Western Animation vs. Films that happen to be Animated

Looking in the forum for "Film", I noticed that one of the thread on Rango was locked on account of already having a thread in the Western Animation forum. Which got me thinking, when a work fits into both the category of Western Animation AND Film (AKA, an animated movie from the west), how are we suppose to determine where it should go in terms of forums or works categories on trope pages. Because I can think of more than one example on trope pages where some of them were listed in one category and others were listed in the the other. Possibly even both.

So is it out of the question to try to establish a guideline for this kind of thing?

It goes in Film. Preferably, you make a category for "Film-Animated".

I have run into conflicts like the before, like direct to DVD releases being Live-Action TV of Film. We need a page about this stuff.

Edit:No, it goes in Western Animation. It always has.

edited 15th Mar '11 5:33:13 PM by nuclearneo577

nuclearneo, the Film-Animated section was made specifically to address this question. Shorts and TV shows go in Western Animation, full-length and feature animations go in Film — Animated. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it's supposed to be.

edited 15th Mar '11 5:41:30 PM by Madrugada

Madrugada is 32 seconds faster than I am.

edited 15th Mar '11 5:42:09 PM by Micah

Ah, O.K.

But the main problem is that on a lot of pages, some people tend to put Disney examples in the Western Animation folder, instead of the Film-Animated folder. I think an example is on the page The Speechless.

EDIT: Another problem are films that are CGI and Stop-motioned, like the Wallace And Gromit example on the same page. They tend to be put in the Western Animation folder instead of the Film-Animated one.

All right, but how recently?

edited 16th Mar '11 3:55:24 PM by chihuahua0

Because Film - Animated is a category that was added relatively recently, a lot of pages don't have it. If it doesn't exist yet, such as on the page your linked, go ahead and add it, moving over the examples as appropriate.

plus some tropers may not know we even have this category, and continue adding animated films under the western animation as usual. I didn't know we had it until this thread.

Yeah, this is the first I've heard of the category.

I've seen it around for the last couple months, so it's not that new, but it is pretty rare.

What about theatrically-released anime? Should that still go with "Anime" (which is what usually happens now) or "Films - Animated"?

At a guess I'd say if it is a film like Spirited Away or along those lines, then it would go under animated films, but it it is part of a wider anime/manga franchise Rebuild Of Evangelion, Ghost In The Shell, etc it would be better to put it under the Anime and Manga listing otherwise we are going to get mixing up of examples from the film and other series, natter, general confusion and so on all scattered across the page. Personally I'm not sure we need to have a separate Animated Film section, seems like a bad idea to me. It was already more than covered under Western Animation with much less fuss. Someone Didn't Think This Through.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:46:05 PM by CrypticMirror

But would a stop-motion go under Western Animation?

We should make a Project.

Since stop-motion is a form of animation, I would say sure, it counts as animated.

I say that we remove the "Western Animation" and "Anime" categories, and remove the "Live Action" from "Live Action Film" and "Live Action TV". Will it lead to less respect by newspapers and Brittannica? Yes. But it's the only way to avoid being a hypocrite with our Animation Age Ghetto page.

Lumping anime in with other stuff means dissociating it from manga, which would suck. A lot.

The categories exist for the ease of finding a particular example on a page. Aside from the issue Micah raised, it would also make the Film and TV categories far too large.

I've always had a really hard time figuring out where to put Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland because of this very issue (the film in question is sort of anime because a lot of it was animated in Japan, but was jointly produced in the US as well). But I guess it would go in Film - Animation then.

@Micah:By similar logic, "Manga" would be put in with "Comic Books".

Spectacularly bad idea.

Manga and anime have far more to do with each other than Manga has to do with Western Comics and Anime has to do with Western Animation.

Why so separatist?

I'd say that it makes more sense to distinguish computer-animated things from hand-drawn things than it does to distinguish Japanese things from Western things. In the end, though, the most neutral thing we can do with the least roots in bigotry would be to simply distinguish things purely based on film versus television.

edited 17th Mar '11 11:43:15 AM by PDown

Part of the reason we categorize things the way that we do is so that people can find examples that they are most interested in.

You could make a legitimate claim that all Fan Fiction is Literature. However, it is safe to say that not all Literature fans are interested in Fan Fiction, and having Fan Fiction examples mixed with Literature examples would cause them frustration. On the other side of the coin, fans of Fan Fiction want to easily find examples related to it without slogging through large numbers of Literature examples.

The same applies for Comic Books vs. Newspaper Comics, Comic Books vs. Manga, Anime vs. Western Animation, Western Animation vs. Live Action TV, etc. The categories we create make it easier for the reader to find those works that are in their sphere of interest, and exclude works that are not.

It's not about bigotry at all. It's an acknowledgement that different people are interested in different things.

edited 17th Mar '11 11:47:54 AM by Meeble

Like it or not, Anime and Manga are established media categories distinct from their Western counterparts. We keep needing to emphasize here that we are not prescriptive. We aren't interested in what "should be" — we care about how things are classified now, in practice. It is far more important that people be able to find things they're looking for than that they get subjected to a course in political correctness.

edited 17th Mar '11 11:48:41 AM by Fighteer

The problem with that approach, is that anime and manga are joined at the hip, and separating them is nearly impossible at times. Anime are often adapted from manga and vice versa. There are some anime that follow the manga so closely that they are virtually identical. (Compare Season 1 of Ranma with the storylines in the manga, for example. Only one episode wasn't directly adapted from the manga.)

edited 17th Mar '11 11:47:55 AM by LadyMomus