I took a 180 with my project because I kind of got the other ideas I had about cosmic horror and collective unconscious out of my system and wanted to shift focus to different ideas that have been on my mind lately. I’ve been thinking of hyper youth culture and nostalgia in comics and cartoons. Anyways:
The East and West have been great collaborators in perfecting and producing brain-rotting commercial entertainment content for people all around the world. Especially in entertainment that targets children. With every decade that passes, there is an escalation in both the cross-cultural fusion of entertainment media as well as its conceptual density and complexity. Imports of foreign pop-culture have struck chords with us and added new flavors and dimensions to our own pieces of media. New generations of creators enter the industry with the influences they synthesized as children to push things further and we the consumers devour increasingly potent fantasies. We live in an age of hyper flavor blasted movies, television, comics, cartoons, toys, and videogames. All designed to capture our attention, excite us, flare up our imaginations, create addiction, consume our brains, and ultimately loosen our wallets. We are overloaded with this from day one and so we grow up with remarkably vast conceptual literacies. For example, nowadays, I would think most Americans would understand all of the different time travel shenanigans, supernatural monster origins, and post-apocalyptic scenarios that were once cutting edge even if they wouldn’t consider themselves to be nerds.
In America’s entertainment industry, influence from Japan has come in waves. Starting with the cartoon show Astro Boy premiering on American TV’s in 1964. Funny enough, in the 60’s there was an outcry against cartoon shows like Astro Boy that made people think of cartoon characters as humans. I think of this as a fear of the mind consuming qualities of cartoon media that adults of the time who were not indoctrinated sensed. “The cartoon is a vacuum into which our identity and awareness are pulled, an empty shell that we inhabit which enables us to travel in another realm. We don’t just observe the cartoon we become it!” (Scott McCloud 36, Understanding Comics). With the 70’s came space operas like Leiji Matsumoto’s Space Battleship Yamato (1974) which was rebranded for the US as Star Blazers (1979) after Star Wars (1977) took off and is considered to be what spawned the US anime fandom.
I’m going to go on to talk about 80’s mech animes, video games, and studio Ghibli. I’ll also bring up transformers and vultron. The American toy and cartoon industry. I watched a few documentaries on this.
Then I’ll talk about 90’s homevideo and bootleg culture Gundam, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Sailor Moon, Evangelion. How that stuff started subtly entering the pop-culture conscious. I’ll bring up the Matrix and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Then I will talk about 2000’s 4kids, Toonami, Jetex, and Adult Swim and other imported entertainment media stuff that started showing alongside American content similar to how Disney and Ghibli became associated together. Dragonball Z impact, Pokemon craze, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh. This is the point where I think America fully awakened to Japanese pop-culture influence. With global childhood crazes, parental paranoia, and internet access making space and opening the floodgates to exchange.
Then I’ll talk about American cartoons that road the exchange waves. Creators who grew up watching mechs, magical girls, and martial arts adventures in the 80’s and 90’s started making shows with those themes.
In the 2000’s there was a surge in American cartoons based on or inspired by anime and Asian culture. Jackie Chan Adventures (2000), Samurai Jack (2001), Xiaolin Showdown (2003), Teen Titans (2003), My Life as a Teenage Robot (2003), Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! (2004), American Dragon Jake Long (2005), The Life and Times of Juniper Lee (2005), Robotboy (2005), Ben 10 (2005), Avatar the Last Airbender (2005), etc.
And now we have shows by creators who grew up with the internet and as children had those cross-cultural flood gates unleashed on their little peabrains. I’ll talk about the rest of the shows that are coming out today with that influence. I’ll talk about the indie/alternative comic and videogame scenes. I will talk about artists like Bryan Lee O’mally and Corey Lewis.
https://www.rightstufanime.com/anime-resources-history-of-anime-in-the-us
https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/12/21/understanding-the-japanese-influences-behind-star-wars/#2f5ed6105e1c
https://www.tor.com/2012/03/30/noboru-ishiguro-animes-master-of-space-opera/
I enjoyed reading your draft. Such an interesting topic. It reminded me of my childhood in Japan when I was watching Pokemon and Digimon. I’m interested in the influence of these Japanese animes on here.
Was a bit bummed at first to see you’d changed subjects since your last one sounded so interesting. Luckily this one sounds plenty interesting too, and with such a broad scope there should be plenty of material for you to pull in and talk about. Seems like you’re off to a good start!
I like how you’re going decade by decade, I think that’ll flow nicely. I didn’t know that Astro Boy was one of the first anime in America? I hope you’ll elaborate more on that. I’m also curious to know about any creators involved in the shows that were inspired by anime and Asian culture who were Asian American, and if there weren’t any then why not?
I think you have a solid plan here, you just gotta flesh it out a bit more and you’ll be fine!
Astro Boy was the first anime in general actually. Osamu Tezuka is called the father of manga and anime for a reason ;0
Interestingly enough, most of the Asian American shows were created by white dudes. They may have had some Asian artists, writers, or voice actors but usually the people in charge were white guys. Xiaolin Showdown was made by a Chinese immigrant. Glen Murakami is a Japanese American animator who created Teen Titans and worked on Ben 10 and Batman. I’ll be fleshing this out soon.
This sounds amazing and I love how in depth it will be going into for each decade. Was it hard changing ideas a bit last minute? What other sources will you be using for the final project? Are there any particualr time period or shows/comics that have more of your interest?
It was a bit tough but necessary because my attention shifted in this direction. Right now I’ve been swept up in anime history research but I’m mostly interested in 2000’s and 2010’s American cartoons and comics with Asian influences because that is most of what I absorbed growing up.