Forum - View topicAnswerman - Did Westerners Always Call It Anime?
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13589 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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I looked up "anime" through the "rec.arts.animation" archives at Google Groups. The earliest reference I saw of it being mentioned was from the "rec.arts.animation huh??" thread/whatever they called it then.
This was started by a Mark Crispin on 6/22/90. The post:
The following day, Oreo Cat mentioned "anime" being used out of domain name/what thing is called that I put in bold. That person asked to keep the anime discussions only in the group that I made bold. The link is groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.animation/rec.arts.animation$20huh$3F$3F/rec.arts.animation/6ht4ute8RMs/9HeskaGwYGMJ. Earliest reference I saw "dub" when relating to the dub vs. sub debate is the 6/19/91 "Bad dubbing of Harlock video". You can find this at groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.animation/dub|sort:date/rec.arts.animation/9-7bzENiG14/oMgnr0sNEFcJ. [/b] |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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The first two X-Files graphic novels, Firebird and Project Aquarius were published by Manga in the UK, before X-Files switched to Titan. That might be as close as they got to actually publishing manga. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I believe (my memory is ever cloudy) that that is the term I first encountered, via an Amiga magazine. Even it that wasn't the first time I encountered anime/japanime, I definitely remember it was there that I learnt that it wasn't pronounced "japaneem". Apart from the occasional review of a Public Domain diskette of anime art (and that one Tetris clone where you were rewarded with pictures of nekkid anime girls hugging large stuffed animals and the like), I remember one of my magazines having something about Akira, which was broadcast by the BBC at the time. I tried to watch it, but received a parental veto so only caught a snatch. As a child I watched Battle of the Planets, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Ulysees 31 and caught part of Laputa a couple of times on TV, and also rented VHSes of some giant robot show, that part model/part animation thing about dinosaurs, Unico and The Last Unicorn. I can't remember at what point I connected any or all of these with Japan, although I do remember altavistaing some of the names in University (where I learnt what Laputa actually meant...)
Well, they did include a miniaturised copy of the American comic with their Karas DVDs. That's close, right? What also annoyed me is that the tiny "manga" section was often subsumed by the larger Martial Arts section next door, and I would spend ages re-arranging discs to work out what was actually there.
That's the joke.
I started watching a YouTube video about common mispronunciation in games the other say. I turned off when he explained that Pokémon is pronouced "Pō-kay-mon" because that's how Beyoncé is pronounced.
Nope, nobody. Not even Justin who worked for CPM and wrote about it in the article you are responding to. |
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davemerrill
Posts: 20 |
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Parsifal24
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This made me remember an old TV Ad for Akira I saw when I was a kid and referred to it as "Japaname" I never saw it as Japnaimation all the times my local Blockbuster was open mostly just Anime but not any emphasis on the e though.
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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When we're talking Japanimation/anime/Cartoons and such for terminology, then usually anything "pre-Akira" doesn't count because everyone DID just call that "cartoons" and no one really raised a stink. That's the main reason I think everyone is trying to originate the term in the early 90s, because prior to that period, the number of people that knew (or cared) that any anime explicitly came from Japan, was pretty low. Pre-Akira I watched a bunch of anime that I was completely unaware wasn't just "really good cartoons". (Battle of the Planets/G-Force, Robotech, Voltron, etc.) I think that's why EARLY localized anime "doesn't count". But we're also probably talking about a pretty narrow window. There was a time no earlier than 88-89 where anyone using ANY term besides cartoons (or just "animation") was only the nerdiest of nerds, and a time no later than 98-99 where it was all "porn & Pokemon" or "DBZ & Pokemon". I think "JapAnimation" was mainly a 90s thing. Not saying it didn't exist before then or still in some places today, but it wasn't really prevalent or in wide use outside a chunk of the 90s. |
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davemerrill
Posts: 20 |
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Here's an article in IMAGE Magazine from the San Francisco Bay Examiner, July 1987, which freely and unashamedly uses the term "Japanimation" for the express purposes of distinguishing Japanese animation. Seems to me quite a few people were using the term, even in those dark "pre-Akira" days.
 image87-2 by letsanime, on Flickr
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RAmmsoldat
 Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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Spot on and i always felt like a t**t explaing that manga was comic books when someone said "oh you like watching manga". As you say though its died down over time. |
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 390 Location: Florida |
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Just so we're clear: the translators of Metal Gear Solid didn't really change any terminology used in the Japanese script for that scene. In the Japanese audio version of Metal Gear Solid, Dr Emmerich as voiced by Hideyuki Tanaka says the word "Japanimation" to refer to what he's a fan of (and Snake being Snake repeats it right back to him  ). Similarly, "otaku convention" is said in English to explain why he wants Snake to call him "Otacon."
