Can Anime be considered an art movement?

I've been quite curious recently about this. Anime is an industry that was born out of japanese culture. However, it's not only something that affects or is limited to Japan. I also don't think it's limited to a certain drawing style either. It's animation with an emphasis in story, characters, heavy topics and deep themes that just grab the viewers' attention and generated a large community all around the world. Would you consider cartoons like Avatar anime as well? What about Korean anime? What about different anime drawing styles?

ok anime (and manga) are classed as entertainment but that doesn't mean it cant be art or that art cant be entertaining to thous that are appreciating the art

the dictionary's noun meaning of the word art states

noun

1.

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/art

and besides me I would believe they others would think of anime filling these requirements

but I do really like the way wikipedia has defined it

art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

art can be quite an open classification but at the end of the day it becomes art because of the one (ones) appreciating it

and just like anything we all aren't always going to have the same fealings about each others list of art

Dang, this answer is actually really well thought out! I shouldn't expect less coming from this community as it seems.

I've been quite curious recently about this. Anime is an industry that was born out of japanese culture. However, it's not only something that affects or is limited to Japan. I also don't think it's limited to a certain drawing style either. It's animation with an emphasis in story, characters, heavy topics and deep themes that just grab the viewers' attention and generated a large community all around the world. Would you consider cartoons like Avatar anime as well? What about Korean anime? What about different anime drawing styles?

This certainly is a question that I have thought about previously there is a fantastic video on why it isn't considered art in art schools - Which you can find in this spoiler tag (if it works haha)

Furthermore yes it is considered art in the same way Media is considered art, as @Wodahs did some good research on in his post. I would like to add and answer your questions even further, Anime from my understanding and expression is like this. It is directly influenced by Asian and Eastern mentality and culture, however, there is an offset culture we see in the way Anime is produced; that is the lens that Japanese pop culture has towards Western Pop culture. Akira Kurosawa was the first film maker to actually achieve this, by basing a lot of his work on Westerns and in turn also influencing directors in the west one of his major works that fit into this category is "Seven Samurai". When we view Anime from this lens it makes it more clear as to what we can define Anime as. Just as we don't consider Star Wars Japanese, even though it was influenced a lot by Akira Kurosawa's work it is still western. In the same light shows made in other countries not made from the Japanese lens into the rest of the world can not be considered Anime, even if it has a similar art style and even eastern premise in its story. The point is the way characters are portrayed in its weirdness and the minor differences in the way plot is executed in Anime vs Cartoons are completely different.

And even if it is set in a world more like the west, for example, My Hero Academia, it still has that Japanese lens that they express the Western culture through, it might resemble western story telling and premise but the execution is completely different.

When we look at a show like Avatar what we instantly notice is the way it presents itself, the way characters grow is similar to that of movies such as Shrek. The progression is the same in the sense that it plays on western tropes instead of eastern tropes, the way characters interact with one another is the same as your tropy American Teenage Film. Where as the interactions between characters within MHA is more eastern in the sense that there are different levels of respect and understanding between peers and elders. If we look at how Bakago reacts it makes him stand out because of the social awkwardness he expresses. Where as Zuko or even Toph are rebellious rather than socially awkward. Therefor from what I can assess in the excecution of Avatar I wouldn't consider it an Anime because of its heavy western pop culture influence and its lens of the Eastern style of media. Rather than an Eastern style of media.

There for Korean and Chinese Anime would more resemble Japanese culture purely because of the Eastern mindset, yet of course there will be slight differences in styles, but you will find shows like "Quan Zhi Gao Shou" which is Chinese, will resemble Anime 80% more than Avatar ever could.

Sorry for my messy argument, if I find time I will edit it properly and find clearer evidence for what I mean to express.

