1965: A Year of Anime Firsts

Mia Lewis is getting her MA/PhD in Japanese Literature at Stanford University, where her area of specialty is manga. Her undergraduate research at Columbia focused on the use of visual manipulation of language to embed meaning into manga’s text. Her undergraduate thesis, which focused on these techniques in CLAMP’s manga, was published in the Columbia East Asia Review. She also runs a blog on anime/manga: http://kagayakusekai.wordpress.com/.

I would like to start as Charles Dunbar did by stating that this era of anime is completely new to me. I must also state that because the vast majority of this year’s anime (beyond their opening themes) is not available outside of Japan or at all, this piece is based almost entirely on secondary research. There were also times when Wikipedia was the only source for specific information. In instances where information from Wikipedia exceeds basic plot information, I only use it when it is consistent with other sources, and note it at the end of the statement. As my goal here is to provide a sense of the industry, rather than individual works, I do not go into plot for most works. I would also like to apologize for putting this project out of order by being late with getting this finished, and to thank all of those who submitted their work early to keep the blog going on time. -- Mia

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1965 was a year of firsts for anime on a multitude of different fronts. Some of these experiments and efforts were so successful as to effectively change the standards to which every subsequent anime was held. On the other hand, some were such huge failures that they ended after only one episode. The number of new anime series produced this year nearly quadrupled over the previous year, going from 4 to 15. Of these series, few crossed over into the Western world. However, this year as a period of trial and error was key to the formation of anime as we now know it.

1966: Reflecting the Economic Expansion in Anime

When we were putting out fliers for our "Golden Ani-Versary" project, he came to us known only as "Inaki", but he convinced us that he'd be the fan for the job when it came to anime. A lifelong fan of Japanese animation, particularly the magical-girl genre with a love of the history of the medium, he can be found on twitter at @aliveinthewired, where he thinks too hard about anime.

WAY too hard about anime.

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Like much of the world, times for Japan the 1960s were incredible and tumultuous, a time of great change. The economy boomed, and society underwent many changes; the country itself was transformed as massive building projects worked to accommodate the new Japan, its industry, and its people. It's in this era that television—as well as televised animation, of course—would become firmly established in Japan's popular culture.

Television wasn't new or novel in Japan in 1966, immediately becoming popular after its introduction in 1953, with everyday Japanese people crowding around televisions in public plazas, shops, bars, restaurants, and other such drawcards. Private television was also not novel in 1966, as many Japanese homes bought television sets to watch the Royal Wedding in 1959 with a second upsurge for the Tokyo Olympiad in 1964. It's into this environment that Tezuka's bold experiment, an animated television programme of his hit manga Astro Boy, was brought into the world.

It's no secret that Tezuka's magnificent experiment wasn't exactly a success. Despite building a television anime industry from the ground up and more or less inventing modern television animation to do it, Astro Boy still failed to turn a profit for Tezuka's newly-founded company. However, that was in 1963, and by 1966 things had changed significantly. In the 1960s, the Japanese economy was booming, and every year the GDP nearly doubled, a phenomenon unheard of in economics. More televisions, more money, and more people drove the demand for entertainment up further each year. The seeds of the anime industry were beginning to blossom.