We have a Western Animation thread for those series anyway.
And yeah, country of origin is what defines anime for me. Is it from Japan? Anime. Is it from somewhere else? Not-anime.
That's pretty racist.
Where an artist was born and what color their skin is has absolutely nothing to do with their choice of medium, subject or style. Yeah, yeah, we can start arguing cultural influences if you want, but people can and do choose to use styles from all over the globe regardless of birth.
I don't even think we are even having an argument right now or a debate. I am just saying how the debate goes and the person who was told "Sorry last air bender isn't anime" isn't even saying a single word of defense.
Or rather I think the debate alarm is a little sensitive.
Not sure what exactly you mean by that? I don't hang out on internet forums all day. I respond when I have time.
I just stick to the country-of-origin side, because the "anime is a style" side has too many caveats - both positive and negative.
If anime is a style separate to cartoons, then it would be logically possible for their to be Japanese cartoons which are not anime. Yet all Japanese cartoons are anime by definition regardless of style.
Uh...you're basically saying that Japanese artists are incapable of producing anything besides anime. I don't think you've thought your definition through very well.
Japanese cartoons are 99% anime because they are 99% the same visually. They simply don't seem to have the same wide range of visual variation that US/EU comics do. Could be the community-and-sameness culture, could just be that what we see outside the country is not as varied as what happens inside the country. But if a Japanese artist comes out with a Marvel-style comic, that's not anime.
All that aside, AtLA clearly has far more in common with anime than any US/EU comic. If the artists' race is your sole defining factor for art styles than I guess that's that but for anyone with a less tightly defined view of art, AtLA is clearly more anime than Marvel.
Art isn't always an easily labeled thing. That's one of the major points of art - pushing boundaries, investigating conventions, trying to find beauty. Trying to define an art style by the artists' race is kind of weird. Art is literally the opposite of widgets that can be easily and permanently classified.