sorry it's almost a meme at this point that France has a thing for Japan and vice versa. The 90s in particular were ripe with animes on the main French channel, lots of collaboration between France and Japan. We got Japanese movies in the cinema much prior the rest of the world and even today you can find gigantic sections for mangas and anime in bookshops, cinemas...
I did my PhD in Japan, in a lab focusing on robotics for lunar exploration, among other things. Every semester there was a revolving door of interns and exchange students from France[1], and a good percentage of them came not for the very interesting subject matter, but for their interest in manga and anime. It was always cringy when they introduced themselves as an anime cosplay enthusiast with the mistaken impression that this a normal hobby for adults in Japan.
Now I live in Europe and joke that you don't see a bunch of Japanese weirdos walking around Brussels dressed up as Tintin.
[1] In the ten years I was there, the number from France was pretty constant, but there was an upward trend in this type of person coming from Scandinavian countries and the US. There is an excellent meme on this matter: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/481/981/034...
I know it's a joke, but I can't help but feel endearment for the (obviously not real) guy every time I see this. Who wouldn't want to trade stories with an eccentric foreigner in a silly hat while eating barbeque and watching fireworks?
In my experience, most Japanese people are much less judgmental about these things than this seems to imply (and less so than Westerners in general). Of course, there's always a time and place for "liking what you like", but this seems a bit otakuphobia-esque.
Well, I didn't elaborate the extent of some of these people but the equivalent would be meeting multiple, 24 year old Japanese women attending MIT for a summer program that has Disney cosplayer as their identity and skip class to walk around Boston taking selfies with Minnie Mouse hats on.
From my childhood, it was obvious the French had a love of anime from series that made it to the UK, like Ulysses 31 [0] and The Mysterious Cities of Gold [1], co-productions between French and Japanese TV companies. I also thought Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds [2] was French, but it was produced in Spain.
Tangentially, Mysterious Cities of Gold played in the U.S. in the 80s, on the children's cable network Nickelodeon, along with another French show they called Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, evidently titled Les Mondes Engloutis in France. I also loved these shows as a kid!
To add a bit, the first manga in Europe was released in France, in 1969. The first anime was 1972. Also in the 70s, a number of co-produced france-japanese anime were produced for the first time, followed by many others over the decades. I also remember a number of cooperations for Live Action-Movies too.
In general, I get the impression that France and Japan seem to have a deep friendship with each other, on the cultural level.
Yeah very much so, maybe even more. As noted, the main lense that people use to discover Japan is animes, which is obviously pretty far from what real Japan is like. Especially the work culture in traditional companies is a massive shock for a lot of French expats.
Personally I still find a whole lot to love in Japan, which could be an entire post by itself.
Yes, for a very long time France was the biggest market for Manga outside of Japan. It's partly due to the fact that France has a thriving local comic book industry and partly due to the fact that we were inundated with imported Anime in the 80s and 90s so there's an entire generation who have been raised with Japanese animes.
Spain, too. We followed the French way since the Bruguera school in the 50s/60s copying the Franco-Belgian comic books (ahem, Francisco Ibañez and Spirou) and then Mazinger Z in the 70's and Captain Tsubasa in the 80's, along DB in 1989.
This craps me up in Reddit: While we, Western Europeans (France, Spain, Italy, Germany...) have been watching manganime since forever Americans keep lying about DB and manganime availability in the West in early 90's as if the West was just the US.
For instance, the big lie on DBZ knowledge on SNES/MegaDrive games from the West. Fore sure the US didn't know nothing at all. Meanwhile, we were nearly finishing the Buu saga. So we were pretty aware of DB games in arcades, the SNES, the MD and any platform.
Not just France, I think the majority of Europe is like that. Here in the Balkans, local dubs of anime (Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, DBZ...) were 90% of what we watched on TV as kids.
That makes me smile when some Americans say "in the West, in early 90's, no one knew about manganime/Japanese video game"... while in Spain, France and Italy in the 90's we already had a long way along that culture.
By 1998-9, go figure, we were watching Dragon Ball GT. Yes, we saw DBGT before Pokémon. In the West. Something very odd to explain to Americans, often they didn't believe me. Until I show them the printed proofs of Spanish magazines about DB with a clear Copyright date, which is understood from nearly anyone in the world.
Others answered about France but everybody born in Italy in the late 60s was exposed to anime before becoming a teen. I remember that the first one was Grendizer (Goldrake in Italy), followed by Mazinger Z (yes, reverse order), Gundam, Lupin III, Future Boy Conan and a zilion of others.
Just to put a number on the « France love Japan », France is the second market in the world for manga after Japan. Despite being a country producing a lot « bandes dessinées » / comics.
Given than English is not the author's first language, and he finds it chaotic, perhaps he actually meant, {despite} being born in France, I was immersed in Japanese culture from a very young age
oh I didn't it was france -> japan too, I know about the japan -> france fascination from the old japanese prints that feature the eifel tower, and hot air balloons, and of course the stories of japanese tourists being overwhelmed by paris
I fail to see how these two things are connected?