>>149763357Nobody cared about that. This was decades before weeaboos existed. The closest anyone ever got to anime was watching Moomins, Maya the Bee or Nils Holgersson on TV, or renting copies of Silver Fang or Gal Force on VHS.
Then in the early 90s we started getting some OVAs released on VHS tapes by Manga Entertainment, some localised PC games like Knights of Xentar but more commonly eurojank games using manga style art (Shadow Fighter, World Rally Fever), and eventually TV shows got licensed from the French distributors (they were closer) like Candy Candy, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon.
First it was collectively called Manga for the entire style (ie. people watched manga, this Amiga game used manga art, etc), then the french animรฉ (with an accent) word got stuck.
America didn't get anime until many, many years later.