Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Isn't American Animation Outsourced To Japan?
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JaggedAuthor
 Posts: 981 |
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The TMS episodes of the various Spielberg-produced cartoons from the '90s always looked considerably more polished than the others.
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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As the man says, American animation WAS outsourced to Japan, back during the Toon-Boom of the glorious 80's, which was around the time that Japan started to learn to make an industry of its own.
Draw a line where "classic" TV anime series started, and it's right about the same period in history where studios with their own neat ideas for a show or manga adaptation stopped working for someone else. While made-in-America He-Man was still stuck in the static one-movement-per-scene Archies/Star Trek:TAS style of Filmation, Hasbro and Clasten were outsourcing their toy-toon action shows like GI Joe and the Transformers out to Asian studios, and from the comparison, we white devils had no clue how to do comic-book action for Saturday morning/afternoon on our own. To our late 70's-mid 80's generation, Hasbro's GI Joe and Rankin-Bass's anime-dynamic Thundercats openings were as mind-blowing as, well...."Battle of the Planets" was. 
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Great Rumbler
 Posts: 335 Location: Oklahoma |
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Sunrise also did animation for Batman: The Animated Series [which is, in part, why we ended up getting a series like The Big O].
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I remember doing a research project about animation in general--while local libraries had plenty of books on American animation, there was very little material on animation from anywhere else, including Japan. What I remembered quite well was that, in one of the books that was supposed to cover the history of animation as a whole (up to about 2002), the only mention of Japan was this outsourcing in the 80's and 90's. In other words, while it talked about American animation, European animation, and occasionally art-house stuff from various countries, there was no mention of anime at all. As far as its author was concerned, anime never existed, not even the Osamu Tezuka stuff. This was kind of odd to me, as Toonami had become a huge staple of TV animation at the time the book was published. (And indeed, the book mentioned animation on Cartoon Network that existed at the same time as Toonami, like Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, but never Toonami itself.)
I cannot remember the name of the book or its author, but I do remember it being a one of those large, heavy hardcover books that had hundreds upon hundreds of pages. It makes me wonder if there are a lot animation historians who really do think in that way: That they are resentful of anime to some extent or another and still view Japan as a country to outsource animation to rather than a source of domestically-made works. |
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2623 Location: Germany |
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There is way less outsourcing to Japan taking place for the stated reasons but DC for example still does it with their animated movies. Justice League: Doom for example was again done by TMS.
Co-productions as Lupin III 2015, the EA/Marvel anime or Thundercats still happen to so i wouldn´t say that all is lost. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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I am surprised no one has mentioned this gorgeous piece of animation that Pixar recenrlt outsourced to Studio Trigger, it is a cartoon, but it is hard to not feel pumped after seeing it.
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wonderwomanhero
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I was just reading about how Toei Animation did the art for some of the American TV series, such as Jem and X-Men (including the latter getting their own anime-style opening theme)
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Whoa, that's got Hiroyuki Imaishi written all over it. I love that guy's stuff. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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And having just posted the actual Thundercats opening, I sense a lit-tle teeny-weeny bit of artistic homage on Pixar's part. 
(For those who want to do back-to-back comparisons.) |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2035 |
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I hear Sailor Moon Crystal is mostly animated in the Philippines, so this would make sense. Most of the Hasbro/Sunbow stuff from the 80s was animated in Japan, as were shows like Batman: TAS. Very few projects, especially television projects, have been fully animated in the US since about the 70s.
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Tempest_Wing
Posts: 305 |
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A good chunk of season two of The Legend of Korra were animated by Studio Pierrot. They didn't do a very good job at it.
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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If it was outsourced to Japan, we'd have a movement to buy cartoon discs here because the awareness of how animators are worked to their deaths is well established, currently cartoon discs sales is primarily a collectors market just like anime in Japan.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4671 |
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Even parts of American shows that were outsourced to Japan would get outsourced again to save costs. According to the commentary on Batman the Animated Series, even though the animation was done in Japan, the filming would be done in China.
Also, apparently outsourcing to Japan could make for some amusing communication errors for Bruce Timm's crew. One episode of Superman involved criminals eating tacos. They were rather surprised when the footage came back and the criminals were eating octopus. |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2511 |
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I do know that Studio Madhouse (or was it Bones? I can't remember) worked on parts of season 2 of The Boondocks. And Studio Trigger animated the opening credits for season 2 of Black Dynamite.
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5525 |
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It is not just America that outsourced to Japan, I fount out that The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends, was co-produced between the BBC and Pony canyon.
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