Cartoon and Anime are often used as synonyms of each other. People use the genres of both as the same because people don’t know about cartoon vs anime. There are only a few who know the true meaning of both and that there is a difference in both.
Anime aims to target a completely different age group of the population and cartoons aim differently.
Also, the content shown by anime is often of some adult age groups whereas cartoons show content that can be seen by both children and adults.
What is Anime?
The word “ANIME” has originally been derived from the Japanese word “Animation”, which means all forms and types of animated media. The Japanese animation style consists of colorful graphics and vibrant characters. Also, the themes that Anime cover is also much more mature than Cartoons.
Basically, the target audience of Anime is adults granting them more freedom to show mature themes and graphic contents and topics. This is why Anime fans usually do not like it when people compare Anime with Cartoon.
Mostly in the world Anime is considered to be a Japanese Cartoon, and Japan does not like being associated with Cartoons because Anime plays an integral and important part of the culture of Japanese people.
In current times Anime has become quite famous and popular and has managed to gather loyal hardcore support among the masses.
What is Cartoon?
A Cartoon is a type of illustration that is sometimes animated and tends to show realistic or semi-realistic styles.
The word Cartoon is used to intend something satire, humour or caricature .
It can also be explained as a form of expression, or communication, that refers to several forms of art, including humourous captioned illustrations.
Comparison Chart
| ANIME | CARTOON | |
| INTRODUCTION | Animes are Japanese animated productions and come in all formats, such as television series . | Cartoons are a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. With time passing by there has been changes in the definition and now in the modern age cartoons are considered to be typically realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire or humor. |
| VISUAL CHARACTERISTICS | Anime has distinct facial expressions and a wide variation in physical characteristics. The physical features/creatures are, on the whole, closer to reality when compared to cartoons. They have larger eyes and smaller mouths and make a cuter style. | Characters in cartoons usually have features that are not relative to the rest of the body parts and hence further from reality than anime. |
| DEFINITION AND TERM | According to English dictionary Anime is defined as “Japanese style of motion picture animation.” | Initially cartoon was used as a model or study for a painting but nowadays the term cartoon is associated with caricatures for humor and satire. |
| TOPICS AND THEMES | The main concentration of Anime is on life issues or things tied closer to human feelings and emotions and has more violent and sexual themes. | The basic aim of cartoons is to make people laugh and so it’s generally made upon themes that make the public laugh. The topics are more comical. |
| LENGTH | Anime is quite of medium time span. They tend to be 22-25 minutes in length per episode. The full action anime movies are most likely to go even far beyond this time. | Cartoons do not have a fixed time period. The time duration varies from cartoon to cartoon. The time period varies from 5 minutes to 1 hour. |
| ORIGIN | Anime originated from Japan. | Cartoons originated from the US. |
| ANIMATION TECHNIQUES | Anime often uses a form of limited animation that is common parts are reused between frames instead of drawing each frame each time. | Cartoons use traditional animation production processes of storyboarding, voice acting, cell production, etc. There is rarely re-use of frames. |
| EXAMPLES | Mecha, Shonen , Shoujo etc. | Mickey Mouse, Charlie Brown etc. |
| HISTORY | Anime has a very recent and new history when compared to cartoons. The first-ever full-length anime released was Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors’ in Japan in 1945, since then there has been no looking back | The first cartoon is said to be produced in 1499. The first-ever cartoon depicted the pope, the holy roman emperor, and the kings of France and England playing a game of cards since then, many humorists and satirists have been known and continued to produce cartoon strips for the general audience. |
Though the content shown in both Anime and Cartoons are different and aimed at the public of different and variant age groups but both are equally loved and liked by its respective audiences.
Where Anime is loved by mostly teens and adults, Cartoons are more famous in children.
But many adults also love to watch cartoons as it adds humor and fun in their lives.
Both have their own loving audiences and own a big part of entertainment.