Anime is not a genra, and this is why. Enough uninformed hatred from both sides.

[Wintermoot]

cartoons are anime and anime,s are cartoons, we simply called Japanese cartoon,s anime to differentiate between the two, if somebody ever where to say "cartoons are for kids" show them Elfen Lied

 

[Azure Sky]

Well, from what I have seen, most anime with such 'fight scenes' aren't really deep anyway.

Hagane No Renkinjutsushi

That is one I haven't seen. =3

 

[A Curious Fellow]

I don't see how a single one of your points changes the fact that most anime is just awful.

 

[thylasos]

It is a cartoon. Which comes from Japan. With its own tropes and standardised storylines, some of which are unique to the culture which created it.

Yes, it's too wide simply to be referred to as a genre.

Yes, there are different varieties of animation around the world. Some are more popular than others. I don't hear anyone harping on about MOSMULTFIL'M, for example.

Apparently there's a great deal of uninformed prejudice. To be honest, I'm completely unawar of that in actual life. On the internet however, we have fans of the anime endlessly asking questions, and other people who're sick of said questions. Both sides have valid points, but this isn't an anime forum.

Someone please create a sub-forum so I don't have to wade through a knee-deep swamp of "I liked Naruto, so what else can I watch?" threads. I don't begrudge you an outlet for that, but how about just... reading some reviews?

I know. People on forums are afraid of search engines, but trust me, they don't bite.

 

[Redeement]

This entire subject strikes me as one I see recurring over and over again, not just restricted to Anime.
It's one of language and definitions.
Diffrent countries have different words and different feelings associated with a specific word, which causes confusion when discussing it with a person from a different country.
And then, even if it boils down to the definitions of things(Which I presume the OP was actually about), getting people in general to actually use the correct ones would be hard on the border of impossible.

To talk for a short moment of cartoons, I'd like to mention Megas XLR again.
It is a cartoon allright, but being so carries with it the negative associations of being silly and over the top, and therefore for kids.
However, those descriptors also suit Monty Python quite well, and I don't know any kids today who'd like that.
What bugs me is that "genres" and grouping things together under definitions color them, steers the way people see them.
While child friendly, I'd say that Megas XLR is a show full of glorious cartoon violence, electric guitar soundtracks and explosions, without the lame jokes, morale and horribly written dialogue that often come with cartoons :3

The thing is not if the word Anime is miss used, but the fact that the English language use the word Cartoon for animation, and comics for well comics... even though I'd claim that Marvel and DC generally are n't very comedic. (BTW I find "Graphic Novel" to be a silly term also, since most comics are not sold in Novel form, but in series of shorter stories collected to one book...)

Anyways the word cartoon is the misleading term. In my language, Norwegian, the word for cartoons is Tegnefilm, which translates into "Drawn film". Tegnefilm then referes to all styles of drawn animation, Anime and Cartoons alike.
Sadly drawn animation has the same stigma here as everywhere else, as "something for kids", but I think that is because the west market it as such, and most western animation is either for laughs or for children. (I mean even animation of adult centric comics tend to be turned into kids shows... Any DC or Marvel animated series for instance)

This is also why a lot of people don't understand how good anime CAN be, because all they see is the shows marketed for kids, like Pokemon, Dragonball, Naruto etc.

That said, anime fans tend to watch a lot of crap (me included back in the day) just because "it's anime, it's better" which isn't really true

I personally stopped "watching Anime" as a hobby because I got sick of all the tropes and bad stories I was handed in anime and manga when you gobble up anything you find.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it now and then, but I am a lot more picky in my series selection.

PS: Not sure how much I contributed to the discussion.. went a little off on the rant side there

Also, hello fellow Norwegian!

 

[archvile93]

It seems to be getting better. I've been seeing more and more cartoons that tend to not be all about comedy, if not particularly deep. then again, the few episodes of anime I've seen weren't really any deeper, they just took ten times longer to get to the point, such as dialouge before a fight that lasts three episodes. This might not be common though, I haven't seen very much.

Well, from what I have seen, most anime with such 'fight scenes' aren't really deep anyway.
Just out of shear curiosity, what anime do you like? If you cant think of any, what normal movies?

