19 January 2006, 8:20 AM
Well to say it's not a cartoon might be false, but I'd be tempted to call it significantly different from mainstream american/canadian/whatever outside of japan cartoon. One of the things I noticed is that anime is in a lot of cases just like a western live-action TV show, but in animated format.
What I mean is that normally you don't see a lot of standard American cartoons in the same vein as Love Hina (that whole romatic comedy thing), and definitely nothing like NGE or RahXephon. I'm sure there are exceptions on all sides but it seems to me that there is a significant divide between the two. In fact the only cartoons that I watched that even have continuing stories are either franchises from other media (comic books or movies), or borrow heavily from japanimation anyways -- although again there are always exceptions, and I could be mistaken. In that sense I guess you could place anime and "regular" cartoons in different categories entirely.
What I mean is that normally you don't see a lot of standard American cartoons in the same vein as Love Hina (that whole romatic comedy thing), and definitely nothing like NGE or RahXephon. I'm sure there are exceptions on all sides but it seems to me that there is a significant divide between the two. In fact the only cartoons that I watched that even have continuing stories are either franchises from other media (comic books or movies), or borrow heavily from japanimation anyways -- although again there are always exceptions, and I could be mistaken. In that sense I guess you could place anime and "regular" cartoons in different categories entirely.