There doesn’t seem to be anything that should be confusing about what he is saying—visual style, acting, and plot are totally seperable things in any story. You could take the exact same audio track and animate the visuals to match the style of South Park, Bob’s Burgers, Beauty and the Beast, or something by Don Hertzfeldt. Crayon Shin-chan doesn’t look like One Piece, which doesn’t look like the Studio Ghibli style, which doesn’t look like the Satoshi Kon style. But any one of them could be reanimated in any other style.
No.
Anime is a style. Like any other such as horror or sci-fi. If you remove elements of that style it is no longer that thing and is something else. What makes sci-fi sci-fi? Or comedy comedy? What parts can you lift out and still call them sci-fi or comedy?
@mordecaiB is trying to lift out distinctive components of what defines anime and still call it “anime”.
No, it is not. It is a medium. Here are 6 distinctive styles of anime:
There is even the occasional anime that is entirely CGI:
Other examples on anime styles:
Anime (Japanese: アニメ, IPA: [aɲime] (About this soundlisten)) is hand-drawn and computer animation originating from Japan. In Japan and in Japanese, anime (a term derived from the English word animation) describes all animated works, regardless of style or origin. However, outside of Japan and in English, anime is colloquial for Japanese animation and refers specifically to animation produced in Japan.[1] Animation produced outside of Japan with similar style to Japanese animation is referred to as anime-influenced animation.
(From Wikipedia)
From Wikipedia (bolding mine):
The earliest commercial Japanese animations date to 1917. A characteristic art style emerged in the 1960s with the works of cartoonist Osamu Tezuka and spread in following decades, developing a large domestic audience. Anime is distributed theatrically, through television broadcasts, directly to home media, and over the Internet. In addition to original works, anime are often adaptations of Japanese comics (manga), light novels, or video games. It is classified into numerous genres targeting various broad and niche audiences. SOURCE
What are you left with if you remove the art and/or animation?
Also, absolutely a style and not a medium.
Fine. All anime looks alike. You stick with that.
Anime is a style. No doubt there.
A style does not mean all things of the same style look alike. Not sure where you got that notion.
From the definition of “style”.
Your definition seems unique to you.
Essential Meaning of style
1 : a particular way in which something is done, created, or performed
2 : a particular form or design of something
SOURCE: Merriam-Webster
And your idea of what constitutes the same style is incredibly broad and more than just a little insulting. If you aren’t willing to call “all animation made in America” a single style, then you shouldn’t do it for Japan, either.
What are you on about?
Cowboy Bebop was anime.
Netflix live action Cowboy Bebop was completely based on the anime.
Does anyone disagree with the above?
And that in fact isn’t even relevant to the idea that it is perfectly legitimate to say that you like the story but not the animation style, or the voice acting, or any other seperable element. Is someone allowed to wish Frozen was hand-drawn cel-animated in your opinion? Or is Frozen so intrinsically linked to being CGI that that is an invalid opinion?
You (general “you”) can like this or that but you cannot say you like “anime” unless you buy into the whole aesthetic that is anime.
“Anime” is a cohesive style.
Saying you like anime but not the art and animation is akin to saying you like sushi but not the fish or rice.
But do you not find it valid to say “I might like the premise or the writing, but find the visual style offputting enough that I’m unwilling to watch it.”? That seems entirely cromulent to me. If you took the exact same story and completly reanimated it in a radically different style, it would still be the exact same story.
Take an example from comics. New Mutants used to change artists and art styles at the drop of a hat. For example, the top two panels are from issue 24 and the bottom two are from issue 61. These are the same two characters.
The story in each issue would have been exactly the same even if you swapped artists on the two, replaced them with one of the other artists from the series, or asked an 8-year old to do it entirely in stick figures. But it is okay to like one style and hate others, even if you like the story. (I always hated the art of the less realstic styled issues.)
The dialog was easily my least favourite part about this series.
I was expecting a lot more witty dialogue. I mean, come on, John Cho is well equipped to handle that kind of stuff. He was totally underused in this show. Instead, they beat us over the head with how much he missed the love of his life by having too many scenes of him staring into the distance while trying to look sad.
Thinking about it now, what was the point to the whole doll storyline? The wife and daughter were immediately dropped so the only outcome was they got a dog. If they really needed the dog there had to be a better way to introduce it than the unfunny and uninteresting doll storyline over 2 or 3 episodes.
.
Not sure what you mean; they appeared in a number of episodes.
Hmm, I only remember them from when he brought the dog for her birthday. I only made it thru six episodes, so maybe I missed them in the latter ones. Or I’m getting senile. 
Side quest, and to show that nothing that they do ever works out right for them. I think it would have been better had they given her the “slightly worn” doll, and maybe the kid would have appreciated it more for its uniqueness and character, unlike all her friends whose dolls all look exactly the same and did not find itself in the middle of a shootout.
That did bother me more than a bit. You don’t give a dog to someone without making sure that it is going to a place where it will be welcome and cared for. You certainly don’t give a dog to your kid if you haven’t cleared it with their guardian first.
They also changed dogs’ status. In the anime, they were fairly cheap, to where no one wanted to buy a Welsh Pembroke Corgi, and that’s how it ended up in their hands. In this version, they are rare and very expensive, as well as apparently very expensive to own. I’m not sure what that added to the story.
Ein himself is, of course, special, but no one seems to ever know that. In the anime, Ed was about the only one that recognized his abilities and intelligence.
I’ve only gotten through about half the season, I don’t have a whole lot of discretionary time, and have other things that have a higher priority on it. It’s not a bad show, and it does have its moments, but it’s certainly not a great show, and barely clears the bar at being “good”.
Now that it’s been canceled, I have a bit less interest in finishing it. I probably will at some point, but between that, and the negative reviews that I see here and other places, it’s not going to be something I make time for.
Ha, no. Not even.
That’s a particular real life peeve of mine. Situations like that often end up with a dog either being maltreated or shoved into an overfull shelter. We are having a lot of problems here with people that bought a dog or cat during early covid days and are just overwhelming the shelters with them now that they are going back to work or switching jobs.
Same for me. I have so little time to actually watch all the shows on my list, I usually won’t watch 6 episodes before I give it up. I really wanted to like this show, I just wasn’t enjoying it enough to spend any more time on it.