Very little. A few episodes of Dragon Ball Z because it was on and nothing else, and a single episode of Naruto. It might have been better if I knew what the fuck was going on, the main problem of story arcs that last the entire series. There are very few series other than those that you can find on cable, and even those are hard to come by now. I guess I could buy DVDs of other ones (they're advertised online so often it's amazing you don't see them anywhere else), but I'm not spending money on hit or miss material I really have little if any interest in anyway. Oh yeah, an episode of Full Metal Alchamist too. Again I had no idea what was happening. I didn't even know the one guy is literally the armor until someone pointed it out a week later.

All of those are Meta-series, most of which I don't actually like. I typically don't recommend any metas to people starting out, and I always tell them to start from the start when I do.

How about something short? Like a Movie or a short 12-13 ep series?
If you like The Matrix, try Ghost in the Shell (That's the first one, not the second or the series) Seeing as you seemed to mention lots of fighting-orientated in your post, how about Hellsing? Guyver? X is reasonable if you can wrap your head around the plot.

I'd still have to buy it before I can see; not going to happen. As I said, I have very little interest in it. I know, shocking considering where I am now, seriously it seems like everyone here watches it heavily. It's also rather sporadic whether or not tie in material necessary for the plot ever get released here, which can make it very hard to follow, assuming they release the entire main series. No export for you is a *****. Nothing is more annoying than, "How will this turn out? You'll never know. Because we're not going to release the rest of it." I suppose if that happens I could spend even more money importing it and taking a crash course in Japanese, but that sounds like a lot more trouble than it's worth.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Hmmm...I've always thought of anime as more of a visual style than anything. You have animesque stuff which is made by western companies, and Japanese animated things I'd not call anime.

For example, Blade Kitten seems much more anime than Ghost in the Shell[footnote]Which, incidently, I thought was much more like Blade Runner (turned up to 11) than the Matrix, which apart from bullet time, wasn't that exciting, tbh[/footnote], though there's no hard and fast definitions.

 

[Trolldor]

"Genre" not "Genra". Just to spare other people from heckling you about it.

Anime are cartoons, because cartoon animations are cartoons, and Anime is cartoon animations. Objective fact.

Genre similarities between Anime and regular film are identical, more or less.

That's all. Didn't think we needed another one of these threads tbh. Couldn't this rant have been put in any of the existing threads?

Anime is a genre, actually. It's style is distinct to that of, say, the way the Simpsons are drawn.

 

[Azure Sky]

I'd still have to buy it before I can see; not going to happen. As I said, I have very little interest in it. I know, shocking considering where I am now, seriously it seems like everyone here watches it heavily. It's also rather sporadic whether or not tie in material necessary for the plot ever get released here, which can make it very hard to follow, assuming they release the entire main series. No export for you is a *****. Nothing is more annoying than, "How will this turn out? You'll never know. Because we're not going to release the rest of it." I suppose if that happens I could spend even more money importing it and taking a crash course in Japanese, but that sounds like a lot more trouble than it's worth.

Well, there is always the 'less ethical' ways, but for the sake of mod-wrath, I will leave it at that.

 

[ecoho]

I partially agree, it angers me to no end to hear people talk about Anime as if all of them are the same or they're just like western cartoons, and it SHOULD be recognized as it's own thing. BUT I think you're wrong when you say they aren't cartoons. Or at least I'd like to ask why you object so much to calling them cartoons. From where I sit, getting worked up over someone calling an anime a cartoon, is the same as getting worked up because someone called

Spoiler: one of these

a car.

ok i get your point a bit but to be fair thats a bad example seeing as if you call that a car most solders who drive or have ridden in one would slap you.(its like calling a rifle a gun man......trust me you dont want to see what happens to people who do that) i would have used a monster tuck instead

now on to why cartoons and anime should not be referd to as cartoons. Mostly its been said but ill say it again it gives the wrong message, in truth most good anime are more like animated films that are put into 30min self contained stories that have an overall connected ending. Now to be fair there are the realy kiddy animes like pokemon that i agree can and should be called cartoons but others like cowboy beebop, gundam,and ghost and the shell to name a few are not made for people under 15 hell i think cowboy beebop targets mid 20 year olds.

