The Era in which Television and Cartoons Matured into "National Entertainment"--Entertainment Around 1975 in Context

The Era in which Television and Cartoons Matured into "National Entertainment"--Entertainment Around 1975 in Context

The year 1975 marked a turning point when Japanese television and manga became "fully integrated" into daily life. With the end of Japan's rapid economic growth, color televisions were in almost 100% of households, and people had established a pattern of watching dramas on the way home from work, watching movies on the weekends, and reading serialized manga in shonen magazines. While there were whispers of a publishing slump, manga magazines and TV programs were growing as huge industries, and star systems were being developed. The entertainment column in the 52nd issue of "Omoshirohan," published right in the middle of this period, condensed the atmosphere of the times.

Around 1975, two years after the first oil crisis, Japanese society as a whole was beginning to feel the end of the growth myth. The recession continued, prices were rising, companies were becoming more cautious about hiring, and young people's future prospects were uncertain. Meanwhile, television and cartoons were resilient to the recession and took root in the center of people's lives. Time spent in the home was being reevaluated, television functioned as a tool for connecting family conversations, and cartoons served as a common language that supported the emotional destinations of young people.

In television programming, family dramas, coming-of-age dramas, period dramas, and special effects broadened the audience base, and evening broadcasts became part of the family gathering. Special effects hero productions were popular not only with children but also with their fathers, and visual expressions became more sophisticated with advances in technology. The television became increasingly functional as a mirror of the times, with local landscapes and the changing urban landscape reflected in the depths of the screen.

Manga magazine circulation remained at a high level, shōnen manga supported the popularity of spōnen, delinquent, and science fiction, and shōjo manga entered a new era of deepened psychological depiction and sensitive portrayal of young women's inner worlds. Both boys' and girls' magazines became the center of the culture, and serialized artists took on the role of storytellers who captured the emotions of the times. Universal themes such as school life, family conflicts, love, and friendship were expressed in connection with social upheavals.

Although the film industry was in a slump, action films for young people and films based on comic books were actively produced. While the spread of television was drawing away customers, the theater retained its value as an extraordinary experience, and genre films made quickly and on a low budget gained a certain popularity. The genres were increasingly differentiated, such as delinquent films, true crime films, romantic pornography, and adolescent action films, with ingenious attempts to scoop up the desires of the audience in minute detail.