Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - But Is it Anime? The Last Airbender Edition
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Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6886 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Whoa, OK. I didn't think someone at ANN has been reading secretly reading my topic thread I created last week when I talked about how the definition of anime get stretched, and hard to defined. I mean I remember 20 years ago when somebody created similar topic like this, and it blows up into a flame war to the point where that thread has to be locked up because of it getting too hot to handle. But now these days, you don't see it blowing it up into a elitist flame war like in the past.
Anyway, it's true the definition of anime has become so blurred, it's hard to give it a definition. I mean I can give a lot of example here and there, but I guess you can see my example on my linked thread above. |
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rfletcher
 Posts: 33 |
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My go-to for "Is It Anime?" is the animated film THE LAST UNICORN. It's a Rankin-Bass production based on a novel by an American writer, but the animation itself was studio Topcraft.
Heck, you could do an entire article about the Rankin-Bass/Topcraft collaborations, from The Hobbit all the way to Thundercats. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6886 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm glad you brought up Topcraft studio and Rankin-Bass in general. Because if you know about Rankin-Bass's well-known uses of top Japanese animation studios like Toei, Mushi Production, and Topcraft. I mean I think all or maybe most of you know about The King Kong Show, that particular Rankin-Bass animation was animated by Toei and it has been acknowledged by all anime databases and classified as anime. But that's not the only Rankin-Bass animation that has been classified as anime. The Stingiest Man in Town (Japanese title: Machi Ichiban no Kechinbō) has been classified as anime by ANN's Encyclopedia, MAL/Myanimelist, Anilist, and AniDB. So this is the only Rankin-Bass animation done by Topcraft to be classified as anime as a consensus. So because when you classified one Rankin-Bass/Topcraft title as anime, does that mean that every other Rankin-Bass animation that was done by that same studio are now anime. So there's legitimate reason why The Last Unicorn could be re-classify as anime if going by this logic. The Stingiest Man in Town, and The King Kong Show weren't the only Rankin-Bass titles that are classified as anime by a whole consensus in the anime community. There's another particular title, although not produced or created by Rankin-Bass, but the studio that does Rankin-Bass's stop motion animation works/titles was responsible for this title, Nutcracker Fantasy, this was animated by MOM Production/Video Tokyo Production, that stop-motion studio was founded by Tadahito Mochinaga and he did the cinematography and animation for Rankin-Bass's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The one particular title this studio did beside Rankin-Bass's stop motion animation work was Sanrio's Nutcracker Fantasy. Although not a Rankin-Bass's produced or creation, but the stop-motion animation style used in that film was done by the same animators who was responsible for all of Rankin-Bass's title when it comes to stop-motion work. And this is where it gets interesting, Nutcracker Fantasy has been classified as anime by ANN's Encyclopedia, MAL, Anilist, and AniDB. So if this title is an anime, and it uses the same stop-motion animation techniques found in Rankin-Bass's stop motion animation titles/works, then does this mean that all of Rankin-Bass's stop motion animation titles are now anime by default just because of the studio did Nutcracker Fantasy and that's now classified as anime by consensus. My point is that if you made The Stingiest Man in Town, the lone Rankin-Bass/Topcraft title classified as anime, then does that applies and extend to other Rankin Bass animation that had animation done by that same studio? If Nutcracker Fantasy's stop motion animation was done by the same studio that did Rankin-Bass's stop motion animation titles/works and it classified as anime, then does that mean that all of Rankin-Bass's stop motion animation titles are now anime by default because Nutcracker Fantasy uses the same stop-motion animation technique found in Rankin-Bass's title. I like to also add that Nutcracker Fantasy although animated by that studio, and produced by Sanrio, that title has been mistaken and misidentified a lot as a Rankin-Bass title because of the stop motion animation being used and found in Rankin-Bass, so if you can fool people thinking that Nutcracker Fantasy was Rankin-Bass's work (which is not), and it's classified as anime, then I guess that mean all of Rankin-Bass stop motion animation works that were done by that same studio should be retroactively classify as anime. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1281 |
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What a coincidence that this column came out today, because if I am not mistaken, 19 years ago today was the premiere of Kappa Mikey, that cartoon that tried to parody the clichés of anime, which was a pretty common thing in cartoons in the early 2000s. But back to Avatar, I loved the series when I was a kid and by that time I had already seen a lot of anime and cartoons, but even then I didn't consider The Legend of Aang an anime, I was fully aware that the show was made in the U.S., while I'm not an actual English speaker, by that time I learned enough English to read Avatar's end credits and I noticed that most of the staff's names were in English and that the show itself was a Nicktoon just like Sponge Bob, Rocko's Modern Life or Danny Phantom, not to mention that I could feel that there was something in the way characters moved that didn't look like an anime, there's a certain feel in how an anime looks that I don't think U.S. animators have been able to replicate, though French animators can. Also, Avatar didn't have opening and ending songs, that was something that even edited versions of anime had.
I know that people always like to bring the fact that anime and U.S. cartoons are animated overseas, particularly in South Korea and that is used a reason why the lines between anime are cartoon are starting to blur, but I don't think so, just like how people tend to cite Western cartoons that were animated in Japan back in the '80s and '90s like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Batman: the Animated Series and the first four Scooby-Doo! direct-to-video movies as prove that they feel more like anime, but those were more practical reasons. In my opinion, a series has to be produced in Japan in order to be an anime, that why I consider things like Scott Pilgrim Takes (Science Saru) Off and Terminator Zero (Production I.G.) anime, and not Castlevania: Nocturne (Frederator). But the thing that always kind of confuses me is that it seems people want to consider some animations as anime just because of some recognition, but why? I mean, is there anything wrong with being an animated series? And the thing is that it seems that it only applies with animation, but there's plenty of video games made outside of Japan that try to pay homage or imitate classic Japanese video games and I don't see them being refered as Japanese games made outside of Japan, though I have a friend that thought Genshin Impact was a Japanese game and he was shocked when I told him it was actually developed in China. |
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db999
Posts: 356 |
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It's because in the US animation is generally seen by most critics and the population as being solely for children and therefore tons of them completely disregard most animated shows as not worth watching, or worthy of critical consideration because it's for kids thus only worthy as being used for babysitting content. So people want to classify animated shows as anime as a way to get more of the general population to accept it as something that is worthy of being watched by adults. I think some of that stigma is starting to fade away, but until it does this trend will likely continue. However, Avatar doesn't really fit into that specific dynamic because well it actually is a children's show. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6886 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Even though we had adult animation in the US for a long time even before anime was a thing in the US. Oh, and about children's animation, not all of them are made equally and not all young kids can watch them easily today, I don't think a 6 or 7 year old kid could be able to watch Batman: The Animated series, The New Batman Adventures, or even Batman Beyond today because of how dark the show is today and mature stuff by current standard compared to how it was watched in the 90's and early 2000's. Has anyone ever The Mask: The Animated Series that ran from 1995-1997? Yeah, there was an episode with this scene and this is from 1996!!! Yes, that was broadcasted during a kid's viewing hours back in 1996. I don't think this would fly well today if you were to show this to a kid demographic. Oh, and does anybody remember Gargoyles from 1994? The one that Disney created in 1994-1997 to push the envelope on how dark can children's animation get? Yeah, I don't think that would fly well today. And I think everybody who watched this show knows about this particular episode with the gun spoiler[and Elisa being shot and showed blood on screen in that particular episode]. There's a reason why that episode doesn't get re-broadcasted since then (other then the Toon Disney/Disney X D doing some form of censorship for the re-broadcast for that particular episode). |
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