There is significant awareness of Japanese popular culture in the United States. The flow of Japanese animation, fashion, films, manga comics, martial arts, television shows and video games to the United States has increased American awareness of Japanese pop culture, which has had a significant influence on American pop culture, including sequential media and entertainment into the 21st century.
Overview The reception of Japanese pop culture has typically been a mainly positively accepted one by the United States. While cultural influences are mainly Japanese as due to nation of origin, Japanese pop culture has gained its popularity by high quality and standard of artistic content for sequential media, from not just artistic style and composition, but to writing content, lack of expressive restriction by censorship and moral regulation of works allowed for syndication, diverse portrayals of genres and imaginative ideas explored throughout its library of works, and appealing to generally shared human ideals and the human condition regardless of boundary of nationality and ethnicity.
While anime, manga, and video games respectively have focus of themes and literary approaches unique from each other that define them independently, shared core elements between them allow familiarity for fans to interchange from medium to medium, and provides a sense of unity, consistency, and respected tradition as sequential art. For fans, this artistic consistency establishes common ground for a community as well as a kind of artistic movement and statement. This artistic consistency has been termed "anime style" or "anime" overall by global and American fans by need of identification, ease of recognition, and sense of historic and cultural origins, with manga and anime founded by Osamu Tezuka, and goes further than just tangible art style, writing, or general themes, instead being more like the soul of Japanese popular culture in itself.
History Japanese popular culture gradually spread to the United States in several waves during the early-to-late 20th century:
1920s International stardom of Sessue Hayakawa, whose fame rivaled that of Douglas Fairbanks or Charlie Chaplin 1940s Arrival of Japanese martial arts, particularly karate in the United States. 1950s Arrival of Japanese cinema, including jidaigeki (e.g. Kurosawa's samurai films) and Japanese science fiction (e.g. kaiju such as Godzilla), and judo in the US. 1960s Arrival of anime on TV (e.g. Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Kimba the White Lion), Japanese electro-mechanical games in arcades (e.g. Sega's Periscope), and first example of Japanese popular music crossing over into the United States with "Sukiyaki" topping the Billboard Hot 100. 1970s Japanese "chopsocky" karate martial arts films (e.g. Sonny Chiba) and Japanese arcade video games (e.g. Wheels, Gun Fight, Space Invaders). 1980s: Golden age of arcade video games (e.g. Pac-Man, Frogger, Galaga, Pole Position) and arrival of Nintendo (e.g. Mario, Game & Watch, NES, Game Boy). Ninjamania, including ninja films (e.g. Sho Kosugi films), cartoons (e.g. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and ninja video games (e.g. Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden). Mecha robot fiction and toys, popularized by Americanized franchises based on Japanese mecha anime and toys (such as Transformers and Robotech). Growth of karate, popularized by martial arts films (notably The Karate Kid series) and fighting games (notably Karate Champ). Early-to-mid-1990s: Growth of fighting games (such as Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury) and Sega Genesis video game console (including games such as Sonic and Streets of Rage). Mature anime on home video, including Japanese cyberpunk (e.g. Akira, Ghost in the Shell) and martial arts anime (e.g. Fist of the North Star, Street Fighter II). Japanese superhero TV shows, including Americanized live-action tokusatsu (e.g. Power Rangers and VR Troopers) and magical girl anime (e.g. Sailor Moon).
