What Is Anime?

The Japanese love to shorten words. Anime is shotened version of the word "animation." Anime is the Japanese style of animation. It's also known as Japanimation, though that sounds more like a word used by people who dislike it or aren't interested in it. Anime is more popular than cartoons here and are not thought of as mere kid shows (though there are many anime create for children as well). Many anime are targeted toward high school and junior high age audiences.

Anime is a very bright and colorful style of animation created in Japan. It comes in a variety of genres and almost always follow some sort of a plot. Each one is usually pretty unique in character design and story. Stories range from anything like a group of people who working to protect Earth against some unnatural power from beyond this dimension to a war between opposing factions in space who fight battles using man-piloted mechas for control of the world. It is usually quite interesting.

Here is just a small sample of the animation quality of anime:



Anime is so popular in Japan that it is comparable to our own Holly Wood-made movies. It is also becoming increasingly popular here as well. There are a few stylistic trates that seperate it from its non-anime counterparts. All of these, but not limited to these are traits found in the best anime I've seen:

• Cute girls
• Detailed, 30-foot-tall robots
• More guns than a person would ever need
• Bizzaire, weird plots
• Tolerates more sex and violence than our animation
• And lastly, made in Japan (of course)

Also the actual animation itself is very different from what we find here. Many visual differences include:

• Big eyes that clearly portray the character's emotions
• Simple, almost invisible noses
• Their mouths don't shape to form words, but instead change size depending on the volume of the character
• And the quality of the animation is usually a few thousand times better than what you might find here.

If you want to see some on your own for free, you can turn to the cable channel Cartoon Network on weekdays afternoons. If you don't have cable, you can also watch a slightly more limited amount of anime on Fox and Kid's WB at various days and time. Either way, most decent anime isn't shown on TV for some reason. Most anime cost about $25 per tape and contain around 4 episodes on each tape. So if you have a few extra dollars you don't know what to do with, you might want to go down to a video store and buy some anime. For some suggestions, you can see my profile for anime I have enjoyed.

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