Anime arose in the early 20th century, when Japanese
filmmakers experimented with the
animation techniques also pioneered in France, Germany, the United States and Russia.
[10] A claim for the earliest Japanese animation is
Katsudō Shashin, an undated and private work by an unknown creator.
[18] In 1917, the first professional and publicly displayed works began to appear. Animators such as
Ōten Shimokawa and
Seitarou Kitayama produced numerous works, with the oldest surviving film being Kouchi's
Namakura Gatana, a two-minute clip of a samurai trying to test a new sword on his target only to suffer defeat.
[14][19][20]The
1923 Great Kantō earthquake resulted in widespread destruction to Japan's infrastructure and the destruction of Shimokawa's warehouse, destroying most of these early works.
The success of
The Walt Disney Company's 1937 feature film
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs profoundly influenced many Japanese animators.
[27] In the 1960s, manga artist and animator
Osamu Tezuka adapted and simplified many Disney animation techniques to reduce costs and to limit the number of frames in productions. He intended this as a temporary measure to allow him to produce material on a tight schedule with inexperienced animation staff.
[28] Three Tales, aired in 1960, was the first anime shown on television. The first anime television series was
Otogi Manga Calendar, aired from 1961 to 1964.
The 1970s saw a surge of growth in the popularity of
manga, Japanese
comic books and
graphic novels, many of which were later animated. The work of Osamu Tezuka drew particular attention: he has been called a "legend"
[29] and the "god of manga".
[30][31] His work – and that of other pioneers in the field – inspired characteristics and genres that remain fundamental elements of anime today. The giant
robot genre (known as "
mecha" outside Japan), for instance, took shape under Tezuka, developed into the
Super Robot genre under
Go Nagai and others, and was revolutionized at the end of the decade by
Yoshiyuki Tomino who developed the
Real Robot genre. Robot anime like the
Gundam and
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross series became instant classics in the 1980s, and the robot genre of anime is still one of the most common in Japan and worldwide today. In the 1980s, anime became more accepted in the
mainstream in Japan (although less than
manga), and experienced a boom in production. Following a few successful adaptations of anime in overseas markets in the 1980s, anime gained increased acceptance in those markets in the 1990s and even more at the turn of the 21st century. In 2002,
Spirited Away, a
Studio Ghibli production directed by
Hayao Miyazaki won the
Golden Bear at the
Berlin International Film Festival and in 2003 at the
75th Academy Awards it won the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.