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The the Anime is often used to mean "Japanese Cartoons", which I think doesn't capture the idea at all. Certainly, few animated films made in "Hollywood" had any of the depth that most would associate with the style of true Anime. There is one that comes to my mind, however.

Anybody remember the movie "Heavy Metal"? It occurs to me that that film deserves to be considered as an "American Anime".

American Anime? Never heard of such thing... There are Anime styled cartoons but I wouldn't consider it an anime since it's made by americans. Anime is a short term for animation in Japan. Basically just Japanese animation by Japanese artists in general.

btw, I could've sworn I heard about Heavy Metal before. I can't remember it though. Guess I just heard of the name. If I saw a a picture of it, it would probably help me remember what it was.

I recall a few American made cartoons that were either parodies of anime, or done in an anime-style. DEXTER'S LAB had a sweet parody of SPEED RACER, & an Adult Swim program, I forgot the name, showed big-time panchira.

As Tailz alluded to, the term "anime" in it's original form is actually meant to refer to animation as a whole. In Japan, when they say "anime", it could mean American cartoons, or it could mean Japanese cartoons. To my knowledge, most other countries use the term "anime" to refer to just Japanese cartoons or animation.

So you're not entirely incorrect in thinking that the term "anime" is misused outside of Japan. In Japan, the film Heavy Metal would be considered "anime".

However, in my opinion, I don't think it looks like Japanese animation, or anime in the non-Japanese sense of the word, but more like something Don Bluth would do or something akin to Super Friends.

When I think of American anime, I think of shows that are talked about in this article on Wikipedia, such as Teen Titans, Avatar - The Last Airbender, or The Boondocks.

Anime used by Japanese simply means 'animation' period. It doesn't matter where the origin or who did it. Disney is anime, Don Bluth is anime, Samurai Jack? ANIME.

However fans of Japanese animation as an artform are a little more... passionate about the term and have come to this general consensus of what an 'anime' is; it is an animation created by Japanese, in Japan for Japanese.

Most of American or Western animation in general with the exception of Disney are animated in Japanese studios (such as Batman the Animated series) or animated in South Korea (such as Samurai Jack and Teen Titans) while they were storyboarded here.

So this thread can be open for interpretation depending on who you ask.

For me as a person that once studied animation I define more or less all animations as the same general, although anime oftentimes runs at a slower frame rate than Western animation and usually has a completely different color pallet. Though that has changed slightly with Japan adopting more gritty color pallets recently.