Manga

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Manga are Japanese comics that sprung forth from early Japanese art. The first 'real' manga (Eshinbun Nipponchi) came out in the second half of the 19th century, when in Europe this art was also taking form. In the first half of the 1950s the production of manga as an industry began to really take flight, thanks to artists ('mangaka' in Japanese) as Osamu Tezuka[1] and Machiko Hasegawa[2].

The target audience of manga is more varied than that of western comics: where in the west the focus lies on children and adolescents, manga are also targeting adults and even the elderly. The subject of stories also knows more variation: there are manga in the well-known sci-fi, fantasy and action genres, but also stories chronicling the adventures of a group of students or even the everyday happenings of an office worker.

Anime

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Anime, or Japanese animation saw its birth at the beginning of the 20th century, roughly at the same time when development of animation began in Europe and the US. We can distinguish two types of anime: productions for a cinema audience and for television broadcasting.

TV anime

Often based on popular manga, games and even so-called light novels, made for television anime treats a wide variety of subjects, although they are tailored towards a more general audience.

Programs are usually produced on a one episode a week basis and may run for several seasons. Seasons last somewhere between 12 to 16 episodes and most series have 1 or 2 seasons. Especially successful series like “Naruto” and “Bleach” tend to run for many years, with episode numbers exceeding 200, or 400 in the case of “Once Piece”, which first aired in 1999. This is comparable to “the Simpsons”, which began 10 years earlier and now has over 450 episodes.

Like most western animation shows, each episode tends to be around 20 minutes in length.

Cinematic anime

Often stand-alone, high-quality productions, cinematic anime include works such as “Akira”, “Steam boy” and the acclaimed “Princess Mononoke”. A comparison can be made with feature length Disney[3] animation in terms of quality, but there is a clear difference in target audience: where Disney films are most often geared towards children and young teens, many Japanese productions are directed towards a more mature audience and handle more complex subjects.

The Japanese way of doing things has had a very noticeable influence on American and European animation. John Lasseter, chief creative officer of the US animation studio Pixar[4] is a great fan of Studio Ghibli's[5] Hayao Miyazaki's way of storytelling. In recent years, Pixar has moved American animation into a position where an adult audience goes to see an animated movie just as easily as it would a live-action movie.

An example of Japanese influence in Europe would be “Totally Spies” by the French Marathon Media Group[6]: the use of exaggerated facial expressions is reminiscent of the type often used in Japanese animation.

Video games

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Since the birth of video games, Japan, together with the US, has been a key player in the development of the industry. If you were born in the 80s, names like “Pac-man”, “Super Mario world”, “Zelda” and “Final Fantasy” will instantly ring a bell.

Aside from being the country of origin of many of the world's great games, Japan is also widely percieved as having been instrumental in ending the notorious “North American video game crash of 1983”. The crash was mainly to blame on the lack of control of production and distribution, which lead to an enormous amount of mediocre games being widely available. Consumers no longer knew how to know a good game from a bad one, leading to a dramatic decrease in sales.

At this time Nintendo[7] introduced the “Nintendo Seal of quality”, a system which gave the company the ability to choose which games it allowed on its consoles, an which it didn't. As a result, the “Famicom”, or “Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)” became a huge success both in Japan and the west.

Currently, companies such as Sony[8] (Playstation 1,2 & 3, PSP) and Nintendo (NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii, Nintendo DS) are responsible for the bulk of world wide consoles: the only western competitor of a similar level is Microsoft[9] (XBOX, XBOX 360). Titles such as “Super Mario Galaxies” and the endless variety of quirky Wii games have in recent years transformed gaming from a “nerd or kids activity” into a mainstream past-time to be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of age.

Music

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References
[1]	Osamu Tezuka website (japanese,english)
[2]	Hasegawa Machiko Museum (japanese)
[3]	Disney corporate (international)
[4]	Pixar (japanese,english)
[5]	Ghibli studio (japanese)
[6]	Marathon Group (Français,english)
[7]	Nintendo (international)
[8]	Sony (international)
[9]	Microsoft (international)