In 2003, the Japanese film Spirited Away (2001), by Hayao Miyazaki, became the first anime production to win the Academy Award as best animated feature film.
Credit: © Pictorial Press/Alamy Images

This Saturday, April 15 is National Anime Day, celebrating the distinct style of animation that developed in Japan in the 1960’s. Anime is short for animeshiyon, the Japanese word for animation. Anime stories may be original or based on popular children’s tales. Many of the stories, as well as the overall look of anime, are taken from Japanese comic books called manga that became popular in the 1950’s. Anime has a flat look and features colorful images and heroic characters. The plots are often action-filled, with fantastic, futuristic, or political themes. Many anime characters have large, saucerlike eyes, small mouths, and wild hair. The characters often display exaggerated emotions.

An action figure display features the superhero Deku from the series My Hero Academia.
Credit: © Morumotto/Shutterstock

Anime television series and motion pictures are watched around the world. “My Hero Academia”  is a popular manga and anime series of the 2010’s and 2020’s. It was created by the Japanese artist Kohei Horikoshi. The series takes place in a world where most people have a unique inborn superpower that individuals can develop to become heroes. “Attack on Titan” is among the most popular manga and anime series of the 2010’s. It is an action and fantasy series set in a world where humanity has been pushed to the brink of extinction by the mysterious Titans. The Titans are giant, humanoid monsters that attack and eat humans on sight.

A life-sized model of a Titan greets visitors to a Japanese theme park attraction based on the series Attack on Titan.
Credit: © MR. AEKALAK CHIAMCHAROEN/Shutterstock

Other popular anime TV series include “Dragon Ball” (1986-1989) by manga artist and writer Akira Toriyama, “Pokémon” (1997-2002), “Cowboy Bebop” (1998-1999), “Naruto” (2002-2007), and “Fullmetal Alchemist” (2003-2004). Notable anime feature films include Akira, Grave of the Fireflies, and My Neighbor Totoro (all 1988); Ninja Scroll (1993); Princess Mononoke (1997); Ponyo (2008); The Secret World of Arrietty (2010); and The Wind Rises (2013). In 2003, the Japanese film Spirited Away (2001), by Hayao Miyazaki, became the first anime production to win the Academy Award as best animated feature film.

The character Goku in the anime series “Dragon Ball Z”
Credit: © Fuji TV

There are many types of anime, including action, adventure, comedy, romance, science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural. Shonen anime features action or adventure and is targeted toward adolescent boys. Shojo anime features character development and romance and is targeted toward adolescent girls. Mecha anime features giant robots with human traits. Some types of anime have more adult themes, often involving violence or sexual material. Anime may be subtitled or dubbed in other languages for release in countries outside of Japan.

Manga comics surged in popularity in Japan in the mid-1900′s. The “Naruto” (1994-2014) series by Masashi Kishimoto became one of the top-selling manga series of all time. It is about the adventures of a mischievous young ninja.
Credit: © Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha Inc.

The Japanese animator and cartoonist Osamu Tezuka was a pioneer of manga and anime. He was greatly influenced by the animation of the American motion-picture producer Walt Disney. Tezuka created a number of popular manga series in the 1950’s that later became popular anime TV series. These include the TV series “Astro Boy” (1963-1966) and “Kimba the White Lion” (1965-1967). Anime often appears jerky because it typically uses fewer drawings than the animation of such major studios as Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Animated cartoons often appeal to children, but anime can be enjoyed by adults as well as younger viewers around the world.

Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum and Pikachu
Credit: © The Pokémon Company

After 25 years training Pokémon, eternally 10-year-old Ash Ketchum finally became a world champion and is hanging up his cap for retirement. The popular anime is completing the story of Ash and his best friend, Pikachu. Anime is a distinct style of animation that developed in Japan in the 1960’s. Ash is finally the very best in the Pokémon world. He collected Pokémon, evolved them, and battled other trainers in his journey to be the very best. His latest television series, “Pokémon Ultimate Journeys,” featured a world tour and ended with Ash ranking as the No. 1 Pokémon trainer in the world.

