Anime = Cartoons

The other day we were doing impromptus in speech class, and this one girl chose anime as her topic. There wasn’t much time for her to elaborate, but the gist of her speech was an argument against the idea that anime is “just cartoons”. I knew even before she started speaking that I would have some sort of bias on the subject.

I often long for the time period when Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon were still in what I fondly consider their Golden Ages. It was then that great cartoons like Dexter’s Lab, The Angry Beavers, Rocko’s Modern Life, Doug and hell I’ll admit it, even the Powerpuff girls, thrived. These cartoons bring back fuzzy memories when I think of them, so it just about killed me when this pretentious, anime-fangirl vehemently declared a deep dissociation between anime, and what she referred to as, “regular, head-bashing over-the-head cartoons”. She followed this up with a statement that would come to be repeated often within her 3-minute speech, “Anime is NOT cartoons!” I beg to differ…

I don’t want to start harping on technicalities, but the dictionary definition of a cartoon/animation is a “film made by photographing a series of drawings to give the illusion of movement when projected in rapid sequence.” And the Japanese word, anime, is a derivation of the English word animation. Anime is simply cartoons from another country. This girl’s indignance about having her precious anime labeled as a mere cartoon (a feeling that I’ve found a lot of anime fans seem to possess) is what set me off. Of course there are “hammer-over-the-head” cartoons such as “Bugs Bunny”, and “Tom and Jerry”, but not every cartoon is formatted in that way. Films like “Persepolis”, and “The Triplets of Bellville” are two prime examples of contemporary animation. But I suppose that these rabid, Japanophiles are too busy nose-deep in manga, and streaming anime off of the Internet to notice. I shouldn’t even have to explain the genius of Adult Swim, a block of cartoons that air late night on Cartoon Network, for the more “mature” audience. They brought us greatness like Harvey Birdman, Robot Chicken, Aqua Teens, and Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast. What’s interesting is that anime also has a significant space on the Adult Swim schedule, and I think that’s fine. There’s room for both, and although I may come off as anti-anime, I’m not.

I love all of Miyazaki’s films, and try to catch any other anime movie that makes it to U.S. theaters (it’s been a while, as the last one I saw was the seizure-inducing, “Paprika”). I’ve even had a couple summer flings with manga, so I understand it’s allure. I am in no way out to denounce anime, or it’s fans. It’s just the superior attitude that certain overzealous anime buffs seem to carry with them.