On The Misnomering And Compounding Of Anime And Cartoons Into A Single Genre

As children, most of us either did not watch cartoons at all, or the cartoons we watched were worlds of talking sponges, smiling cars, and exaggerated faces with grasping arms. It is a multigenerational one-liner we still sing when someone asks about the fellow who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

Indeed, many of our childhood memories of cartoons involve after-school sessions of The Incredibles and Supa Strikas, as well as weekend mornings with Dora the Explorer and Tom and Jerry. They made for laughter-filled rooms and stories that evaporated as soon as the episode ended. Cartoons marked the carefree, shallow phase of childhood.

And so, it becomes conveniently easy to lump all animated art into the broad classification of “cartoons.” When someone insists, “It’s not a cartoon, it’s anime,” the response often mirrors an atheist's sarcastic dismissiveness of saying, “It’s not a fairy tale; it’s a Bible story.”

However, in classifying cartoons and anime, one must look beyond surface animation and examine origin, cultural relevance, thematic depth, and audience orientation. To assert that anime is merely cartoon because both are animated is an erroneous simplification. It is akin to calling African legends a random collection of ancient oral literature.

The Origin Of Animated Arts

Cartoons, as traditionally conceived and globally perceived, are largely Western animated tools designed for comedic relief, satire, and children’s entertainment. Their evolution in the early twentieth century emphasized simplicity, vibrance, exaggerated motion, and accessible humor.

Anime — derived from the Japanese pronunciation animeshon — is a distinct Japanese art form and literary medium shaped by historical events, societal values, and the collective imagination of the Japanese people. Drawing heavily from manga, kabuki theatre, and ukiyo-e woodblock prints, anime inherits themes of national identity, suffering, philosophy, and existential inquiry, rather than prioritizing humour or episodic amusement.

To call anime “cartoon” is to confine works like Attack on Titan and Astro Boy into the same conceptual room as SpongeBob SquarePants or Teen Titans Go. This reductive act is comparable to calling seppuku mere suicide simply because both end in death -an assertion that collapses deep cultural, philosophical, and historical distinctions into crude similarity. Anime has long held a non-comedic reputation for confronting mature themes such as technology, identity, and human society.

Purpose And Thematic Depth

While cartoons typically explore short, episodic humour, moral fables, and reassuring happy endings, anime frequently confronts mature and unsettling themes.

SpongeBob may be squashed into a steaming paste, his square pants riddled with holes, in one episode; only to return perfectly cubic when the next episode begins. No matter how close Tom comes to eating Jerry, he inevitably fails, and the chase resumes anew. Cartoons may develop emotional resonance or moral dilemmas, but a defining feature remains their discontinuous episodic exhilaration and tonal lightness.

Anime, in contrast, unfolds as long-form narration with enduring plot progression. Death Note unveils the gradual transformation of Light Yagami from an idealistic student into a god-complex tyrant. Monster forces the viewer to walk through each episode with evil not as a force to be defeated, but as a companion whose philosophy must be reasoned with.

Anime narratives are layered, slow-burning, and psychologically demanding, addressing questions of identity, morality, mortality, power, trauma, and meaning. In cartoons, heroes are clearly defined as the plot unfolds. In anime, one often discovers that everyone (and no one) is a hero. At the conclusion of an anime, the viewer is not merely entertained, but compelled to reflect, sometimes uncomfortably, on existential truths.

The pressing question at the end of Naruto is not who was right or wrong, but whether peace can ever be willingly adopted by all mankind. It proposes the philosophical stance that progression for one people often means repression for another, and that most pursuits of peace and justice arise from selfish attempts to avenge personal pain — thus sustaining an endless cycle of hatred and war.

This is not the typical cartoon plot.

Cultural And Global Perception

Cartoons are branded as “kid stuff.” When anime is forced into that same category, it inherits an undeserved stigma. This mislabelling is precisely why the distinction matters. Anime’s target audience and its willingness to engage themes deemed too complex, disturbing, or inappropriate for children place it beyond the traditional cartoon framework. Even adult cartoons such as The Simpsons and Family Guy retain humour as priority and preserve shallow narrative consequences.

Anime, however, confronts war trauma (Grave of the Fireflies), sexual violence (Berserk), and existential despair (Serial Experiments Lain). This is why a parent may disapprove of a child watching Berserk while remaining completely comfortable with Mickey Mouse.

As a result, anime is rightly respected in many cultures as a serious artistic representation of real human conditions, not merely a diversionary spectacle.

Industry Structure And Creative Control

The anime industry functions less as a mass-market entertainment machine and more as an auteur-driven audiovisual adaptation ecosystem. Unlike Western cartoon industries — where production companies dominate creative direction, rights, and branding — anime places significant authority in the hands of manga artists, original creators, and directors.

Anime allows authors to imprint personal philosophy onto their work, whereas cartoons, being merchandise-driven must constantly negotiate corporate image, public acceptance, and commercial safety, often at the expense of creative depth.

Figures such as Satoshi Kon, Kentaro Miura, Hayao Miyazaki, Akira Toriyama, Masashi Kishimoto, and Eiichiro Oda have shaped global thought through philosophies embedded within their creations. Anecdotally, while the world steers the creativity of cartoons, the creativity of anime has often steered the world.

The relationship between manga, anime studios, and production committees fosters narrative depth rather than purely innovative imagery. This structural distinction further separates anime from the conventional cartoon industry in both intent and execution.

In Conclusion

Respecting artistic integrity requires resisting lazy classifications that erase fundamental distinctions. Calling anime “cartoon” sacrifices decades of unique cultural, historical, and philosophical storytelling while diminishing the complexity of a multibillion-dollar global industry.

Anime and cartoons may share the fact that they are drawn but that is where the similarity ends. Just as hymns differ from hip-hop despite both carrying melody and rhythm, anime differs from cartoons in purpose, depth, and soul.

To make anime a subset of cartoons, or to classify both under any genre other than animation, is not simplification; it is an erroneous assertion that anime exists merely as a tool for child amusement.

Abdulrahmon Quareeb