I seem to have lost track of whatever point you are trying to make.  


Jeremy 'Loki' Blackman wrote:

Don't take this wrong; the tone may be somewhat sarcastic.  Nothing
personal.

On Mon, 25 Aug 1997, Phillip Masters wrote:

The question is not who came up with the concept.  Lot's of anime's use
stories non-Japanese to work from.  If it's a Japanese company/person
doing it, it's anime/manga.  Very simple.  Why?  Because this is what
the creators wanted to call it (The Japanese people I mean, I don't know
who coined the term).  We call ours cartoons, comics, and animated
features.  They call it anime and manga.

Ok, how about films which are worked on cooperatively?

Ghost in the Shell had Western personnel working with the Japanese
studios, as did Tenchi Muyou! In Love.

Or how about Disney TV productions, or Warner Brother TV productions,
which have a lot of the work done by places like TMS (a Japanese animation
studio).  Does this mean 'The Disney Afternoon' consists of anime, or
Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures were anime?

No?  But they were animated in Japan!  They had American writers?  You
just said that doesn't matter!  :)

No he didn't.  He said the original source material didn't matter.
The writer is a different question.

While 'anime' literally means 'animation' in Japanese, they apply the term
to everything - EVEN AMERICAN ANIMATION - aired over there.  Disney films
released to theaters are classified in Japan as 'anime'.  It'd be like if
we just called 'anime' 'animation' - effectively, translating the term
back into English.

So if we accept that -we- as a community are applying the term 'anime' to
a particular art style, what elements are we using as the judgement for
that art style?

"Art style"?  The two minutes of Gatchaman I watched wasn't drawn 
particularly like Ranma or Gall Force.  In fact it seemed rather
similar to an animated american comic book, as long you didn't pay
attention to the story. Of course the narrative had some rather 
distinctively non-American elements, such as a sexually ambiguous 
villain, people dying in combat, heros falling in love with people from 
the villainous side, and heros and villains committing suicide.  
Busy two minutes, wasn't it? 

I think we need to move past the boundaries of nationality because those
can get extremely confusing anyway - look at some older cartoons, like
'Mysterious Cities of Gold'.  A Japanese-French co-production (loosely)
based on a British novel and simultaneously produced in three languages in
three countries.  Is it 'anime'?  Is it 'animation'?  Is it whatever the
heck the French would call it?  :)

Bad?  

Just my $0.02 + state sales tax where applicable.

----[Loki]-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jeremy Blackman / Anime fan/fanfic author, Game Designer/Engineer
loki@maison-otaku.net (personal mail) / Maison Otaku Productions founder
loki@thekeep.org      (mailing lists) / Fanfic author / anime
jeremy@lith.com       (work)          / Monolith Productions