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Examples include Avatar, Korra and, to some extent, Samurai Jack. They're all widely popular American cartoons, sometimes even referred to as Amerime.

Are questions about these series on-topic?

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  • This question should be broadended to manga, with manga-like cartoons like Dreamland, which is from France and is even drawn manga-style, as in, right-to-left reading, IIRC. Same goes for Manwha and Manhua.
    – Xeo
    Dec 11, 2012 at 21:00
  • I agree with @Xeo -- we might need to extend this conversation to include manhwa. I love Bride of the Water God but I'm not sure if asking questions about it would be on topic here.
    – user74
    Dec 12, 2012 at 15:40

3 Answers 3

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Tough, I also had thoughts about it. I believe that by definition, we should not allow such cartoons, because we need to draw the line.

The line should be drawn at "Anime & Manga only", which by definition is only Japanese.

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    I tend to agree, a line has to be drawn. On MyAnimeList.net, Avatar has been allowed for only a brief amount of time, IIRC. The same goes for the French "manga" Dreamland, which has been removed recently.
    – Xeo
    Dec 11, 2012 at 20:56
  • I agree with this, however I believe manhwa and manhua should be on topic here. I've mentioned as much in my answer below.
    – Aarthi
    Dec 11, 2012 at 21:14
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    How do you define Japanese? TLoK has some episodes animated by Japanese companies en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierrot_(company)
    – BCLC
    May 24, 2015 at 13:24
  • @BLCL: That's a very good, but a somewhat separate question. I've personally come to the conclusion that the best indicator I can think of so far is whether the original audio is in Japanese or not. For the specific (intentionally far-fetched, I assume) example of Avatar/TLoK being Japanese animation, I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that the decision to use a Japanese studio for some of the episodes in the second season of a sequel does not make the whole franchise/series Japanese/anime.
    – Aleksi Torhamo
    Aug 5, 2016 at 15:26
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I recently watched a Youtube video where an American asked some Japanese people what their favorite manga and anime were. One girl answered that SpongeBob was her favorite "anime".

It seems to me that Japanese people don't make the distinction between western cartoons and anime like we do. Therefore I'd rather be on the permissive side when it comes to which content is allowed or not.

On the other hand, I do strongly feel that there must be at least some Japanese influence to the show. Otherwise this site might just as well be called the Cartoons and Comics SE.

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    Which then bleeds into my site of Movies & TV SE :P
    – Tablemaker
    Dec 11, 2012 at 20:59
  • I'd like to take this opportunity to plug my Comics & Sequential Art proposal, then!
    – Raye Keslensky
    Dec 11, 2012 at 22:14
  • Just to clarify, anime-style drawing is or isn't enough to conclude Japanese influence then?
    – BCLC
    May 24, 2015 at 13:23
  • There's a reason for that. In English we have the words "animation" and "cartoon" to denote any and all animation. (Ditto for other languages) In Japanese, "anime" is that word, and just means "animation" - so the described response was completely understandable. The word anime was loaned from the Japanese language to western languages because western people wanted a word specifically for Japanese animation. So even though the word used is the same, the meaning of the word is very different in western languages compared to the Japanese language.
    – Aleksi Torhamo
    Aug 5, 2016 at 14:49
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I agree that Korra/ATLA and Samurai Jack and anime-inspired Western shows should be disallowed.

However, I do feel that manhwa should be on topic. A lot of manhwa / manhua looks just like doujinshi or independent manga.

To clarify: I don't think anything that "looks like" manga should be on topic here. However, manhua and manhwa are the products of Japan's historical dominance of East Asia, both economically/politically and culturally.

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  • Although manhwa / manhua, from what I saw, are generally left-to-right, not right-to-left reading. And if we go by looks, Dreamland would fit just perfectly. It's a manga written in French, really.
    – Xeo
    Dec 11, 2012 at 21:28
  • They have strong cultural ties to Japanese media, though, thanks to both Japan's economic and military strength historically as well as the sheer prevalence of Japanese media in East Asia. Japan is to East Asia as America is to most of the "West".
    – Aarthi
    Dec 11, 2012 at 21:30
  • So basically it counts if the average person would mistake it for Anime / Manga, then?
    – Raye Keslensky
    Dec 11, 2012 at 22:15
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    @RachelKeslensky That strikes me has an intense reduction of the larger cultural factors that have led to manhua / manhwa. It's not just "would a bunch of gaijin think it's manga" -- it's also about the strength of Japanese cultural influence.
    – Aarthi
    Dec 11, 2012 at 22:19
  • So do you want to include OEL Manga, then? I'd think you'd have a hard time saying one belongs but not the other.
    – Raye Keslensky
    Dec 11, 2012 at 22:32
  • So you consider TLoK to not have strong ties to japanese media despite having some episodes animated by Pierrot (I'm assuming that lack of strong ties is your reason for disallowing) ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierrot_(company)
    – BCLC
    May 24, 2015 at 14:35

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