In the last decade, anime movies and shows have successfully made their presence known with a great spike in viewership. Though most of us millennials and Gen Z understand what anime is (definitely not a kid’s cartoon), there is a majority that still considers anime nothing but a cartoon. Being an anime fan myself, it pains me a lot to make people understand the existence of anime vs cartoon debate.
Joining the race, here in this article, I’ll be talking about the key differentiating factors between anime and cartoons. Now, I am not saying that there are no similarities between the two; yes, there are a lot. But counting them as the same is like saying there’s no difference between an Xbox and a PS5 (apologies, Xbox fanboys).
Anime vs Cartoon: What’s the basic difference between the two
| Anime | Cartoon |
| Originated in Japan, it is a Japanese style of motion pictures. | Originated in the United States, could be dubbed 2D animation. |
| Revolves around crucial topics like horror, family, politics, sports, romance, and more | Pretty light hearted and usually deals with humorous content that can make people laugh their guts out. |
| In anime, the visuals are created even before the voice is integrated to the clips. | In cartoon, the audio is get done with first followed by the development of visuals. |
| Anime making is pretty identical to movie making. | Cartoon production is way different from what we get to see in the case of anime and movies. |
| The target audience of anime is young adults and teenagers. | The target audience of cartoons is children on a primary basis. |
Anime vs Cartoon: Other major differences
Apart from the above-mentioned basic differences between anime and cartoons, there are some important ones that you don’t want to sleep on. These differences include:
Sequence of episodes
Most of the anime shows out there have a watch order. For example, you cannot start watching the 10th episode after the first one if you want to understand the basics of character development and the story of the show.
However, the case is pretty different when it comes to cartoon. You can start from any episode because they are not related to one another. Though I’ll not say, there are no exceptions here. But still, a majority of cartoon shows have no connection between the episodes.
The depth in story
Anime shows have a story that is followed strictly and always gives a message at the end. The storytelling and character development in anime is nothing less than that of live-action movies. And this is the biggest reason why anime is made for teenagers and young adults who have the mind to understand it.
While watching anime, you are not going to stay constantly dominated by a single emotion. For example, Naruto is a show where you will get to see sad moments that can even make you cry, along with funny moments that will make you laugh your guts out. While in a cartoon, most of the time, the emotion that is more focused on is happiness. So, there is no depth in the story like the way you see in an anime.
Audience segmentation
I’ll let you understand this one with an example; let’s say there’s a five-year-old kid at your home, and you are going to make him watch Death Note (something on my wishlist as well). There is a high chance that he or she will get bored because of the inability to understand the story.
Nonetheless, the reaction will be pretty different when you show the same anime to a young adult or a teenager. This clearly shows that the anime has a pretty different target audience as compared to cartoons. In the case of cartoons, the same five-year-old kid is going to enjoy it. But an adult will most probably give up after a couple of episodes (unless it is Tom and Jerry).
Relationship with reality
Reality or realism is something that gets compromised in both cartoons and anime. But I can say without a doubt that anime is closer to reality as we get to see families, emotions, consequences, and a lot more things there.
Now, I am not saying that magic, beasts, dragons, and superpowers are real, but yes, these fantasies are something that could be associated with humans. Anime justifies that by showing characters, story, development, etc. For example, Superman, Wolverine, and Deadpool are fictional characters, but when connected to a human, we love all of them, right? Anime characters are similar to that like Naruto, Gojo, Itachi, etc.
Wrapping Up
The Anime vs Cartoon debate has been going on for a long time now. Though there are multiple differentiating factors between the two, still people mix both of them up. I know, as an anime fan, it can be disappointing, but there are times when any kind of debate related to the same is going on, instead of joining it, just plug in your earphones and start streaming the latest anime shows like Solo Leveling because there’s a lot of shows remaining in your watchlist.
