Don't take this wrong; the tone may be somewhat sarcastic.  Nothing
personal.

On Mon, 25 Aug 1997, Phillip Masters wrote:

The question is not who came up with the concept.  Lot's of anime's use
stories non-Japanese to work from.  If it's a Japanese company/person
doing it, it's anime/manga.  Very simple.  Why?  Because this is what
the creators wanted to call it (The Japanese people I mean, I don't know
who coined the term).  We call ours cartoons, comics, and animated
features.  They call it anime and manga.  

Ok, how about films which are worked on cooperatively?

Ghost in the Shell had Western personnel working with the Japanese
studios, as did Tenchi Muyou! In Love.

Or how about Disney TV productions, or Warner Brother TV productions,
which have a lot of the work done by places like TMS (a Japanese animation
studio).  Does this mean 'The Disney Afternoon' consists of anime, or
Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures were anime?

No?  But they were animated in Japan!  They had American writers?  You
just said that doesn't matter!  :)

While 'anime' literally means 'animation' in Japanese, they apply the term
to everything - EVEN AMERICAN ANIMATION - aired over there.  Disney films
released to theaters are classified in Japan as 'anime'.  It'd be like if
we just called 'anime' 'animation' - effectively, translating the term
back into English.

So if we accept that -we- as a community are applying the term 'anime' to
a particular art style, what elements are we using as the judgement for
that art style?

I think we need to move past the boundaries of nationality because those
can get extremely confusing anyway - look at some older cartoons, like
'Mysterious Cities of Gold'.  A Japanese-French co-production (loosely)
based on a British novel and simultaneously produced in three languages in
three countries.  Is it 'anime'?  Is it 'animation'?  Is it whatever the
heck the French would call it?  :)

Just my $0.02 + state sales tax where applicable.

----[Loki]-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jeremy Blackman / Anime fan/fanfic author, Game Designer/Engineer
loki@maison-otaku.net (personal mail) / Maison Otaku Productions founder
loki@thekeep.org      (mailing lists) / Fanfic author / anime
jeremy@lith.com       (work)          / Monolith Productions