The anime started in 1997 and has continued to run over several television series through 2023. It aired in the United States in 1998. The show was based on the electronic games, created by Japanese game designer Satoshi Tajiri. Until his championship, Ash introduced new players to the world as a fellow new trainer with each game and show. In the series of Pokémon games, players capture fantastic monsters, train them, and command them in duels. When the creatures are not fighting, game characters keep them in pocket-sized balls. The term Pokémon is short for pocket monsters.

Tajiri grew up in a rural suburb of Tokyo. As a child, he loved nature and collected insects. The thrill and mystery of discovering unique new insects served as inspiration for the game. The first Pokémon game was released in 1996 for the Nintendo Game Boy, a popular handheld game system. In addition to numerous video games, Pokémon have featured in card games, comics, and animated television shows and motion pictures.

In the Pokémon games, the player takes on the role of a Pokémon trainer. The trainer must journey around a fictional world, collecting and training new Pokémon. Each Pokémon has unique abilities and a clever name, such as Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur. Along the way, players must pit their own collections of Pokémon against those of other trainers. They include a team of evil trainers that seeks to take over the world.

In the earliest games, players could collect 151 different Pokémon. Players could also trade their Pokémon with other players, using a cable to link their Game Boys. Because each monster has unique strengths and weaknesses, players must use them strategically in duels. With sufficient training, a Pokémon might evolve (change) into a more powerful creature. Later games introduced greater numbers of Pokémon.

Disney and Pixar’s animated movie Turning Red (2022)
Credit: © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

What’s red, fluffy, and loves boy bands? Pixar’s newest movie Turning Red is a big hit shining a spotlight on red pandas. Turning Red is an animated motion picture released by Pixar Animation Studios and the Walt Disney Company in 2022. It tells the story of a young Chinese-Canadian girl who discovers she can shapeshift into a red panda. The movie is set in Toronto. It was the first Pixar movie created by an all-woman leadership team.

Turning Red tells the story of the Chinese-Canadian 13-year-old Meilin “Mei” Lee, who lives in Toronto. Mei’s family includes her mother, Ming, and father, Jin. They maintain a Chinese temple dedicated to their ancestor Sun Yee. Mei works to balance pleasing her mother and being herself with her friends Abby Park, Miriam Mendelsohn, and Priya Mangal. Mei and her friends obsess over a boy band called 4*TOWN. After Ming embarrasses her daughter, Mei has a nightmare about red pandas and wakes up transformed into a giant red panda. Mei hides her transformation from her parents. But, she cannot keep her newfound ability hidden for long, and its discovery leads her to secrets in her family’s past.

The Lee family is voiced by Rosalie Chiang (Mei); Sandra Oh (Ming); Orion Lee (Jin); and Wai Ching Ho (Mei’s grandmother Wu). Mei’s friends are voiced by Hyein Park (Abby); Ava Morse (Miriam); and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Priya).

The film was directed by the Chinese-Canadian animator and screenwriter Domee Shi and the American playwright and television writer Julia Cho. The American actor and producer Lindsey Collins produced the film.

The film’s soundtrack, also released in 2022, features original songs written and composed by the Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson. The American singer-songwriter siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell wrote three original songs performed by 4*TOWN in the film.

In real life, red pandas are adorable and unique creatures. A red panda is a medium-sized mammal with a red coat and a long, ringed tail. The red panda is also called the lesser panda, in reference to the much larger giant panda. Red pandas are not closely related to giant pandas or any other living animal. Red pandas live in bamboo forests on upper mountain slopes. Red pandas are arboreal—that is, they live in trees. A red panda has adaptations that allow it to climb trees easily including its tail for balancing and flexible ankles which allow it to climb headfirst down trees. They are found in parts of Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, and Nepal.

Human population growth in the Himalayan region threatens the habitat of the red panda. Deforestation has reduced the area where red pandas live in the wild. Red pandas are in danger of dying out completely. They are protected by national and international laws. Scientists and wildlife officials have worked to help ensure the pandas’ survival by protecting their habitat and breeding them in zoos.

Encanto opened in the United States on Nov. 24, 2021.  The story introduces the Madrigals, a compelling and complicated extended family who live in a wondrous and charmed place in the mountains of Colombia. 
Credit: © Disney

Encanto is an animated motion picture released by the Walt Disney Company in 2021. The movie is set in Colombia and features Disney’s first entirely Latino voice cast. 

