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Friday, March 6, 2015

Check Out The New Anime Trailers

By Leslie Ball


People on the street, in stores, clubs and just about anywhere wearing strange clothes and arty hairstyles aren't aliens from another planet; they may just be ordinary people indulging in cosplay is a portmanteau of the words "costume" and "play." Cosplay is a rapidly-growing pastime. It originated in Japan and the Far East but is spreading all over the world. Characters are often based on new anime trailers. There are more than 430 studios around the world producing this material. Big names include the likes of Gainax, Toei Animation, and Studio Ghibli.

Anime is a form of cartoon animation based on hand-drawn or computerized images. It is an abbreviation of the Japanese word for animation and is pronounced, "any-may, " with emphasis on the second syllable. The genre is characterized by intense graphics, deep characters and highly imaginative plot lines.

Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), the godfather of the genre, is regarded as Japan's answer to Walt Disney. Tezuka was, in fact, largely inspired by Walt Disney, although it may be difficult to see a an obvious correlation between "Sleeping Beauty" and "Astro Boy." Tezuka's profound influence in Japan is illustrated by the fact that, eight years after he died in 1989 of stomach cancer, stamps were issued in his honor.

Tezuka's stories were frequently based on literature and films of the west. He was also a prolific contributor to the world of manga, a category of Japanese comic books/graphic novels. No matter how old you are in Japan, you read manga. The art encompasses numerous sub-categories, from comedy and romance to the darker worlds of horror and sexuality.

Tezuka was also responsible for 13 experimental films, among which is "Legend of the Forest." The animation shows a woodsman hacking into a large tree with an axe, and shows the impact on the vast population of squirrels and other wildlife dwelling in the tree. Although most of his work was directed toward kids, he dabbled in the adult animation market with "Cleopatra, Queen of Sex." With animation, you can get away with more graphic sex and violence than you can with real flesh and blood actors.

Manga has been a large part of the Japanese publishing industry. The market is boosted tremendously by material being translated into English for the International readership. In Canada and the United States alone, the market has been recently valued at 175 million dollars. Some material is published originally in other languages, but these are referred to as anime-influenced animation to distinguish it from the "real thing."

The style of animation in these videos is different from the conventional western cartoon in that the movement of the characters isn't fluid, as if in a hand-drawn film. Instead, the medium relies on fewer, more intensely-drawn, frames. Top titles from 2014 include, "Witch Craft Works, " "Nobunaga the Fool, " "Space Dandy, " and "Noragami."

All three art forms, cosplay, Anime and Manga have a basis in Japanese. All three are sweeping the rest of the globe. Not bad, considering the west gave them "Friends, " McDonalds and Justin Bieber!




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