The Playful World of Manga and Anime

The playful world of manga and anime

The Japanese tradition of focusing on the universe of children is ancestral. The annual celebrations of Girls' Day – 03/03 – and Boys' Day – 05/05 – date back millennia. The oldest known artifacts date from the Jomon period (10,000/300 BCE). The ritual dolls – Ningyo – that embody the values and aspirations that parents have for their children follow this tradition.

The evolution of the more modern concept of Ningyo began during the Edo period (1603–1868), when there was a growing emphasis on craftsmanship and artistic expression, which stimulated the rescue and development of various forms of traditional art, including doll-making. Some of these Ningyos were the object of the exhibition that preceded this one at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum.

The current exhibition, entitled "The Playful World of Manga and Anime", takes up the theme of the universe of children and projects it towards the juvenile and beyond.

Manga (漫画) are comics or graphic novels that often depict urban daily life. In Japan, people of all ages read manga, in a wide range of genres: action, adventure, horror, commerce, detective stories, the country's history, science fiction, sexual fantasies, sports, etc. Many of these manga gave rise to anime (アニメ), a characteristic art form that emerged in the 1960s with the works of manga artist Osamu Tezuka, and became popular in the following decades. They are often the celluloid, and now video, version of manga, since many anime are based on them.

Many of these anime have become known in Brazil and have turned into true icons for our younger generations... and not so young ones. Many of these original drawings and celluloids were collected by me at Tokyo's flea markets, on weekends, when I was serving at our embassy. There are thousands of them, discarded by their producers and despised by those who searched for old pieces there. Acquiring them became a "mission" for me, as they record the Japanese soul and culture in its most authentic aspects: the coexistence of contemporaneity and ancestral values, and, in parallel, the mixing with other cultures.

Such is the symbiosis between inspiration from American cartoons and animated drawings, combined with the civilizational values of contemporary Japan, divided between tradition and modernity.

Fausto Godoy

Donor and curator of the Asian Collection of the Museu Oscar Niemeyer

Since the magnificent Asian collection, with over three thousand pieces, was donated to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, several exhibitions have been held featuring these works, allowing the public to learn more about this heritage of immense historical and artistic value that belongs to Paraná.

By presenting the exhibition "The Playful World of Manga and Anime," the MON confirms that this is yet another of the countless facets of this amazing collection, which reveals the Asian continent in its geographical expanse, ethnic and religious plurality, and artistic exuberance throughout thousands of years of history.

In this exhibition, we bring to our visitors an expression of contemporary Japanese art that has reached and conquered a large part of the world: the popular manga and anime.

Here, they are presented in over 100 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, sharing space with traditional Ningyo dolls. In Japan, these are objects full of ancient meanings, gifts intended to wish longevity, health, and fertility to children.

By presenting this exhibition, which showcases such an important symbolic and aesthetic dimension of Japanese culture, the MON invites reflection on the cultural expressions of different regions and countries, and what unites us as individuals and as a society.

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika
CEO of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum

Japanese animations originated in cinema, but gained their own definitive space on world television starting in the 1960s. Since then, they continue to enchant generations. Anime refers to an animation that can be drawn both by hand and by computer. The first commercial Japanese animations date back to 1917, influenced by Western techniques. However, it was only in the 1960s, with the work of the renowned manga artist (mangaka) Osamu Tezuka, often called the "God of Manga", that anime began to take shape as a distinct cultural phenomenon. At that time, they were drawn on a sheet of acetate. The artist would sketch on a sheet of paper, with relevant indications, and the assistant would transfer it to celluloid.

This style of art emerged in the 1960s and became popular in the following decades, attracting a large domestic audience. Anime began to be shown in movie theaters, and were later broadcast on television, then released directly to home devices and online. In addition to original works, they are often adaptations of manga and even video games. Classified in various genres – comedy, horror, drama, science fiction, etc. – they target broad and diverse audiences.

In the 1980s, anime became a major popular success in Japan, with the release of productions such as "Gundam", "Macross", "Dragon Ball", and genres like real robot, space opera, and cyberpunk. The film "Akira" (1988) became an international success, and "Spirited Away" shared the top prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003.

Like manga, anime is a form of art and expression of its authors' creativity, both in terms of form and content, as the same creator often handles the plot and drawing. Titles like "Attack on Titan", "One Piece", "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood", "Death Note", "Dragon Ball", and "Akira" are constantly cited as the best and most popular, both by fans and critics.

The anime industry is currently divided into over 430 production studios, including major names like Studio Ghibli, Gainax, and Toei Animation. Anime has been an even greater international success since the introduction of dubbing in television broadcasts. This increase in popularity has led to non-Japanese productions that employ the same anime art style.

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Manga (漫画) are comics or graphic novels, similar to our old comic books, while anime originally had a celluloid format. Most manga follow the styles developed by Japanese artists who created ukiyo-e (浮世絵), a term meaning "image of the floating world", a genre of art that became very popular among the merchant class of Tokyo in the Edo period (17th-19th centuries). They were woodblock prints that depicted themes from urban daily life, such as kabuki theater actors, courtesans, sumo wrestlers, landscapes, folk tales, etc.

The term "manga" is used to refer to Japanese comics. Several of them gave rise to anime (アニメ), created by cartoonists and originally drawn on acetate, as shown in this exhibition, and now created by computers, in the format of films and videos.

The roots of manga are older. They originated in the Nara period (8th century CE), when the first painting scrolls, called emakimono (絵巻物), appeared in Japan. These scrolls contained paintings accompanied by texts that told a story as they were unrolled on a surface. Initially, this style followed Chinese patterns that inspired the art produced in Japan at that time. It was from the mid-12th century that the first typically Japanese emakimono appeared.

In the Edo period (1603–1868), these scrolls were replaced by books. Initially, the prints were intended to illustrate texts, but soon "books to see" emerged, as opposed to "books to read". From the mid-19th century, Japanese artists were influenced by European graphic humor. In 1861, British cartoonist Charles Wirgman settled in Yokohama, near Tokyo, and had a great influence on local artists. Wirgman created a satirical newspaper, The Japan Punch, and taught Western techniques of drawing and painting to many Japanese artists.

Influenced by The Japan Punch, Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyosai created the first manga magazine in 1874, Eshinbun Nipponchi, which did not achieve popular success and was closed after three issues. However, the techniques brought by Europeans boosted a slow but steady production of native artists, especially Rakuten Kitazawa, whose manga "Tagosaku to Mokube no Tokyo Kenbutsu" (田吾作と杢兵衛の東京見物) (1902) is considered the first manga in the modern sense.

Several series comparable to those from overseas emerged in the 1930s until the mid-1940s, when the press was subjected to government censorship during World War II, as were all cultural and artistic activities. After this troubled period, under American occupation, manga artists began to be influenced by Western comics, especially American ones, which were translated and widely disseminated in the daily press.

In 1946, the first manga by a woman, Machiko Hasegawa's strip "Sazae-san", was published. It was also when Osamu Tezuka, an artist influenced by Walt Disney, gave life to modern manga. The facial features he developed, similar to those of Disney drawings, with exaggerated eyes, mouth, eyebrows, and nose, made manga popular. Tezuka also introduced graphic effects in comics, such as speed lines and onomatopoeias that integrate with the art.

Nowadays, a mangaka typically works with some assistants in a small studio and is associated with a publisher. In Japan, manga is usually published in large specific magazines, often containing several stories, each presented in a single chapter to be continued in the next issue. If a published manga series is popular enough, it may be adapted into an anime.

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