So, in the end anime is an art movement that represents the eastern culture, in particular the Japanese culture. I've never thought of it this way. So it's all into the execution and if the message/themes it contains are approached in an eastern way. That's why My Hero Academia is a play on the western super hero stories but with a inherently eastern spin on it. It's a social critique of Japan's culture regarding work, professions, school and most important the drive to succeed and to follow your dreams that gives enough motivation to our characters so they can face adversity. The way the show traces parallels with the Japanese reality is part of what it defines it an anime. However, it's also like you said, it's all portrayed with the lens of the eastern culture, which drastically changes how some characters are viewed by others and how their behavior and relationships play out.

Daaaaaaang, this is interesting!

This is only my view from a back ground of studying Film history relating to cultural settings. I am sure there are other perspectives that would be valuable to extend or strengthen our understanding of this topic. I would also like to further say that not necessarily Japanese culture as a whole, rather its pop culture, because the culture in Anime is very different than it is in actual real life setting in Japan, within exception. But yeah Eastern pop culture rather than western.

But yeah Eastern pop culture rather than western.

I think we are definitely in the right track. We just need more opinions here. Anime is without a doubt a movement inside of the eastern popculture. So that would be a key difference between western animation and eastern animation as a whole. Crazy to think that our world is so culturally divided on that sense, but when it comes to pop culture I'm not surprised. I live in Brazil and here our popculture is not as different than the rest of America. Of course there is our own culture in the country, but it's way less divisible than the difference between eastern and western per say.

ok anime (and manga) are classed as entertainment but that doesn't mean it cant be art or that art cant be entertaining to thous that are appreciating the art

the dictionary's noun meaning of the word art states

noun

1.

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/art

and besides me I would believe they others would think of anime filling these requirements

 

but I do really like the way wikipedia has defined it

art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

 

art can be quite an open classification but at the end of the day it becomes art because of the one (ones) appreciating it

 

and just like anything we all aren't always going to have the same fealings about each others list of art

To add to this, entertainment and art usually go hand in hand. Think about, music is an art, although it often lacks a visual, but not always. Comic books, art, anime, art, video games, art, TV Shows and Movies, animated or otherwise, art. The only entertainment that doesn't really classify as art are probably news broadcasts and reality TV because even though those are something of a work, be it what facts are presented by what source for news or what plays out in reality TV that's obviously scripted, for the most part they are visual representations of real life. Anything that takes true talent to create though, is an art.

Yes. Definitely. Anime as a medium and as an industry has, over the years, influenced many people, films, television series(live-action or animated). Some of these include The Matrix, etc.

The definition of an anime has varied over the years. I consider it to be any animation produced in Japan. So, in that sense, Avatar: The Last Airbender is not an anime. But, there's no denying that there's a lot of influence from anime in that show. If you show a random episode from the series to an otaku(assuming that he hasn't heard of it), he'd probably think it's the dubbed version of an anime.

There are a few arguments people tend to use to differentiate it from cartoons and movies/television series. One being that, anime doesn't necessarily have a lot of moderation, meaning, you can have an anime with blood, gore and sexual content, and the anime gets the appropriate rating for that. You don't see this happening with cartoons. They are all mostly kid-friendly, and are for the most part, non-violent, and certainly don't have sexual content. The only exceptions I can think of are Southpark, and Rick and Morty. The other being that, even though movies don't necessarily have a lot of moderation and restriction(in that if you have adult content, all you have to do is get an R rating), there's the issue of money. CG is extremely expensive, and they can't do whatever they want. Since anime is mostly 2D, and whether or not it's digital or hand-drawn, it's not as expensive as producing a movies.

About the argument of whether anime is very Japanese or not, we can take the example of Hollywood studios trying to adapt anime. Almost every single one of them failed. Why? They didn't accept the fact that the anime sort of feels like something that's Japanese lived-in. Take Dragonball: Evolution or Ghost in the Shell, or even the most recent one, Death Note(which arguably has the least amount of Japanese influence). All three of them tried to give it a western take, and all of them failed, miserably. So, yes, there are some things that you can't just exclude. That's the reason why, I don't think Steins;Gate would translate well, if it's adapted into a Hollywood movie. It's filled with characters who are inbred in the otaku culture in Japan.

The definition of whether it's an art or not is subjective. But, there's no doubt that anime has influenced a lot of work all around the world.