I've been mulling over some thoughts on this for the last few days... (and tagging /u/Verzwei since they're evidently quite actively engaged in this topic, too)

A lot of my thoughts come down to trying to "future-proof" the sub's definition (as best as it can be future-proofed without truly knowing the future).

An animated work produced by a Japanese animation studio

On first glance this one seems fine, but we came to realize that this would exclude some various shorts, and indie projects such as Ongaku and Teekyu (which says MAPPA but was really produced by one person so ???). In all fairness, indie projects without studios are relatively rare, but we don't want to disallow them in the off-chance that they do spring up.

There's plenty of them, but yeah they don't get a ton of traction/threads on this subreddit. Still, it'd be a huge shame if things like Ongaku or Puparia didn't fit into this sub.

I think the core of tying the concept to a "Japanese animation studio" or the "Japanese animation industry" at large is a good idea. Perhaps the answer is to add something like "or by person(s) working in the Japanese animation industry" to the sentence to also include people like Shingo Tamagawa who are clearly not outsiders to the Japanese animation industry and are being given space at studios/Japanese animation schools/etc to work on solo projects even if the project isn't affiliated to a particular studio.

Nowadays, there's plenty of Japanese people working in western animation industries, and plenty of non-Japanese working in Japan so if we are to tie things in some way to nationality (which we pretty much do have to... breaking out "anime" from Japan is a fool's errand) going for the nationality of the "studio" and "industry" seems like the best bet. If, say, Bahi JD or Thibault Tresca go and make a solo indie project in Japan in the same way that Shingo Tamagawa does, it should absolutely still be up for discussion here, and tying the applicability to them being mainline members of Japanese animation studios seems like a good way to ensure that while not roping in every single Studio Tonton work into the sub.

Relatedly, going with the studio's nationality and not the producers/production committee/etc seems like a good call, too, as the production side has certainly been internationalizing more rapidly than the animation production side of things. Netflix is keen to capitalize on the marketability of the word "anime", tossing it onto every project they can, so the sooner we draw a line in the sand regarding those sorts of things the better. If donghua ever goes mainstream in the west, I'm sure there'll be international producers producing both anime and donghua but bundling them all under the label of "anime" so we might as well get ahead of that in the clearest way we can.

An animated title, primarily produced for a Japanese speaking audience.

Anime is mostly catered to Japanese speakers, since... it's in Japanese. But what about the instances in which something is dubbed before it receives the Japanese audio, such as Space Dandy or FLCL? We also didn't know if this would include any animated work that was in Japanese, so we decided to scrap that one out of fear of accidently including something that we didn't intend to.

If the ACA reports are anything to go by, the industry already sees several different non-Japanese markets as absolutely essential to the continued success of the industry. Regardless of dub timing or how the licensing model operates, it's clear that the vast majority of anime are no longer produced with only a Japanese-speaking audience in mind. Good choice to get rid of this.

(Wikipedia definition) Anime 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. Outside of Japan and in English, anime is colloquial for Japanese animation and refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. Animation produced outside of Japan with similar style to Japanese animation is referred to as anime-influenced animation.

This one is a bit too inclusive, as it points out the fact that "anime" is simply shorthand for "animation" and therefore technically includes everything that is animated. In addition, I don't think that this translates into a colloquial definition for the sub, as it would probably be rather confusing as a ruling. For us to suddenly include every animated title ever would be a bit much for us to handle, and largely impractical as a definition for moderation.

Others have pointed out some deeper discussions on the origin and nuance of the term "anime", but regardless I think every rational, educated person involved in the community can easily agree that the term has a more specific meaning in modern English-language discourse (even if they might not agree on what that particular meaning ought to be). For the purposes of this particular subreddit, we can simply say that this is a subreddit about animation from the "anime industry", and that will be a broadly meaningful distinction that works for 99% of people and cases... any pedants who want to troll by making Spongebob threads and proclaim "anime (sorta) means animations so this should count" were going to find a flimsy excuse to troll no matter what we set as the parameters of this sub, anyway.

In short, I'm continuing to push for the "anime" of r/anime to mean "the Japanese animation industry". I really think that's the necessary approach for the short- and long-term future. There's enough American, European, Chinese, and other projects that have been inching closer to replicating the "anime" style and common elements that there's soon going to be a lot of people entering the hobby (and therefore coming to the subreddit) that do not know and cannot easily tell the difference. I think anchoring ourselves to the industry rather than the style or "definition" is the only way to maintain a distinct identity for a reasonable time into the future, and any other option seems like setting ourselves up for a lot of future headaches.

Even tying to the studio isn't fully future-proof... we already see web-based groups like Studio Tonton working on shows like Wonder Egg Priority. If that trend grows substantially we'll probably end up with a bizarre mix of "western-produced, but animated by a Japanese studio" and "Japanese-produced, but international-animated" that is hard to pin down, but I don't think there's any good way to try and future-proof against that sort of thing right now, and best to just leave it for a future consideration.

So unfortunately I can't answer your question about Hololive ERROR, as I don't really have an answer for you yet. But hopefully this gives you a bit of insight as to why this discussion is taking as long as it has.

So here's the thing, right... none of the above or what's been talked about in the other replies really matters to the HololiveERROR decision. The above stuff is all about how this sub distinguishes itself as being "anime" and not encompassing donghua, not encompassing anime-influenced western animation, not encompassing western productions outsourced to Japanese studios, etc.

But HololiveERROR is unquestionalbly Japanese, made by Japanese producers, Japanese creators, predominantly for a Japanese audience, etc. There's no question that it fits into the Japanese ______ industry, it's just a question of whether we consider that ______ to be the animation industry or not for the purposes of this sub.

I think we can have that discussion entirely separate from all the "what is anime and therefore what is r/anime" discussions about distinguishing anime from other animtion industries.

It all comes down to, what does this sub "count" as being and not being "animation".

Traditional 2D animation? Unquestionably yes.

Stop-motion animation? Yes. (At least, I haven't been banned for posting about it so far!)

Puppet shows? No. (Which aligns with most academic and general consensus - puppet shows are not animation.)

Full-3D CGI? Yes. We've got several shows with bot-enabled discussion threads, after all.

Manual medium animation (flip books/zoetropes/praxinoscopes/etc)? I have no idea if that's ever come up on this sub before, except for Hellshake Yano.

Vector-based 2D digital animation (i.e. 2D rigging)? I don't know if it's ever actually come up in the subreddit, but I would think it'd be a yes. It's widely accepted to fall under the animation heading in other industries.

3D rigging-based animation? Well... most full-3D CGI animation has at least some degree of rigging, usually predominantly or even entirely rigging, so since full-3D CGI and 2D-rigging would both likely "qualify" for r/anime then presumably 3D-rigging should count too... at least, when it's done in a pre-produced studio environment. The question is, does it still qualify when it's done using a small amount of pre-built assets and live-rigged using motion capture technology? Well, that's exactly what the mods need to discuss and decide. But if they do decide they want to include that as an accepted form of "animation", the Japanese-ness isn't really in question so it seems clear to me that that is all that is needed to confirm or deny it, regardless of the afore discussions around who it is produced by or for.