Initially called Japanimation and later called anime, the art form involved a genre of drawings that adhered to a particular style. Though there are variations in style and studio within the genre, common characteristics include distortion of body proportions, dramatically shaped speech bubbles and exclamatory typography.



Anime usually depict people with unusually large eyes, elongated limbs or with a large head of hair. And with wallpapers constituting a huge industry, it didn't take long for the Japanese to jump onto the anime wallpapers bandwagon.

The art form was soon used to design wallpapers, both static and interactive, video games, internet clips and short and full-length feature films like Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors. But if that dates back to 1944, why is anime not more popular than it is?

Anime itself has been around in Japan since the early 20th century and was invented as a way for Japanese animation film-makers to cut costs. The oldest recorded anime film is a clip of a samurai resting his sword. It was a two-minute clip but it made animation history.

Three decades into the 20th century and Japanese animation artists were using the medium to tell stories when the live-action industry had still not taken off. Incorporating elements from traditional Japanese comics – also called manga – anime was popular with both children and adults.

A few decades later, Osamu Tezuka, also known as the Walt Disney of Japan, gave anime the launch pad it was waiting for. Tezuka adapted Disney's techniques to produce one that cost less. It operated on the principle of “the suspension of disbelief”. This meant using fewer frames to produce the illusion of movement.

Speaking of anime genres, here are some: the Mecha genre, Super Robot, Go Nagai, Gundam and Macross. It was only in the 1980s that anime grew in popularity outside Japan. Then, with the growth of the Internet, anime wallpapers grew and flourished.

There are hundreds of anime wallpaper sites that offer a range of things you can do. Apart from downloading anime images that you can fix on your desktop, these sites offer – hold your breath – anime songs complete with lyrics uploaded on YouTube; anime chat, and even anime forums where everything to do with the art form is discussed; anime games.

So if you love your anime wallpaper and can't get enough, what's better than playing an anime game on the Internet? Make no mistake. There's a whole anime community out there waiting to be discovered.

Some sites even invite you to drawn your own anime sketched and mail them in. These are screened and if your sketch is truly original and meets the site's standards, why, they'll upload it for everyone to see!

And if you're bored, just click on quizzes, music downloads to the how-to-draw section and lose yourself in the magical world of Japanese animation.