German Expressionism, Greek epics and Japanese cartoons

Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and Shinichirō Watanabe's "Samurai Champloo"

This week’s post was going to be about Japanese wordplay. However, one link led to another, and I spent an evening researching foreign films and literature and genre.

In a PBS Idea Channel video from January host Mike Rugnetta discusses whether Nickelodeon’s Avatar franchise qualifies as anime.

As Rugnetta points out, in the U.S. “anime” refers to Japanese animation, but in Japanese “anime” is just a word for cartoon.

By the U.S. definition, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and its sequel series “The Legend of Korra,” both developed in the U.S., are definitely not anime, and by the Japanese definition, as they are both animated, they are definitely anime.

These standards don’t really help us much. Both terms lack the subtlety Rugnetta seems to be getting at.

C.S. Lewis's sci-fi novel "Out of the Silent Planet" and Shinichirō Watanabe's sci-fi series "Cowboy Bebop"

“The Maltese Falcon” is an American film, not a German film, but it is a part of the American film noir tradition that has roots in German Expressionism.

Film noir uses parts of the visual language developed by German Expressionist filmmakers.

The sonnet, which most of us associate with William Shakespeare, is an Italian invention.

Greek and Latin traditions share stories and styles of telling them. Virgil, a Roman poet, developed his “Aeneid” as a sort of sequel to the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” of Homer, a Greek poet.

This sort of cross-pollination exists in animation.

The Avatar franchise borrows heavily from the visual language and storytelling techniques present in various genres of Japanese animation.

It has at least one example of a beach episode standard to many Japanese cartoons that focus on high school students.

It also uses a stereotypical anime classroom set in one episode and shows Japanese influence to its animation.

Guillermo Del Torro's Spanish "Pan's Labyrinth" and Jim Henson's American "Labyrinth"

So, is it anime? Well, we're really back where we started.

“(500) Days of Summer” references French film, but that doesn’t make it a French film.

Japanese animation itself was influenced by Walt Disney in its early days, but that doesn’t make every Japanese cartoon a Disney picture.

Anime (by the U.S. definition) isn’t a genre in the same way film noir is or fantasy fiction is.

Comics "Astro City" by American author Kurt Busiek and "Watchmen" by British author Alan Moore

If it’s a genre at all, it’s one with numerous subgenres.

Just like American animation includes “Batman: The Animated Series,” Seth MacFarlane’s “Family Guy,” and Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” anime includes a variety of works with different tones and tropes.

Anime includes heartwarming films like Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” sci-fi adventures like Shinichirō Watanabe’s “Cowboy Bebop,” and crass comedies like Yoshito Usui’s “Shin Chan.”

Genre doesn’t rely on country of origin. “Shin Chan” has a lot more in common with “Family Guy” and “South Park” than it does with Watanabe’s “Kids on the Slope.”
“Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” are both fantasy novels. Just because Lewis Carroll was British doesn’t make his work more like Jane Austen’s than L. Frank Baum’s.
So what is Avatar? Well, it could be an early entry in a new genre of American animation that borrows from Japanese animation like film noir borrows from German Expressionism.
It could also be part of a trend of breaking down the American notion of "anime." Years from now the radical difference in animated stories that crops up between cultures might be very diluted as artists reference one another and one visual language affects another. 

American fantasy novelist L. Frank Baum's classic "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and British author Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell"