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Just like @senshin stated in his comment, for the Japanese people, their characters do look Asian.
There is a really nice article written about this on thesocietypages and as stated there:
Why do the Japanese draw themselves as white? You see that especially in manga and anime.
As it turns out, that is an American opinion, not a Japanese one. The Japanese ...
39
I think the simplest answer is that anime is just not that popular. Though immensely popular and gaining momentum, the anime community just isn't that widespread. If you look at it critically MOST of the anime fans are limited to the popular and mostly Shounen series such as Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Dragon Ball, Pokémon, Deathnote etc.
Compare it to the ...
34
Historically speaking, Germany and Japan have been on friendly terms since the 1930s (and even before), due to their shared militaristic ambitions just prior to the second world war (which led to their Axis Alliance).
After the Second World War, the economies of both nations experienced rapid recoveries; bilateral relations, now focused on economic ...
30
Okay, so I have been able to find a definitive answer!
Naruto Narutimate Hero 3: Finally a Clash! Jonin VS Genin!! Indescriminate Grand Melee Tournament Meeting!!
is the longest titled anime with a large 107 characters or 87 characters without non-alphanumeric characters
Second Place goes to:
Digimon Adventure 02: Zenpen Digimon Hurricane Jouriku!! - ...
26
The First Anime
Astroboy's Claim to Fame
Astroboy (1963) is often thought to be the "first anime", but that's false. It does merit some firsts though: it was the first anime to be broadcast overseas, and also the first anime that was broadcast regularly that lasted a full TV slot's duration.
What Astroboy isn't, and the real 'first anime'
The first ...
26
Since the question has picked up steam, I am going to construct the answer by including both historical and modern viewpoint and then the depiction of women in anime and manga
Part I: Historical viewpoint
The proper name for the trope is Yamato Nadeshiko. "Yamato" is one of the older, fancier and more poetic name for Japan and the Japanese people. ...
23
If we look back to Astroboy, the first regularly broadcast tv-length animated series, we can see that characters are still not necessarily Asian-looking
Astroboy started off as a show targeted mostly towards the Japanese, but soon Tezuka realised that it would not strike a profit on this alone. 52 episodes were sold to NBC Enterprises (as opposed to NBC ...
23
There are critically analyzed works.
It is indeed a much newer and nicher area than traditional film, but there are communities around it. There is just much less of it (as @Arcane states) due to popularity
Critics in anime come in a few different forms:
Academic Critique & Analysis
Many film/media journals accept papers on animated media - this is ...
22
Anime can be broken into three broad catagories - shounen, shoujo, and seinen. These translate into roughly young guys, young girls, and adults (as in not young people). Most of the "popular" shows are shounen, which contain a lot of action/fighting, simply because that demographic likes that kind of thing more.
As can be expected, there are also shoujo ...
22
Percentage wise bleach has the most fillers, since it has a total of:
366 episodes
160 filler episodes
which means 43.4% of the anime are fillers.
naruto and naruto-shippuuden combined have
640 episodes
238 filler (1st season 89, 2nd season 149)
which means 37.2% of the anime are fillers.
one-piece has
682 episodes
97 filler episodes
which means only ...
22
I don't know where you heard about a creativity crisis but in the early 90's there was indeed a huge crisis which weakened the anime industry for a few years, along with a lot of other industries: an economic crisis.
In the world, we more-or-less refer to this crisis as the "Early 90's recession". In a few words, it was a massive and worldwide economic ...
21
It's partly a matter of targeting specific audiences. Depending on what time a show broadcasts at, you can tell roughly what their target audience is.
Plenty of anime are broadcast in the morning. From this season, Danchi Tomoo airs at 9:30, Dokidoki! Precure at 8:30, Toriko at 9:00, One Piece at 9:30, Uchuu Kyoudai at 7:00. These are mostly shows which are ...
21
It is for financial reasons.
In the past, many series had longer seasons: 24, 26 or 28 episodes for a season was common in the 90s (Meitantei Conan's first season was 28 episodes). Series that were pretty guaranteed to be popular enough to keep up selling a lot of toys to kids had longer seasons (Sailor Moon's first season had 46 episodes). Gag series from ...
19
In the 90s, Anime (formerly called Japanimation in some magazines and sources) became the latest target of alarmist conservative media due to a set of OVAs titled "Urotsukidōji" or "The Overfiend" in many English translations:
It's a 3 part series which contained masses of animated gore, demon tentacle rape, and horror.
Not only was it offensive to much of ...
18
You have two questions here:
What exactly is this treaty?
and
Does it really have so much control over anime?
