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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Skade" data-source="post: 1149015" data-attributes="member: 3320">This is one of the reasons I disagree that anime is a genre.  Though the book definition of genre is "a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content", it is more often more specific than this.  Since anime (and I will include manga in this) covers so many different types of stories it's really many genres.  No one would lump Friends, Star Trek, Alias, and Shogun in the same genre in the US.  Now take Tenchi Muyo, Ghost in the Shell, Read or Die and Bandit King Jing and you have as wide a variety, but for non-Japanese they are lumped into one category.  As you said, there is a huge variety in Japanese animation, mostly because they use animation as regular prime time television, as well as kid oriented stuff.  Science fiction, horror, kids entertainment, action/adventure, romance, sit-coms, historical dramas, and porn are all valid areas to present in an animated form there.    Now, for convenience I still refer to Japanese animation as anime, mostly because it is easier.  I've seen arguments that the word defines the style, but since I have read and heard Japanese artists refer to American animation as "American anime" I really feel the difference is one of nationality and culture, with artistic style being a product of that, rather than a hard defined style.  basically, animation and anime are have identical meanings, only one is more commonly used to refer to Japanese products. To me good animation is good regardless of who does it.  I have some friends that despise all american animation, and admittedly there is a lot of crap out there, but no worse than anime. I don't know what to think of Totally Spies.  On one hand it is kind of amusing, and on the other it sets of my prude alarms.  I am generally not a prude, but since this cartoon was originally slanted towards American pre-teen girls I have something of a problem with certain aspects.  Namely that the girls are constantly falling into these prone positions that display their figures in a "flattering" light.  It feels gratuitous.  I always thought it was a poor rip off of Danger Girl myself.  Animation uses short cuts to describe emotion.  The Japanese just have different short cuts than we do.  I have not watched much of Transformers Armada, because I thought it was one of those "American Anime" shows that sucked.  In this case I mean one that uses pointedly Japanese design elements, but is still basically American.  It wasn't the Japanese elements that bugged me though, I just could not stand the voice acting, the new plot, the kids, the skateboarding and vespa mini-cons, or the cheap animation.  So I will agree to shoot them, but maybe the insecticon scene would have made me laugh at the novelty of it.That is a pretty acuate assesment.  X-men Evolution may be what you are looking for.  Mad House is a Japanese design studio, and they are behind the show, but it never really looks like it is Japanese, aside from a small case of BESM, and even that is only just barely.  I am really looking forward to the day Disney starts to make movies that do not "pander" to adults and kids.  I have no problem with a family movie, but what I dislike is when a mature story is marred by very childish add ins.  Mulan for instance would have been beautiful had it simply been the story of a young Chinese girl pulling a Joan of Arc and saving her country and her family.  It would have been good for kids and their parents.  They could not trust that however, so they had to add Eddy Murphy's dragon, and a can-can number, and sing along songs, and cheesy slapstick comedy rather than story driven comedy.</blockquote>

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