To those saying that it’s okay to call To Be Hero X “anime” because the Chinese equivalent term “donghua” (动画) literally also means “animation” don’t get the point.
Would you call your English breakfast tea “chai” even though “chai” is just the Hindi word for tea? Or any bread “naan” even though naan also just means “bread”? Café au lait and café con leche both literally mean “coffee with milk” in their respective languages, but their traditional preparation method and taste is very different. There’s also American comics vs Filipino komiks.
But most of all, would you call your Japanese anime “cartoon” even though that’s the actual English word for animated shows?
So when you borrow a term from another language to describe one thing, you’re actually saying that that thing comes from a particular country or culture.
Calling To Be Hero X an “anime” is like saying it’s from Japan.
“Oh chill, Miya, it’s not that serious—” But it is.
It’s bad enough that a lot of people already think that the show is from Japan and don’t bother to watch it in the original audio, but it’s even worse when you see the sinophobic comments online about people’s resistance to the original version despite learning it is from China (insisting the jp dub is better even though they can’t understand Japanese).
Calling TBHX an anime would be acquiescing to the erasure of the Chinese background of the show and saying that it’s actually Japanese when it’s not. (And if you just pause for a second to think about it, that is such a fucked-up thing, considering what Japan did to China in WW2. But let’s not delve too deeply into that.)
“But some people call ATLA an anime even though it’s not from Japan—”
Yeah, but the USA-Japan relationship is very different from the Japan-China relationship. You cannot compare these two. I can go at length about the geopolitical implications, but to keep it simple, just think of it this way: Calling a donghua an anime would be similar to whitewashing.
But even without considering the “serious” context, TBHX animation isn’t even like that of a typical anime. Have you ever seen an anime that blends 3D and 2D animation so seamlessly and ambitiously like TBHX does?
3D animation is kinda a staple in donghua. There are so many great 3D donghua out there. Recently, the 3D donghua Nezha 2 even beat Inside Out and The Lion King for highest-grossing animated film of all time. And even before TBHX, there were already many other donghua that mix the 3D and 2D mediums (e.g. You Yao, No Doubt in Us, etc.).
So to say, TBHX animation style is distinctly Chinese. You cannot call it an anime.
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