[Ads-l] Antedating Japanimation

[Jesse Sheidlower]

2003 F. Patten _"Anime" Versus "Japanimation"_ in _Watching Anime, Reading Manga_ (2004) 85
"Japanese animation" soon got condensed to "Japanimation". By the early 1980s, it was so widespread in fandom that some fans got into an argument over who should get the credit for inventing the term. This set off a brief historical search through old anime club newsletters and correspondence for the earliest use of the word. The oldest found was in late 1978 in correspondence from Carl Gafford, who claimed that he had already been using it for some time by then.

Fred Patten died in 2018. Carl Gafford died in 2020. There are no citations in this essay, but presumably it would be possible to track this down.

Jesse Sheidlower

On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 05:43:59AM +0000, Bill Mullins wrote:
> OED has 1985
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> 1983 Cartoon/Fantasy Organization Bulletin #22 21 May 4
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> Ed Noonchester brought a tableful of Japanimation cels for sale.
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> https://archive.org/details/1983-05-cfo-bulletin-22/1983-05%20CFO%20Bulletin%2022/page/n3/mode/1up?q=japanimation
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org