Teen Titans, Boondocks and Avatar were definately inspired by Asian animation .
Did the reverse happen?
I suspect it did, but quite a while ago. I remember that when I was a kid there was some obviously non-American animation showing on a syndicated show. I stiull haven’t been able to identify all of it (working from my ancient memory and very inadequate info from the internet). One piece was a French cartoon, but others were apparently Japanese, and it seemed clear to me that they were imitating Disney – the style was in the classic, flowing Disney style, not the sort of limited, open-mouthed anime style. So back in the (?) 1950s(?) they were imitating Disney. It makes it all the more interesting that, at least starting with the Little Mermaid, disney was being influenced by anime (those oversizeed eyes, that lovingly animated hair!)
Sure. People like Osamu Tezuka were influenced by the Disney style circa Bambi, particularly as regards the large eyes, and his work was extremely influential in the growth of manga and anime styles. A long time before The Little Mermaid, definately.
Cowboy Bebop. All of the musical references are American or Western in general. Case in point: Episode titles like “Honky Tonk Women,” “Heavy Metal Queen,” “Jupiter Jazz,” and of course, “The Real Folk Blues.” It’s anime meets N’awlins jazz.
It’s not clear from what you write that you understand my post. I said that Japanese animators in (possibly – the date isn’t clear, but pre-1960s) the 1950s were clearly influenced by Disney style. That’s definitely pre-Little Mermaid (1989). I then said that It was odd and interesting that The Little Mermaid itself seemed anime-influenced.
The Amine Metropolis was probably inspired by a western film (or at least its poster)
In the last episode of FLCL at one point they animation style turns into the South Park style. Caught me completely off guard the first time I saw it.
Samurai Champloo, also from Shinichiro Watanabe, did with hip-hop what Cowboy Bebop did with jazz.
Not N’awlins jazz in particular, which is typically a very specific kind of early, primitive jazz. Yoko Kanno, the composer of the Cowboy Bebop score, is influenced by all types of jazz, including big band swing (the title song “Tank!”), and also pop and blues (closing credits “The Real Folk Blues”). New Orleans jazz brings to mind Louis Armstrong’s trumpet playing, oom-pah lower brass, clarinet rather than saxophone, and possibly even a banjo – sort of like Dixieland music with a steady, shuffling beat, stuff from the 1920s and ‘30s. Most of Kanno’s work is much more modern-sounding and swingin’.
At least one episode of Cowboy Bebop (the one set at the amusement park) was meant as a homage to Bruce Timm’s animation work on the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series, in terms of its noir direction and “set design.”
And filmwise, Mushroom Samba is a total riff on blaxploitation flicks.
The manga (later turned into an anime) Bastard!! is chock full of heavy metal references. The main character is Dark Schneider, assumed to be named after Dee Schneider, one of the main countries is Metallicana, there are some spells like Helloween and Megadeth and a lot of other references. If anyone’s interested, the manga itself reminds me a lot of the magazine Heavy Metal.
I stand educated. The wikipedia page also says that #19, “Wild Horses,” has a bunch of Star Trek references. Sweet!
Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z is an anime version of a U.S. cartoon.
The influence that I think that shows up the most, especially when you understand one key fact about anime, is that of the Hanna-Barbara studio.
The thing about anime is that the bulk of it, especially the stuff made for television, is done as cheaply as possible. The techniques that Hanna-Barbara pioneered in order to make animation feasible for television were picked up by those early anime studios. Time has diverged things, of course, and the studios have learned new techniques for how to make a 22-minute, 40000-frame show out of just 1500 drawings, but the style that was created to deal with the technical limitations grew from those American roots.
Awesome
I’m a fan of PPGZ…I wouldn’t call it particularly influenced by it or any other Western shows, based on it though it is. It’s quite thoroughly ‘Anime’.