Beyond ‘Speed Racer’

The year is 2029, and man and machine have become one. In “Ghost in the Shell,” an animated sci-fi thriller based on a Japanese comic book, humans have mechanically augmented bodies and can dive into the virtual world by plugging their brains directly into the Internet.

“If man realizes technology is within reach, he achieves it,” muses the heroine, Maj. Motoko Kusanagi, a tough, 21st century cop with a cybernetic body even Barbie would envy.

This futuristic look at technology gone wild was the first joint U.S.-Japan venture in Japanese animation, and it took America by storm: In August, “Ghost” hit No. 1 on Billboard magazine’s video sales chart. Its theater run earlier in the year earned it the title of New York’s highest-grossing film shown exclusively on a single screen in one theater.

First it was cars; now Japan is preparing to pepper the world with cartoons. Animation has been called one of Japan’s most exportable cultural products, but until recently, it hasn’t made it big outside of Asia--where countries such as South Korea and Vietnam are voracious consumers of Japanese animation and comic books.

Japan’s animation, known to fans by its Japanese name, “anime” (AH-nee-may), has long been limited to a small cult following in the United States. But suddenly its popularity has exploded--and Japanese and American companies alike are attempting to cash in on its worldwide appeal.

In Japan, cartoons are big business: One hit TV series can bring in a quarter of a billion dollars in sales and merchandising. Annual exports of Japanese animation and comics to the United States are estimated at $75 million, and many Japanese companies are beginning to create anime with an eye on the world market.

American Gen-Xers who grew up on Scooby-Doo and Disney classics are discovering that cartoons are not just for kids. Anime often serves up action, violence and sex. Japanese animated series such as “Sailor Moon” and “Dragon Ball” have made it into the highly competitive syndicated U.S. television market.

The anime boom has also reached Europe. “Sailor Moon” has been translated into, among other languages, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Chinese.

Even Disney, America’s king of animation, has gotten in on the act: A recent deal to distribute the works of one of Japan’s best-loved animation filmmakers, Hayao Miyazaki, gives it a hand in the large Asian market.

“Anything big we do--a movie, a video, a big game--we’re looking very much at the worldwide market rather than just Japan,” said Scott Frazier, president of I.G. Inc., the branch of the Japanese animation company whose studio and staff were used to make “Ghost in the Shell.” The division was formed as an American company last October, though its staff is based in Japan.

Many Japanese animation companies say they are actively seeking joint ventures with foreign companies to help them penetrate markets abroad, lessen risk and reap higher profits than the royalties they receive from licensing rights to a foreign distributor.

“I don’t think it would work if we Japanese try to make a [foreign distribution] system by ourselves because, up until now, we’ve had failures,” said Shigeru Watanabe, managing director of production for Bandai Visual, co-producer of “Ghost.” In the past, poor translations and a lack of knowledge of the U.S. entertainment market were stumbling blocks to success, he said. So, “just that we’re getting a profit is a big deal because that’s never happened before.”

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One draw for American investors is anime’s low cost. Production costs for “Ghost in the Shell”--billed as “the most expensive and technically advanced Japanese animated feature yet made”--are estimated at a tenth of that for Disney’s recent “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

And although prices of almost everything else in Japan have skyrocketed, the price of making anime, especially for television, has remained low.

To cut costs, Japanese animators may use as few as eight cells (the clear plastic on which each frame is drawn and painted) a second, while most American productions use 24 cells a second, making anime action distinctively choppier than American animation. Costs are also kept down in part by the low pay scales of Japanese animators.

In Japan, where there is no embarrassment in a blue-suited businessman reading a comic book on the train commute home, anime is not considered merely children’s entertainment. While Disney creations generally are designed to appeal to a wide range of viewers, anime is targeted at specific age groups. For grown-ups, anime often contains dark, adult overtones that give it a gritty realism that American animation--geared for “family viewing”--often lacks. Happy endings are not a given. Characters sometimes have complex personalities, and story lines may deal with such subjects as death and betrayal.

“Often [anime] is not your stereotypical [American] cartoon that has a clear-cut good versus evil, where good wins and rides into the sunset,” said Kevin Sung, president of the Cornell Japanese Animation Society.

Anime first hit Japanese television in 1963 with the hugely successful series “Tetsuwan Atom,” based on the popular comic book by Osamu Tezuka. (It was exported to the U.S. as “Astro Boy.”)

At the time, Japan was struggling to rebuild its economy after World War II. With little available capital, and a market half the size of the United States in population, anime was limited to the relatively low-budget, low-quality productions that became known in America as “Japanimation.”

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Anime quality has risen dramatically in the past 30 years, and many Japanese animation companies say they believe larger investments will yield larger audiences. Japan’s Bandai and Kodansha, along with Chicago-based Manga Entertainment, spent $5 million to finance “Ghost in the Shell.”

