The 1960s are the decade in which the modern Japanese animation industry was founded and in which manga reorganised itself into the magazine system it still uses today. Two events dominate the decade — the broadcast of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (1963) as the first weekly TV anime, and the launch of Weekly Shōnen Magazine (1959) and Weekly Shōnen Sunday (1959) and the resulting consolidation of serialised manga around weekly publication.
1963 — the beginning of weekly TV anime
Mushi Production's Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy), based on Osamu Tezuka's manga, began broadcasting on Fuji TV in January 1963. It was the first half-hour anime to run weekly and established the cost-saving production conventions — limited animation, repeated character cycles, sliding backgrounds — that defined Japanese television anime against the much-more-expensive American model. Mushi's competitors followed within months: Toei Doga began producing TV anime, and TCJ (later Eiken) launched Tetsujin 28-go the same year.
The weekly magazine system
Two events at the end of the 1950s shaped manga publishing for the following six decades: Kodansha launched Weekly Shōnen Magazine in March 1959, and Shogakukan launched Weekly Shōnen Sunday in the same month. The weekly schedule — rather than monthly, as had been standard — forced manga artists into assistant-based production studios and produced the format in which most major manga has been serialised since. Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump followed in 1968.
Shōjo and the 'Year 24 group'
Shōjo manga in the early 1960s was a small, male-edited category. The decade ended with a generational shift: the women who would later be called the 'Year 24 Group' (named for Shōwa year 24, 1949, their approximate birth year) — Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, Yumiko Ōshima, Riyoko Ikeda — began publishing toward the end of the decade and would reshape shōjo in the 1970s.
Key works of the decade
- Astro Boy (manga 1952; TV anime 1963).
- Tetsujin 28-go / Gigantor (manga 1956; TV anime 1963).
- Cyborg 009 (Shotaro Ishinomori, manga 1964).
- Mahōtsukai Sally (1966), first magical-girl anime.
- Speed Racer / Mach GoGoGo (manga 1966; TV anime 1967).
- Ashita no Joe (manga 1968), foundational spokon.