-Rideback* NOTE: Funimation, the company that made it
Importnant note: Funimation don't actually
make any shows, they just bid for the US broadcast rights and dub the shows. Madhouse is the studio that made Rideback.
It *could* be argued that by dubbing a show that Funimation are partly "making" a show, but I don't think we'd accept that e.g. a studio that dubbed Star Wars into Chinese "made" Star Wars, even partially, so I think we have to say that localizing a show for a particular country isn't quite enough to list a company as one of the producers of that show.
I do believe neither Avatar The Last Airbender nor the Legend of Korra are actual anime.
That is debated, but for the sake of clarity I put them up.
Fine, though anime specifically means cartoons from Japan, and only that. The reason is thus: any other definition opens up a HUGE can of worms.
For a definition to "work" it needs to be simple, clear and objective. Avatar TLA has: art style and narrative, similar to A FEW anime. A few popular long-running ones like DragonBall or Naruto. But those are the minority of actual Japanese anime. They're mainly notable for being popular in America.
We could say that a particular art style, fantasy settings, martial arts battles, and a flowing narrative "define" anime. But that definition excludes many, many shows from Japan we already call anime. Hell, the bulk of Japanese anime are shows set in the modern world which deal with everyday life. Slice of Life, school and romantic comedy anime vastly outnumber the martial arts fantasy shows.
We could then say "cartoons like Avatar OR from Japan are anime" but then we're making this
huge judgement - really unwarranted - of what are the "true" anime from Japan, and the rest "just happen" to be anime because they are from Japan. Who are we to say which type of Japanese anime are the "true" anime style and which Just happen to fall into that category by virtue of being Japanese? The Japanese certainly make no such distinction.
If we come up with a "style" based definition for the term "anime" we need to be comfortable with the idea that this definition could theoretically exclude some shows from Japan as "not anime enough". Since we're not comfortable with doing that, anime should be used only to refer to shows from Japan, and not shows with a plot that have fantasy adventures and battles, even if they got the idea from Japan.