Comic and animation development: Comparative study between Malay and Japanese

Abstract

Manga (Japanese comic) and anime (Japanese animations) are closely related to culture, history, politics, economy, family, religion, belief and gender and are very popular around the world. Manga and anime are reflections on the fantasy, beliefs, values and myths of Japanese society. This paper is based on literature review of references in Malay, English and Japanese as well as an author's visit to the Kyoto International Manga Museum, the Tokyo International Manga Museum, Saitama Municipal Cartoon Building Hall and Malay Documentation Center, Kuala Lumpur. The paper attempts to find the relevance of Malay comics and animations on the international front. No detailed study was conducted on both Malay comics and animations in terms of early history of comic writing, story plot, culture or writings contained in Malay comics. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of comics and animation from the very beginning to the present and to compare both in terms of its function at a certain time. The result shows that Japanese caricature writing has begun since the Japanese prehistoric times before the year 1600 compared to comics that can only be referred to as early as the 1950s. For comics and animations, the timelines that are appropriate to distinguish their development are before and after the 1980s. What can be concluded is Malay comic or a very humorous looking sketch are still very new, in fact no significant research has been conducted so far by researchers.