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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2026
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Unpopular Opinion
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“Cartoons” have an English interpretation for being narratively simple. Whether they’re 3-4 panel comic strips or political speech or 30-minute kids shows, they tend to be fundamentally bite-sized morsels of media and do not traditionally evoke notions of grand storytelling or significant narrative merit.
There is no shortage of anime series and films that I’d classify as cartoons. Cartoons are fine and respectable entertainment, but they are only a small subset of all animated media.
Fans of the anime art form are justified in bristling at someone who calls all anime “cartoons”, or animated media from any other country for that matter. Tokyo Godfathers, The Tale of Princess Kaguya and Mind Game are all dense, complex films, which pushes them outside the bounds of what most people categorize as cartoons. Yuri Norstein, Hayao Miyazaki and Jan Švankmajer make animated films, not cartoons.
So a cartoon with a coherent story, like ATLA for example, is an anime then?
I'd say that ATLA is an animated show but doesn't feel like a cartoon. For me personally, "cartoon" and "anime" are different subcategories of "animated show or movie".
Actually, yes. ATLA is generally considered closer to anime than American cartoons, and is heavily influenced by anime
No-one calls the DCAU an anime, and I daresay for its time that Justice League TAS had one of the most intriguing and thoughtful plotlines in the whole collection.
DCAU is not influenced by Japanese animation, so of course it's not. But I wouldn't call it a cartoon either. It's an animated series, IMO