Meet the subject
アニメーション
Japanese animation includes feature films, television series, shorts and online works. It is neither a single genre nor one drawing style. Movement can be built with drawings, puppets or digital methods, while a finished scene joins visual performance, setting and sound through collaborative production.
Animation and manga are different media; adaptation is one relationship between them.
Storyboards, key drawings and in-between animation do different jobs.
“Earliest surviving” does not prove the absolute first work ever made.
Animation presents arranged images in sequence so that changes of position, pose or expression produce movement. Following one subject through successive positions makes that change easier to see. Holds and reused images also matter; every displayed frame need not contain an entirely new drawing.
Toei describes the storyboard as a design that communicates staging to the production team. Its panels organize shots and storytelling. Several panels may depict different shots, so a storyboard page is not automatically a sequence of frames from one continuous movement.
In Toei’s account of drawn production, key animation establishes important acting and action poses; in-between animation supplies the movement between them. Colour design, colouring and backgrounds have further roles. The Japanese production term dōga here names a specific job rather than every kind of video.
The two examples illustrate production roles without identifying them as a matching shot.
Modern compositing can join animated figures, backgrounds and CG on a computer. Editing, dialogue, effects and music help complete the scene. Work may run in parallel or return for revision; no single straight production line applies unchanged to every studio and project.
Puppet animation photographs movable three-dimensional subjects frame by frame. NFAJ’s exhibition on Mochinaga Tadahito follows work linking Japan, China and American productions. His career broadens the picture beyond drawn television series to materials, photography and international collaboration.
Three illustrative states of a malleable clay bird in a fixed set. Photographing each adjustment and playing the exposures in succession produces movement.
Shimokawa Ōten, Kitayama Seitarō and Kōuchi Jun’ichi released works in 1917. NFAJ identifies Kōuchi’s Namakura Gatana as the oldest surviving Japanese animated film. Its online collection of 64 films from 1917–1942 offers evidence of early production, not a count of everything made in those years.
Military propaganda commissions affected production. Momotarō no Umiwashi, released in 1943, marked a medium-length development; Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei followed as a feature in 1945. Animation served education and propaganda as well as entertainment. Expanding technical scale does not itself establish progress in the purposes it served.
Postwar groups and companies repeatedly reorganized. Toei acquired Nichidō Eiga in 1956 and released Hakujaden in 1958, a major colour-feature milestone. Yokoyama Ryūichi’s Otogi Production followed a different, smaller-scale route. No one studio supplies the entire industry’s history.
Mushi Production’s Astro Boy began on January 1, 1963: 24-minute episodes in a run of 193. Regular television schedules supported series production. Features continued, while original video animation later added another route. Toei’s 1986 Shōnan Bakusōzoku is one company example, not the first OVA in Japan. By the late 1970s, younger fan communities and animation magazines also helped popularize the term anime. OVA identifies original animation initially released for home-video media, distinct from a cinema or television premiere followed by video. Dallos, released in 1983, is an early example; later streaming or broadcast does not change that initial release route.
Sally the Witch began in 1966 and ran until 1968. Its young princess comes from a magical kingdom to live among human friends. Toei describes the series as animation for girls, combining fantasy with humour and sentiment. Magical adventures and everyday friendships gave this television series a distinct audience and story world.
Toei’s chronology records completion of its CATAS image-production software in 1991, digital systems in 1997 and networked production and digital drawing in 2000. Overseas sales, subcontracting and later online distribution broadened circulation. Adoption differed by company and task; the industry did not become digital everywhere in one year. Production tools and distribution are separate questions. Cinema, television, home media and online delivery can coexist, and one work can circulate through different routes by territory. Wider online access does not mean every work is exclusively commissioned by a platform. A signed June 2026 Finance commentary describes a change in financing as well: alongside television sponsorship, publishers, manufacturers and other participants can invest through a production committee and share rights and returns. This connects animation with publishing, merchandise and distribution. It is the writers’ industry analysis, rather than a rule governing every project.
A lead studio may assign work to other studios or freelancers. Television, cinemas, streaming and discs are distribution channels for the finished work; arrangements vary.
JFTC / Cabinet Office Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters Secretariat, 22 June 2026
No. It embraces different formats, materials, subjects and production methods.
Not necessarily. They may describe separate shots.
In the drawn workflow described here, one establishes key poses and the other develops movement between them.
No. Survival and discovery limit what the evidence can establish.
Astro Boy in flight, from the 1963 series ©Tezuka Productions