Anime is popular, but other countries are not making it. WHY??
Just to add to the many answers we already have here, if not summarize a little bit.
Anime in general English parlance refers to Japanese animation, though in recent years, it has slowly changed from the product of a country to a style that refers to the popular animation style produced in Japan. It’s why we’re hearing phrases like “anime-styled” becoming more and more often.
A number of well-known / popular games playable in the English-speaking world these days, with anime-styled characters, aren’t from Japan, Genshin being one of the prime examples, from China, and there’s those like Blue Archive, from South Korea (though iirc they get a mix of South Koreans and Japanese illustrators for their assets). Japanese pop culture has had a strong influence on many Chinese and South Korean youths over long enough to result in the creation of companies specialized in making anime-styled games and even the “anime” we know of (some people have mentioned a few in other comments). A lot of the times though, these anime don’t really get as much attention from English audiences, unless you’re in a circle who’s attentive to that side of the market.
That said though, I’ve had people argue with me over the definitely of “anime” itself, saying that it should just be “animation”. To those, they aren’t wrong if they look simply at etymology and not what’s evocated in anime-watchers’ minds at the mention of anime. To be fair though, the line does start to get murky. I mean, take a look at this list I just looked up: https://whatnerd.com/best-non-japanese-anime-series/.
It’s IMO from here, but Japanese anime has a few distinctive features: generally heavier use of detailed backgrounds, and scenes that prioritizes raw art prowess over animation techniques. There’s also the fact that voice acting is just a huge scene in Japan, and so there’s a lot of good talent that comes up, whereas everywhere else, the scene is rather limited. Underlying the success of anime is manga and (light) novels, which is also a really active industry in Japan. Comics are just quite limited elsewhere.
It’s like champagne. If it doesn’t come from Japan, it’s just sparkling animation.
Wym avatar the last airbender is right there
This is one of the advantages of running your own media server. I removed the anime tag from ATLA. I’m a purist.
Anime is made outside of Japan. China and South Korea have anime industries of their own in addition to contracting with Japanese companies for animation outsourcing.
In the English-speaking world, we use the term ‘anime’ to specifically refer to animation made in Japan. Other countries do make animation, we just don’t call it ‘anime’ unless it comes from Japan.
But in Japan, ‘anime’ simply means animation. I remember seeing a video where someone interviewed random people on the street in Tokyo asking what’s their favorite anime. The most popular answer was Frozen.
When I was a kid in the '60s, Japanese anime was shown on TV dubbed into English. It was just cartoons to us, it wasn’t until much later that the term “anime” was attached to them.
Kind of by definition since “anime” is just a “Japanese cartoon”.
There’s all kinds of anime not made in Japan.
Chinese, Korean, shit even Western countries like France, Germany and the US make some anime.
anime is a loanword from “animation”.
Lots of countries make animation.
“Why yes I do watch anime, just the other week I started rewatching Scooby Doo!”
Ganbatte.
Faulty premise. There are lots of series that are pretty close in style that aren’t made in Japan, e.g. https://whatnerd.com/best-non-japanese-anime-series/ (I just searched for “anime not made in japan” and this was one of the first results). There are also many Japanese animation studios who outsource some amount of work to other east-asian countries to save on costs.
And considering that manwha (Korean comics) looks exactly like manga, that’s exactly as expected.
Look up Link Click. Anime made in China. China has a few anime series, but Link Click may be the best one. It’s about a couple guys who use their strange super powers to help others. One can see 12 hours before and after a photo is taken, and the other can possess the picture takes for 12 hours from when the picture was taken (basically time travel with extra steps). They do this to help people and eventually attract the attention of villains with weirder powers. The second season has this wild opening with reversed Chinese rap verses (with matching, mirrored subtitles!). Goes way harder than most anime. And completely original. Dubbed in Chinese, Japanese, and English (that I know of).
To be hero X is another really good Chinese one
Technically those are donghua, not anime, though. Similar in style, different origin.
Not sure about link click but To Be Hero X was co-produced between a Japanese anime studio (I forget which one) and Bilibili. The source material is game franchise, so the line is definitely blurry there. But since Cyberpunk Edgerunners generally counts as anime despite being published by an American company and based on a Polish game, I’d say these can fall under the umbrella also.
the term anime typically refers to japanese ones, but there are many animations from other countries that has the ‘anime vibe’. also, all those japanese animations are made together by animators from many countries. (you can easily spot non-japanese staff names :))
Wakfu is french
Most anime is made in China.
