So the mainstream misconception of anime is deeper rooted than plain ignorance. Granted the media and general public have touted the word 'anime' as something connotative of sex and violence, an error railed against by irate fans and enterprising anime distributors. But simply tossed about in the parlance of our times, the term anime remains malleable, subject to change as more examples of it pop up in afternoon cartoon blocks and at the local multiplex. Once indoctrinated into the official depositories of language, however, the word is less vulnerable to changes in the mainstream consciousness. (Perhaps it's a good thing that no one seems to use dictionaries any more.) And there it is, impressed into the pages (or, rather, included on the digitized sheets) of the Oxford English Dictionary: "sex and violence."

Defending anime against such a shortsighted definition would simply require drawing up a list of non-futuristic anime not characterized by sex and violence. But that wouldn't necessarily stab at the crux of the problem. The worse offence isn't that lexicographers misunderstand anime, but that they're myopia precludes them from describing Hollywood entertainment as characterized by sex and violence … in fact, entertainment as a whole from the dawn of time through to early last Tuesday has been characterized by sex and violence:

- Medea runs off with Jason, bopping him with the shifting wind, and then, when he's seduced by some buxom temptress virgin, she drowns her own children.

- "Top Gun" features hot shot pilots screwing in barroom bathrooms and then soaring into the sky to vaporize faceless Russian fighter planes without ever really understanding the dispute at hand.

- Pocahontas, thigh exposed by the slit up the side of her skirt, swoons over the tall blonde foreigner as an eminent violent clash between Euro trash and feathered hatted draws near.

- The World Wrestling Federation parades scantily clad vixens around a ring while thugs pummel each other to the erratic rhythms of a screaming mob of beered-up enthusiasts.

- Bugs Bunny dons a dress and lipstick to woo the befuddled Elmer Fudd into the shaft of a cannon.

By defining anime as characterized by sex and violence, the lexicographers of the American Heritage and Oxford English dictionaries infer that this does not characterize a host of other forms of mainstream entertainment.

Perhaps a more fitting, but admittedly incomplete, definition of anime should be:

Everything that one would find under the sun and moon … only drawn. And my crazy uncle Fred now agrees that anime is not communist, but very, very capitalist indeed.

Dog of Flanders © Pioneer Entertainment