All the facts 49 facts

• Browning is chemistry

  When sugars and proteins are heated together, the Maillard reaction takes place, the one that improves the taste and look of cooked food. It is not the same as enzymatic browning, like a cut apple turning brown, which is an oxidation.

  Source: Britannica

• Dragon Ball pulled Oda away from Western animation

  Eiichiro Oda, creator of One Piece, has cited Dragon Ball as an influence: it was the anime’s early episodes that drew him away from Western animation and toward manga.

  Source: Britannica

• Traditional Japanese cuisine is UNESCO heritage

  In 2013 washoku, the traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. UNESCO highlights its respect for nature and notes that skills such as seasoning home cooking are passed down at shared family meals.

  Source: UNESCO

• “Spirited Away” won in Berlin and at the Oscars

  “Spirited Away” (2001) won the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival and the 2003 Academy Award for best animated feature.

  Source: Britannica

• Umami was discovered in seaweed broth

  In 1908 Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda identified a fifth basic taste, umami, in broths made from kombu seaweed. He found glutamic acid was responsible, which led to the commercial production of monosodium glutamate.

  Source: Britannica

• Shonen, shojo, seinen and josei are audiences, not genres

  Manga is sorted by its intended audience: shonen for adolescent boys (often action), shojo for adolescent girls (more romance), seinen for adult men (often grittier takes on shonen themes) and josei for adult women (romance and personal relationships).

  Source: Britannica

• The bananas we eat are clones

  Domesticated bananas have no functional seeds and reproduce through suckers, so the plants are clones and especially vulnerable to disease. Panama disease devastated the Gros Michel, which dominated the market, in the 1950s and ’60s; the Cavendish replaced it.

  Source: Britannica

• “What we’re making is not animation, it’s anime”

  According to the BFI, Tezuka reportedly told his staff that what they made wasn’t animation but “anime”: a truncated term for a truncated product. “Astro Boy” (1963–66) was anime’s first full-length TV series.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• Chili peppers come from the Americas

  Chili peppers are native to the Americas, and research traces domesticated Capsicum annuum to Mexico. Christopher Columbus is believed to have been instrumental in bringing them to Europe in the late 15th century.

  Source: Britannica

• Akira cost 1.1 billion yen

  “Akira” (1988), by Katsuhiro Otomo, cost about 1.1 billion yen (around $9 million) and was released just as Japan’s economic bubble burst. Its success abroad opened up a new market for anime.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• Salt does more than make food salty

  A 1997 paper in Nature proposed that salt works as a flavor filter: it mutes unpleasant tastes such as bitterness more than pleasant ones such as sweetness, letting the pleasant ones stand out.

  Source: Nature (1997)

• Astro Boy was “Mighty Atom” in Japan

  In Japan it was “Tetsuwan Atomu” (“Mighty Atom”). Tezuka adapted his manga for TV in 1963, two years after founding Mushi Productions; it was syndicated to several countries, including the US, where it was released as “Astro Boy”.

  Source: Britannica Kids

• A court ruled the tomato a vegetable

  In 1893 the US Supreme Court (Nix v. Hedden) held that, for the purposes of the tariff law, tomatoes were vegetables, while acknowledging that botanically they are the fruit of a vine, like cucumbers, squashes, beans and peas.

  Source: Cornell Law School (LII)

• The first anime feature was long thought lost

  “Momotarō: Sacred Sailors” (1945), directed by Mitsuyo Seo, is Japanese animation’s first truly full-length feature. It was made largely by retrained waitresses, because the animators had been drafted. It opened in April 1945, with Tokyo in ruins; today’s print comes from the only surviving interpositive, found in a warehouse in 1983.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• Saffron takes 75,000 flowers per pound

  Saffron is the three stigmas of each Crocus sativus flower, picked by hand and dried. A pound (0.45 kg) represents about 75,000 blossoms, and it is still the most expensive spice in the world.

  Source: Britannica

• Sazae-san has been on air since 1969

  It is the longest-running anime TV series according to Guinness: first broadcast on October 5, 1969 on Fuji TV, it had run 55 years and 1 day when verified in October 2024. It adapts the four-panel (yonkoma) manga by Machiko Hasegawa.

  Source: Guinness World Records

• Cashews are never sold in the shell

  Between the two shells of the cashew fruit sits a caustic resin that can blister skin, so cashews are always sold shelled. What we eat is the seed; the “cashew apple” it hangs from is an accessory fruit.

