Anime

Anime (Japanese: アニメ; IPA: [aꜜɲime] ^ⓘ; derived from a shortening of the English word animation) is animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, anime refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, anime, in Japan and in Japanese, describes all animated works, regardless of style or origin. Many works of animation with a similar style to Japanese animation are also produced outside Japan. Video games sometimes also feature themes and art styles that may be labelled as anime.

The earliest commercial Japanese animation dates to 1917. A characteristic art style emerged in the 1960s with the works of cartoonist Osamu Tezuka and spread in the following decades, developing a large domestic audience. Anime is distributed theatrically, through television broadcasts, directly to home media, and over the Internet. In addition to original works, anime are often adaptations of Japanese comics (manga), light novels, or video games. It is classified into numerous genres targeting various broad and niche audiences.

Anime is a diverse medium with distinctive production methods that have adapted in response to emergent technologies. Predominantly hand-drawn, even into the modern day, anime combines graphic art, characterization, cinematography, and other forms of imaginative and individualistic techniques. Compared to Western animation, anime production generally focuses less on movement and more on the detail of settings and use of "camera effects", such as panning, zooming, and angle shots. Diverse art styles are used, and character proportions and features can be quite varied, with a common characteristic feature being large and emotive eyes.

The anime industry consists of over 430 production companies, including major studios such as Studio Ghibli, Kyoto Animation, Sunrise, Bones, Ufotable, MAPPA, Wit Studio, CoMix Wave Films, Madhouse, Inc., TMS Entertainment, Studio Pierrot, Production I.G, Nippon Animation and Toei Animation. Since the 1980s, the medium has also seen widespread international success with the rise of foreign dubbed, subtitled programming, and since the 2010s due to the rise of streaming services and a widening demographic embrace of anime culture, both within Japan and worldwide. As of 2016,^[update] Japanese animation accounted for 60% of the world's animated television shows.

As a type of animation, anime is an art form that comprises many genres found in other mediums; it is sometimes mistakenly classified as a genre itself. In Japanese, the term anime is used to refer to all animated works, regardless of style or origin. English-language dictionaries typically define anime (/ˈænɪmeɪ/) as "a style of Japanese animation" or as "a style of animation originating in Japan". Other definitions are based on origin, making production in Japan a requisite for a work to be considered "anime".

The etymology of the word anime is disputed. The English word "animation" is written in Japanese katakana as アニメーション (animēshon) and as アニメ (anime, pronounced [a.ɲi.me] ^ⓘ) in its shortened form. Some sources claim that the term is derived from the French term for animation dessin animé ("cartoon", literally 'animated drawing'), but others believe this to be a myth derived from the popularity of anime in France in the late 1970s and 1980s.

In English, anime—when used as a common noun—normally functions as a mass noun. (For example: "Do you watch anime?" or "How much anime have you watched?") As with a few other Japanese words, such as saké and Pokémon, English texts sometimes spell anime as animé (as in French), with an acute accent over the final e, to cue the reader to pronounce the letter, not to leave it silent as English orthography may suggest. Prior to the widespread use of anime, the term Japanimation, a portmanteau of Japan and animation, was prevalent throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s, the term anime began to supplant Japanimation; in general, the latter term now only appears in period works where it is used to distinguish and identify Japanese animation.

Emakimono and shadow plays (kage-e) are considered precursors to Japanese animation. Emakimono was a common form of entertainment in the 11th century. Traveling storytellers narrated legends and anecdotes while the emakimono was unrolled from the right to left in chronological order, as a moving panorama. Kage-e was popular during the Edo period and originated from the shadow plays of China. Magic lanterns from the Netherlands were also popular in the 18th century. The paper play called kamishibai surged in the 12th century and remained popular in street theater until the 1930s. Puppets of the Bunraku theater and ukiyo-e prints are considered ancestors of characters of most Japanese animation. Finally, manga was a heavy inspiration for anime. Cartoonists Kitzawa Rakuten and Okamoto Ippei used film elements in their strips.