“Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra” were not made in Japan, thus they are not considered to be anime. They were made by USA, thus they are animated series.
When the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series was first announced, Netflix heavily promoted the involvement of the original series' creators. In 2018, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko were signed on as showrunners and executive producers.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is perhaps Nickelodeon's most beloved property, and it's easy to see why. In an era where most children's entertainment consists of lighthearted, comedic slice-of-life shows like Spongebob Squarepants, Avatar did something daring ...
Though ATLA may look like an anime, feel like an anime, and have all the right themes for the genre, it just isn’t an anime. If this seems like a technicality, it’s because it is. But that doesn’t make it any less true. A good comparison is how champagne is only champagne because it comes from a certain region in France.
When watching Avatar The Last Airbender, it becomes very apparent that it took major inspiration from the extremely popular—Japanese Anime. Despite it having similar storytelling elements and art style; Avatar The Last Airbender is not an anime.
The Legend of Korra, also known as Avatar: The Legend of Korra, is an American anime-influenced animated television series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko for Nickelodeon.
The SpongeBob SquarePants Anime, simply referred to as SpongeBob SquarePants (Japanese: スポンジ・ボブ Hepburn: Suponji Bobu, pronounced Spongey Bobbu) is an ongoing Japanese anime television series produced by Neptune Studios to produce a quality fan series built around his and Narmak's ideas.
Anime refers to a specific style of cartoon produced or inspired by Japanese animation. Think of it this way: all anime shows are cartoons, but not all cartoons are anime. The art style associated with anime is very unique and recognizable.
Starting from Wikipedia, Anime is a Japanese term for both hand-drawn and computer-generated animation. Anime is a broad term that encompasses all animated works, regardless of style or country. Outside of Japan and in English, however, the term “anime” is colloquial for Japanese animation and refers solely to Japanese animation.
Naturally, the “is it an anime?” discussion may quickly devolve into a battle among the fanbase. However, fans of The Last Airbender and Korra cannot dispute that many parts of the program resemble those of Western animation. This creates a great deal of misunderstanding and is one of the reasons why many believe Avatar is anime.
Even though Avatar: The Last Airbender has many characteristics with anime, it is not an anime. It possesses all of the characteristics of a single: action and art, character development, and travel. Anime, on the other hand, is more than an art form; it is an industry.
Since Avatar: The Legend Of Korra was mostly an American production, it is not an anime. It is not drawn conventionally, and it was not produced in Japan to qualify as anime. Although it has elements of anime, the program was created in the Nickolodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California.
The art style of Avatar shows a heavy influence in the drawing and art style and the portrayal of various characters from anime. The way if the eyes of the character are squintier or tapering to the end, it signifies the evil character while good characters tend to have bigger and rounder eyes. Very close to and influenced by anime.
What is Anime? In Japan, the word ‘anime’ is anything that is animated Japanese or not. So, any media that involves hand drawing or computer animation is considered to be an anime in Japan. So, if you are Japanese, you will refer to this epic piece of art as an anime.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest, most complex, intriguing masterpieces made by the Nickelodeon Animation Studios . This seemingly straight forward story about a superhero not only gives us the childlike excitement of watching a cartoon but also has a number of tricks under its sleeves which it hides impeccably.
For the rest of the world, the word ‘anime’ is used as a colloquial term for any Japanese animated media. The grave, serious and often complex themes of the greyness of human kind, morality of war and a lot of other heavy themes depicted in this series are very similar to the ones depicted in a lots of anime.
Avatar on the other hand, does have a journey, a build up to the final battle and needs the commitment to actually be able to understand what is going on in the series as a whole with the introduction of a bunch or side characters and arcs that do come in as references later.
Though it does retain it’s episodic nature in some episodes like the Secret Tunnel or the Serpent ’s Pass . A lot of similarity to anime but also retains its cartoonic nature.
Well, Zuko is a character that starts of as a villain. He starts off as a character who is misguided, who only and only wants to be accepted. He is a character that has the one of best, if not THE best redemption arcs in the entirety of cartoon industry!