For most of its history, to be classified as anime, a work had to be made in Japan. The term didn’t describe a specific genre or a general aesthetic, but rather the national industry with its own production systems, artistic traditions, and cultural context.
That understanding has held for decades, including here at Cartoon Brew, where it is literally written into our editorial guidelines. Plenty of Western productions have borrowed visual ideas from anime, sometimes heavily, and the term “anime-inspired” has become the default way to describe them. Think Blue Eye Samurai, Castlevania, or Disney’s upcoming Dragon Striker. But those productions were still viewed as Western animation influenced by Japanese works rather than anime itself.
Over the last several years, however, that consensus has started to erode, especially among younger fans. Now it has even cracked into one of Japan’s largest studios.
Speaking to Variety at the Cannes Film Festival while promoting Toei Animation’s upcoming feature Monkey Quest (heading to Annecy for a Work in Progress presentation next month), studio general manager Asama Yosuke said: “The era when anime was something made only by Japanese people is over. From now on, we aim to create entertainment works rooted in local cultures together with creators from around the world.”
Coming from an executive at a smaller studio, the remark might have gone unnoticed. Coming from Toei Animation, it lands differently.
Toei is one of the foundational companies in anime history. This is the studio behind Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, One Piece, and Digimon. For many international viewers, Toei titles were their introduction to anime. The company’s productions shaped generations of artists, fans, and filmmakers worldwide.
So when a senior Toei executive openly suggests anime is no longer exclusively Japanese, it feels less like marketing rhetoric and more like a recognition that the industry itself may be changing its self-definition.
For now, at least, we won’t be updating our editorial guidelines here at Cartoon Brew and will continue to require that anything we label as anime be Japanese in origin, which has long been the industry’s widely accepted definition of the term. But if even major Japanese studios begin moving away from that definition themselves, the conversation may not stay settled for much longer.
