Anime (Japanese animated cartoons) began as an art form at the beginning of the 20th century and it has been said that the styles that we are now familiar with were based upon early Disney and Betty Boop type American cartoons, with exaggerated physical details, large eyes, small mouths and button noses a la Bambi. The eyes are of course the mirror to the soul so providing the characters with large ones gave the animators a great deal of scope to express emotion, which is not typical of Japanese art in general.

From the 1930s onwards Anime became more and more popular in Japan and slowly began to attract a following abroad as well, with a growing interest throughout the USA and Europe during the 1990s; the success of the genre can be illustrated by the fact that the market in the United States of America is now worth around $4.5 billion annually!

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The coming of the Internet gave it a considerable boost but unfortunately the World Wide Web has a darker side to it, and the popularity of online pornography meant that it was inevitable that sooner or later the sex industry would target Anime; many of the characters in it are childlike and so a whole industry grew up of producing animated cartoons which appealed to the pederast and domination perversions. However legitimate uses of the art form have continued and expanded into areas such as computer games (Pokémon is a good example) and US animated television series such as South Park. Along with the growth in popularity of Anime has being the growth in interest in all things Japanese, and there has even been a great increase in the number of people learning the Japanese language; whether the two are linked is debatable but many commentators feel that overall, Anime has been very good for Japan's image abroad.