Introduction to Manga and Anime

Hi all,
Welcome to my blog again :D

Today's post is about anime and manga, 2 things that I love very much from my childhood until now.

Anime(アニメ) is an abbreviated pronunciation in Japanese of "animation". Anime began at the start of the 20th century, when Japanese filmmakers experimented with the animation techniques also pioneered in France, Germany, the United States, and Russia.The success of The Walt Disney's 1937 feature film "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs" influenced Japanese animators. 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[Wikipedia].

Manga(漫画/まんが) consist comics and print cartoons in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th century[Wikipedia]. In short, Manga is like Japanese version of Comics in America such as Marvel and DC comic.

Manga and Anime are part of Japanese modern culture. In Japan nowadays, they are used in many part of daily life, such as for education, advertising, story telling, and many more. It has very wide range of audience, from kids to adults, both male and female. Because of that, manga and anime has many genre to classified, such as for shounen(for boys), shoujo(for girls), seinen(for mature and adults audience), etc.

Many says that manga and anime are just fiction for kids, created story based only on imagination. But I disagree to judge just based on that aspects. It's true that manga and anime is fiction, but fiction is always based on true life story although its not 100%, and fiction is made by the writer who has real life experiences, good or bad, and want to express them in their story. Of course in manga and anime, there are unreasonably giant spaceships, unreasonably clothes, unreasonably big eyes, but that's just on the outside. When you see more of the story's characters, it's environments, it's depth and plots, manga and anime is no difference from a novel. It's better than novel because in manga you can read, watch, and feel the suspense and expressions from the graphics. Hollywood movies packed a story to a high budget 2-3 hours movie with many details missing and plots got cut, when in anime, you get a detailed story, complex plots and characters. See it as a 6-26 hours Hollywood movie with low budget.

Manga and anime for me is just like an another chicken soup for the soul. It pictures a little bit of humanity, mix it with fantasy and reality, put it in one story, and show it to the viewers. You will see in it many aspects of human's heart in many different point of views, ones that you can't experience in your daily life. That's what makes manga and anime interesting.

Later I will post reviews of anime and manga that I highly rated, ones that open my eyes about certain things in life.

Thanks for reading.