Japanese Animes

There have been many theories why Japanese animes are popular in the West including the United States. Japanese animes ranging from Hello Kitty, Pokemon and Yi-gi-oh have taken the US market by storm. Sales of these related Japanese animes products have surpassed many US products. Many scholars have debated why Japanese animes have caught on in the West. We will examine some of the theories behind why Japanese animes are so popular here.

Before Japanese Animes

Before we discuss why Japanese animes have been widely accepted in the United States, we should examine how Japanese movies were brought over to the West.

In 1950s Godzilla movies were brought over to the US because the US Television stations needed to fill the undesirable time slots with cheap films that were sort of good enough and easy to dubbed into English. The first Godzilla movies were aired in the US, in the South becuase it was believed that Southerners were more likely to tolerate well under budget movies.

With the rise of television industry and cable TV, US movies theatres needed more new movies to show than Hollywood was able to supply. So, movie theatres looked elsewhere for new and cheap movies. Japanese studios were able to supply many movies that were different yet entertaining even though the production values were lacking. The Japanese studios were more than happy to sell those movies to the Americans and the Americans were happy to have something to fill the air time. It was a win win situation.

Astro Boy Japanese Animes arrived in the US

In 1960s Astro Boy Japanese animes entered the US market. Astro Boy or 鉄腕アトム or Atomic Boy or Tetsuwan Atom was probably the oldest Japanese animes which pioneered the anime industry. Astro Boy was the equivalent of Mickey Mouse in Japan.

Since Astro Boy, many Japanese animes and other Japanese pop icons TV series constantly entered the western markets including the US. By the 1980s, Ultraman and super hero TV series such as the Power Rangers were widely known to the general public.

Since the 1980s, Japanese animes have been invading the US market constantly. While some Japanese animes do very well in the West, other Japanese animes that do well in Japan could not penetrate the US market. It is an interesting study to find out why some Japanese animes are so poplar in the US while others cannot make it out of Japan at all.