My emphasis was more on anime in so far as storytelling, what separates it as a medium from the approach that other countries take with their animation. While the visual style is the most recognizable trait of anime, I feel it’s superficial to believe that’s the only thing that can define it, since even that style has grown and changed over time as technology has allowed and, in ways, facilitated. What I was trying to do was not define what anime is, but rather explore why the perspective people take in regard to it is so very different than other animated mediums. And that is not because it is Japanese, and not because it looks different, but rather because it’s spirit is different. Anime is more diverse in the range of stories it feels fit to tell. It’s difference in spirit, however, is often overshadowed by it’s visual style, or it’s ‘nationality’, both, I feel, are only small pieces of what makes it such a great thing.

@Bateszi: I apologize if my use of the word xenophobia came off as an attack — it was only brought up as a sort of tangent about how anime fans tend to go all “Japan is the best!” and anything outside of that is an unacceptable abomination. I didn’t think you were being the case I was describing of this at all, though your declaration of needing a new word because an American wrote it and other such things triggered the thought process. It was really just a tangent, and wasn’t intended as insult. 8I actually agree with much of what you’ve said in this comment, and in your post, my only issue is that the names for things, to me, are wholly irrelevant, as long as the spirit of them stay the same. Hence my ranting on semantics.

Obviously, in this day and age, such a strict definition that’s based on geographical boundaries is a little redundant, but at the same time, there is a reason why I’m an anime fan, a feeling or a style of storytelling that’s distinct to Japanese artists. Anime itself is spreading the world over, it’s now an aesthetic “style”, but for so many fans, the original attraction must be directly related to it’s unique Japanese sense of direction, characterization etc. This is where the semantic issues come in, but I’ve already said enough, ultimately, our language will evolve as society changes.

Children’s cartoons are things like Hello Kitty and The Smurfs. A teenager’s cartoon is something like Thundercats or Gundam Wing. And an adult’s cartoon (here not implying sexual content) is something like The Yellow Submarine or Tokyo Godfathers.

While animation has had a more juvenile context to work within as far as North America is concerned, this is not true the world over. If we are to call something “anime”, it does not imply something NOT intended for children, so that definition is useless too. Anime is, as far as regular use should be concerned, something influenced by Japanese animation, or Japanese animation itself. It is then attached to perhaps a pornographic, adult, teenage, or child following which is a category of genre. Of course there are many other technicalities to be concerned with, such as if it’s an action film, a drama, or a comedy, and so on.

Anime is quite Japanese. It is influenced by (and largely taken from) early American animation, but it IS Japanese. Therefore we cannot say that Treasure Planet is anime, it is an American cartoon for teenagers — for which we have no more concise a term. To say otherwise is to deny the essence of the title. It is one thing to expand a definition, it is another to abandon its spirit altogether.