  Source: Britannica

• The word “manga” dates back to the 19th century

  “Manga” was first used in the 19th century to describe woodblock-printed copybooks, such as the 15 volumes of Hokusai’s “Manga” (1814–1878). They were sketchbooks, not today’s panel-by-panel stories: modern manga emerged after World War II.

  Sources: Britannica, Britannica (Hokusai Manga)

• Tomatoes are berries; strawberries aren’t

  In botany a true berry is a single fruit that grows from one flower: grapes, tomatoes, watermelons and oranges all qualify. The strawberry is an “accessory fruit”: what we eat is the enlarged flower receptacle, with the true fruits (achenes) embedded in it.

  Sources: Britannica Kids, Britannica

• One Piece holds a Guinness record for copies

  Guinness has recognized it since 2015 as the comic series by a single author with the most copies published, and reconfirmed it in 2022: 416,566,000 copies printed between December 1997 and July 2022, across 103 volumes. It has run in Weekly Shonen Jump since 1997.

  Sources: Guinness World Records, Britannica

• Vanilla is pollinated by hand

  Vanilla is the pod of a climbing orchid. Naturally, only certain small bees pollinate it, so outside their range the flowers are pollinated artificially with a wooden needle as soon as they open.

  Source: Britannica

• “Tezuka’s Curse”

  Tezuka sold “Astro Boy” to Fuji TV at a knock-down price, matching the cost of live-action children’s TV and discouraging competitors. That left Japanese TV animation with a precarious price point, profitable only with sponsors or foreign sales.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• Chili heat is a false heat alarm

  The capsaicin in chili peppers activates TRPV1, the nerve-ending receptor that detects painful heat. That’s why spicy food “burns” with nothing hot involved. Its discovery was part of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

  Source: Nobel Prize (2021)

• In Japan manga is read on the train and discarded

  According to Britannica, it’s common in Japan to see manga read on commuter trains in place of newspapers; it’s designed to be read quickly and discarded. In North America most manga is published to be read right to left, like the Japanese originals.

  Source: Britannica

• Avocados don’t ripen on the tree

  According to UC Davis’s Postharvest Center, avocados are unusual because they don’t normally ripen on the tree: they ripen after harvest. What increases on the tree is their oil content.

  Source: UC Davis Postharvest

• Shonen Jump reached a circulation of 6.5 million

  According to Britannica, Dragon Ball ran in Weekly Shonen Jump when the magazine had a circulation of 6.5 million copies.

  Source: Britannica

• Swiss cheese holes come from hay

  A 2015 study by the Swiss research center Agroscope concluded that the “eyes” in Emmentaler are caused by tiny particles of hay that fall into the milk during milking. As open buckets gave way to closed milking machines, the cheeses gradually lost their holes.

  Source: Smithsonian Magazine (2015)

• Ghibli was founded in 1985

  Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. Its first official release was “Castle in the Sky” (1986), and in 2001 the Miyazaki-designed Ghibli Museum opened in Mitaka.

  Source: Britannica

• Onion tears are made by a dedicated enzyme

  The irritant in onions was thought to form on its own, as a by-product of another reaction. A 2002 study in Nature showed that a specific enzyme, lachrymatory-factor synthase, makes it, and suggested that turning it down could give us onions that don’t make us cry.

  Source: Nature (2002)

• 1970s anime was funded by toy makers

  According to the BFI, in the 1970s anime was largely a TV phenomenon sponsored by toy companies, and it developed tricks to stretch tight budgets, such as freeze-frames and hyper-realism.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• The heat isn’t in the seeds

  The highest concentration of capsaicin, and so most of the heat, is in the chili’s placenta, the inner tissue the seeds attach to, rather than in the seeds themselves, according to the University of Bristol.

  Source: University of Bristol

• Miyazaki banned his films in the West

  After “Nausicaä” was badly edited for the US as “Warriors of the Wind”, Hayao Miyazaki forbade his films from being released in the West for years. In 1996 a deal with Disney was reached, with one condition: no editing.

  Source: Britannica

• Instant noodles were born in 1958

  According to Nissin, Chicken Ramen, launched in August 1958, was the world’s first instant noodle. Cup Noodles followed in 1971, the first cup-type instant noodles.

