Anime is currently at its most popular across the globe, with the medium being more mainstream than ever in the West. Many look back at the 1990s as the era in which the medium first got big outside of Japan, with shows like Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon bringing in a generation of viewers to the wide world of anime fandom. Otaku nowadays have a veritable smorgasbord at their disposal through which to watch anime, with various streaming services offering decades worth of animated material. It wasn't always this way, however, with anime once being far less than even niche in the West.
Long before the hits of the '90s, anime was only sporadically released in the West, with these old-school classics often being heavily edited for Americans. Decades of drip releases finally softened American viewers, however, opening the floodgates for many audiences to not only accept anime, but embrace it wholeheartedly. Here's a brief look at how anime got to be where it is today and how the road to the successes of the '90s was actually paved all the way back in the 1960s.
The First Big Anime In the West
Some of the first massively successful anime both in Japan and the West were works such as Astro Boy and Speed Racer. The former is about a future dominated by robots in which a robot boy with a heart of gold defends his city, giving rise to one of the most venerable anime franchises over the years. Speed Racer, which is about a young man who becomes a prominent race car driver, is easily one of the best-known "classic" anime among even older Westerners, who instantly recognize the series even if they don't know what anime is. Its art style and storytelling were notable during the era, making a huge impression on youngsters who were none the wiser about its foreign origins.
Another similar series was Gigantor, which was one of many shows of the time starring a boy and his giant robot. The series was an Americanized adaptation of Tetsujin-28, paving the way for giant robot fiction as well as, along with Speed Racer, a somewhat unfortunate precedent of heavily editing material for Western audiences. More and more, these somewhat outlandish concepts would become the face of the anime industry, which itself was becoming increasingly synonymous with popular culture back in Japan. However, anime as a broad concept still wasn't on American radars, although this would change as home video releases and otaku culture began to be exported among immigrant communities.
Akira and the Rise of Otaku Culture
Many anime tropes had become established by the 1970s, and the industry was now a firm feature in Japan. The rise of VHS tapes saw anime shows become more profitable than ever, giving birth to the concept of OVAs. These straight-to-home release productions had much higher budgets than regular broadcast anime and thus could get away with a lot more risque material. This somewhat controversial nature of "adult cartoons" helped to make anime even more popular in the growing underground fandom outside of Japan. Their being brought to the West, either officially or unofficially, was the result of the success of subtitled anime being shown on specific Japanese-oriented TV channels in America that were created primarily for early Japanese-American communities.
This was bolstered by the success of Americanizations like Star Blazers/Space Cruiser, which came out in the San Francisco area and adapted the iconic anime Space Battleship Yamato. Part of the show's success was due to its refraining from censorship, keeping much of the original material intact. This harder material, which was told in an ongoing storyline format, was worlds more advanced than much of the animated children's fare in America at the time. The wealth of different genres and tones was also a welcome reprieve from the much more trite American cartoon industry of the period; the result of the sales of manga and anime allowing for a wider variety of stories to be told.
This idea that "Japanese cartoons" were so much more mature and experimental, along with the roots of the Western otaku culture, was cemented with the release of the legendary film Akira. Though it wasn't much of a success in Japan, the dark cyberpunk film made a huge impact in the West. The fact that a "cartoon" could be so evocative of stories like Blade Runner and other such serious sci-fi films showcased the power of the medium and what broadcasters could be potentially cashing in on by importing more of these productions.
The mid and late '80s ended with the release of shows such as Robotech, and while this title did make some changes to the original material, much of the original spirit remained intact, making the show authentically 'anime.' There would also be attempts to bring the massively popular Dragon Ball anime to the U.S., although these first tries failed to reach even a fraction of what the franchise would eventually become in America.
The '90s, however, was finally the decade in which anime as an idea and medium began firing on all cylinders and was released in a widespread, relatively unchanged capacity in the West. Since then, anime has gained an undeniable foothold in modern American culture, with poor dubs and questionable localizations a long-forgotten relic of the past. Needless to say, this could not have happened without the decades of breaking down barriers and slowly bringing watered-down but well-produced adaptations overseas, where they were loved by various generations of both kids and adults.
