Name: The Masterpieces That Shaped Anime
Uploaded: 2019-09-11T13:19:05.000Z
Duration: 10 min 4 s
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It's the early 60s, anime has struggled to find structure and hasn't yet been able

It simply hasn't been able to make money in its current form.

The best works of the previous decades have been unprofitable or government funded, which

But a young man named Osamu Tezuka has a dream to turn anime into a global industry.

He rounded up unhappy animators from other studios at the time and started to create

Astro Boy, a revolutionary series that would set the template for every Tv anime to follow

and establish a business model for anime that hasn't changed in over half a century.

You could say that even today, the industry if running because of Tezuka's Astro Boy.

Tezuka wanted to break anime into the TV industry, he saw a far more efficient and feasible future

for the medium here instead of at the cinema.

And he was right, Tv was far cheaper to produce and very profitable if the right sponsor was

But there was one problem, Anime in its current state was incredibly expensive to produce,

it was estimated that for the production of Astro Boy, Tezuka would need 3000 staff and

There wasn't even half that many animators in Japan at the time and a TV time slot would

But Tezuka adapted and set about re-inventing the wheel.

He created a whole new system of anime production, it was called Limited Animation and it established

production techniques that are still the most efficient in the industry today.

Astro Boy started its broadcast on New Years day 1963 and marked the start of a new age

in anime and arguable the start of anime as we know it.

From here onwards, every year is filled with profitable, large productions of TV anime.

But, it was called limited animation for a reason.

Tezuka was able to fund weekly episodes of his series because he cut corners with the

He used his skills to create a series that would be both look good and not strain the

Over the following years, other studios continued with this system and it became the standard.

In this video, I want to look at the wave of creators who came after the advent of limited

animation and who tried to blur the lines between high quality animation and profitability.

Creating projects that would shape the entire medium.

And when talking about this evolution of anime after Astro Boy, science fiction shows are

usually cited as the most important over other genres.

Shows like Space Battleship Yamato were massively popular at this point which progressed into

the colossal Mecha boom in the late 70s and early 80s.

And it's easy to get the impression that Science fiction anime for a young male audience

was the only the important genre of the time, which just isn't true.

Massive chunks of the industry were aimed at completely different audiences.

Zuiyo Eizo were a studio at the forefront of one of those markets.

They started the 70s doing contracted work for other studios and went on to produce a

number of popular shows during the first half of the decade.

It's where individuals like Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Yoshiyuki Tomino got their

And they would be crucial in a very important artistic movement.

The studio began production on the series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, taking inspiration

from early magic girl shows like Sally the Witch.

These shows targeted a young female audience instead, which usually means it gets discredited

as females didn't buy robot toys to fund their anime.

But In truth they did, just in the form of different merchandising like toy wands.

This sector of the market was massively important and not mentioned as much as it should be.

The production of Heidi was a hectic one, Miyazaki has noted many times in the past

that Heidi was a far more intricate production to most other TV anime at the time.

Some episode having as much as 8,000 cels of animation, considerably more than most

It was also possibly one of the first productions since Astro Boy were critical reception was

put on a higher pedestal than financial gain.

The creators wanted to make a kids series that was authentic and timeless.

The team went the extra mile to make sure Heidi was fully realised, even making trips

Heidi was completed and to an extremely high standard.

Miyazaki even discusses how the bar was set to a dangerous high as most other studios

Although, Heidi wasn't a financial success, it wasn't a disaster but this level of production

What's important is Heidi's reach and critical success.

The series was dubbed and spread across the globe, reaching audiences that wouldn't

And it proved that there was a market for shows that weren't action oriented.

And Heidi achieves a magnificent look, with gorgeous painted backgrounds and animation

that was far more intricate than most other TV anime at the time.

What's impressive I think is how well the complex animation blends with the static portions

Moving objects in the world don't stick out like a sore thumb and animation seems

Where Heidi excels most above its competition is in its character animation.

The way facial expressions and body movement is presented here is magnificent.

What was also important about Heidi, and the shows that followed was that it established

It actually ran alongside Yamato, you would think that ratings would drop because of this

but they actually both held very high ratings.

Meaning there were two large, different audiences watching TV anime now.

One interested in Science fiction and one more interested in drama.

One theory is that sons would watch Yamato with their fathers and daughters would watch

Heidi had created a whole new sector of the medium: now known as 'Masterpiece anime'.

The idea of adapting classic works of literature into anime to tell compelling stories hadn't

And this was really changing how creators approached anime, suddenly they could create

stories that didn't necessarily rely on fight scenes or space battles, they could

put their resources into subtle character animation and melodrama and actually find

The Success of Heidi would prove to be extremely valuable.

Zuiyo Eizo transformed into Nippon Animation in 1975, bring along its key staff members

and gained a lucrative sponsorship deal from the drink Calpis to start the 'World Masterpiece

The goal was to adapt a classic piece of literature into anime every year, and from this spawned