Inspired by America

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Radek Bejma

New member
I been getting way into Lupin the 3rd lately, so I went up and look for some information about the Creator “Monkey Punch”. He said his style of art was inspired by america magazine “Mad”.
Now, just by reading that, how many manga/anime creators were inspired by American's work/stuff?
 
I thought Osamu Tezuka was inspired by Disney work? Well, I did read something about Betty Boop, but I thought Disney's "Snow White" inspired Osamu...
 
Cowboy Bebop and Big O are obvious enough. Bewitched, Sabrina, and the like were basically the original 'magical girls' ... there's a lot. I've also heard Gundam was basically Star Wars mixed with Starship Troopers.
 
How Cowboy Bebop was inspired by American's stuff? I can see what Big O though. The art style looks a lot like the Batman:TAS art style. But Cowboy Bebop?
 
Osamu Tezuka was influenced by Disney and Fleischer. Akira Toriyama was influenced by "101 Dalmations". Mizuki Kawashita and Watsuki of "Rurouni Kenshin" cite American comic book superheroes as heavy influences. Fujio Akatsuka says MAD and Buster Keaton were big influences.

I'd say American influence is pervasive enough among Japanese culture in general so even without specific examples you'll see plenty of it in almost every Japsnese anime or manga you're bound to come across.
 
The point is though it should be obvious to anyone familiar with Cowboy Bebop, to the extent of the title. Let's not even go into the shot for shot omages to various films, the genre omages and so on. Cowboy Bebop may be as American as an anime can get (Gunsmith Cats and it's perfectly captured Chicago geography and orgy of guns and American muscle cars not withstanding.)
 
I think Gundam has been slightly American inspired for most of this decade. SEED was partially created because America didn't dig MSG...except they gave it to a guy who seemed to have an axe to grind with the western part of the world and couldn't pace a series. 00 by comparison is much more welcoming- although it's critical, it's more critical of humanity as a whole and the Japanese characters aren't implied to be to the greatest folks ever. Just characters who happen to come from Japan.
 
If you go back and look at some older shows like Ashita no Joe, you see some parallels with American Westerns - mysterious stranger blows into town where nobody initially welcomes him, finRAB himself (willingly or otherwise) called to do something there. Which is actually kind of ironic, since many classic Westerns took their cues from Kurosawa's films.

In his notes, Nobuhiro Watsuki mentions that a lot of his character designs for Rurouni Kenshin were influenced by American comic-book heroes and villains.
 
On the other hand, Kurosawa was a big fan of John Ford's westerns, so it seems like a "the chicken or the egg" situation, in regard to who inspired whom first.
 
A multi-genre soundtrack which consists mostly of jazz and bebop, episode titles coming from Western pop music ("Bohemian Rhapsody", "Sympathy for the Devil"), noRAB to American films here and there, particularly Westerns...
 
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