I think most of the anime community agrees on more or less MAL’s definition: “An animated work created in Japan for the Japanese market”.
Sure, there’s animation studios that outsource a lot, but it’s usually just inbetweens, rarely Key Animation. Directors, screenwriters and other positions are almost always Japanese.
Has exceptions, where some anime like Cyberpunk Edgerunners is primarily designed for westerners, and published on a western companies streaming service(netflix). Is Edgerunners not anime?. Like i said, there are always exceptions to more strict definitions that arent the japanese one. Keep in mind, thr average japanese person hasnt even remotely played or heard of cyberpunk 2077. Japans pc business isa growing market by still severely smaller than other asian countries, and home console adoption in japan is low. (And abysmally low if you count xbox in japan) Cp2077 is also not on the switch.
Then you have examples that are not as favorable in japan and run because they are extremely popular outside of japan like Vinland Saga. Is Vinland not anime because the target audience is mostly people outside of japan at this point.
CP2077 even won GOTY in IGN Japan. And yes, Pc and Xbox aren’t that common, but PS4 is extremely widespread. It was definitely a success in Japan as well.
And both Edgerunners and Vinland Saga launched with a Japanese Dub on Japanese platforms. They might’ve bet more on the oversea market to get the budget back, but they were still made as products to be watched in Japan, unlike Batman, My Last Day or other “borderline” cases.
Ps4 adoption in japan is lower than the vita(around the time where marketing was relevant) vita is at 6m sales, ps4 is at 9m now, but at the time of marketing, was about the same.
Let alone, the experience of 2077 on the base ps4/xbox to be abysmal. The practical size of the userbase that would be even able to play the game is extremely low.
Theres a HUGE reason why the head of playstation decisions is from the American branch and not the japanese one.
