Ask The Tropers

From what I know, in this site "Anime" refers to any type of animation made in Japan, not just the specific animated style. My Little Goat is in stop motion and is sorted in the Anime namespace. However, Pokémon: Paldean Winds is in the Web Animation namespace because it's located on web pages and didn't air on TV or a movie screen. As a comparison, Wallace & Gromit is sorted in the Western Animation namespace because it's made in the west, not because of its animation style.

The person who edited it is sort of correct (the term anime literally does refer to animation originating from Japan and it is seen as another medium there), but if we take the Wikipedia definition, it does refer to hand drawn or computer animation, not stop motion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime

At best, I'd argue it would fall under Asian Animation rather than Anime itself. There are also very distinctive attributes in Japanese animation, to the point where some works which DON'T originate in Japan (Totally Spies, Winx Club and Code Lyoko immediately spring to mind) are assumed to be anime even though they technically aren't (totally spies and code Lyoko are both French in origin, while Winx Club is Italian).

^ Problem is, I don't think Asian Animation is a proper namespace (BoBoiBoy is made in Malaysia but it's sorted in the Animation namespace), if that's what you're saying.

There's only the "Animation" namespace, which is used for everything not Western Animation (Eastern Europe, Asia outside Japan, Africa, South America and what have you) and not Anime. I took anime as "traditional animation or CGI animation made in Japan", hence my issue with stop motion.

I am also in agreement with that (there's a bunch of Taiko no tatsujin claymation shorts which are listed as anime too) - it also feels very weird to have "if it's from Japan, it's anime" as a blanket rule when a) there are distinctive attributes within Japanese anime compared to Western animation and b) if we're going to use "it's from this country" as the sole criteria for a namespace, then by that logic we should be having separate namespaces for various other forms of animation eg French animation and so forth.

^ "if it's from Japan, it's anime" is a fair criteria, since the medium is so varied within Japan. I also can't see why stop motion should be excluded. It's certainly less common than traditional/CG animation, but it still exists in the country and it seems unfair to exclude. Also not sure why anime having distinct attributes from Western Animation means here, like does anime have to look a certain way to "count" as anime?

If we're going to go "if it's from a specific country, it's this," regardless, why do we ONLY have a listing for anime, manhua and a couple of others in that case? Why not a separate listing for say, French animation? Or Australian animation?

Basically, relying solely on the country of origin for a separate listing is a very weak argument at best and very inconsistent as it only seems to apply to a few set things. To use a western example, we don't categorise Korean soap operas or telenovelas separately from Live Action TV series.

The discussion that preserved the Manhwa/ namespace is here. I, for the record, votes against it for similar reasons, but debating on it belongs to a new Wiki Talk thread and not ATR.

I agree that /Anime should include stop-motion.

As arbitrary as it is to define a namespace by country of origin, it's still less arbitrary than a namespace defined by a vague notion of "distinctive attributes compared to Western animation". Especially since there's no consensus about those supposed attributes.

^ Exactly, the idea of anime should be defined by its "distinctive attributes from western animation" feels rooted in older fandom discourse that just doesn't apply. There's plenty of anime out there (especially for young children and adults) that doesn't "look like anime", yet it's not like we don't call them anime.

There's this thread here for the discussion on where does this go: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13292464700A22187400&page=75

As for the argument over what defines anime, I will start a Wiki talk thread tomorrow my time (Aussie here) and we can look at it from there. But in the meantime, this is the actual page the OP is referring to: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Anime.

I'll point out Anime.Rilakkuma And Kaoru is another stop motion show under the anime namespace

As arbitrary as it is to define a namespace by country of origin, it's still less arbitrary than a namespace defined by a vague notion of "distinctive attributes compared to Western animation"

Yeah, basically this. As long as we have namespaces divided solely by country of origin, then... We should use them as appropriately. Incidentally it's why I think western OEL Manga should go in the Comic book/ namespace but I've given up on getting a consensus on that one one way or the other.