Free Step Dodge

So the labeling on the game like Steam tags, PSN tags, and even Xbox tag has the game listed as Anime. Even some online documentations listed it as an Anime Fighter. I think I know exactly why despite DOA does have some aspect of realism.

Part of it is what the main casts do for example (teleporting, shooting a wave attack, Izuna Drop, people falling off cliffs and surviving etc.) which to be fair, are qualities to what most anime entails to. Especially any anime with heavy action. You also have things like cloning, fiends like Tengu, Genra, Zack doing blanka ball etc. This is all your typical anime/magic fantasy stuff so it's not inherently wrong.

Tekken is also listed as anime. Even VF has something of an anime concept (Dural) and also has some anime label tags. It's just another way of adding a fantasy term that just happens to be a Japanese product on top of it, so they just put the two together as "anime" to avoid the hassle of labeling later on.

Well, when I think of anime; DOA isn't really the first thing that comes to mind. I guess I understand why people would see it that way to a degree. But it's always been more realistic than anime IMO.

Well, going back to the old games pre-5, it is consider an anime. Soul Calibur can be considered as one too. Hell, majority of Capcom and SNK fighters are anime, especially Street Fighter, KOF and Darkstalkers.

Derock is right yeah, those games are perfect examples actually. The term is definitely more strongly tied to other games like BlazBlue, DBFZ, Melty Blood on pure definition.

DOA would probably have to be more grounded, removing the ninjas, no cloning, no juggling air combo, survive from a cliff, not surviving explosions etc. to have realism higher than anime, but then that takes away to what DOA is.

You could also say the anime portion is what separates DOA from other games since it has it's own unique anime stronghold with it.

For me at least, any animation that's animated in Japan is technically anime. Any animation made outside of Japan trying to emulate Japanese style is anime-style. Simple as that. Some Japanese-made animation is more "typically anime" than others (ranging from Lucky Star to Metal Gear Solid, for example), but ultimately they're all still anime. All Japanese FGs technically fall under anime in some form.

Outside of Japan it is kind of weird the way the "anime" shorthand is used when it comes to games, because it's inconsistent. GitS is considered to be an anime & is always called so whither its the movies or TV series, but when a Japanese game has that same kind of more realistic style people don't call it anime style. I mean, Yakuza, VF, MGS, SF, etc, they should all count as anime too right?

DOA's style was always and still is "anime" to me, it's just moved into a bit more realistic style since DOA5 (or maybe the tech boost just made it seem that way). Maybe it's because of all the variety of anime, old and new with all kinds of styles, that I've seen over the years, anime is less a visual style for me than the inherent Japanese-ness that's in the animation style, not just simply character designs.