Japanese Anime's Popularity Spells Success for American

Japanese Animes Popularity Spells Success for American
Animation in America once meant Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Winnie the Pooh. These days, it's just as likely to mean Japanese fighting cyborgs, doe-eyed schoolgirls and sinister monsters, thanks in large part to people like John Ledford.

The 36-year-old American is one of the top foreign distributors of Japanese manga comics and animation, known as anime, building his fortune on a genre that is rapidly changing from a niche market to a mass phenomenon.

Ledford, who is so busy his dubbing studio in Houston runs 24 hours a day, says the key to the success of Japanese manga and anime in the United States is their widely varied, cutting-edge subject matter.

"We're kind of like the anti-Disney," Ledford, a bespectacled, fast-talking man with a friendly smile, said during a recent visit to Tokyo. "Disney is very family type. We are appealing to the video-game, PlayStation, Generation X, Generation Y kind of crowd in America."

Although American animation releases such as Toy Story, Shrek and The Incredibles continue to wow audiences, they are largely aimed at children. Japanese anime and manga spans a wide range of topics, including science fiction, horror-thrillers and soap-operatic melodrama.

At American video-rental shops, whole shelves are taken up by titles like Ninja Resurrection, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Bub