>>149459509
Honest answer, is people who like talking/humanized animals as protagonists in fiction, existed always. For whatever reason, 20th century had a huge spike of both animal content and animal content enjoyers. No, no one knows why, feel free to waste your time trying to blame some "cause", like "modernity" or "world wars" or "chemicals in the water" or "feminism". In the 60s and 70s media conventions became big, anime in particular. In the early 80s, over at those conventions, the biggest animal media enjoyers found each other, and decided to try and make an "anthropomorphic animal convention", as a spin off. It worked. More conventions happened. Also crazy people happened. Also drama happened. Fast forward to today, you asked a stupid question. For sure anon, people who really like to draw animal people and make stories with them, they did not exist until someone saw Gadget on TV.