There are many reasons why anime has become increasingly popular. With more anime available to the American audience, people are discovering and falling in love with anime. Anime is very diverse and stretches the boundaries of the logical world with unique characters and stories.
While anime is popularly perceived to be a uniquely Japanese art form, it has its roots in American animation of the early 20th century. Even today, some forty-six years after Ozamu Tezuka pioneered the first Japanese animated TV series, Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), American culture has a heavy influence on the medium.
Some claim the word comes from French, but the point remains the same; “anime” means “animation.” In Japan, little, if any, distinction is made between Japanese animation and animation from abroad.
Attitudes to anime movies among adults the United States as of January 2020, by ethnicityCharacteristicVery favorableHeard of, no opinionWhite9%19%Hispanic16%17%African American15%16%Other22%16%Feb 4, 2020
Other than the fact that anime was targeted at children before, Americans also had issues with how female characters are made in anime. They believe that women are hypersexualized, and they didn't want their children to be exposed to sexualized cartoons.
Astro Boy, created by Osamu Tezuka, premiered on Fuji TV on January 1, 1963. It became the first anime shown widely to Western audiences, especially to those in the United States, becoming relatively popular and influencing U.S. popular culture, with American companies acquiring various titles from Japanese producers.
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.
Ultimately, the answer depends on what dictionary you're looking at, but if separate the actual meaning of the word from the use, then yes, a work can be called anime even if it wasn't made in Japan.
Donghua, sometimes called "Chinese anime," has been steadily growing in recent years and is poised to become the next big thing in animation. Chinese anime, as the name suggests, refers to animations that have been created in China or are Chinese adaptations of Manhua (Chinese manga), and are often called Donghua.
Japan. Japan is the orgin of anime even though people from Western countries watch it more than Japan.
A 2020 survey conducted in the United States found that anime movies were generally more popular among men than women, with 13 percent of male respondents reporting that they found anime to be very favorable, compared to nine percent of women who said the same.
It's more popular in Japan by a country mile, made by the Japanese for the Japanese. That's the way most Japanese things work, they're very focussed on what their own country's consumers want first, everyone else comes a very distant second.