About Anime

If you have no idea what anime actually is then take a few moments to read.

I hate people that call anime "cartoons". It is not just "cartoons", it is "anime", the original Japanese genre of "cartoons", characterised by the characters' big, expressive eyes, nice and smooth bodies, quality graphics, generally describing teenagers' life in nowadays, feudal or future Japan. Mostrly appealing to teenagers, but not only, since I like to believe that i will watch anime for ever, this type of "cartoons" sometimes have movie-like developed and controversed storylines, with twists and turns, humour of countless types, action, psychology...basically every genre that you would ever think of.

If you still have doubts about anime then think of the following aspects:

1. Why to people all around the world watch it?

2. Why is the age of those people ranging from 0 to 40 and more?

3. Why does it get thounsands more fans every month, all around the world?

4. Why do the ones that have a taste of it never let go of anime any soon?

5. Why do people all around the world learn japanese only to understand the bare japanese version of the anime?

6. Why do you find anime related articles all over the Internet?

Jpop and Jrock are the most usual music genres among anime ost (original sound track) thus, very appreciated by otaku (anime watchers). You'll find loads of otaku listening only to Jpop and Jrock like the majority of japan does. Even if you find it strange at first you'll get to like it as soon as you get into anime.

Of course, like in any other thing in this world, there are also crap anime series, usually the ones that appear at tv from one week to another, usually made especially for female audiance and children. As well as the anime crap goes the Jmusic crap. You will find many childish or girlish songs but you don't have to watch and listen to those. There is plenty of good anime to chose from, and a lifetime is very likely not to be enough to have yourself satisfied.

Otaku all around the world also use to cosplay. They wear the clothing of various anime characters and behave the same. It is fun to take pictures, reproduce parts of different anime series and joke around wearing those weird clothes. Japanese have also made an art from dying their hair which also adds to the enjoyment of a cosplay party. Hair paintjob is the most popular among jrock bands, also called visual ken.

Among the numerous genres of anime, there is also anime with content close to adult content. While hentai, yuri and yaoi are usually revealing, ecchi is more like surprising the characters in embarrasing and incitant poses. Sometimes pushed to the very limit, ecchi scenes can be very funny and enjoyable, especially for male audiences. Two perfect examples of ecchi anime would be Love Hina and Green Green. Watch, enjoy, laugh and cry as you will most likely have part of all these. And yes, if you want to experience real ecchi, try Golden BoY and Amaenaideyo! Yay!

However, anime humour does not restrain itself to this category, having much more than this to entertain. For a different kind of humour try School Rumble.

AMV, fanart and fanfiction are three ways in which fans express their attraction toward anime and manga. They are fans' creations (fanart), mixes of pictures and sequences (AMV) of original anime series or pieces of writing (fanfic).

AMV stands for Anime Music Video and is very popular with anime fans. They are simply a musical backgorund, especially anime and rock music, covered with related pictures and sequences of anime. It is very enjoyable to watch them after you have watch the anime series they are made of.

Fanart is the easyer way through which fans show their gratitude toward anime and manga. They are usually actual anime and manga characters but also characters created by the artists themselves. In both AMV and fanfic some creations are surprisingly good.

Fanfictions are pieces of writing, usually describing imaginary episodes of already existing anime series or products of fans' imagination. Some are pretty crude but, as i mentioned in the latter paragraph, some of them are quite good.

There is also fanmade anime which can be really good. The one I like the most is developed by Maikaze and it is called Touhou - A Summer Day's Dream. Its story is based on the game Touhou which i like very much and which i recommend.

However sad and unbelievable it might seem, as PackOfLlamas mentioned in a comment, anime has began to turn to the commercial side. The effect of this phenomenon is the appearance of many ongoing series like naruto, bleach, pokemon which make more episodes just to increase their revenue. These episodes can still generate more money for the sole reason of their fame, the episodes themselves being mainly fillers and new pokemons who the collectionaires should...well, buy. Another subcategory is a large number of 12 episode animes made just to promote the manga version of them. Some of them are also filled with crap like homosexuality, exagerately cute characters on which the anime is based rather than the story, too much ecchi and less thinking. These are mostly fillers up to the last 2 episodes where the situation gets complicated and more or less solved very briefly. The sad thing is that despite some such anime have a pretty good story, they fail to develop it and what has the potential to become a great anime becomes just another piece of crap. What the anime world is the appearance of second seasons, ova and movies of old but very successful anime. However, unfortunately this is more my speculation and desire than the reality since very few such anime appear.