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. Occasionally anime is also is referred to as Japanimation (not one of my favorite terms). Although it seems as though anime just recently has gained much attention in America (mainstream attention anyway), anime actually does have a history. Along with actual motion pictures there evolved the drawn motion pictures or animated motion pictures.
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. I'm not exactly sure when the Japanese really picked up on animation, but I'm willing to bet that this probably happened after WWII. You can see anime begin to emerge as a venue in the 60's. This isn't really meant to be a "history of anime" sort of section, but you can see that by the 80's, anime had come into it's own and has continued to evolve into something truly unique with it's own quirks and sub-cultures. It was announced in 1999 that the last animation cell manufacturer Fuji would no longer be producing raw 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 on computers. As animation has become fully integrated with the computer age, only time will tell about where the future of anime is headed.
Characteristics of Anime
As for physical description; there are many different attributes which give anime it's character. First and foremost, however; are probably the eyes of an anime character. As said before this stemmed back to early American animation, although today it has changed considerably and has become a staple of what anime "is". Ironically this feature of Japanese anime makes all the characters look anything BUT Japanese. Oddly enough, some western comic book titles have not been as well received as expected, mainly due to the fact that the characters eyes look much smaller and look "unfriendly" to many Japanese. Eye style can in fact vary. If you look at some earlier anime titles, such as Macross, and Captain Harlock, 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 anime trait which is highly visible are 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. Actual hair styles actually vary greatly also, but can quite often get so elaborate and or bizarre that the hair actually isn't something a regular 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. Take a situation such as private school where all females and males wear the same uniform, and you have a perplexing problem. On the other hand if you vary the characters hair color and hair styles you can easily tell the difference between the characters despite how similar they are. I guess its probably worth mentioning that eye color can also vary in the same way.
Subtypes
So what kinds of anime are there? Well... about any subject you can think of, and probably a couple more. Granted, there is anime that is geared towards kids, but a fair portion is more mature in nature. Horror, comedy, romance, science fiction, pretty much anything. And yes there is also pornographic anime, which is usually denoted as Hentai anime.
I would recommend not limiting yourself when it comes to anime. Although you may not like something, you might want to give it a chance. If it looks interesting, it's probably worth watching. You might even find that you like the anime category of something that normally you don't like.
More than the sum of it's parts
Anime isn't exactly one of those things that you can talk about, and give a person a adequate impression. Most people would probably like anime, but the trick is to find out what sort of anime film would suit your taste. Anyone that judges anime to be air-headed cartoons because they saw an episode of Sailor Moon and didn't like it, may be surprised by watching a title like Akira. The best way to get a picture of anime is to actually watch it, although sometimes you can get the general idea by talking to someone or looking at web pages, etc. Anime is a visual audio experience not to be missed. But you have to be careful, after all everything has it's lemons, and anime is no exception.
Anime utilizes many visual effects. The beauty of the artwork, and the way the images present themselves makes for a terrific visual experience that has yet to be achieved (in my opinion) by conventional filming. Things can be presented in any fashion, the only limitation (other than the budget) is the imagination of the creators. Although anime is animated, anime is about MORE than just animation. Anime is an art form which involves many different aspects. The music, and the story also are big factors in anime. While a particular title may excel in only one particular area, quality anime excels in most or all aspects to become something which is more than just the sum of its parts. Still, many revere anime simply for being more imaginative in it's story lines.
Samples:
So overall I wonder if anyone could get an overview of anime without ever seeing it. The answer is simply no. And for that matter you'd have to watch a fair amount of anime to get a good idea of what it is really about. But anime is also different things to different people. Some like myself are simply "all around" anime fans. Many however simply like specific flavor of anime that appeals to what they like. But with that in mind, I thought that perhaps it would be nice to see a visual sampling of anime - not to present any real idea of what anime is, but just to see what it looks like.
Much if not MOST anime is available dubbed in the English language. My preference is Japanese language with English subtitles which the samples here reflect. Likewise this is just a small sampling of anime. It's hard to get much drama or comedy in extremely short clips.
Clips are encoded using mpeg4 (xvid). They may require a special player such as VLC or media player classic (or a special codec install). Click the thumbnail to download.
Captain Harlock (1978)
Not Released in U.S.
size: 6.8Mb ¤ time: 2:35
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Macross (1982)
Released by Animeigo
size: 7.7Mb ¤ time: 2:55
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Blade of Kamui (1985)
Released by Animeigo
size: 5.8Mb ¤ time: 1:20
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DP: Project Eden (1987)
Released by ADV films
size: 5.0Mb ¤ time: 1:58
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Devil Hunter Yohko 2 (1992)
Released by ADV films
size: 4.1Mb ¤ time: 0:58
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Magic Users Club (1996)
Released by Bandai
size: 5.2Mb ¤ time: 2:15
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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
size: 5.9Mb ¤ time: 2:18
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Black Lagoon (2007)
Released by Geneon
size: 9.6Mb ¤ time: 3:04
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© 1999