Research on the art and history of animation
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 