The 1970s transformed anime into a television-centered medium, with constrained budgets prompting recurring tropes and cost-saving styles. Television dominance reduced theatrical production, a shift enabled by the market foundations laid by Osamu Tezuka and the economical success of Astro Boy. TV compilation films and made-for-TV features played a critical role in the decade's cinematic legacy. Directors such as Isao Takahata produced landmark TV films like Heidi: Girl of the Alps and Anne of Green Gables that became central to their oeuvres. Adaptations like Animal Treasure Island featured classical animation choices and early design contributions from figures such as Hayao Miyazaki and Yasuji Mori.
If the 1980s saw the increased proliferation of anime in the west, and the 2000s saw them becoming part of the cultural zeitgeist, the 1970s were a period of great change for the industry at home. In a piece for Sight and Sound in its Summer 2020 issue, historian Jonathan Clements traces technological and ideological changes through each decade - the '70s, in his words, saw anime as a TV phenomenon, "developing a series of tropes and styles designed to stretch limited budgets as far as they would go."
The dominance of television and the sparseness of film production - predicated on the market created by Osamu Tezuka and the cheap production of "Astro Boy" - is hard to overstate, even if we try to steer the conversation back to cinema. When surveying the best anime films of the 1970s, one has to reckon with the fact that some of the TV compilation films of the '70s are crucially important to the history of anime.
"Animal Treasure Island" (dir. Ikeda Hiroshi, 1971) " Treasure Island" is a rather irresistible adventure as it is (another director on this list, Osamu Dezaki, took his own stab at the Robert Louis Stevenson classic in 1978), and this adaptation from director Hiroshi Ikeda finds its all-ages appeal by building the cast with mostly animals - the exception being Jim Hawkins and his friend Cathy. The animation and art direction feels very classical, as is the choice of adapting this tale in the first place. Along with Yasuji Mori, Hayao Miyazaki is credited with some of the design work, and with that name
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