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” 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.
The setting of 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' is the Four Nations, fictional lands inspired by various moments in Chinese and Japanese history.
— Bryan Konietzko about the creation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Avatar: The Last Airbender, also known as Avatar: The Legend of Aang in some PAL regions, is an Emmy award-winning American animated television series that aired for three seasons on Nickelodeon and the Nicktoons Network.
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.
Anime-as-loanword is a somewhat fuzzy term, but generally refers specifically to the animation's origin, and not necessarily where it is produced. Much of what we would call anime is actually produced outside of Japan: it originates there, but the production is outsourced to studios in other countries.
From a Western perspective, 'anime' is a looser term, generally meaning animations from Japan, but sometimes it's applied to Western shows with the anime 'look', like RWBY or Avatar. There's no strict guideline on what qualifies as anime and what doesn't, and arguments arise frequently online by people with different opinions on this.
Likewise, a surprising amount of animation that we wouldn't call anime originates outside Japan, but the animation work is outsourced to a Japanese company.
So someone speaking Japanese would call The Promise "manga" because that's the Japanese word for such works, like Calvin & Hobbes or X-Men.
Depending who you ask, it's a style of animation, probably including shows such as Avatar and RWBY but not the Simpsons, or it just means cartoons from Japan, in which case Avatar is definitely excluded. Because of this ambiguity, there isn't a simple, accepted answer to your question. Share. Improve this answer.
In regards to the 'manga' of Avatar, it seems to be commonly referred to as a comic rather than a manga. But the format of this should have no bearing on the animated production. The other answers are being unnecessarily noncommittal. The meaning of the word anime has different connotations in the West and in Japan.
ThunderCats is an example in both its incarnations: few people outside of Japan would call it anime, but the animation work was done there (the 1980s TV series was done by Pacific Animation , while the recent series was done by Studio 4C).
To help save on budget due to more complex character designs (and save all that money for the epic fight scenes), many anime series will have long scenes of talking with a camera panning over a still frame. Avatar does this frequently and for good reason beyond budgetary constraints.
This. The Avatar State. This is the most anime thing ever. Also, you can totally see the inspiration the team got from Fullmetal Alchemist in the 2003 version. The Avatar State is used as a bending trump card of sorts, allowing the Avatar to tap into the knowledge of past Avatars and channel that energy into powerful attacks. It does drain the Avatar’s energy and despite the power associated with the Avatar State , leaves the Avatar pretty vulnerable.
0. Comment. Avatar: The Last Airbender is famous for popularizing the Western anime style. Created and run from Burbank, the show is a massive homage in art style and storytelling to popular anime.
There is a minor tribute to this idea in season 3 , when Aang ends up in a school in the Fire Nation. Aang had stolen a school uniform, after all, and was sent to class. He learned some incorrect history, joined the school band, and even got into a (bloodless) fight with the local popular jock.
Obviously, the art style lends itself to anime tropes. Avatar had the most realistic human designs for Nickelodeon by far. That’s not to discount other styles of 2D animation, but Western animation tends to have simplified designs that make complex animations easier to achieve with a standard budget.
While Avatar didn’t have this problem airing in any English-speaking nation, their lip flaps more closely resemble those of anime, animated in a fast, more up-and-down pattern that’s typical of anime. You notice it more when the show goes through a longer talking scene.
Granted, this is a pretty standard television technique, but every anime has a clip episode at some point in time to save on the budget. It’s always completely pointless and meant to fill out the season lineup, but they’re usually done in somewhat amusing ways. Like in a sports anime, the team may be interviewed and the characters involved might interject with witty banter.