Tag: Osamu Tezuka

The History of Mushi Pro – 05 – Farewell to Tezuka (1970-1972)

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From a Tezuka-centered perspective, the legacy of the Animerama films is difficult to assess. They were certainly pioneering, but the studio had to pay a heavy toll for that, and the mangaka grew increasingly estranged from his own staff. Things went slowly, but Tezuka gave up on Animerama after Cleopatra and, soon, on Mushi Production as a whole. Tezuka and his studio would go their separate ways: among the symbols of that split was the so-called third Animerama movie, Kanashimi no Belladonna.

The History of Mushi Pro – 3 – The beginning of the end (1967-1969)

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With the huge debt left by its former acting director and the end of Mushi’s partnership with NBC Enterprises, the studio found itself in an increasingly difficult financial situation from the second half of 1967 onwards. Things would only get worse from there, and every attempt to resolve them ended in failure as Mushi failed to produce any success. By 1969, the signs were clear: the studio's downward spiral could not be stopped.

The History of Mushi Pro – 02 – Anime business (1965-1966)

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While I’m hesitant to speak of “golden ages”, if Mushi Production had one, it was certainly the years 1965-1966. Still riding on Tetsuwan Atom’s prodigious popularity, the studio considerably expanded its personnel and activities. It launched production of new, ambitious TV shows, notably the first color TV anime, Jungle Taitei, and seemed to reach unprecedented artistic heights. But at the same time, the atmosphere at the upper level was getting worse, as Osamu Tezuka started realizing the situation was getting further and further away from what he originally envisioned for Mushi, and the anime industry knew its first deaths. Mushi’s success was not just built on the vision of ambitious and passionate creators, but also on frustrations, failures, and human lives.

The History of Mushi Pro – 1.5 – Atom through its storyboards

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In the previous article of this series, I stated that Tetsuwan Atom’s production was “centered on one document, the storyboard”. Although the production pipeline of anime has changed a lot with time, the storyboard’s central place has remained constant. It is, alongside the layout, the lifeline followed by most of the staff, the central document which has to be both adapted and interpreted. It is therefore very important to understand the history of how anime storyboards, or ekonte, appeared, evolved and were used.

The History of Mushi Pro – 01 – The Road to TV Anime (1960-1965)

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Osamu Tezuka, the God of Manga, is also the father of modern anime - not only did he coin the word, his Tetsuwan Atom was the first animated TV serial in Japan, and pioneered the “limited animation” techniques still associated with anime. Or so the story goes. In actuality, things are far more nuanced: the goal of this first article is to show that, and narrate the events that led to the completion of Atom in all their complexity. I hope to achieve that in mostly two ways: avoiding teleology - that is, the idea that Tezuka’s goal was to make TV, “limited” animation from the start - and shifting the focus away from Tezuka as an individual.

Japanese Animation, 1937-1958: or, more notes on Akira Daikuhara

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The origin and core of this piece is my personal interest in Daikuhara, but it will not be  another biographical piece like my previous one. I will rather explore the area which I wrote the least about last time: Daikuhara’s pre-Tôei work. More generally, this will therefore be an exploration of Japanese animation production from the time of the Sino-Japanese War to Tôei’s first animated feature film, The White Serpent - that is, an exploration of roughly two decades of animation in Japan, from 1937 to 1958.

The History of Tatsunoko – 1 – Early Days

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anese animation studios whose origins go back directly to the so-called “first anime boom” - that is, the development of TV animation. For that reason, Tatsunoko’s first years are chronologically distant and the stuff of some legend: after all, wasn’t the studio one of the pioneers? Didn’t they contribute to forever change the way animation would be made, first in Japan and then in the entire world?

Toei and early TV anime – Part 1: Kaze no Fujimaru (1964-1965)

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The goal of this two-part research is to explore part of Tôei’s early TV production, mostly between 1964 and 1968. It will be centered around what is paradoxically one of the studio’s lesser-known series, Shônen Ninja Kaze no Fujimaru or, translated into English, Young Ninja Fujimaru of the Wind. This first part will analyze the show itself, which was probably one of the boldest of its time in terms of direction and narration. The second part will follow Fujimaru’s staff after the show, especially two of Tôei’s greatest animators: Keiichirô Kimura and Hayao Miyazaki.

Akira Daikuhara: the works and career of a forgotten anime pioneer

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For Japanese animation fans and historians, the name of Akira Daikuhara (sometimes spelled Daikubara) should ring a bell as belonging to one of the major artists in postwar Japanese animation and to the core member of studio Tôei Animation’s team throughout the 1960’s alongside Yasuji Mori. However, despite this universally-acknowledged importance, Daikuhara seems like a forgotten figure: he has no Wikipedia page in any language, his personal page on the Japanese sakugawiki encyclopedia is blank, and until recently, he barely had any uploads to his name on sakugabooru. Although I will try later on to understand the reasons behind this state of affairs, the first goal of this article is to correct it by giving a detailed account of Daikuhara’s career, work and legacy.