What do we mean when we say "anime"?

[Cy~]

I ran into an interesting question of semantics, recently. A while back, I made a topic about which anime character is most like someone. I was originally going to write about my resemblance to the character in my avatar (which, I probably should).

 

However, there was a slight problem with this. Sion is not really an anime character. She is a character from a fighting game series. At the time, I decided to write about my resemblance to another character. Now, I'm wondering. Does it really matter anyway?

 

When we say anime, what do we mean? Do we mean the general universe of fan content, fan art, music, and more? Do we include video games in anime style? Japanese visual novels (which heavily intersect with anime)?

 

For you, personally, what do you mean when you say anime? Narrow definition? Or, something fuzzier? I'm neutral here since I have never thought of this before, tbh, hahaha.

[Orius]

Fuzzy. I consider any Japanese hand-drawn animation to be anime (which also includes cinematic in video games) if you want to go strictly by the book. However, in terms of art style, I also consider a lot of light novels and visual novels to be similar in style when compared to anime. Like I've said before, I think anime has such a broad stroke that it's impossible to define a single definitive and distinct style, and that variety spreads to other Japanese works as well.

 

Heck, if you want to bring music into part of the definition, then I could very well say live action Japanese shows can be considered part of anime culture as well, considering how some of them reference "moe" or even outright incorporate "moe characters" in live action form (alas, a more cringey effort than a successful one). But that would mean that the definitive anime style strictly and exclusively involves moe... which it doesn't (necessarily). And here's the part where we go round and round in semantics, so I'll just stop there.

 

I think it's more of a wishful thinking on my part to think that anime has a style that other Japanese works would imitate in mediums outside of animation, when in truth, a lot of Japanese people don't even really care about anime in general. I mean, they don't hate it, they are just not as obsessive as we foreigners seem to be. You have to also consider that anime and otaku are closely associated, and "otaku" is a generally frowned upon concept in Japan. But that's for another topic.

 

Honestly, I'd say this is a really fuzzy question, one I have much more trouble answering than the "genre vs. medium" one. Anime can be so many things. Life. Style. Art. It's very fluid.