The film’s soundtrack, released in 2021, became a worldwide hit. The album spent more than a week at the number one spot on Billboard magazine‘s “200 Albums” chart. Encanto became Disney’s first animated film to have two songs in the top 10 on Billboard magazine’s “Hot 100” chart. The song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” performed in the film by Adassa, Stephanie Beatriz, Mauro Castillo, Rhenzy Feliz, Carolina Gaitán, and Diane Guerrero, reached number 2. “Surface Pressure,” performed in the film by Jessica Darrow, broke the chart’s top 10. The soundtrack featured original songs written and composed by the American musical theater composer Lin-Manuel Miranda. It also featured instrumental music by the American composer Germaine Franco. 

Encanto tells the story of the magical Madrigal family. The family was led to a safe haven and magical home known as Encanto by its matriarch (ruling mother). The Madrigals’ magic comes from the flame of a candle that gives a unique power to each descendent. The movie’s protagonist (main character), Mirabel, is the only member of the family who did not receive a magical gift. According to prophecy, it is up to her to restore the family’s magic when it starts to falter and repair the bonds among the family members.  

Members of the Madrigal family include Mirabel (voiced by Beatriz); Luisa (Darrow); Isabela (Guerrero); Pepa (Gaitán); Félix (Castillo); Dolores (recording artist Adassa); Camilo (Feliz); Bruno (John Leguizamo); and Abuela Alma (Olga Merediz, singing, and María Cecilia, speaking). Colombian singers featured in Encanto included Maluma, who provided the voice of Luisa’s love interest Mariano, and Sebastián Yatra, who sang the film’s main theme, “Dos Oruguitas.”  

The film was directed by the American screenwriter Jared Bush and the Japanese-born American animator and character designer Byron Howard. The American playwright Charise Castro Smith co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Bush.  

April 13, 2020

In late March, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in New York City named the computer scientists Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan as the recipients of the annual A. M. Turing Award. The award is given to one or more individuals each year in recognition of contributions of lasting importance in the field of computing. Catmull and Hanrahan were honored for their work on three-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics and the impact of these techniques on computer-generated imagery (CGI). Their work has greatly influenced the motion picture and video game industries as well as the fields of augmented reality and virtual reality.

The 1995 film Toy Story used 3-D animation software created in part by Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan, the winners of this year’s A. M. Turing Award. Credit: © Walt Disney Pictures/ZUMA Press

Ed Catmull is a former president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. Pat Hanrahan, a founding employee at Pixar, is a professor in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. Catmull and Hanrahan helped guide Pixar through its early years (the animation studio was created in 1986), and they helped create the “RenderMan” graphics system that gives two-dimensional images a 3-D appearance.

Under Catmull, Pixar used the RenderMan software to produce the motion picture Toy Story (1995), the first fully computer-animated feature film. Pixar then used RenderMan in a number of highly successful Toy Story sequels and other animated films. RenderMan software has also been used in numerous video games and in such blockbuster live-action films as Avatar, Titanic, and movies in the “Lord of the Rings,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Star Wars” series.

Alan M. Turing (at right) was an English mathematician and computer pioneer. He made important contributions to the development of electronic digital computers. Credit: Heritage-Images/Science Museum, London

The A. M. Turing Award is named after Alan Mathison Turing, a British mathematician and computer pioneer. Turing made key contributions to the development of electronic computers, including his work helping to build the first British electronic digital computer. In 1950, he proposed a test for determining if machines might be said to “think.” This test, now called the Turing test, is still central to discussions of artificial intelligence.

The first Turing Award was given to the American computer scientist Alan J. Perlis in 1966 for his role in developing influential computer-programming techniques. Since then, an award has been given every year. As of 2014, the award includes a $1 million cash prize. Catmull and Hanrahan are scheduled to receive the A.M. Turing Award at ACM’s annual awards banquet on June 20, 2020, in San Francisco, California. That event is contingent, of course, on the containment or continued spread of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

February 10, 2020

On Feb. 10, 1940, 80 years ago today, the classic animation comedy duo “Tom and Jerry” first appeared in the cartoon, “Puss Gets the Boot.” Created by the famous animation team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the ongoing slapstick rivalry between Tom, the cat, and Jerry, the mouse, has entertained generations of viewers. Hundreds of episodes of the cartoon have been made, as well as films, direct-to-video productions, and even a stage musical. Originally made at a time when cartoons were shown before motion pictures in cinemas, “Tom and Jerry” won eight Academy Awards between 1940 and 1952.

