Why are Japanese cartoons a global hit?

In early 1979, a cartoon series about giantrobots, “Mobile Suit Gundam, ” made its debut on Japanese television. It wasnot a hit. Scheduled to run for 12 months, the plug was about to be pulledafter just 10 months.

But then the show’s creators noticedsomething unexpected: it had a very loyal, if small, following. Fans werecreating encyclopedias about the show and creating timelines of its events. Theshow was given a new lease on life — and the studio producing it took notice ofwhich elements had proven most popular with its audience. Given a new chanceand some creative tweaks, the “Gundam” shows became the basis of a sprawlingseries of cartoons, movies, comic books, video games, best-selling toys andmore. “The ‘Gundam’ giant robot series was written off as a failure — exceptthat it got picked up by a few fans, ” says Ian Condry, an associate professorof Comparative Media Studies at MIT and head of MIT’s Foreign Languages andLiteratures section. “Now it’s an ongoing 30-year-old franchise.”

As Condry sees it, there is a lesson in the“Gundam” case for producers of culture everywhere. Japanese anime — animation,usually in the form of hand-drawn cartoons — is a wildly popular global export:According to one estimate, about 60 percent of the world’s animated televisionshows originate in Japan. They have become popular, as Condry asserts in a newbook, “ The Soul of Anime, ” published today by Duke University Press, byembracing what he calls “collaborative creativity” — by accepting input from arange of artists, and, crucially, feedback and modifications from fans. Andwhen fans get involved, Condry says, it makes a pop-culture product, like acartoon series, “a living thing for the people who are interested.”

Creativity, ‘Gundam’-style

Certainly, the cultural reach of Japaneseanime has been enormous. In 2004, when Japan sent water-tank trucks to helpIraq’s reconstruction, Iraqis coordinating the effort felt the Japanese flag,displayed on the sides of the trucks, would likely go unrecognized. As Condrynotes, the Japanese government also placed large stickers on the vehicles, ofCaptain Tsubasa, a popular Japanese cartoon soccer player, as a more effectiveway of denoting which country was providing the trucks.

While the origins of anime techniques areabout a century old, the cartoons took hold in Japan only in the post-war era.Other global Japanese anime hits include the Pokemon series of video games,cards, cartoons and toys, which, as Condry notes, are “so ubiquitous, it’s kindof a shared language of youth.” And yet, the success of Japanese animeconstitutes something of a mystery. If you were to concoct a plan forentertainment-industry success in the digital age, Condry notes, it wouldprobably not involve the painstaking development of hand-drawn cartoons.

“It’s incredibly difficult, and not verylucrative” for the artists, says Condry, who visited dozens of anime studios,workshops and artists while researching the book over the last eight years.“It’s one of the most labor-intensive forms of media there is.” Entertainmentcompanies do not necessarily make huge profits off anime, which was an issuemotivating Condry’s study; as he puts it, “How can things that don’t make moneygo global?” The answer is that anime producers create many series and watchclosely for what catches on — and then, once the characters in a series becomea “platform” for audience participation, may cash in through toys, games andother forms of entertainment. “What distinguishes anime, ” Condry says, “is thedegree of openness the copyright holders have to give the fans a chance tore-work the characters” and other elements of the original cartoons. He adds:“The ‘Gundam’ producers, when shown work created by fans, just said, ‘Thatmight be the way it is.’”

Getting more social

One historical curiosity of anime, Condrynotes, is that the dynamics making it successful emerged even prior to thecommercialization of the Internet and the rise of social media, which in theoryshould make mass collaboration, today, easier than ever. Indeed, it is possiblethat the history of anime, Condry says, holds “lessons we might use for newemergent industries” that can tap into crowdsourcing and collective feedback.As such, Thomas LaMarre, a scholar of Japanese culture at McGill University inMontreal, calls the book “a bold challenge to our understanding of the socialside of media.” And while anime might be a globally exported product, audienceparticipation also makes it a highly personal form of entertainment, Condryadds. Anime might often feature seemingly soulless robots and monsters, but the“soul” of the art form, as Condry sees it, precisely comes from the investmentof creative energy that its fans pour into it. “Anime is imbued with a sense ofsocial energy, ” Condry says.