 

[kickyourass]

I partially agree, it angers me to no end to hear people talk about Anime as if all of them are the same or they're just like western cartoons, and it SHOULD be recognized as it's own thing. BUT I think you're wrong when you say they aren't cartoons. Or at least I'd like to ask why you object so much to calling them cartoons. From where I sit, getting worked up over someone calling an anime a cartoon, is the same as getting worked up because someone called

Spoiler: one of these

a car.

ok i get your point a bit but to be fair thats a bad example seeing as if you call that a car most solders who drive or have ridden in one would slap you.(its like calling a rifle a gun man......trust me you dont want to see what happens to people who do that) i would have used a monster tuck instead

now on to why cartoons and anime should not be referd to as cartoons. Mostly its been said but ill say it again it gives the wrong message, in truth most good anime are more like animated films that are put into 30min self contained stories that have an overall connected ending. Now to be fair there are the realy kiddy animes like pokemon that i agree can and should be called cartoons but others like cowboy beebop, gundam,and ghost and the shell to name a few are not made for people under 15 hell i think cowboy beebop targets mid 20 year olds.

Something like that probably would've been a better example, but at least you get the point I was trying to make.
I've already said this a few posts up, I've never really had that "Cartoons = kids shows" connection so I think it's really just me growing up with cartoon being a mostly neutral term, while most other people obviously didn't.

 

[Ice Car]

Personally I have a bit of a problem with using the word cartoon to describe a serious dramatic piece of animation because of what the word cartoon implies, at least in the mind of the general public.

This. This is exactly why I don't like when anime is grouped in with and/or called a cartoon. Most if not all animes appeal to a more mature audience than the age group common cartoons target.

 

[ecoho]

I partially agree, it angers me to no end to hear people talk about Anime as if all of them are the same or they're just like western cartoons, and it SHOULD be recognized as it's own thing. BUT I think you're wrong when you say they aren't cartoons. Or at least I'd like to ask why you object so much to calling them cartoons. From where I sit, getting worked up over someone calling an anime a cartoon, is the same as getting worked up because someone called

Spoiler: one of these

a car.

ok i get your point a bit but to be fair thats a bad example seeing as if you call that a car most solders who drive or have ridden in one would slap you.(its like calling a rifle a gun man......trust me you dont want to see what happens to people who do that) i would have used a monster tuck instead

now on to why cartoons and anime should not be referd to as cartoons. Mostly its been said but ill say it again it gives the wrong message, in truth most good anime are more like animated films that are put into 30min self contained stories that have an overall connected ending. Now to be fair there are the realy kiddy animes like pokemon that i agree can and should be called cartoons but others like cowboy beebop, gundam,and ghost and the shell to name a few are not made for people under 15 hell i think cowboy beebop targets mid 20 year olds.

Something like that probably would've been a better example, but at least you get the point I was trying to make.
I've already said this a few posts up, I've never really had that "Cartoons = kids shows" connection so I think it's really just me growing up with cartoon being a mostly neutral term, while most other people obviously didn't.

its ok alot of people have the same problem.

 

[Aurgelmir]

Also, hello fellow Norwegian!

Hello \o


BTW, is it just me or is this topic turning into a "Anime isn't a genre, but man how awesome is Anime?" Topic?

While we are on the differences between Anime and Western Animation I'd like to point out one thing I feel Anime do a lot better than American Animation/TV in general: Story Telling.

That doesn't mean the story in it self, which both sides have plenty of aweful versions of, I mean the way the story is presented.

American TV: "Let's Milk this cow till it's dry"
Anime: "Let's make 26 episodes with a beginning, a middle and an end" (Shonen Jump crap not included...)

This is probably why I got into Anime in the first place, it's not the stories that are deeper or better, it's that I get a full story that is thought out from the beginning. Where as American TV always leaves the possibilities open for a second and third season, ruining what was once a good show because they have nothing else to say (Prison Break I am looking at you)


Just imagine how good some of the american plot based shows could have been had they been thought out as a 1-2 season show and that was it. Lost? Well we would not have so many unanswered questions. Prison Break? Well the two last seasons broke away from what made the first season epic.

I am not saying all TV should be like anime, I am just saying that is the biggest thing I feel they are doing correctly.

 

[MacGuges]

Hmmm...I've always thought of anime as more of a visual style than anything. You have animesque stuff which is made by western companies, and Japanese animated things I'd not call anime.

For example, Blade Kitten seems much more anime than Ghost in the Shell, though there's no hard and fast definitions.

