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The definition of "anime" has become more blurred, and confusing.

lumclaw wrote:

As far as I understand it, what makes all this debate humorous, is how the presentation and aesthetic most strongly associated with the term 'anime' was initially derived from western animation.

Imagine if the next year, all anime released looked like a classic disney movie, say, Beauty and the Beast or better yet, an older work before Osamu Tezuka like Cinderella. How would you feel about it? You'd obviously notice things look radically different, maybe some stories, like shoujo manga adaptions would still work but battle shounen type stories would be worse off...

That's my whole problem with the debate. While some western art does actually imitate anime to the point you could mistake the two, by and large that's not what the debates about. The debate is about defining works like ATLA, Arcane and the Dragon Prince which DON'T look like anime to be anime. The for lack of a better term, pro OEL anime people claim to argue that we should redefine anime to refer to a style of story telling or a style of art, but then when trying to come up with western works to include in this new definition, don't even pick things which have anime style art or anime style story telling.

I would call "original English language anime" works that are made in English but by a Japanese animation studio and directed by a Japanese director.

For example, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a Japanese animated film but was originally written in English by English speakers. That's what I consider OEL anime.

In regard to an American animation called anime because of its "anime style," that basically boils down to false stereotyping of Japanese styles, which vary A LOT, and is insulting to the massive Japanese animation industry to be reduced to a stereotype.

If I just consider the last few anime titles I watched, they cover a wide range of styles: City the Animation, Fate Stay Night Heaven's Feel, Amanchu, and Idolmaster U149; each has its own quite distinctive style. Well, sure, one can say all look Japanese/East Asian, but that's not quite true of City the Animation, which looks closer to many Western cartoons/comics than it does to Fate Stay Night Heaven's Feel.

From a Facebook feed, I found Xie Wang Zhui Qi viewable on YouTube. So far, I've watched the first 90 seconds alongside some clips. To no surprise, I do not find this one anywhere on this site. To my further disappointment, I don't see it in Wikipedia either. However, MyAnimeList was open enough to include it into their database.