Why Beyblade Manga Rocks

When anime and beyblade manga made its debut in America, it was typically considered a quirky Japanese style of cartoon made for children.  A little later, when manga and anime galvanized characters like the Mario brothers began to control the computer game market, folks started to take more notice.  Many of the first generation of American and western european gameplayers became charmed by the style of art in their games and wanted more .  Who could blame them?  Just look at beyblade manga.

Many of the most popular Playstation games in history have their origins in manga and anime.  Except for the most famed P and PG rated games like Mario, Pokemon and Digimon, plenty of the M and R rated games, too, have their sources in Japanese cartoon art, animated or otherwise.  Still other Japanese games such as the prisoner of Zelda, began as games and then were made into manga and anime.  However, the style of the originals were in most cases clearly related to manga, beyblade manga and anime.

This has seemingly small to do with how anime has had an impact on the North American film industry until you look at the dates when these Playstation games were released in the U.S.  And understand that many of our best Hollywood directors were preteen and teenage boys when these games came out.  Their first intro to M and R rated anime would be through these Playstation games and would naturally have led on to an interest in what else beyblade manga offered.

Just as the sixties produced a number of French impressed Hollywood productions, the end of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century have seen Japanese anime-inspired films.

The spook in the Shell is one of the most highly acclaimed anime productions ever.  Years back, director James Cameron called it the most literary and artistic adult animated film in history.  His contemporary production, Avatar, lately became one of the highest grossing film in history.  The influence of Cameron’s exposure to the great anime features like ghost in the Shell and beyblade manga is obvious across the film.

The Matrix, another ticket office hit, also owes a big debt to ghost in the Shell.  When the little known directorial team, the Wachowski siblings, gave their pitch to producer Joel Silver, they asked him to observe the anime and told him that was what they needed to create on the screen.  The Matrix trilogy went on to become not just a box office success, but keeps a large cult following to this day.

Another of the most well-known directors of the previous two decades is Quentin Tarantino, who harked back to manga and anime in his Kill Bill films.  Tarantino is an eager anime fan and there are substantiated rumours that he intends to make anime prequels to Kill Bill in the near future.

The list doesn’t stop there, either.  Beyblade manga and anime have caught the imagination of Hollywood giants and audiences alike and doubtless we will be seeing much more of it in the future.