  Source: Nissin Foods

• Toei grew from 23 to over 500 staff to take on Disney

  In 1956 Hiroshi Okawa bought the Nichido studio and turned it into Toei’s animation division, aiming at Japan’s first feature-length color cartoon. Staff grew from 23 to more than 500, and in 1958 came “Hakujaden”, the first Japanese animated feature to play, briefly, in the UK.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• Flour is a raw food

  Milling grain doesn’t kill bacteria: the FDA says flour can carry Salmonella or E. coli because it isn’t treated to remove them. That’s why you shouldn’t taste raw cookie dough: baking is what makes it safe.

  Source: FDA

• Dragon Ball was inspired by a 16th-century Chinese novel

  Akira Toriyama was loosely inspired by “Journey to the West”, a Ming-dynasty Chinese novel in which the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, first appears. In Japanese, 孫悟空 is read “Son Gokū”.

  Sources: Britannica, Britannica (Sun Wukong), Wikipedia (Goku)

• Cooking with wine doesn’t remove all the alcohol

  According to the USDA’s table of nutrient retention factors, when alcohol is stirred into a dish that simmers, 40% remains after 15 minutes, 25% after an hour and 10% after two hours. Flaming it keeps 75%.

  Source: USDA ARS (2007)

• Miyazaki and Takahata made “Heidi” before Ghibli

  In 1974 Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata worked on “Heidi, Girl of the Alps”, an adaptation of Johanna Spyri’s Swiss novel. It was well received and became a prototype for “World Masterpiece Theater”, but its cost nearly bankrupted the studio.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• A pharmacist created the heat scale

  Spiciness is measured in Scoville heat units (SHU), created in the early 1900s by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. The scale is linear: a 350,000-SHU habanero is about 100 times hotter than a 3,500-SHU jalapeño.

  Source: Britannica

• The home VCR gave birth to anime fandom

  Critic Yasuo Nagayama likened the arrival of the home VCR in the 1980s to the invention of the time machine, the BFI reports: it allowed a fandom to form that could share and evangelize anime.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• On a mountain, water boils below 212 °F

  At sea level water boils at 212 °F (100 °C), and every 500 feet (about 150 m) of altitude lowers that by about 1 °F (roughly 0.5 °C). According to New Mexico State University, a 3-minute soft-boiled egg may take 5 to 6 minutes at high elevations.

  Source: New Mexico State University

• 10,000 young fans overwhelmed Gundam’s premiere

  The 1981 premiere of the first “Mobile Suit Gundam” film, billed as the “proclamation of a new century”, was overwhelmed by some 10,000 fans in their teens and early twenties: proof that anime had an audience beyond children.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• The Neapolitan pizzaiuolo is UNESCO heritage

  In 2017 UNESCO inscribed the art of the Neapolitan “pizzaiuolo”: four phases of dough preparation and wood-fired baking, with a rotating movement by the baker. About 3,000 pizzaiuoli now work in Naples.

  Source: UNESCO

• One actress has voiced the same character for 55 years

  Midori Kato has voiced Sazae Fuguta since the first episode of “Sazae-san”. On October 6, 2024 Guinness verified her record: the longest career as a female voice actor for the same character of an animated TV series, 55 years and 1 day.

  Source: Guinness World Records

• Bacteria can double every 20 minutes

  Between 40 °F and 140 °F (4–60 °C) bacteria grow fastest and can double in as little as 20 minutes, according to the USDA. That’s why leftovers go into shallow containers and into the fridge within two hours.

  Source: USDA FSIS

• A weekly cartoon looked impossible

  One estimate held that producing 22 minutes a week of “full” animation (12 drawings per second) would need more than ten times the labor of Japan’s entire industry. Osamu Tezuka solved it with “Astro Boy” (1963): about 8 new drawings per second, fast cuts, freeze-frames, zooms and a bank of reusable cels.

  Source: BFI Sight and Sound (2020)

• Menthol tricks the cold receptor

  The cool feeling of mint isn’t a real drop in temperature: menthol activates TRPM8, a receptor that responds to cold. David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian each identified it independently using menthol, work recognized by the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

  Source: Nobel Prize (2021)

• Cacao was used in the Amazon 5,300 years ago

  A 2018 study in Nature Ecology & Evolution found traces of cacao (starch, theobromine and ancient DNA) about 5,300 years old at a site in southeast Ecuador. It points to the upper Amazon as the oldest known center of cacao domestication, not Mesoamerica as long believed.

  Source: Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018)

• Birds don’t feel chili heat

  In a 2001 Nature study of chiltepin peppers in southern Arizona, mammals avoided the fruit while birds ate it without a problem. Capsaicin deters those that would destroy the seeds, not those that spread them intact.

  Sources: Nature (2001), University of Florida (2001)