What characteristics tie anime styles together?

handyman_hank

Anime seems to be a broad subject, but it also tends to be fairly easy to identify something as anime, even if it is dubbed very well. The only exception that I can personally think of where it's easy to confuse an American production from a Japanese production is Avatar: The Last Air Bender. Excluding being produced in Japan, is there a defining set of characteristics that makes a work anime? What makes it so easy to spot a production as anime?

Originally asked by DForck42 on Stack Exchange (movies) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

The word "anime" is an abbreviation of the Japanese loanword "animeeshon" - from the original English, "animation." In Japan, it literally just refers to any animated material. In North America, the term "anime" has been re-borrowed to refer specifically to animation that came from Japan. Therefore, the singular and defining quality that makes a particular animated show "anime" is that it was made in Japan. Granted Japanese anime have a very distinctive style, but that's not actually part of the etymology of the word. The fact that some North American productions (like Avatar: the Last Airbender) deliberately copied the style of Japanese anime does not properly make it anime, at least in my...

Full answer by Steve-O: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/71213 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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