Forum - View topicAnswerman - Did Westerners Always Call It Anime?
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Weazul-chan
 Posts: 625 Location: Michigan |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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I hate the use of a term to refer to all animation made in Japan. I know that they made up the term because they felt that "cartoon" had a bad rep, however, "anime" eventually acquired a bad rep as well. People should just use "animation", because the reason why people watch anime is because they like animation as a medium for telling stories.
Also, the term anime is rather racist: it implicitly says that animation made by Japanese is "different", well, its not really so: anime is very similar to American live action stuff, though of course carries Japanese sensibilities but other articles of Japanese media do not have a specific name (like calling Japanese movies Filmuu or something). Japanimation would be as bad as anime since its the use of a umbrella term that leads to false generalizations. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3650 |
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This reminds me of the late night Sci-Fi channel japanimation showings. That was one of the first times I ever saw anime (later learning that some of my saturday morning cartoons were also imports) and recognized (and appreciated) that it was different then anything else available.
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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As for Japanese cinema, I'll leave it to any movie buffs obsessed with that to think up a word if they want. I don't think it's going to be anywhere near as unique as manga and anime have wound up, though. |
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Remington Steele
Posts: 63 |
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I always called it anime here in Canada back then. Plus it was nice due to the fact that a lot of anime were not rated and you could easy pick up and rent an R rated anime and no one cared. The early days were fun. Seeing gore filled anime did not corrupt my mind
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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Japan's reverse importation habit didn't spare the term "Japanimation" either, as it has been used within Japanese audio tracks as well. Perhaps most famously in episode 17 of Excel Saga back in early 2000.
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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Not quite. The accent aigu on animé means that the E is pronounced as ay. Think of the word fiancée which is pronounced Fee-awn-say. My name is French and has the accent aigu on it. Pronouncing a French feminine word like fiancée as Fee-awn-see is actually comedy shorthand for an English speaker being an airhead. Think of Lina in 'Singing in the Rain' :" Donnie, how can you let them talk to me that way, your fiancee?"
I do, however, agree wholeheartedly with your earlier reply to Justin's line. I get the impression that Justin feels that edited or localized anime doesn't count; That's an attitude I've never understood. I can understand being frustrated, or even angry, with changes made, and the reasons for doing them, but to outright deny anime was available seems odd. I still have anime which my parents taped off of cable, both movie channels and channels with commercials, from the 80s and early 90s. I've even got Toei's Swan Lake (Pam Dawber dub) complete with I Will Not Spoil The End ending, in all its uncut glory. The movie was neither edited nor localized, and was aired on TV, so does it count? I've never known a time when I didn't know that animation which looked like that was Japanese animation. So it's not as though it was a deep, dark, secret kept under lock and key. Maybe the hosts on YTV chatted about it in the late '80s ( I know for sure that Phil talked about it, in the '90s, but I knew anime existed before then); Maybe an older cousin talked about it; Maybe my parents mentioned it in passing and I thought it was SO COOL that I filed that info away in my brain: I don't know; All I know is that, despite the efforts of some companies, it was not totally a mystery as to where these cartoons came from. The end credits of 'Speed Racer' and 'Kimba the White Lion' credit Japanese staff, for heaven's sake. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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This may be weird, but I always liked the term Japanimation. Maybe because it's the first thing I heard (which was long before I started watching it), but also maybe because like Justin said, it's a self-explanatory term. Japanese Animation works too, but the abbreviation is cute IMO.
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2514 |
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Boy did this one take me back. I'll add that in the '60's very few even realized that these "cartoons" as they were called were from Japan. For the longest time I told people that it was Japanese Animation to explain why they were so different (compare original Flintstones with AstroBoy). I'll agree with others that it was the late '80's when I heard "Japanimation" used which seemed fitting. I still have the VHS of Project A-ko I got from Suncoast (what a funny show!).
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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I never referred to Anime as Japanimation although I have heard it before on occasion on tv and at my local Blockbuster video (RIP) of course I also heard the term from some of my friends.
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Ah, you're right. Thanks. I must have confused it with Battling Seizure Robots. I still have no idea where the word "Japanime" came from though, aside that some people must've gotten REALLY confused.
Same here--my father watched anime, so I knew anime when I saw it for aslong as I can remember. He watched the extra-violent stuff from the 80's too (the stuff Manga Entertainment UK would've wanted), so I knew they were nothing like the Saturday morning stuff I'd watch. As for Japanese staff, not a lot of people read the credits, and I'm sure some people probably thought they were just outsourced labor. During those decades, Japan was a major source of outsourced animation, after all. (So much so that, to some animation historians, they'll ignore that anime exists at all and consider Japan as strictly a source of outsourced labor. I mentioned it in another Answerman topic, but it bugs me quite a bit that way.) |
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himeji
 Posts: 16 |
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I prefer terebi manga (テレビアニメ) myself.
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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Anyone remember the days of the CPM-run AOL keyword "Japanimation"?????
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roxybudgy
Posts: 129 Location: Western Australia |
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My interest in anime started when Neon Genesis Evangelion aired on TV in 1999. Back then, the TV guide had an article about the series, referring to it as "anime", so I have used that term ever since, but initially made the mistake of pronouncing it as "ani-mee". I try to pronounce it correctly, but I can't help but feel pretentious when I do.
But prior to that, I liked animation/cartoons in general, and used to watch things like Dragonball and Samurai Pizza Cats before I even knew the word "anime", I only knew them as cartoons, or as my dad called them "katong" (Chinese word for cartoons). The only time I heard/saw the term "Japanimation" was when I read articles about anime which would briefly mention it as an alternative term for anime. Honestly, I had no idea "Japanese" was a racial slur until I said it to someone from the US. In the context of our conversation, I said "Japanese" when talking about the subjects I studied in high school (obviously I did not intend it as a slur). In high school it was common to abbreviate subjects (Aussies sure love abbreviations). For example: Applic (Applicable Mathematics), Econ (Economics), P&L (Political & Legal Studies), EngLit (English Literature), Chem (Chemisty) etc... Japanese was one of the subjects I studied in high school, so it was common for my classmates and I to say things like "Have you done your Japanese homework?" or "We've got Japanese after Applic". (edit: forum auto edited "starts with J and ends in ap" to "Japanese") On that note, I find many of the younger generation don't know that "coon" is a racial slur (also a brand of cheese in Australia). I used to be a GM and forum moderator for an MMORPG which had raccoon mounts, and players would often ask why the word "raccoon" was filtered from in-game chat. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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I started in the Toonami era, and was a huge, huge obsessed fan of Dragon Ball Z before I even heard the term "anime." I knew DBZ came from Japan, since my older brother and cousins were kinda into anime back then and explained it to me, but I didn't think much of it. I also knew Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Tenchi, Gundam, Digimon, Yu Yu Hakusho, and anything else on Toonami also came from Japan, as well as video games I played like Super Mario World, Tetris Attack, Super Mario Kart, etc, as well as Tamagatchi. I also thought Powerpuff Girls came from Japan, as quite a few people my age did. I never really separated Japanese stuff from American stuff. I think I may have heard the term "anime" at some point, but I actually never saw it in print until Shonen Jump had sections under that name, and I wasn't quite sure what it meant or how to pronounce it. I never used the term myself until maybe around 2006ish and I was looking up this stuff online, but I don't even think I used it regularly until a couple years later.
"Manga" is a different story though. Ever since I knew about Japanese comics, they were "manga." I first learned the term from Shonen Jump and "How to Draw Manga" books. I even learned how to pronounce it correctly thanks to my cousins. I was probably the only 9-year-old saying "MAHN-ga!" |
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