The Treaty of San Francisco they reference is otherwise known as the Treaty of Peace with Japan. Representatives from 51 countries worked together to create this treaty at an opera house in San Francisco, CA. The treaty was ratified by 48 of ...
17
Most of this is a summary of the paper Maid in Japan:
An Ethnographic Account of Alternative Intimacy by Patrick W. Galbraith (author of 'the otaku encyclopaedia')
The first maid costume in Japanese popular culture came from the erotic anime series Cream Lemon, part 11: Black Cat Mansion in 1986. (Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan's Database Animals, ...
16
According to The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan, Lum Invader from Urusei Yatsura is possibly the first tsundere to exist (and also potentially the source of all moe)
Urusei Yatsura started manga distribution in 1978 and Lum's cold exterior (but in actuality being kind and loving) accrued her the title.
However, ...
16
Kotaku says in its post here:
Increasingly, Japanese authorities have been cracking down on drugs and celebrities. Instead of letting these famous individuals off, like police seem to do in the U.S., the Japanese police and the country's media appear to make examples of them, stringing them out to dry. This might be a good thing! It also might be a bit much....
15
It may come to a surprise for you, but the anime you typically watch is not what is considered mainstream in its country of origin, unless of course you watch shows made for children and families.
In fact, most of the anime that the international community consumes are what is called "late night anime." The overall ratings on these TV series are so low that ...
15
TLDR: The premise of the question is only true for male-oriented works.
The main bulk of the question (the reason for women in anime being portrayed mainly as housewives) has been answered by Fumikage Tokoyami quite comprehensively, so this is more of a frame challenge to the question than a straight answer.
There is significant gap between the portrayal of ...
14
Adding onto @Angelo's answer, the rise of the trend seems to coincide with the rise of idol culture in Japan.
The idol phenomenon began during the early 1970s, reflecting a boom in Japan for the musician Sylvie Vartan in the French film Cherchez l'idole in 1963, with Japanese title (アイドルを探せ Aidoru wo sagase?) in November 1964.
The term came to be applied to ...
14
Just like in this answer, let's take a look at /u/homu's data.
This basically answers your question right here: between 8% and 15% (avg. 10%) of anime in each year from 2000-2013 were based on a video game of some variety. Games are a minor but not insignificant source for anime.
Now, if you're asking "what percentage of video games get turned into an ...
14
In real-life Japanese culture, many people do hope to get and attempt to get the attention of their love interest without ever voicing it or being direct, so this is not an anime/manga-specific trope but rather works of anime/manga are incorporating a very standard experience of elementary/jr. high/high schoolers in Japan past and through to the present. In ...
14
The first 'magical girl' anime was Sally The Witch, who transformed with a wand into another costume - This was a simple animation though and performed in the same cut as the rest of the scene. Sally The Witch came out in 1966 and was in black and white.
[Apologies for low-quality gif]
If however, that feels like a bit of a cop out answer, the anime ...
14
I've done some searching about the names like this, and I wasn't able to find any particular explanation. Some people say it's just for style, other argue that the × is another form of "vs" (which kind of makes some sense), or "and" (like &), or "with". (Not to mention that it might also mean "kisses" like in "xoxo" = "hugs and kisses", but that's most ...
13
The golden age of anime began in the 1980s with Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato.
According to Wikipedia:
Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), the first Real Robot anime, was also initially unsuccessful but was revived as a theatrical film in 1982. The success of the theatrical versions of Yamato and Gundam are seen as the beginning of the anime boom of ...
13
What should a university-level course about manga and anime culture cover as part of its curriculum?
Some Notes Before Reading
This is an imaginary course that I have created. I think it gives a broad enough overview of the subject for a single term, but I think it could be extended easily to a two term course if a more in-depth knowledge was required.
I'm assuming 1 hour lectures twice a week, enough time in seminars to do full screenings, and a ...
13
This meme seems to be a conflation of two very different things.
First, Hyakuya Akane from Owari no Seraph (the girl on the lower part of the image) does not share the low below-the-shoulder ponytail that the women in the top of the image share; she has a loose braid. Today I was handed this event flyer by a friend (a Japanese college student involved in ...
12
This is a pretty common trope which, I dare say, predates energy drinks and the like. From TV Tropes:
A common device for a series opening or Establishing Character Moment. Things begin in a frantic rush which usually results in taking short cuts, such as eating breakfast on the run. The classic image is of someone running down the street with a slice of ...
12
Question #1: Why do many characters tend to have crazy hair colors? What is the cultural origin of such a style?
The origin of this practice is the primarily black and white medium of manga.
Manga pages are printed in black and white, so almost all of the art that mangaka (manga artists) draw is black and white (this is much cheaper for the publishers than ...
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