Anime and manga, Art or not?

What is an art exactly? okay so I was wondering around the googleverse (like I always do when ever I’m bored) when I found this post on deviantArt entitled “Anime is NOT art”. okay, so you ‘ll probably say “who cares! it’s just his opinion.” but the thing is, if you read his post properly, he said that his personal opinion about anime is “NOT in any way art.” and that really disturbed me.

Well let’s talk about art first. What is Art? according to oxforddictionaries.com, Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. If that’s the case, even poems, novels, comic books, as well as TV Series and Movies can be considered art. according to wikipedia, Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities; this article focuses primarily on the visual arts, which includes the creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media.

Now, I know that anime has already been overused in deviantArt and I agree to some people that at least deviantArt should maintain the flow of artworks pertaining to anime as minimal as possible (after all deviant Art is an art site and there are a lot of artwork in the site other than anime.) but calling anime NOT AN ART is unacceptable.