Ask John: Should “Anime” be Capitalized?

Question:
I read your response to the question about “Japanimation.” I too shudder at the sound of the phrase, but I was curious on your take with the word “Anime.” Very few people capitalize the word when using it in a sentence. Don’t you feel that due to it’s characterizing demeanor the word deserves to be capitalized? I mean come on, it describes an entire genre of animation, almost like a trademark if you will. I noticed your lack of capitalizing the word in your rebuttals, actually in the entire AnimeNation website.

Answer:
Speaking as a former part-time college English teacher and someone with a Masters degree in English, it bother me very much to see the word “anime” capitalized because there is no proper grammatical reason for “anime” to be capitalized. It’s true that the term “anime” does refer to an entire genre, but terms like “romance,” “horror,” “action,” and “suspense” also categorize genres, and are not capitalized. The fact that the word “anime” refers to a genre means that it is a descriptive, categorical term, but not a proper name. Similar to the way “Pinto” may be capitalized as the proper name of a type of car, the word “car” itself is not capitalized. The name “Akira” or “Slayers” for example should be capitalized, but the genre “anime” should not. I appreciate the fact that many anime fans do capitalize the “A” in “anime,” as a sign of respect, but this seriously conflicts with my personal training as an English major and my valuation of proper, academic English grammar.