A brief introduction
So what is "anime"? Anime is Japanese animation. Actually anime is the Japanese word for animation. When the Japanese use a long foreign word, they often truncate it into a smaller word. Thus animation became anime. Then the word anime was adopted by western people to refer to Japanese animation. In the past anime was also sometimes referred to as Japanimation. While nearly unknown previously, anime has begun to pick up in popularity in recent years, but anime actually does have a fair amount of history.
So where did anime come from? In the beginning there was the cave picture that was etched in stone... A few thousand years later, motion pictures were invented. While primary interest has always been in making actual pictures or photographs move, animation also has it's roots in the very beginning of the industry. Animation in the beginning however was painstaking to say the least, although this is the birthplace of where many techniques of animation were born and are used to this very day. I won't get into the earliest animation since I don't know anything about them, but if you look at any animation in the early 30's you find that there is an amazing amount of effort put into the animation. It is probably key to note that back then black and white was the premier technology which certainly worked towards the advantage of the animators. If you think anime is the only format with the larger eyes, take a look at Betty Boop or Felix the Cat, and you can easily see the similarities in what was the very root of anime.
Here's where the big gap occurs, since I again don't know much about it. You can see anime begin to emerge as a venue in the 60's. and by the 80's, anime had come into its own and has continued to evolve into something with its own defining characteristics. In 1999 the last animation cell manufacturer Fuji announced it would no longer be producing raw animation cells (the basis for an animation frame) because of the high cost of importing high quality paper pulp. This means that today's anime is completely done with computers. Computers can of course create much more "realistic" animation, so it seemed as if anime was set on a new course of evolution. This didn't happen though, and if anything current anime goes out of it's way to maintain the visual art style that embodied it previously. No one knows where anime is headed in the future, but it doesn't appear that anime will morph into simple CGI movies, but will instead continue on as a venue all its own.
Characteristics of Anime
As for physical description; there are many different attributes which give anime it's personality. First and foremost however; are probably the eyes of anime characters. This stemmed back to early American animation, although today it has evolved quite a bit to become a staple of what anime "is". Ironically this feature of Japanese anime makes all the characters look anything BUT Japanese. This could be a cultural thing as well since some western comic book titles have not been as well received in Japan. The reason cited is the smaller characters' eyes appearing "unfriendly" to many Japanese. Eye style can in fact vary depending on the period during which it was produced, and can also vary with style of the original artist. If you look at some earlier anime titles in the 70s, you can see that the eyes in fact weren't very exaggerated at all, but as anime continued to develop, the exaggeration became more pronounced and has basically ingrained itself as a part of the genre. Usually younger children (and teenage girls) have larger rounder eyes, while adults have more sleek, regular looking eyes.
Another well known anime trait is the drastic variations in hair colors. Anime hair colors can be just about any color you can imagine, from blue to green, to pink, to the regular hair colors. Hair styles vary greatly also, but can quite often get so elaborate and/or bizarre that the hair often isn't something a real person could even style. The basis behind this is that anime characters tend to look very similar by the nature of Japanese animation design. The head, and eyes are quite often drawn nearly identical on many characters. On top of that, take a situation such as private school where all students wear the same uniform, and you have an even bigger problem. However if you vary the characters hair color and hair styles you can easily tell the difference between them despite how similar they are. It's probably worth mentioning that eye color can also vary in the same way, for the same reasons.
Subtypes
So what kinds of anime are there? In theory you could make an anime about anything, but like everyone else, the Japanese need to actually sell things to make a living. So while there are limitless possibilities for anime, in practice it's settled into a few categories which Japanese animation has excelled at as an industry Anime can do the regular basic film categories such as horror, and romance, but in particular tends to excel in science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and action/adventure. While there is a lot of anime for adults, and some for kids too, one of the biggest market segments is actually targeted at teenagers - something almost ignored here in the west. This is probably one of the big reasons that anime has made inroads here, due to the large and nearly untapped market for teens, although even those titles are easily appreciated by others outside of that age group. Lastly, there is also pornographic anime, which is usually referred to as Hentai anime (see page on that topic for specifics).
More than the sum of it's parts
While big budget movies tend to concentrate on special effects, anime often goes out of its way to show even seemingly simple things in an artistic way. Likewise story lines can often seem refreshing and much more daring than would readily be accepted in the average Hollywood movie. It's something to be watched, and something to be heard, and understood (via plot) but even taking all these things into consideration, anime is very much it's own thing - not simply all these things put together in a way you might expect. But even anime has its lemons, and while a title may be good, it might not suit your interest. While it's not for everyone, there's probably an anime title that suits your tastes if you can find it.
Samples:
So I wonder if anyone could get an overview of anime without ever seeing it. My conclusion was simply no. And for that matter you'd have to watch a fair amount of anime to get a good idea of what it's really about. But with that in mind, I thought that perhaps it would be nice to see a visual sampling of anime, just to see what it looks like. Much if not MOST anime is available dubbed in the English language, but my preference is Japanese language with English subtitles which the samples here reflect. Keep in mind that it's hard to get much drama or comedy in extremely short clips, so there's limits on kind of stuff I could put in these samples.
Clips are encoded using mpeg4 (xvid). I'm working on converting them into flash video
Captain Harlock (1978)
Not Released in U.S.
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Macross (1982)
Released by Animeigo
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Blade of Kamui (1985)
Released by Animeigo
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Devil Hunter Yohko 2 (1992)
Released by ADV films
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Magic Users Club (1996)
Released by Bandai
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Great Teacher Onizuka(2000)
Released by Tokyopop
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Vampire Hunter D (2001)
Released by Urban Vision
size: 6.2Mb ¤ time: 1:45
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Beat Angel Escalayer (2004)
Released by Kitty Media
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Initial-D (2005)
Not (yet?) Released
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© 1999