arts Article The Anime Connection. Early Euro-Japanese Co-Productions and the Animesque: Form, Rhythm, Design José Andrés Santiago Iglesias Fine Arts Faculty, Drawing Department, University of Vigo, 36002 Pontevedra, Spain;
[email protected] Received: 3 July 2018; Accepted: 28 September 2018; Published: 5 October 2018 Abstract: After European audiences had first contact with anime in the late 1970s, animated co-productions between domestic producers and Japanese studios emerged in the early 1980s, playing a lead role in standardizing anime aesthetics and hence contributing to the broader development of anime in Spain and other major European markets. These pioneering co-productions fostered the arrival of Japanese studios to the European broadcasting scene. However, its real impact on the popularization of anime is subject to debate. Appealing to a European audience, these series lacked some of the most recognizable features associated with anime as a larger medium. Nonetheless, in some of these animated productions there was an underlying animesque flair in the shape of conventionalized elements, character design, facial expressions, rhythm, camera action and tropes. Neither entirely domestic nor fully Japanese, these hybrid productions set up a ‘bridge’ between European and American animated visual language and anime mainstream features, thereby shaping the collective idea of what anime is for the first generation of viewers in Spain and Europe. Keywords: anime; animesque; co-productions 1. Introduction In the early 1980s the Spanish anime scene was quite different from other major European markets—mostly Italy and France—due to the disparate pace of the liberalization of TV frequencies and the subsequent arrival of several (Japanese) anime productions to those markets.