Tom and Jerry first appeared in the cartoon “Puss Gets the Boot” 80 years ago today on Feb. 10, 1940. Credit: © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The “Tom and Jerry” series was the first big hit for Hanna and Barbera and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) cartoon studio. Originally a one-shot deal, “Puss Gets the Boot”—in which the cat was named Jasper and the mouse was named Jinx—was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. The short proved popular enough to warrant the duo’s return—now as Tom and Jerry—in 1941′s “The Midnight Snack.” Hanna and Barbera and MGM producer Fred Quimby then made over 100 more “Tom and Jerry” shorts until competition from television forced the closure of MGM’s cartoon studio in 1957. Hanna and Barbera then formed their own studio, where they created such cartoon classics as “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” and “Scooby-Doo, Where are You!”

In the 1960′s, various producers—including Looney Tunes animation legend Chuck Jones—continued to make “Tom and Jerry” shorts, which had migrated to the Saturday morning television cartoon lineup. Tom and Jerry found their way home to Hanna-Barbera Productions in the 1970′s before moving to the networks of Ted Turner in the 1980′s. The show continued sporadically under various producers in the 1990′s and 2000′s. Since 2006, “The Tom and Jerry Show” has appeared on the Cartoon Network and the Boomerang streaming service.

Tom and Jerry made cameos in the Hollywood musical films Anchors Aweigh (1945) and Dangerous When Wet (1953). The duo finally got their first theatrical feature-length animated film, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, in 1992. A new animated-live-action movie, Tom and Jerry, is due for wide cinema release in December 2020. In Japan, the live-action stage musical Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream debuted in 2019, and the pair’s 80th anniversary is being celebrated in a special exhibition at Tokyo’s Matsuya Ginza department store in 2020.

December 21, 2017

Eighty years ago today, on Dec. 21, 1937, the animated motion picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered before a star-studded audience at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The first full-length animated feature produced by a studio, Snow White achieved instant critical success. The film also began a lengthy popular run with its wide release in 1938. The Walt Disney Company movie revolutionized animation with its brilliant visual effects. Snow White ranks among the most popular motion pictures ever made.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Credit: © Walt Disney Productions

Tickets to the 1937 Carthay Circle Theatre premiere of Snow White were among the hardest to get at that time in Hollywood. The elite list of attending stars—all taking an unfamiliar back seat to Walt Disney and his wife, Lillian—included Milton Berle, George Burns, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, and 9-year-old Shirley Temple. Many thousands of people gathered outside the theater to be a part of the event.

In January 1938, after Snow White premiered at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, The New York Times described the film as “sheer fantasy, delightful, gay, and altogether captivating.” Since then, millions of people around the world have agreed and continue to agree with that critical opinion, and the film remains a popular challenger to such recent animated Disney hits as The Lion King, Aladdin, and Frozen.

To mark the classic film’s 80th anniversary, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs returned for a brief run in select cinemas. Department stores issued Snow White-themed clothing lines. Numerous figurines, jewelry, plates, and other collectibles featured Snow White waking with Prince Charming’s kiss, and television’s Disney Channel ran a nostalgic 80th anniversary program that included a rousing rendition by the popular rock group Fall Out Boy of the Dwarfs’ song “Heigh-Ho.” And, of course, Disney Stores across the country are overflowing with Snow White-themed items for the Christmas shopping season.

Disney adapted Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a famous collection of German folk tales published in the early 1800′s. The film tells how the beautiful Snow White triumphs over the evil plotting of the Wicked Queen with the help of seven dwarfs who live in a forest. Each of the seven dwarfs has a distinct comic personality that matches his name—Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy. The young woman eventually marries the handsome Prince Charming.

At the time the movie was made, Disney was taking a huge gamble in creating a feature-length cartoon. The expensive film took four years to make, and there were predictions that it would fail with a public accustomed to short cartoons. But the movie was an immediate international success. Disney received a special Academy Award for “a significant screen innovation.” The award consisted of the traditional Oscar statue and seven miniature statuettes.