If you are a fan of magna and read the latest anime and manga releases and subject history, you will find there is a lot of confusion between anime and manga. Suffice it to say that manga means Japanese comic books, or in other words, cartoons drawn on paper originating from Japan. Anime is an animated, or you could say, an animated version of manga.
If you are a fan of magna and read the latest anime and manga releases and subject history, you will find there is a lot of confusion between anime and manga. Often times, fans will ask others on forums or on blogs or in chat rooms what the difference is. But this is like having a blind lead who is visually impaired in most cases.
There are experts who visit these sites and can intelligently answer questions, but since they usually don’t leave a link to back up their claims, it may not be clear if what they are saying is true or if they are really experts. When you go to an online encyclopedia, you often find so much information to go through with so many big words, it’s hard to fully understand them all.
Suffice it to say that manga means Japanese comic books, or in other words, cartoons drawn on paper originating from Japan. Similar to American comics with Superman and Spiderman, these comics are often made into different series and are still produced in quantity. Anime is an animated, or you could say, an animated version of manga.
Any animation actually needs to start as such a cartoon image.
Manga artists create characters and storylines, then their drawings are made into animated films. The animation process is long and detailed, and it brings a number of talented people to bring the final product. The artists who initially create the characters, their personalities and the scenes where the action takes place play a big part in the anime production.
Sometimes, in addition to the manga creators themselves, studios pick up artwork and create backgrounds and other details with a workforce of other animators. These images are combined and photographed or scanned as one piece, making the whole scene with characters, extras and views of a modern city or whatever is being depicted. Thus the anime was created.
Rumko Takahashi made the popular series, Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2. He does original drawing and assists in the animation process along with other artists in the studio that produced the final anime. And so are many manga-cash (manga writers).
Which came first, manga or anime?
That is easy to answer in studying the history of cartoon drawing. In Japan, the most famous manga artists were being produced in the 1940’s, as they were producing cartoons about the World War that was going on at that time. That doesn’t mean there weren’t other cartoonists before this time. Of course there is.
In the US, comics were in vogue early on. In the early 1700s, Benjamin Franklin started the first editorial cartoons. This soon evolved into longer comic strips, first drawn by Richard Outcault in 1895. Then in the 1930s there were the debuts of heroes such as Superman and Batman.