The visual conventions of anime are important to distinguishing it, but fans have recognized other common features. Expecting those features, Western anime fans began to identify them together as the anime "genre". And not only the fans, but when booksellers and media stores began stocking anime (omigosh actual "anime" sold at an ordinary store at the mall, deep breaths) they began to collect their product under a "genre" marker named "anime" (or "animé" or even "japanimation", shudder).

I think Azure Sky means to suggest that the artistic features that define a genre ought to be limited to story elements, so that it could be correct to say that The French Connection [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/] and Monster [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=3750] are both members of the thriller or mystery genres. I agree that it's important to recognize the different kinds of stories that are told in anime, but to read the definition of the word [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/genre] it is also not incorrect to call anime a genre, even by finicky academic standards.

Which, incidently, I thought was much more like Blade Runner (turned up to 11) than the Matrix, which apart from bullet time, wasn't that exciting, tbh

It is certainly possible that Blade Runner was an inspiration for Shirow. The Matrix, of course, followed Ghost in the Shell.

 

[PhiMed]

"Genre" not "Genra". Just to spare other people from heckling you about it.

Anime are cartoons, because cartoon animations are cartoons, and Anime is cartoon animations. Objective fact.

Genre similarities between Anime and regular film are identical, more or less.

That's all. Didn't think we needed another one of these threads tbh. Couldn't this rant have been put in any of the existing threads?

They can heckle all they want, if they want to get off topic in that manner that is not my problem. =3

Cartoons are Animations, not the other way around, this is the misunderstanding I believe most people have.

I actually did drop a mini-rant into the thread I mentioned above, but decided against a full derail, which is what it would have been and just put it here where hopefully more people would see it in context.

Personally I have a bit of a problem with using the word cartoon to describe a serious dramatic piece of animation because of what the word cartoon implies, at least in the mind of the general public. To non animation buffs, the image the word cartoon implies is a comedic animated program intended for children. It causes people to not look at a piece of animation seriously, and I think that it further reinforces the animation age ghetto that is such a problem (ESPECIALLY in the west)

Agreed, this is one of the mine things that gets under my skin.
Especially when you try and call say... Ghost in the Shell a cartoon.
Not only would you be wrong, you would be insulting its near-genre perfect film relation, The Matrix. They are both an Adult Themed quasi-futuristic sci-fi fantasy. =3

Animated cartoon: a motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects (as puppets) and that simulates movement by slight progressive changes in each frame.

Anime are animated cartoons. Fact.

Accept this fact, and accept the fact that being a cartoon is not a negative thing, or continue to fight a futile, silly battle against the Merriam Webster Dictionary.

 

[xFullmetalx]

So, after poking my head into one of the most recent anime threads, sifting through pages of flame, I finally decided to throw this out there and hopefully weed out some of the uninformed/unintelligent crap that gets thrown around.

Before we get started, lets clear something thing up.
'Anime' is a Stereotypical generalization of Animation that comes from Japan, nothing more, nothing less. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as people know the meaning of the word before throwing it around. It is not the spawn of Satan. It is not a 'Cartoon'. And it is not the Holy Grail descending on the wings of a Silver Chariot.

Now that is dealt with, lets move onto the meat of the topic.

There are two main 'Archetypical mediums' people quite often get confused about.

The first is Film, evolving from Theater, which started in the 1880s? and is one of the two most used methods for producing 'pictures on screen' productions, for the lack of better phrasing.

The other most used medium is Animation, which has been actively around since just after 1900, 1908ish maybe? but has been known to exist in forms such as primitive Zoetropes, which have been around since 180AD.

There is also the CGI medium that is more recent, but pure example of this are few and far between, so is not really counted amongst the other two, although it is quite often folded into Film itself. Toy Story and The Spirits Within are some better examples here.

Both Film and Animation contain various genras ans sub-genras. Both have titles that have cult followings. And both have conventions for both as a whole and for specific titles. In short, the only difference between Animation and Film is the medium it is set in.

That and Anime has giant Robots and Monsters, oh wait, so does film.

/endrant

Hopefully we can get some more intelligent discussions from now on, without it descending into silly flamewars? Please?

I suppose I should tack some discussion value to the end of this... What to do...
How about trying to bridge the gap by discussing the genra similarities between Animation and Film?

Anime are cartoons just like american animation are cartoons. Its as simple as that, don't get all prenchy about it.