Together with its branch in the United Kingdom, Manga has become the largest distributor of Japanese animation outside Japan. The company’s president, Marvin Gleicher, said getting “Ghost” into theaters created the press buzz needed to raise interest in the movie. Other sources say the video’s release during the summer lull helped it top the charts, again garnering media attention.

Manga held free screenings of anime at colleges nationwide to raise awareness of the genre. “The biggest problem . . . was that people just didn’t know what [anime] was,” Gleicher said.

But the genre has slowly crept from the U.S. underground into the mainstream. Americans got a taste of anime in the 1960s with shows such as “Astro Boy” and “Speed Racer.” Later, there were “Star Blazers” and “Robotech.” The art form began to find its way to America on video in the 1980s, although works usually were expensive and difficult to find and viewership still was limited to groups of anime fanatics.

College clubs have helped make the genre hip. “Animania” at the University of Michigan started 11 years ago with a few admirers. Now, its screenings often attract more than 500 people.

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Anime is spreading through the Internet, with hundreds of colorful fan-made home pages. Fans of “Sailor Moon,” ostensibly a children’s show about a wimpy middle-school girl who transforms into a voluptuous, long-legged, evil-fighting superhero, can find pages detailing the name and background of every character in the series and a synopsis of each show. Adult fans of the show, whose English-language version was discontinued last year by DIC Entertainment Inc., have even created a Save Our Sailors (SOS) home page, complete with off- and online petitions to get the show back on the air.

The 1988 cult classic “Akira,” directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, is often credited with helping anime gain a wider audience in the U.S. Set in post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, the story follows a young biker punk who develops telekinetic powers after being used as a guinea pig in a government experiment and threatens to destroy the city.

“Akira” videos have since sold 400,000 copies worldwide. In comparison, “Ghost” sold 200,000 copies in the U.S. consumer market alone in the first five months after its release.

Anime video sales are still only 1% or 2% of that of Hollywood hits such as “Toy Story,” but they are increasing rapidly, and companies expect to raise profits through CD-ROM and game software tie-ins.

Anime companies say Japan will remain their main target, but many are choosing stories with more universal themes in order to appeal to a broader viewership.

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Like Disney cartoons, anime is easily manipulated and dubbed into other languages, making it one of the more exportable forms of entertainment. Gaining wide acceptance among foreign audiences, however, is still a tricky task.

While good translation of the script is important, differences in body language and cultural idiosyncrasies sometimes do not translate well and have to be changed. And while Japanese animation’s reputation for graphic sex, violence and nudity may help it win admirers among young adults, it sometimes becomes an obstacle to foreign distribution. When “Sailor Moon” was released on American television, some changes were made: Fight scenes were toned down, and the name of the show’s blond, blue-eyed heroine was changed from the feminist’s nightmare “Usagi,” or Bunny, to Serena.

“Several of the [Japanese] directors are looking for our ideas just to add more of a Western influence to some of the stories to make them more appealing without sacrificing much of the Japanese content,” Gleicher said. For example, to bring in more Western flavor, Manga asked I.G. to include “One Minute Warning,” by U2 and Brian Eno, as the theme song for “Ghost in the Shell.”

But not everyone in the industry agrees anime should be Westernized. “If Japanese animators think too much about how to make anime for foreign markets, it will be a big mistake because they don’t understand enough about it,” said Bandai’s Watanabe. “The important thing will be how well we can make something that’s truly Japanese.”

Many, however, do agree that making big-budget, high-quality animation in the anime style is the real key to a hit overseas. They say “Ghost in the Shell,” with its mix of computer and traditional animation, is just a taste of what is to come. “We didn’t think of it as making animation,” said director Mamoru Oshii. “We thought of it as making a movie.”

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With its “high-concept” plot, it is certainly no Saturday morning cartoon. In “Ghost,” Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has created the ultimate tool of espionage: Project 2501--a spy with no body, a program with the power to travel freely through the Net and hack into and manipulate people’s minds. But the project careens out of control when the virtual agent--nicknamed “The Puppet Master”--attempts to defect, declaring itself a sentient being and demanding political asylum and a physical body.

Maj. Kusanagi, having surrendered most of her original brain and body (leaving little more than her ghost--the intangible essence of human individuality and existence) to become a cyber-robocop, is put on the case to trap The Puppet Master, who later forces her to question her own existence.

Fans say complicated plots like this appeal to twentysomethings.

Japanese attention to detail is another draw. Those in the industry say Japanese animators compensate for using fewer cells by being more dynamic in their drawing.

“The Japanese are famous for saying that Americans don’t pay enough attention to detail, and in animation, it’s true,” said I.G.’s Frazier. Most animators start out at the bottom rung of the ladder, drawing shoelaces, so when they become supervisors, they notice all of the little things, he added.

And Frazier should know: He apprenticed at Japanese animation companies doing the tedious drawing. Now, he is looking to take his obsession home to America. “We’re talking to anime fans to find out what they want, but we’re going for a wider audience--young adults,” he said.