Research on the art and history of animation
This series on the sakuga is going to be half articles, half interviews of members of the community. This time, I got to talk with manuloz, French anime and sakuga fan, and admin of the (now dead) website manganimation.net
In the 70’s, TMS and its subcontractors managed to create two aesthetics of their own, one centered around the A Pro comedies and the other the Madhouse dramas. Despite how innovative and influential these might have been, TMS was missing the tidal change known as the “SF boom” that started in 1974, with Space Battleship Yamato and risked, because of that, to fail to attract anime’s new audience, young men in highschool or older that would form the first generation of otaku. But the studio profoundly influenced early otaku culture with a series so enduring it’s still alive today : that was Lupin III.
The second half of the 1970’s was no doubt a transitional period for Tokyo Movie. As a whole, the anime industry had set up a stable structure that would only be modified in the middle of the 80’s by the otaku boom and the new OVA format. But for Tokyo Movie and its subcontractors, this was a time of big change, marked by the separation between A Pro and Tokyo Movie in 1976. The consequences were unexpected : A Pro’s staff scattered and its most talented members would do the groundwork of Studio Ghibli. But before that, Tokyo Movie profited the most from this outpouring of talent.
Last time, I covered the changes in anime from the perspective of the industry : how studios evolved, how staff moved from one place to the other, and how anime’s production processes became closer to what we know today. Now, it’s time to look at it from the perspective of the shows themselves : how their style, staff and animation are unique to that specific time period - one so exceptional that it could rightfully be called Tokyo Movie’s golden age.
In 1973, anime celebrated its first decade of existence. But the anime industry in 1973 was almost a world apart from what it was 10 years earlier : the production system had become almost set to what it mostly still is today, the manpower had immensely grown and the studio organization had evolved. Moreover, new people had started producing their own original works, people whose names would be among the most famous in anime history.
During the 60's, Tokyo Movie, still a small studio, laid low and only produced one new show in 1967, the SF-manga adaptation Perman. But they were working hard behind the scenes and made their first two historical moves : overseeing the creation of a new studio, A Production ; and a new revolutionary anime in 1968, Star of the Giants.
While today we speak of “the anime industry” like it’s something obvious, that wasn’t always the case. When animation started in Japan around the 1910’s, it was still very much a rudimentary process ; and even after WWII, with the creation of the first major Japanese studio, Toei Animation, things were still very different from now. In this first essay, I will show how anime became the “industry” we know today : an entire sector sharing common business practices and production processes. As I’ll do during the entire series, I’ll mostly focus on TV animation : the starting point will therefore be 1963, the generally accepted date of anime’s birth.
Animétudes 