In the mid-to-late 1990s, this culminated in Japanese pop culture having a significant impact in the United States, with anime, manga and Japanese video games becoming integrated into American pop culture. It made grassroots due to the cultural, social, moral, and altogether tied political landscape of the United States at the time:
The Dark Age of Comic Books: With the increase of American comic books made solely for the comic book collector's merchandise speculator bubble upon The Death of Superman and poorly written examples of nuanced ambivalent morality by the character archetype known as the "90's comic book antihero", and the bankruptcy of DC Comics and Marvel Comics in 1996, these events would soon entrench comic books as disposable and forgettable male adolescent reading material. While long standing figures of comic books like traditional superheroes and Archie Comics would largely go unharmed in the cultural consensus, the failures and shortcomings of the American comic book industry had snowballed to the point where comic books struggled to uphold its artistic integrity and appeal to new readers into the mid to late 1990s. Anime and manga provided the alternative in the face of this, being able to provide content that was able to reach to both male and female demographics, provide dilemmas and stories that were well written, and showcased topics and subjects not restricted by the Comics Code. The revival and revitalizing of the video game market by Nintendo in 1988: Nintendo had helped to re-establish a market for video games in the United States after the video game crash of 1983, due in part that the crash had cemented video games as a dead end of unprofitable business in the electronics industry, and in turn, an untrustworthy investment. With Nintendo reviving the market and paving the way for other competitors and developers by its examples of video games that were of quality and were able to sell by their reputable reputation, this would become some of the first pivotal cultural entries and layouts Japanese popular culture would have to properly settle into American awareness. The rise of alternative media in the 1990s: American popular culture soon began to turn to more subversive forms of entertainment upon the end of the 1980s as response to the excesses and indulgences of the prior decade. Many examples include the rise of animated series aimed for older audiences like The Simpsons, Duckman, and Beavis and Butthead, the popularity of the social commentary laden dystopian sci-fi action movie Robocop, and backlash against the practices of the mainstream music industry upon the lip syncing debacle of pop duo Milli Vanilli. In regards to the context of Japanese popular culture within this subject, anime, manga, and video games provided both something "different" while at the same time presented relatable entertainment that resisted the far reaching influence of American politics and morality regarding the regulation of what can be presented and shown as entertainment.
Anime in the United States Anime differs from American animation in the range of its audiences and themes. Although there are anime for all different age groups, it is made for young teenagers and adults more often than are American cartoons, and often deals with more serious themes. Anime and manga incorporate a multitude of genres such as romance, action, horror, comedy, drama and cover a wide variety of topics like teen suicides, high school rivalries, and social commentary, and more subjects. Described as a gateway for many fans that takes them to a whole new culture; it is sometimes used as a way to learn about Japan. People who are avid devotees to anime in the United States affectionately refer to themselves as otaku, although in Japan the term is similar to geek, and is commonly frowned upon by society. Much like punk and goth, anime has become a subculture.
History Anime culture in the United States began as a niche community that had a grassroots foundation built by groups of fans on the local level. Some of the earliest televised anime to air in the United States were Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Gigantor, which gained popularity with many American audiences during the late 1960s. Speed Racer was watched by a total estimated audience of American viewers during the 1960s1970s. Anime shows that aired in the United States up until the 1980s were usually heavily altered and localized, such as Science Ninja Team Gatchaman becoming Battle of the Planets in the 1970s, and the mecha show Macross becoming Robotech in the 1980s. Takara's Diaclone and Microman mecha toylines also became the basis for the Transformers franchise in the 1980s.
Small patches of isolated communities started to form around collective interest towards this new medium, which seemed reminiscent of familiar Disney visuals and Warner-Brothers narratives. One of these communities was the first anime fan club called the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (C/FO), formed in Los Angeles, California during 1977; club actives involved monthly meets in order to watch newly aired anime. The early popularity was driven by fan-subtitled content and remained that way until much later, when inter-connected entrepreneurs from Japan and the United States saw an opportunity for business through this new medium. These business opportunities eventually led to the founding of Streamline Pictures, the United States' first anime import company in 1989, thus starting anime's widespread commercialization. Over the next dozen years, anime fans became more connected through fan-held conventions and the internet. These groups began to develop new social identities, centered around what they saw as an overall interconnected community.
A subculture began to grow around the United States revolving around people who identified with the social identity “Anime fan.” The imagined community built by the fandom since the earliest days was both the backbone and reason for the subculture's growth. Today, early 2000s anime shows like Pokémon have become almost universally recognized media in the United States.
The intrigue for anime in the United States has brought out celebrities to produce and star their voice in these series. For example, Michael B. Jordan, known for Black Panther & Creed, is starring in his own series and is producing the series Gen:Lock. This has helped the genre to grow and become more fruitful in sales.
Anime is now used by some American teachers to teach Japanese culture in classrooms. It draws student interest and may increase their contribution to the course. Many already had great interest in the art, mainly due to the popularity of Pokémon, making its use as a teaching tool very effective for them. Students who were not previously interested express curiosity towards this style of learning, and generally adapt with minimum difficulty.
Anime fan-culture