This Week in Anime

When East Meets West: Can We Call This 'Anime'?

Nicky
Well, if we're getting technical about it, the term "anime" is just short for "animation," and therefore, all things animated are considered "anime." I've been told that if you were to ask any random Japanese citizen off the street about their favorite anime, they would most likely not make a distinction based on the country of origin or demographic, as anime is seen as a medium. Yet, the debate over what should be labeled as anime versus what is considered cartoons has been ongoing for a long time among us overseas. Many of us consider anime to have its own identifiable aesthetic, shorthand, and tropes, and the Canadian indie comic Scott Pilgrim incorporates those style points heavily into its visuals and story.

Many enjoyers would also claim Scott Pilgrim is a Western property that does its homages justice, too, rather than being only a parody or a cringy attempt at what Westerners think anime and manga are. This didn't stop at the page, either. When the series jumped from page to the big screen, director Edgar Wright was smart to keep much of the graphic novel's style, giving the whole film this "larger than life" quality. This is apparent in Scott's battles against each of Ramona's evil exes.

While I mentioned that many people consider anime an aesthetic or "art style," I meant that Scott Pilgrim's character designs do not match the typical anime look. However, anime can be more than just one type of look or genre. I prefer to draw the line at whether a property was animated by a Japanese studio. Otherwise, anyone could make their own thing and call it "anime." However, as streaming networks continue to hire Japanese studios to co-produce content for them, that definition gets blurry! Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a Western property with Western writers, cast, and producers, but an anime studio is undoubtedly handling it and even marketed as "anime" by Netflix.

Even other streaming platforms have tried jumping on this, such as Star Wars: Visions shorts written and animated by some well-known anime studios, including Science SARU.

However, when I gave my impression of it for the column, I noted that Visions reminded me of co-produced anthologies of previous eras.
While streaming has exploded the amount of anime content we get, the idea of contracting anime studios to put their spin on Western properties has been around for a while. Anime studios have been used to bring new ideas to Western video games, movies, and comic books for quite some time with anthologies like Halo: Legends, Batman: Gotham Knight. Though their quality sometimes varies, at least some of those are still available to stream.

Though some would argue that these are for a "Western" audience and, like in Gotham Knight's case, has pretty much all Western writers, I consider them to be interesting international creative collaboratives and a chance for certain studios and directors to show off their voice. A loosely drawn image of Batman has a very different meaning when the short was directed by Tekkonkinkreet film (with an American director, coincidentally).

Studio Trigger isn't shy about collaborating with Western productions either; while not a series, I'm still really amazed by the opening cinematic they co-produced with Titmouse for the indie game Indivisible (from the people who brought you Skullgirls).

and before that, they animated the opening for Wayforward's fifth Shantae game!

While we're on the subject of Trigger, Steven Universe had Takafumi Hori guest on the episode "Mindful Education," and he later collaborated on The Movie and the opening for Steven Universe Future. There's a bit of mutual iration involved here as some Japanese animators love and are influenced by the art of the Western world just as much as many of us are influenced by anime. More than before, a generation of living artists have grown up inspired by anime, making the current animation landscape feel more of a hybrid. Like Scott Pilgrim, Steven Universe fits that bill, so Hori's guest work meshes well. Hori is also notably a big fan and has posted several fanworks online, like this elaborate battle sequence based on the movie.

including the process!

Yeah, for me I feel like it varies on a case-by-case basis because it's not just about who animated what but also who wrote it and who the audience is, and there are different ratios of this. As I mentioned some original co-produced anime have Western writers involved and some people may feel that this can hamper the authenticity, just like too many cooks spoil the broth.

However, it varies on a case-by-case basis since like for Edgerunners you have both Eunyoung Choi. At the time it was broadcasted, the audience most likely consisted of children and other people unaware of his work as an anime director. It's also not connected to the rest of the show and it can be taken as its standalone piece of abstract experimental art.

Still, I think those work because the anime creative side was given a lot of control and creative freedom to do something interesting and that isn't always the case, it wasn't always so special for Japanese studios to be outsourced for in-betweens or openings. Regular contract work used to be the norm for most of the 1980s and 1990s! You can thank anime studios for much geek nostalgia even before people would think to call it anime. Dr. Stone.

As you said, these kinds of contract contributions were the norm back in the day. Sunrise also subcontracted on Batman, with some of that team citing it as a direct influence when the studio went to make Transformers Prime or the later seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars as anime.

Again, it is kind of this mixture of creative control and audience, The Big O was also a co-pro with otaku would find it questionable because we're not the audience. (The Song is a Bop tho)