How Walt Disney Influenced Anime

Anime, or Japanese animation, began to develop in the early 20th century alongside animation from other nations. The oldest-ever anime, a two-minute film about a samurai warrior, appeared in Japanese theaters in 1917. By the 1930s, the animation industry in Japan was thriving, although animators were forced to cut costs by using less expensive cutout, rather than celluloid, animation.

 

 

Although Japanese animators produced some notable feature-length films in the 1940s, it wasn’t until the post-war period that anime really took off. It was in the late 1940s that one of Japan’s most prolific and most important animators first rose to prominence: Osamu Tezuka.

 

 

Over the course of his career, Tezuka would create more than 700 manga (comics) totaling more than 150,000 pages. He would earn the moniker “God of Manga.” And, incredibly, the work of Walt Disney would prove to be one of his strongest influences.

 

How Walt Disney Studios Inspired Early Anime Artists

 

Long before Osamu Tezuka came on the scene, Japanese animators were making short and even feature-length films. Some early notable anime films include “Momotaro,” made by Kitayama Seitaro in 1918, and “Chikara To Onna No Yononaka,” the first anime “talkie,” which appeared in 1932.

 

But these were short films. The animation industry in Japan was developing slowly alongside its live-action counterpart, and most animators believed the medium wasn’t suited for feature-length films. It was the overwhelming commercial success of Walt Disney’s 1937 film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” that blew these assumptions out of the water and inspired Japanese animators to begin making longer films.

 

The WWII era in Japan saw the government use anime as a propaganda machine. The first feature-length anime film, “Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors,” was one such propaganda piece. It was released in 1945.

 

 

Walt Disney’s Influence on Osamu Tezuka

 

As a child growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, Osamu Tezuka adored Walt Disney. He is said to have watched the 1942 Disney film “Bambi” more than 80 times. He also enjoyed “Dumbo” and the post-WWII “Uncle Scrooge” comics drawn by Disney animator, Carl Bark.

 

Under the influence of the animated, full-length Disney feature films of his youth, Tezuka became the first anime artist to tell stories in a manner that was cinematic in scope. Where other artists had been simplistic and guileless in their storytelling, Tezuka was intensely active and highly emotional in his. Tezuka wasn’t afraid to use several pages to explore a scene in detail.

 

Anyone who compared the work of anime artist Osamu Tezuka and the work that came out of Walt Disney studios in the 1930s and 1940s could see the obvious similarities between Disney’s characters and Tezuka’s. Of course, Tezuka created all of his own characters and story lines, but he borrowed the bold lines, round heads and large, expressive eyes of Disney characters, making his own characters at once impossibly cute and extremely expressive.

 

Borrowing Disney’s simplified animation style served two purposes for Tezuka: It helped him cut animation costs, which was crucial in an industry that was already struggling, and it also ensured that his mangas and anime films sacrificed none of their emotional intensity. The large eyes, though cartoonish, allowed Tezuka’s characters to express any emotion called for by the scene.

 

Disney’s Continuing Influence on Anime

 

The generations of Japanese animators who followed Tezuka borrowed his animation techniques and also gave their characters big heads and oversized eyes. Over time, this technique became characteristic of the “manga-style” so recognizable to anyone who likes to watch anime. It’s the reason that even relatively violent anime films like “Princess Mononoke” feature cute-looking characters with big, adorable eyes.

 

Did Anime Influence Disney?
In the early 1950s, Osamu Tezuka wrote a manga series called “Jungle Emperor,” commonly translated to “Kimba the White Lion” in English. He made it into an animated television program in the 1960s.

 

 

When Disney released “The Lion King,” in 1994, fans of Tezuka’s work pointed out a number of similarities between the “The Lion King” and “Kimba the White Lion.” These similarities include the protagonist and several other characters, as well as some remarkably parallel scenes.

 

Although anime films began in Japan in the early 20th century and developed at a lackluster pace throughout the 1930s and `40s, they didn’t really begin to take off until the post-war period. A single animator, Osamu Tezuka, is credited with founding the anime genre. Profoundly influenced by the works of Disney animators, Tezuka also established large heads and eyes as trademark features of anime characters.

 

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9 thoughts on “How Walt Disney Influenced Anime

  1. I’ll give you that Tezuka influenced the storytelling and animation techniques of anime and manga as well as the imitators of his art style, but anime has looked very different from Disney and Tezuka styles since it’s debut.
    Look at Osamu Tezukas typical Disney like style then contrast with smaller eyed and more detailed and realistically proportioned anime like half the Gundam series, Macross, Naruto, JoJo, Fist of the North Star, Berserk, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Square’s and Atlus’s art styles etc, and then try to make sense of the idea that Disney and Tezuka had any influence on anime’s visual style. It’s the shape of the eyes that makes anime it’s distinct style, the size varies. If the eye size was all that made something anime, it wouldnt be a style distinguishable from western cartoons. You can see a direct contrast of the two styles in Kingdom Hearts and Naoki Urasawa’s manga, Pluto, a re imagining of Astro Boy in a vastly different modern anime style. There are at least as many anime without big eyes as there are with big eyes. Anime is not by default the “big eyes” look that a surprising number of people ignorantly believe it to be, and obviously has absolutely no resemblance to any Tezuka/Disney style.

  2. I thought The oldest-ever anime was Katsudō Shashin witch was made around 1907-1911. It was where a boy tipped his red hat with the words 活動写真 at the top witch mean moving picture. Please correct me if I am wrong.

  3. I could care less what came first, Disney or the founder of Anime? When I saw Japanese Animation for the first time at the age of 5, my subconscious began a loathing for Disney, a slow distaste as '70s, '80s and '90s Anime took to the sky with a fan-following more than Disney can ever keep up with, and now that Disney does less cartoons, and Japanese animators have delivered us Appleseed and Neon Genesis Evangelion and Bio-Booster Armor Guyver… I have to admit and promote Anime as the new master of 2D(Bio-Booster Armor Guyver) and 3D CGI(FF7:Advent Children)!

    Rot in Hell, Disney! The only thing good that's ever come out is the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Narnia movies!

  4. I could care less what came first, Disney or the founder of Anime? When I saw Japanese Animation for the first time at the age of 5, my subconscious began a loathing for Disney, a slow distaste as '70s, '80s and '90s Anime took to the sky with a fan-following more than Disney can ever keep up with, and now that Disney does less cartoons, and Japanese animators have delivered us Appleseed and Neon Genesis Evangelion and Bio-Booster Armor Guyver… I have to admit and promote Anime as the new master of 2D(Bio-Booster Armor Guyver) and 3D CGI(FF7:Advent Children)!

    Rot in Hell, Disney! The only thing good that's ever come out is the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Narnia movies!

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