Anime Vs. Cartoons, What Is The True Difference?

If any of you readers grew up as a teenager between the late 90's and early 2000's then you have to know what anime is. You were one of the many people in what is known as the Otaku generation. A generation of people who were exposed wholly to anime. Fast forward to now, anime is starting to get a little more back into the public spotlight after it was long forgotten and left the public eye. Now must of you who watch anime must have this situation happen all the time. You're sitting down watching anime on your computer (much as I do in my free time in school and sometimes when I shouldn't) and you hear that comment. "Why you watching some stupid cartoons?" Yes to the untrained eye they mite seem like some little kid's cartoons, but what is it that truly separates anime from just some cartoon. Today I'll be talking about the things that in my opinion stand out. 

Now first and most obvious, anime is originally made in Japan which is it's most distinct quality. But it isn't what makes anime, anime. For instance people confuse Avatar The Last Air Bender for being an anime all the time. This is because it shares the other qualities most commonly seen in anime. To start the art style of an anime is always very high quality. Because it has become such a big part of their culture all anime is put together with such high art talent that everything looks amazing. The bigger the production time and project the even better it will look. On the topic of art, anime always has its own great line up of music tracks. The compositions even lead a lot of us to pull them up on our computer to listen to as we do work. 

Some of the biggest qualities come in the story though. Most anime is made from manga. A manga is a Japanese graphic novel. This is important because it means most anime already have established stories lines that are well fleshed out, meaning is all about bringing those details out in the video form. Which brings up another good point that characterization is a huge part of all animes. Every character no matter how big or small is usually given some way to emotionally connect to the audience to wear you care about them. I've seen an entire episode dedicated to one character who showed up at the beginning gained and emotional connect to the plot and audience and then dies at the end of that episode. Animes also share great, broad genres. There are comedies, sports, slice of life, action, adventure, mystery, if its a genre then there is a hit anime to cover it. 

Now focusing more on the story you see a huge difference in types of stories shown in american animated programs (and even live action) and that of animes. This is because Japan does not share the same sort of censorship that we do. Meaning a lot of radical and new ideas can be created and made over there that couldn't be done here. Usually this translates to seeing more mature themed stories or more complicated story lines, but this is not always true. Also in most cases when an anime is made the idea is pitched to a board of investors from different animation companies, they then decide whether to pick it up or not and who will fund and take the roles of this anime. This group of collaborators is most commonly seen in credits as the project group for the anime. For instance for Sword Art Online (shortened to SAO) they are credited as SAO Project. This highly differs from the American way of creating cartoons especially in the sense that they pull in more resources and talent from different place. 

So this is just a brief description on the differences I see between cartoons and anime. I hope that you enjoyed this article and for those of you reading who may have had a different mind set about anime before or didn't watch it then I hope to have convinced you to give it a try.