Ask John: Where Did the Word “Anime” Come From?

Question:
Where does the term “anime” come from? Is it derived from the French word for cartoons, which is also “anime,” or is it a shortened form of the English “animation”?

Answer:
As far as I’m aware, the word “anime” did not come from French language. The French word “animé” itself is an adjective meaning “animated,” “lively,” or “motivated.” Only when used in conjunction with the word “dessin” (drawing) does the French term “dessin animé” refer specifically to animated film. And the French term “animé” may very well originate in the English word “animate,” which is itself traced back to the Latin “animare” derivation of “anima,” the Latin word for “soul.” It seems unlikely that Japanese culture would have adopted and condensed the French term “dessin animé” into its own term “anime.”

The general argument states that the word “anime” evolved and came into general use in Japan after France discovered and began to translate anime and manga into French. This argument, though, isn’t valid because the term “anime” was used in Japan more than a decade before the French translations of Taiyo no Ko Esteban (Mysterious Cities of Gold) and Meitanti Holmes (Great Detective Holmes) in the early 1980s. The word “anime” can easily be traced back to Japanese usage in the early 1970s if not earlier while France doesn’t seem to have discovered anime until the early 1980s. I’ve never come across any reference to French-Japanese cross-cultural exchange in the anime realm prior to the Japanese introduction of the word, so it doesn’t seem very likely that Japan would have altered and adopted a French word to describe a Japanese art form more than 10 years before the French were ever aware of Japanese animation.

Japan has a great tradition of abbreviating and combining English words, such as “pasokon” (personal computer), “Famicom” (Nintendo’s Family Computer TV Game system), “sekuhara,” (sexual harassment), and “telecard” (telephone card), so it’s not difficult to imagine that the word “anime” is simply nothing more than a shortened version of the English word “animation.” This derivation gains further credence when taken in conjunction with the proven, verifiable fact that Osamu Tezuka, the acknowledged “father of anime” patterned his art style on the animation of Walt Disney and American animation, not French language or art. Given that the art of anime is rooted in American animation, it makes sense to also assume that word “anime” is likewise a derivation of English. So while it may seem “cultural” to assume that “anime” comes from French language, or may seem like a foundation for critique of the background of anime, I’ve never encountered any evidence to prove there’s any relationship whatsoever between the word “anime” and French language. However, there is identifiable, provable correlation between the word “anime” and the English word “animation.”

Thanks for special assistance go out to “aaronstc” and Brian Dunn.