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Anime was made for military propaganda
During World War II, Anime was used for military propaganda by the Japanese government. Lying to the people by making anime where the Japanese were winning the war, which led the people to believe that they were winning. -
Period: to
1930 - 2024
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Anime gradually shifted from war to generality and the world
After World War II Anime started to slowly shift from propaganda and was slowly released to the world, with one of the main influences on new anime being America. -
Manga and anime flourishes
During the late 1940s and the 1950s manga and anime started to flourish and foreign films began to influence them. -
Anime studios started appearing across Japan
During the 1950s anime studios soon started to appear all over Japan, leading to very prominent studios like Toei Animation being created. -
The traditional anime art style became a thing
During the 1960s the traditional anime art style began to form. Consisting of large eyed, big mouthed, and large headed characters. -
The Japanese film market shrinks
During the 1970s the film market in Japan shrank due to competition from other countries on television. This reduced the popular animation studio, Toei Animation, workforce as they had to leave and go to other non-Japanese studios. Though those employees soon left and created two different animation studios that are very well known now. Those Being Madhouse Animation and Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. -
Anime became more real and multifaceted
In the 1980s, anime went through a "visual quality renewal" thanks to the founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki and the creator of the anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo. They made anime begin to deal with more complex and nuanced stories. During the time a lot of science fiction anime was created as well. -
Neon Genesis Evangelion was created
In the 1990s the controversial anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion was created by Hideaki Anno. The show became popular both in and outside of Japan and halfway through the show even created a whole new genre of anime, mecha. The anime was wrapped up with a movie called "The End of Evangelion" which grossed over 10 million in 1997. Also, due to its high amount of violent and sexual scenes it caused anime censorship to increase around the world. -
The Evangelion Era
Throughout the 2000s mecha anime was commonly made in Japan, with a lot of Evangelion inspired anime like RahXephon and Zegapain. During this time, the two anime franchises Gundam and Macross started airing. With Gundam shows still being made to this day. The most recent one being "Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury" which aired between 2022 and 2023. -
Adult Swim now released anime
In 2010 the late night adult-oriented action channel, Adult Swim, got permission to release uncut popular anime. This allowed them to broadcast or rebroadcast anime back to a wider audience through the power of television. English dubbed anime such as Deadman Wonderland, Sword Art Online, Hunter x Hunter, Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, Akame ga Kill!, and so many more were now being broadcast to the general audience. -
Covid-19s impact on anime popularity
Due to Covid-19 anime popularity grew to heights never before seen. Due to this rise in popularity, many streaming services started to expand the availability and number of anime that they had access to. The anime movie Demon Slayer: Kimitsu no Yaiba: Mugen Train was the worlds highest grossing film of 2020 with 10 billion yen made in just 10 days. Even becoming the fastest grossing film in Japanese cinema, beating the previous record holder, Spirited Away. Who made 10 billion yen in 25 days. -
Idol by Yoasobi was released.
In 2023 the song Idol by Yoasobi was made and used as the opening song to the popular anime Oshi no Ko which in English translates to "My Favorite Idol". It topped the Global Billboard Charts 200 with 45.7 million streams and 24,000 copies outside of the U.S. It also became the first Japanese song and anime song to take the first spot in Apple Musics Top 100: Global Chart.