Otaku Blog

Why anime is better than cartoons- a lot of anime fans take it for granted. Here are some legitimate reasons.

1. The art. Anime art is very lifelike, but with an idealistic simplicity in the characters. The backgrounds are very real. The animation looks lifelike, showing how the muscles actually react to things, as opposed to the bouncy, rubbery look of cartoons that makes them hard to watch. Cartoons may be smooth, but they are not even shaded! Cartoons are just smoother because of the budget anyway. It has nothing to do with talent.

2. The characters. Anime characters are always unique, realistically built with development, and easy to connect with. Every anime contains a beautiful spectrum of characters. Cartoons, however, only can offer cheesy superheroes, people who are so stupid it's supposed to be funny, animals that talk, and dumb "pretty" girls.

3. The story. No matter what people say about anime's generic plots or whatever, you probably just got it from a friend who got it from a friend who got it from an idiot. You most likely haven't seen any anime, except for 5 minutes of "Pokemon" or whatever is on American TV. Cartoons often don't even have plots. Disney? The older ones (the better ones) are just borrowed from classic stories. The new ones don't make any sense. An anime plot has a MESSAGE. Lots of philosophical meaning can be extracted from Japanese cartoons. They have enough emotional depth to make people cry.

4. The songs. Not much explanation there. If you compare an anime opening to a cartoon opening song, you're sure to understand.

There are probably 10 times more reasons than that, but I'm going to go ahead and sum it up. Anime is better than cartoons. If you think otherwise, you're probably thinking of, hmm... Pokemon? Yu-Gi-Oh? Dragonball Z? Give me a break. Let me list some shows that are actually fair examples of anime.

-Air
-Black lagoon
-Death Note
-Byousoku 5 Centimeters Per Second
-ALL Miyazaki things
-Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu
-Haibane Renmei
-Fullmetal Panic

Those are only a few.

Another Lady Innocent is a good example of anime art, even though it's hentai (I have not seen the full episodes, I don't watch hentai). I have seen little pieces of it that don't have adult content and the art has it all- good backgrounds, complex shading, fantastically smooth animation. So, watch at least one episode of an anime I named before judging Japanese animation as a whole.