Art & Creativity Quote by Lucy Liu

“Japanimation” lands like a time capsule: a slightly awkward, very 1990s/early-2000s catch-all that betrays how new anime still felt in mainstream American culture. Lucy Liu isn’t delivering a manifesto; she’s drawing a bright boundary for an audience that, back then, was still inclined to file animation under “kids” or “Saturday morning.” The phrase “whole different” does heavy lifting. It’s less taxonomy than permission slip: you can take this seriously, you can read it as cinema, you can let it be strange.

As an actress whose career has often hinged on moving between cultural codes, Liu’s intent is also defensive in a savvy way. She’s pre-empting dismissal. Anime isn’t just “cartoons but with big eyes”; it’s a system of aesthetics, pacing, and emotional logic that doesn’t apologize for tonal whiplash. It can be cute and brutal, meditative and melodramatic, all in the same breath. Calling it “a whole different art form” reframes that intensity as craft rather than excess.

The subtext is about translation and legitimacy: what happens when a Japanese popular medium arrives in the U.S. through dubs, fan subs, midnight programming blocks, and niche DVD shelves, then gets judged by the wrong rules. Liu’s line works because it’s plainspoken, not precious. It meets the skeptical listener where they are, then nudges them toward a more generous lens: don’t compare it to Disney; compare it to storytelling.