Anime began at the start of the 20th century, when Japanese filmmakers

experimented with the animation techniques also pioneered in France, Germany,

the United States, and Russia.[3] The oldest known anime in existence was
screened in 1917 - a two minute clip of a samurai trying to test a new sword on his
target, only to suffer defeat.[4] The first talkie anime was Chikara to Onna no Yo no
Naka, released in 1933.[5][6]

By the 1930s, animation became an alternative format of storytelling to the

underdeveloped live-action industry in Japan. Unlike in the United States, the liveaction industry in Japan remained a small market and suffered from budgeting,
location, and casting restrictions. The lack of Western-looking actors, for example,
made it next to impossible to shoot films set in Europe, America, or fantasy worlds
that do not naturally involve Japan. Animation allowed artists to create any
characters and settings.[7]

The success of Disney's 1937 feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
influenced Japanese animators.[8] In the 1960s, Osamu Tezuka adapted and
simplified many Disney animation techniques to reduce costs and number of frames
in the production. He intended this as a temporary measure to allow him to produce
material on a tight schedule with inexperienced animation staff.

The 1970s saw a surge of growth in the popularity of mangawhich were often later
animatedespecially those of Osamu Tezuka, who has been called a "legend"[9]
and the "god of manga".[10][11] His work and that of other pioneers in the field,
inspired characteristics and genres that are fundamental elements of anime today.
The giant robot genre (known as "Mecha" outside Japan), for instance, took shape
under Tezuka, developed into the Super Robot genre under Go Nagai and others,
and was revolutionized at the end of the decade by Yoshiyuki Tomino who developed
the Real Robot genre. Robot anime like the Gundam and Macross series became
instant classics in the 1980s, and the robot genre of anime is still one of the most
common in Japan and worldwide today. In the 1980s, anime became more accepted
in the mainstream in Japan (although less than manga), and experienced a boom in
production. Following a few successful adaptations of anime in overseas markets in
the 1980s, anime gained increased acceptance in those markets in the 1990s and
even more in the 2000s.