Osamu Tezuka

At the end of my last piece on limited animation, I declared that next time I would write about “Japanimation.” The name Japanimation was a label bestowed in Europe, meaning: that stuff is not animation. After “Astro Boy,” thirty-minute series came to be produced one after another, and by the 1990s series like “Candy Candy” and “Urusei Yatsura” were airing on French and Italian broadcasters. They created a boom among children, and at the same time criticism began — and the word born of that criticism was “Japanimation.” ...

The word ukeru has no single kanji that captures its full meaning. The character 受ける means to receive or to hand over an object, but when we say a manga or anime uketa or ukenai, the word becomes an indicator of whether something has reached the hearts of the audience – those who watch, those who listen. One day, Master Tezuka invited me out. “Tsuki-san, I’m heading to Ginza today. Want to come along?” ...

What Is the Bank System? Long ago, Osamu Tezuka — creator of Astro Boy, the pioneering television anime — devised a method called the Bank System to produce 30-minute episodes every week. “Bank” means to store. Unlike today, animation at that time was drawn on paper, traced onto cels, and painted by hand. Normally, cels were discarded after a production was completed. But Tezuka decided to keep and organize certain cels rather than throwing them away — bust shots, waist shots, close-ups, walking shots, flying shots, crying, laughing, lip-sync shots, and other footage likely to be reused. This was the Bank System. ...