Emmerich is supposed to be an American, so the script's usage of "Japanimation" is consistent with what I said in my post earlier: as recently as the late 1990s/early 2000s, the Japanese figured that was just the term Americans used to describe "anime." |
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GOTZFAUST
Posts: 35 |
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West = America?
Again, Latin Europe and America have quite a different history of anime. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I barely even remember the days of AOL keywords! 
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GhostStalkerSA
 Posts: 425 Location: NYC |
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Yeah, use of the term "Chinese cartoons" to refer to anime is almost always either said ironically, or by an anime fan attempting to troll another one. I've never heard a "normie" refer to anime as such, but I could see how uninformed people would assume it to be such and use it. Seeing as how the term originated in 4chan's /a/ (Anime and Manga, sometimes changed by mods to Animu and Mango at least a couple of times after the ironic usages of those terms as well) board as a term of self-deprecating irony (plus to troll anime fans and weebs who took things way too seriously), it was only a matter of time before its use became unironic (but still used as an in joke and way to troll the aforementioned groups) and then spread memetically to the rest of the internet via the diffusion of 4chan memes by users and lurkers as usual. It's gotten to the point where anons come up with even more ridiculous (south)east Asian country/art style pairings ("Mongolian woodblock prints" anyone?) to refer to anime ironically (and to posting on 4chan, which of course was started by moot as an imageboard to post anime, with anons unironically saying that they're posting on a, say, Vietnamese calligraphy board), and every other anon who is in on it (basically anyone who has been on 4chan or lurked it for any appreciable amount of time, or picked it up via internet memetic spread due to 4chan) knows exactly what they're referring to. On other boards, there may be one or two people not in on the joke who get trolled by the use of the term, though that usually doesn't happen on 4chan since practically everyone is in on the joke already. As for use of the term "Japanimation", I've personally never used the term regularly, but I have heard it being used in the mid 90s or so before anime became the default term to use. I remember watching the early "mon" shows in the late 90s when Pokemon made it big, and Fox Kids and Kids WB started showing a ton of them, plus what eventually became Toonami, and I remember understanding that this was a different style of animation, but I didn't understand that it was brought over from Japan until like late middle school or whatever. I guess I learned about dubbing about the same time, probably when I was finding out about the Pokemon games and anime (and around the time home internet was just starting to get off the ground). When I first got into anime seriously in high school through the anime club and friends who were into anime and such, I kinda knew what I was getting in to, as I think I learned of where anime and manga (which I think I stumbled upon in a Barnes and Noble when I was killing time early in high school and it was even labelled as such, IIRC. Though I kinda knew manga existed in some abstract form because of a local news report I remembered talking about how some parent bought her kid the Dragonball manga that was just starting to come out back when I was in middle school because her kid liked Dragonball Z, and then complaining about the sexuality in it, especially the scene where kid Goku meets Bulma for the first time and asks her "Why do you have a butt on your chest?" as he had never seen a woman before or whatever, and the reporter playing it up like this was some danger you had to look out for because it was corrupting kids of whatever. Like how dare something so clearly made for kids, because it's based off of a cartoon and is a comic book, be so blatantly sexual about things! Think of the children! Japan is strange and foreign!) was originally from. I think by that time, anime had already been established as the default term to use. Manga as well. Therefore, I never used the term "Japanimation", though I think I remember it being used in some of the older video/electronics stores and Blockbusters still did, I dunno. I wasn't into anime back at that time, so I never really payed attention to those sections in the rare occurrence that I would be in one of those stores. My parents and most of my family still see it all as cartoons (using the Cantonese term katong pien to refer to it in general, meaning cartoon shows or films) that I should've outgrown a while ago (because of course anything animated is only for children!) whenever they see me watching it, but they also do that when I watch western stuff like Venture Bros or whatever. My grandfather was especially bad about that, IIRC. My mom and aunt still do it too, but not so much anymore these past couple of years. Generational stuff, I think, and not being aware of it until after their opinion of animation being for children is already formed, and then lumping it all under that same umbrella. It's already happening with me and younger members of my own generation, though with totally different things, like apps and YouTube and TV shows and other things like that... Man, I feel like I'm getting old, and I'm only 28... |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Ah, so "Japanime" HAS been around for a long time as a term. I just thought it came from solely from confused people who saw the words "anime" and "Japanimation" and combined the two. Then again, "Japanime" would be like calling movies "filmovies" or tortilla chips "Tortitos."
