The Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of Anime.

I notice a lot of online Anime Discourse, at least back in 2016-2017, talking about what was the Golden Age of Anime treating that term as just meaning whatever is the best when that's not actually what the concept of a Golden Age means.

The Golden Age of something is it's first era of greatness, some stuff can have came before but they're basically Pre-History in the grand scheme of things.  No fan of Western Superhero Comics actually thinks the Golden Age had a higher baseline level of quality then fully developed modern comics, or that most of the absolute best Comics ever made were made then, but they call it the Golden Age anyway.

Likewise I am going to say the Golden Age of Anime began with the premier of Astor Boy in 1963 and ended with the final episode of Lupin III Part II (Red Jacket) in 1980 even though I am personally into very little from that era.  

I will then define the Silver Age as spanning 1981 through 1994 and maybe even the first season of 95.  

The Bronze Age is then 1995-2010 (or maybe it wouldn't be completely wrong to include the Fall of 94) while the current Modern Age began with 2011 and is still going on as I write this. 

Significantly over 50% of all the Anime I've completed on MAL is Modern in this definition.  Partly because how much Anime gets made each year keeps increasing, but also because it was a few years into the Modern Era that Anime became a full time interest of mine.

However I would have to say the Bronze Age is probably the age I currently like the most, it contains most of the few Anime I actually do have Childhood or YA Nostalgia for.  And there are so many interesting kinds of Anime I feel were only made then.

Now my definition for the Golden Age is perhaps the most self explanatory.  That it ends right before Millennials begin being born makes it easy for us to see it as the Antiquity of Anime History.  

The Silver Age is then contemporary with the earliest Millennials growing from Babies to starting High School.  But I'd also say the key 1981 milestone to kick off this age was Urusei Yatsura while the swan song of the Silver Age was Sailor Moon S the last season of that Anime with Tomita, Yanagikawa and Sumisawa on the writing staff.

I already have a Post on this Blog about Anime in 1995 showing what a game changing year it was. But the argument for starting the Bronze Age in Fall of 94 would be Macross 7 & Magic Knight Rayearth and how DNA seems ahead of it's time as an absurd Harem premise. And I also already have a post on 2011 Anime showing how it launched many of the trends that define modern Anime Culture.  And even in that post I had not yet accounted for Psycho-Pass or some other shows I watched more recently, or how for Detective Conan the Holmes' Revelation Case can definitely be considered the start of the Modern Era for that show and Movie 15 the first movie to truly feel like modern Detective Conan movies.

But 2010 as the end of an Era is also interesting to break down.  War on Geminar was the last real OVA saga, since then OVAs have almost only been for bonus episodes of TV shows and Hentai.  Oreimo season 1 was the last real Otaku Rights show before Otaku culture became too tolerated for such a premise to feel relevant anymore.  White Album and Yosuga no Sora were the last Anime adaptations of retro Visual Novels made before modern Anime styles got in the way of such adaptations feeling Retro (I love YU-NO's 2019 Anime but I do wish it could looked more like a 90s Anime).  For Pokémon Diamond and Pearl is the last generation I personally feel can be considered a classic gen.  Legend of The Legendary Heroes was the last major Fantasy Anime before the influence of SAO and LN Isekai took over (a few shows and movies with the vibes of these kind of Fantasy still get made but they get drowned out).

For both Superhero Comics and Anime the change from Golden to Silver is shockingly clean, with if anything a brief gap that feels like neither rather then a transitional period that feels like both.  With Anime it's only the change from Silver to Bronze I consider debatable at all, Fall of 94 and Winter of 95 can each go either way.  I similarly do consider the transition from Silver to Bronze for Comics the most stylistically complex (other transitions are only debated more by DC nerds because this is the only one where the continuity didn't change).  None of the shows airing in both Fall 2010 and Winter 2011 I consider defining shows of either era.

What to call the era that follows the Bronze Age after it's no longer Modern is what isn't so standardized.  For DC Comics it's the Post-Crisis era, I'm of the generation of DC fans who grew up with the Post-Crisis era being the current Modern Era.  But when did the Post Crisis era end?  During the early-mid 2000s we felt like it was still the Post-Crisis era but in hindsight a lot of what was special about the Post-Crisis era to many who consider it their favorite era of DC comics was already being eroded by 2002, I consider the reviving of Oliver Queen in the Quiver arc from 2001 a key turning point.

So with about 15 years seeming to be the average, we Anime fans may well be near the end of our current era, which is perhaps what a lot of people tired of certain current Anime trends are hoping for.  But we probably won't notice the change as it happens just as DC fans didn't and just as I don't think we noticed the huge shifts happening in 2010-2013.  Madoka Magica was a big deal immediately, but how soon did people realize just how much it had completely changed the game for it's Genre?  Maybe the upcoming Madoka movie will help end the very same era the original show helped start?

But what will we call this era?  DC fans were lucky being given a convenient name early on, though it was originally used to denote continuity changes more so then an era.  We have been using some terms to describe the modern state of Anime, but they tend to refer to specific subgenres of what's going on now rather then all of it.  What do Dark Magical Girls, Isekai, VRMMOs, Magic Academies, endless Fate/ Spin Offs, and Battle Royal/Death Games all have in common?

I know sometimes the Post Crisis era is also called the Dark Age of Comics because of Watchmen/DKR influence.  And indeed some of those Anime trends are Dark but not all of them, Isekai is usually the opposite and plenty of classic style Mahou Shoujo have coexisted with the Madoka Clones.

Maybe "The Light Novel era" works.  LNs were a thing during prior eras and they portably will still be in future eras just as the Edgy Anti-Heroes of 90s Comics didn't just disappear.  But it does feel like this is an era where even some things that aren't LN based often seem like they are because of how pervasive their influence is.