Anime - Meaning in Japanese
Saturday, August 6, 2016
We all love anime アニメ, right? Anime is the best. Truly the greatest of all modern arts. Both you and me know this. If you don't, then, well, I don't know what you're doing in this blog. Anime is good and all, but... what does the word anime mean in Japanese? Is it really the anime we know and love? Well, not really.
In Japanese, anime is exactly what you feared it would be: an abbreviation of animeshon アニメション, which is just a Japanese way to say the English word "animation." That is, the Japanese word anime is indirectly loaned from the English word "animation" and mean the exactly same thing.
To make matters worse, those western cartoons you watch? Like Spongebob Squarepants which are totally not up par with the glorious nippon anime? They are called anime too.
Yeah. That settles it.
Cartoons are anime, deal with it.
In Japanese, anime is exactly what you feared it would be: an abbreviation of animeshon アニメション, which is just a Japanese way to say the English word "animation." That is, the Japanese word anime is indirectly loaned from the English word "animation" and mean the exactly same thing.
To make matters worse, those western cartoons you watch? Like Spongebob Squarepants which are totally not up par with the glorious nippon anime? They are called anime too.
Yeah. That settles it.
Cartoons are anime, deal with it.
But wait! There is more!
So, I'm sure you're feeling really off balance and seeing the floor disappear under your feet as you entertain the thought that maybe, perhaps, cartoons are also anime, but fear not. The best thing to make you forget about how bad your day is right now is showing how worse it gets.
Not only are cartoons anime, but also, anime are other things which aren't even cartoons. Take a look at the anime below, for example.
(source: blog wasima no nikki wasimaの日記)
See that cartoon in the gif? The anime in the gif? The animated drawing in the gif? The animated dog? Well. Then you're missing the point.
It's an animated gif, or GIF anime, or even GIFアニメ!!!
Yeah. I'm for real.
Don't need to trust me, just check out hashtag GIFアニメ on Twitter to see the truth nobody wants you to see!
See that cartoon in the gif? The anime in the gif? The animated drawing in the gif? The animated dog? Well. Then you're missing the point.
It's an animated gif, or GIF anime, or even GIFアニメ!!!
Yeah. I'm for real.
Don't need to trust me, just check out hashtag GIFアニメ on Twitter to see the truth nobody wants you to see!
Anime vs. Animeshon
Like I said before, anime is short for animeshon, but does anybody even say animeshon? It's longer, plus we got anime already, so why bother with that word?
Some people do, in fact, say animeshon. And they are very close to the anime you knew about. In fact, they are the industry that makes the anime you knew about!
For example, Toei Animeshon 東映アニメーション, who's behind Sailor Moon and Yu-Gi-Oh 遊戯王, use the word animeshon for their own name instead of anime. I think we can conclude that, business-wise, it's animeshon, but generally speaking, anything "animated" is just anime.