My topic is very lighthearted compared to some of the ones I've heard over the past few days. I classify myself as an otaku which is, defined in western culture, which we are, as a person who enjoys solitary activities and is highly into Japanese culture, anime, games, cosplay, etc. This can be negative or positive depending upon how you look at it. So I am going to be presenting a topic that I’m very passionate about which is why anime is not a cartoon as I so often hear.

It’s true that in Japanese anime means cartoon but that’s only because there isn't a proper work in English that describes this particular style of animation. Anime has plots that range from very kiddish to highly mature context where as American cartoons tend to stick strictly to a single topic for children. There are adult cartoons but the plots are greatly predictable and/or only focus on one attraction such as sex, drinking, or violence. With anime you can have all of those in one with a deeper background.
In anime the character development is much more profound than in cartoons. Depending on what anime you chose you can almost know the characters personally because of the outrageous colors and styles of hair, the large or narrow colorful eyes, and exotic personalities. Cartoons can barely show enough emotion to keep the film rolling. Indeed there are cartoon characters that display more feelings than others but anime does it for most if not all their figures.

Another point that skeptics bring up is that they both “originate” from the Latin word for animation which is animare meaning “to fill with breath”. However anime comes from a deeper root of anima meaning “breath” or “soul” and cartoon comes from the word charta meaning “piece of papyrus” in which drawings were written down for writing or presentation of not words. So they both may share a connection along the way but not so often.

And now I come to my conclusion. As I hope you can tell I am very passionate about this particular subject and I will gladly debate with anyone about this. I love my anime and I enjoy some cartoon but I always remember to differentiate the two. Anime has its key points as does cartoons and I’m not saying that one is better than the other but that they are different and deserve to be known as two distinct styles of animation. I hope that I have made my point clear in saying that anime is not a cartoon.