The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story (Experimental futures) by Condry Ian

Author:Condry, Ian [Condry, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2013-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Real Robots and the Birth of the “Anime Fan”

If we think of the real in terms of toys and relationships, we can see that Mazinger Z in the early 1970s helped not only bring characters out of the pages of manga and the screens of anime into the hands of children; it also strengthened the relationships between anime producers and toy companies. As the children who watched Astro Boy grew up, a new generation of anime creators emerged. In the 1970s, Yoshiyuki Tomino was making a name for himself as an anime creator whose TV shows sold robot toys effectively. One of Tomino's early projects as a director, Umi no Toriton (Triton of the sea), was based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka. According to the critic Gō Sasakibara, when Tezuka released the collected volume of his serialized manga, he added a note disavowing his connection to the anime version ((Ōtsuka and Sasakibara 2001: 192). Sasakibara interprets Tezuka's distancing himself from the anime as a reflection of his distaste for the ways Tomino altered Tezuka's original manga in order to attract a new kind of viewer. In 1972, Sasakibara points out, there was still no widespread concept of an “anime fan.” In fact, the word for “anime” at the time was still “TV manga” (terebi manga) with the assumption that it was for children.1 He also notes, however, that by the early 1970s, the kids who had grown up watching Astro Boy were reaching adolescence and growing tired of immature fare. “It was Umi no Toriton that found a technique to grab (tsubo ni hamaru) adolescent viewers” (Ōtsuka and Sasakibara 2001: 195). The hero of the series is a boy, the last of the Triton tribe, who must battle the Poseidon tribe. He is forced to become a man even though he is only on the verge of adulthood. Sasakibara sees this character's premise (kyara settei) as identical to the experience of the adolescent viewers, who feel deeply their own liminality, betwixt and between childhood and adulthood. This is another example of the logic of resonance, using ideas of audience identification with certain kinds of characters and worlds. More intriguing to me, however, is how this success created opportunities for Tomino to work in new directions. For, despite Tezuka's disavowals, Tomino's star began to rise.

A couple of years later, the hit TV series Uchu Senkan Yamato (Space battleship Yamato) (1974) contributed to a shift in understanding the anime audience, solidifying the idea that many anime viewers were becoming adults. The mainstream media caught on, as well, when huge lines formed outside cinemas for the release in 1977 of the theatrical version of Yamato. The huge, global success of Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, 1977) further extended the interest in space battles. Meanwhile, Tomino also directed Muteki Chōjin Zambot 3 (Invincible Superman Zambot 3), a giant robot anime that solidified his reputation as a director whose anime sold toys. Television stations increasingly made room for giant robot shows, and Tomino became a sought-after creator.

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