Glossary of Terms Related to Japanese Animation

Glossary of Related Terms

If you arrived at this page from one of the essays, click the back button on your browser to return to the essay. Revision plans include small pop up windows for glossary definitions.

Pronunciation Note

anime: Pron. "AH-nee-may." Also known in America as Japanese animation and Japanimation. In Japan, anime, a word borrowed from French, refers to any kind of animated film, while in America, we use the term to refer to the unique animation that comes from Japan. (Levi 1).


bishounen**: Trans. "beautiful boy." Bishounen are the beautiful, androgynous young men who populate shoujo manga and anime. According to Antonia Levi, bishounen characters are products of the influence of the Takarazuka (all female) theater on early shoujo manga, and are modeled after male-impersonators (10). Bishounen characters are not necessarily, but frequently, homosexual or bisexual; part of the tradition stems from the historical male-to-male distanced, non-sexual romances of samurai times (Levi 76). A sub genre of shoujo manga exists called bishounen manga which focuses on gay male romance, but instead of catering to gay males, it caters almost exclusively to heterosexual girls and women (Levi 14).

ecchi (see hentai): Note: "ecchi" is the Japanese pronunciation of the letter "H", which stands for hentai.

hentai (ecchi, "H"): From Eastern Standard Time: "Perverted; used to describe someone with an unhealthy or unusual degree of lust, or to denote a pornographic work" (57). In anime, you might hear young animated women scream "Hentai!" or "Ecchi!" at lecherous young animated men.

manga: Trans. "irresponsible pictures" (Yang 46). Although they have rich historical roots in the Japanese woodblock printing tradition (see ukiyo-e), manga are basically Japanese comics. Unlike American comic books, which are more like small magazines, manga are "thick, dictionary sized volumes [that are read] by men, women, and children of all ages" (Yang 46). They cover a wide variety of themes and are not only considered leisure materials but also learning tools. They are also the most popular printed media in Japan.

otaku: According to Antonia Levi, author of Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation:; "...otaku is a word that completely defies translation. Technically, it is a formal usage of the Japanese word meaning "your." In Japanese slang, it refers to someone with an obsessive interest in something, a geek. One can be a computer otaku, a fashion otaku, or an anime otaku. In America, it refers exclusively to those who are obsessively interested in anime" (2).

shounen**: Trans. "for boys." Shounen manga is caters specifically to a male audience. Early shounen manga focused mostly on plots and action, and little on character development, with themes like "war, sports, sex, and sometimes business rivalries" (Levi 9).

shoujo**: Trans. "for girls." As opposed to shounen manga, shoujo manga caters to a female audience, and focuses more on interpersonal relationships that action or plot. Shoujo manga were written mainly by men until the 1960's. Many shoujo manga were based in the West, which gave its characters a Caucasian look that has become a distinctive feature of contemporary anime. Because shoujo manga focuses mainly on the thoughts and emotions of its characters, certain facial features, like the eyes, have grown in importance (and size) in order to emphasize characters' expressions and moods.

super-deformed, SD, chibi: According to Eastern Standard Time, "A comically miniaturized rendering of an animated character, with enlarged head, shrunken body, and cutesy, childlike features" (59). [To see an example of super-deformed characters, click here]

ukiyo-e: Trans. "pictures of the floating world" (Yang 24). Essentially, ukiyo-e are woodblock prints of scenes of everyday life in historical Japan. They reflect the joyful, "buoyant" mood of the Edo period (in contrast with "the transitory, heavy atmosphere characteristic of the troubled middle age") (The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum Guide). For more information on Japanese printmaking, or to see some excellent examples of ukiyo-e, visit The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, online at http://www.cjn.or.jp/ukiyo-e/.

**Note about pronunciation: Due to the existence of several different styles of romanization of Japanese characters, I have chosen to opt for consistency by translating hiragana characters directly into their Roman equivalent. Therefore, in some instances where a "u" appears after an "o" ("ou," as in "shounen" and "shoujo"), like its character equivalent, the "ou" is pronounced as a long "oh," as in the word "overcoat."