Back when I was a child I remember programs like Starblazers, Robotech, Speed Racer, etc., and most of us referred to the style of animation as Japanimation. We did this because the shows were animated in Japan and we were of course imitating others who had used the term before us.
At some point it was thought of as offensive to use the word Japanimation. So far as I can recall the transition from Japanimation to anime occurred sometime in the early to mid 90s. I’m curious to find out if this was the case for other people and also why there was a drive to stop the use of japanimation in favor of anime.
I’d post this in General Questions but this seems like the more appropriate forum.
I remember that at about the time the word Manga came into the vocabulary, Anime happened along soon after. I think it was just a case of learning the “correct” name for the art form.
It can’t be that stupid, unless you’re not a fan of the word “animation” either. Nevertheless, it’s the word that the Japanese use. Fans tend to be enthusiastic about using the proper terms for things, and the word was learned by non-fans as well.
Okay, I had composed a reply going by my admittedly faulty memory and then scrapped it. Then I found a reference to this in Watching Anime, Reading Manga by Fred Patten which confirmed everything I remembered so…
The term japanimation was the first widely used catch all term for Japanese animation in the US. It goes back to the late seventies. In the mid-eighties it started falling out of favor for three major reasons:
First, the pun wasn’t funny any more.
Second, it tended to get pronounced by some people as Jap-animation rather than Ja-panimation turning the term into a racial slur.
Third, fans on this side of the pacific had picked up the term anime (which the Japanese borrowed from the French). Now if you know anything about anime fandom then you know that there’s nothing they like better than appropriating Japanese words, using them poorly, and being smug about it to people who don’t understand them. So naturally this quickly became adopted as the term to use.
I first bumped into this when Akira was released in the US which happened when people were still going on about “japanimation” vs. “anime”.
Since reporters find a pun easier to understand than a new loan word they continued to refer to Japanese animation as japanimation until well into the nineties but eventually enough anime fandom leaked into pop culture to squash the term.
I should clarify, adding on to what Just Some Guy posted, that the Japanese use it to refer to animation in general. Americans/English speakers seem to use it only for Japanese-origin animation.
Technically, I don’t think the Japanese use the term “Japan” either.
I believe the same is true of the term “manga,” isn’t it? In Japan it means comic books of any nation; so *Uncle Scrooge Comics * are also “manga.” Just as Walt Disney’s *Snow White * is “anime.”
There sure seems to be an “anime/manga style,” though. Is that just an example of Japanese animators and illustrators slavishly copying the stylistic idiosyncracies of a few groundbreaking artists, just as lesser animation studios have tried to copy Disney?
*I edit this post to head off the objection that Disney wasn’t a groundbreaking artist. “Influential,” then. Who also copied from others. In fact, forget I even mentioned Disney.
I think some also believe the term is racist. Although the intended combination is “Japan+Animation,” some people believe the term implies “Jap animation.”
[sub]“It’s called Japanimation! At least it was the last time I checked…which was 1987…”[/sub]
No you are remembering fairly well. Tezuka appropriated the large eyes common in the Disney style, and other American styles like Betty Boop, into his style. Astro Boy was hugely influential and the style evolved into what it is today.
The term “anime” was taken from the French, and used by the Japanese, and now used by Americans.
Like many other genres, it’s been influenced by animators and cultures around the world.
This is my favorite quote of the thread so far. So true!
The Japanese word for animation is アニメーション (a ni me-- sho n) which is in fact the English word adapted into Japanese. Most of the time, people use the shortened form アニメ, which is romanized as “anime”.
Now regular English pronunciation rules would make that last “e” silent, so a lot of people in English speaking countries wrote it as “animé”, to indicate that the e is pronounced. This makes it look French, so many people assumed it was a French word first.
Nice broad brush you’re painting with there…:dubious:
Let me just get that other typical anime fan knee-jerk reaction out of the way:
IT’S NOT A GENRE!!! IT’S A MEDIUM!!!1!!
Okay, got that covered…back to the discussion.
Actually, I think I noticed the decline of the term japanimation around the same time that people started hating on Carl Macek for “butchering” anime series for the American market.
The fact that the French and Japanese words are pronounced the same is an accident of the two languages’ phonetics. The fact that they’re spelt the same (save for the accent) in Latin letters is an accident of French orthography and standard Romanization.