I had to snicker when I read "Japanimation: Where women are as competent as men" thinking about gender equality between the countries in the 80's. Then I realized that we're comparing this to stuff like The Smurfs or He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and how female characters were written in those shows (not to mention their scarcity). Of course, western animation was like that because they had to sell toys (still do), and boys and girls wanted to distance themselves from each other. |
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EricJ2
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Although much of the "Yellow peril" about how all anime was gore-and-hentai because it, as the article said "wasn't the Smurfs", was still a product of our resentment toward Japan during the late 80's--Which was only just starting to cool down in '91 as news was trickling out about their Recession, and that they probably wouldn't be taking over the world by the year 2000 after all, like they said they were going to do in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. ABC News, with Jeff Greenfield as the cultural correspondent, was particularly racist in trying to look for ANY nationalism the Japanese had against US culture, and any "invasion" of our soil. (Even the Pokemon craze as late as '99, when we still thought Sailor Moon as silly, Power Rangers as goofy, and anime as comic-store niche-y, was satirized by comics as "the new Kamikaze attack on our culture, you-die kids, banzai!") It didn't help that back in the "garage company" early-90's, if you weren't one of the (as the article says) "punk" Robotech/StarBlazers teens slinging snooty mass dismissals of Hanna-Barbera (I actually took the pro-Flintstones defense against one such fan-snoot, back in college, and I'll do it again), "anime" was the fringe-y OVA titles coming out of MangaUS, CPM and Streamline, with Doomed Megalopolis on one cover, ADVision's Demon Hunter Yohko on another, and the Puma Twins of CPM's Dominion on another if you were lucky. If you lived in a town where Blockbuster Video was your only source of VHS rental, what few struggling mainstream-accessable OVA titles they got were usually put on the "Alternative Animation" shelf, right next to Ralph Bakshi, Fantastic Planet and Allegro Non Troppo....And being put next to Fritz the Cat didn't exactly help the "family-friendly" image any. That came to be the "Japanimation" we referred to. If you were a, quote, "punk teen" who didn't watch Robotech, but had heard about all the "forbidden" blood and boobs in these new invading titles, you RUSHED down to your Blockbuster, leaving a little fire trail behind you like the Road Runner--And being Blockbuster, the most commercial, or only, anime title they had next to the R-rated animation titles (apart from FHE's kids-video collection of Robotech, which was "too afternoon-kiddy"), was Manga's movie of Ninja Scroll. Cool, ninjas!...So you took that one home, clearly got all the forbidden-thrills you wanted, and then, as we would joke back during the Usenet days, immediately pester the Anime newsgroups and forums for "More cool violent stuff like Ninja Scroll! And not that Sailor Moon or Pokemon stuff either!" Who quickly started being referred to as "Scroll-heads" by the other fans. It was our way of saying "Thanks loads, guys, you're not helping the image.  "
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2524 Location: Germany |
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@MarshalBanana I may not like where the series went with the duology if crazy called V but don´t question my MGS knowledge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quU1KfV-Nf4 Minute 2:30 and Japanimation also shows up in at least TS and Acid. The way the scripts was translated is a very insightful look into 90s anime culture and crazy good for the conditions it was recorded it.
I am from Russia and anime (i had a Robotech Valkyrie as a child and was a Voltron fan) were just toons we all watched. That changed immediately when i moved to Germany in 97 as manga were brought over to us since the 80s in a noticeable way. Even hardcore Seinen series as Jikken Ningyou Dummy Oscar but a censored Kamui Gaiden also graced the US at the same time. Anime was already big on daytime TV and a lady-friend instructed me that Sailor Moon was an anime from Japan within the year. I watched all episodes thanks to her (what a rough childhood...) and dedicated magazines existed too. Let´s not forget co-productions as Biene Maja, Heidi, Wickie and... which continue to be cultural touchstones. MTV aired GitS and Gantz around 10mp in the 00s but daytime TV anime or SJ style anthologies turned out to be a failed experiment over the years, as in the US, besides Naruto and the like. It´s still fair to say that anime and especially manga are way bigger here than in the US. Just look how often official German titles show up in web databases and start consider the size difference between both nations. Vinland Saga is till trucking over here and Billy Bat even won a price! Don´t argue with a librarian  and i blame our world famous book market on Johannes Gutenberg and the only markets that get more licensed Japanese content seems to be France and ironically China/South Korea. The German piracy scene is huge too and we even had cultural roots with Japan for nearly a centenary. We even lost a war together... That is a far cry form the Yellow Peril campaign the US lead during WW2 which was logical back then but that happened again in the 70s and especial the 80s. Nintendo even had to re-brand themselves... Do a column on that Justin.
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