A lot of people may think of anime as 'cyberpunk' because a lot of well known anime's are largly based on the human race struggling to co-exist with a technologically advancing world. (1). What some people don't realise is that there are many other different kinds of anime out in the world. "Anime is a medium, not a genre. Nonetheless certain genres and themes are very common in anime." (2).
Anime is not cyberpunk in itself, but cyberpunk is one of the more popular genres. Napier states in her book referencing cyberpunk as one of the top 2 most popular along with the genre ‘Mecha.’ (1).
While Cyberpunk focuses on the idea of humans existing in a world of advanced technology and dealing with all the different problems that occur, Mecha deals with the posibility of Robots. An example of a Mechan anime would be Chobits where the main characters are a human and his personal Robot girl 'Chi' who has no memory of who she really is. 
Other genres in the anime world include the typical action stories such as cowboy bebop, Martial arts like Dragon Ball Z, Romance such as H2O: Footprints in the sand and many others.So, while cyberpunk is a highly popular anime genre, anime itself is not considered as such. Many different audiences watch anime and through their interests decides whcih genre they most enjoy watching.
(1) Napier, Susan 2001, 'Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing contemporary Japanese animation', Macmillan, Palgrave.
(2) Gunden, N.Owen 2003, "Why do hackers watch anime?", Cyberculture Final Project. Found at:
~Blue-Inspiration
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