The Very First Anime?

[PictureGuy]

I found this on YouTube. Possibly from 1907, the person who posted this quoted from Wikipedia. Knowing Wikipedia is not always so accurate, I tried to find confirmation elsewhere. imdb.com was not much help. I did find one source which dated this short film from 1907-1911. Anyway, if anyone knows of an earlier example of Japanese animation, please post.

[Takatofan1986]

Wow, that's really interesting! Thanks for sharing!

[Immoral]

Imokawa Mukuzo: Genkanban no Maki is the first anime listed on anidb. It aired in the winter of 1916/1917.

This is what they say about it:

Although it's not the earliest animation to be made in Japan, it's the first one to have been publicly shown in a theatre. Because of that, it's regarded as the first "true" anime film.

Neither this anime, nor any of Shimokawa's five other animated shorts are known to have survived and don't exist anymore.

[PictureGuy]

^ It aired in 1917? Wow! The Japanese had commercial TV decades before us!

Actually, there were experiments with cathode ray tubes back in the late 19th century, and many experimental broadcasts up through the 1930's. Television as a popular commercial medium then had to be postponed due to resources required for World War II.

[Clayton_n]

In the 1800s the Japanese did a sllideshow about tanuki balls.