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A Brief History of Anime - The Golden Age I
Urusei Yatsura by Rumiko Takahashi
As the 1980's began, television and film producers scrambled to keep up with the increasing demand for more sophisticated and exciting animated programming. The situation became even more frantic as the home video market exploded onto the scene a few year later. Now Japanese fans could actually buy copies of their favorite animated TV shows and movies. Production companies even started to bypass the traditional entertainment media and release original animated features straight to video. In 1986, an adaptation of his fantasy series Dragon Ball went on to become Japan's most popular animated TV show.
Employing as deft a hand at light comedy and fantasy as Toriyama, Rumiko Takahashi dominated television and video throughout the '80's and '90's. First with the insane alien comedy Urusei Yatsura and later with the gender-bending of Ranma 1/2, she enchanted audiences of all ages. her other important series, Maison Ikkoku, playfully toyed with the conventions of the romantic comedy genre.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Takahashi was Go Nagain, an artist with a reputation for creating "naughty" manga. Anime adaptations of his work actually began in 1972 with the Devilman TV series. Now that the direct-to-video market had been established, anime created strictly for adults could bypass the usual restrictions imposed by TV and film sensors. Strange and sexy programs like Nagai's Kekko Kamen, which featured a naked super-heroine, could now be produced for home video release.
The first and best was artist/director Katsuhiro Otamo. Not only was his groundbreaking 1988 anime film Akira a huge international hit, it ushered in an entirely new style of anime. Popular titles like Bubble Gum Crisis and A.D. Police were cut from the same fast-paced and dangerous mold as Akira. In 1987, Otomo contributed two short segments to the Neo-Tokyo and Robot Carnival animated anthologies.
Equally as influential was the work of artist Masamune Shirow. Through the adaptation of his original manga Appleseed and his own direction of Black Magic M-66, he presented a future where the lines between technology and humanity began to blur. Although Shirow's energetic video series Dominion Tank Police can best be described as a police-mecha-comedy, his recent masterpiece, the 1995 film Kokaku Kidoutai (US: Ghost in the Shell), once again took on the man versus machine interface.Not all new anime was as outlandish as Shirow's or Otomo's. In fact, some of it was quite serious. Keiji Nakazawa wrote of his experiences as a Hiroshima survivor in the heartrending manga saga Barefoot Gen. With director Masaki Mari, Nakazawa adapted his novels into a frank and powerful 1983 film. Exploring similar territory, Hotaru No Haka (US: Grave of the Fireflies) followed the struggle of two orphans who survived the fire-bombing of Tokyo. Few live action films have ever come as close to capturing the true horrors of war as this animated film did.
Audiences were now becoming more receptive to animation that wasn't strictly action or comedy oriented. In response, anime producers turned to Japanese literature for inspiration. Based on the classic novel by Murasaki Shikibu, Genji Monogatari (US: The Tale of Genji) was a fascinating study in palace intrigue. A novel by 20th century philosopher and children's writer Kenjii Miyazawa inspired the delightful Ginga Tetsudo no Yoru (US: Night on the Galactic Railroad). The success of such films showed that anime had finally broken free from the restraints of its earlier "kids-only" label to enter the realm of high-brow acceptance.
source http://gwu.edu/~koulikom/history.html
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