A Brief History of Cartoons ~ Doujin Manga Society

Defined by the Oxford dictionary as: "A simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way, especially a satirical one in a newspaper or magazine."

The Awesomeness of Technicolor!!

Once again I welcome you all to another post in the "Anime/Manga Vs. Cartoon/Comic" as we get near the "dramatic" conclusion on this series it's time for us to have a look at the other contestant, the animation style that most of us in the Western world grew up with and one of the things that defined our childhood, "Cartoons"

Animated cartoons have existed since the invention of devices that used a series of still drawings that when moved in a rapid succession would give the feeling of motion.

Victorian Zoetrope (1834)

But Cartoons as we know it today began in the 1920s as shorts that were shown before a featured film (instead of the obnoxious previews and trailers of other films we have today), several studios shown animated cartoons that lasted from 5 to 10 minutes.

Initially these animations were silent and as you guessed in black and white, the very first to have a soundtrack was a short animation titled "My old Kentucky Home" by Max Fleischer in 1926, but at the time the soundtrack and the animation wasn't perfectly synchronized.

And now with fully synchronized soundtrack!!

In the late 1950's with the invention of Television audience was drown away from movie theaters and theatrical cartoons decline, instead they moved to television where at first with limited animations styles that depended mostly on their soundtrack rather than their visuals.

Some of this early animated cartoons included shows like Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw. Also several rebroadcast of many theatrical cartoons.

In 1960 with the success of the cartoon "The Flintstones" several other networks tried to follow the show success by scheduling other cartoons in their prime time, though very few of them survived more than a year and networks decided to move this cartoons in a different schedule that had more success with a smaller audience but with a better demographic unity.

I will never understand why in the Spanish version
Fred and Barney
are called "Pedro" and "Pablo"

Thus beginning what we known as the "Saturday Morning Cartoons" (fun fact: here in Guatemala they never aired in Saturday mornings), since then "cartoons" have been seen as programs intended for kids , with simple plots and humor. But there are a few things I would like to point out and I would like to compare some of the early cartoons shown in theaters and some of the "cartoons" we know.

In their beginning animated cartoons and cartoon strips were almost identical, the characters portrayed had the intention of being a satirical reflect of real life persons or a satirical and humorist look on the world itself.

Interestingly enough Popeye started as a secondary character in a comic strip

A satirical and..maybe a bit racist view of black people at the time.

As time passes and as the animation techniques , style and technology improved "cartoons" moved from comic strips with motions and a somewhat sloppy soundtrack to a more sophisticated form of entertainment. By 1980 we can see a clearly difference between the first television "cartoons" and the "cartoons" schedule as "Saturday Morning Cartoons"

Saw almost all of them...even the G1 Mlp...

This "cartoons" had a more complex plot in some cases and some even had a progressive story line, they didn't satirize as much as their predecessors instead they focused on bright new interesting characters or tell a story featuring some sort of superhero.

With the success of the animated series "The Simpsons" a new era of "cartoons" not aimed for children began, with more controversial topics and the use of more adult reference series like Family Guy , American Dad , The Cleveland Show and Futurama were created. At the same time other "cartoons" aimed for children tried to deviate from their predecessors and tried to cover an even more wide quantity of topics.

My childhood~

Well that concludes this brief look at "Cartoons" history and by now some of you might be wondering why I keep using "" every time I refer to cartoons...well that I will explain in the conclusion of this series, so don't forget to leave your thoughts on our comment section and for those of you who haven't checked the other post, why not check them out?