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NEWS: Funimation Starts Initiative for Co-Producing Anime

Also, just because they are going to be co-producing a lot of these shows doesn't automatically make them non-anime. Several criteria would have to be met for that to happen.

Anime fans would rather have real anime and not US stuff turned into so called anime meaning they are not the target market.

What is the target market who think anything animation is for children unless it's something along the lines of Family Guy, American Dad or the Simpsons.

So in the end you could say that US produced anime is even more of a niche the normal anime already is.

Reibooi wrote:

Anime fans would rather have real anime and not US stuff turned into so called anime meaning they are not the target market. What is the target market who think anything animation is for children unless it's something along the lines of Family Guy, American Dad or the Simpsons. So in the end you could say that US produced anime is even more of a niche the normal anime already is.

That seems like a totally baseless assumption. Why assume anime fans prefer Japanese animation when as you said, there is pretty much no similair animation in existence from the US? Isn't a more likely explanation that they simply like animation and therefore animation from their own country might actually be more popular.

I love anime because I like animation. I sometimes enjoy the Japanese influences in it but it can also be a pain. So while I'd never want to see Japanese animation disappear, I'd love to see more US stuff as well.

I don't think it's simply liking animation in general. If that were the case, everything would have a mostly equal response.

Personally, I think this is the beginning of anime losing its identity. If Funimation has any respect for the medium it's localizing, then they should call their original content something else than "anime."

Bah, what will calling it something other than "anime" achieve? If something will make Japanese animation lose its identity, it won't be the word shows they base on US franchises are marketed with. Think about it. Over in Japan, they don't even have a word for it.

They don't have a word for what? Or are you just fooling yourself into thinking that Japanese anime fans call every piece of entertaining animation "anime"?

This ought to be common knowledge among anime fans by now, but in Japan, yes, "anime" is just an abbreviation for animation, just like "terebi" is an abbreviation for television.

This is a common misperception, I'm afraid. While it's just an abbreviation, Japanese anime fans make a concerned effort to label cartoons of foreign origin with proper adjectives or prefixes and separate them away from the more narrow group of Japanese made cartoons that are made for the Japanese. Just like the fan side likes to keep things separate, I've seen corporations like Disney Channel Japan to rather use "animation" instead of anime.

So Funimation using anime isn't only scrutiny against the identity of Japanese animation, it's scrutiny against the English language, which already has all the definitions neatly implemented.

Why change them? Because some company wants to include the existing anime fanbase under its seller demographic? Nothing wrong with that per se, but there are other ways of doing it. That or creativity has failed them.

Bah, what will calling it something other than "anime" achieve?

I still fail to see why they need to find another term for it. You're not just saying this because you're afraid anime fans might lose their elite status, are you?