Anime is, basically, animation that is made in Japan. I will give you some illustrations of anime that you might know. Speed Racer, Hello Kitty, Pokemon, RoboTech, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, as well as a lot of the cartoons you find on Cartoon Network qualify also, particularly Adult Swim.































Thankfully our country has gotten the rights to translate the stories from Japanese to English, since the storylines in anime are actually good. Often they are better than what Hollywood shovels into your brain.































That is basically what anime is. Now let`s speak about what it isn`t.































Anime just isn`t a genre; it is an art form; a medium. From now on I want you to think of anime as being equated with movies, books, music, etc; all the entertainment media. The same as you`ve got movies for kids, movies for teens, adults, so it is with anime.































All of your entertainment comes in 31 flavors, right? Comedy, horror, drama, suspense, action, etc. You file similar movies on the exact same shelf in the store, don`t you? But you should not be putting all free anime on the same shelf because anime is just not a genre. It`s a medium, like movies are a medium, like books are a medium. A medium can have any genre of entertainment in it; well so can anime. Anime isn`t all sex and violence as many people will tell you. When I hear someone state that anime is sex and violence, that immediately tells me that they watched probably one particular anime show that had that and after that they go \"Oh well that`s how it all is.\"































Now granted, some anime has that. Much like some movies have that. Much like some books have that. Does that make all books bad? No. So why should it for anime? Again, anime is an art form, not really a genre. Anime may have comedy, it may have horror, drama, suspense, action, hey it can even have porn or blood-and-gut, but that will not mean all of it has it! I`m not going to lie to you and state that anime is all happy goodness and none of it has anything you do not want to see. There is great stuff, and there is bad stuff, and there is everything in between, just like any other form of entertainment. If somebody came up to you and said \"Hey man, we should really be censoring these `movies` that men and women are discussing. They`re all sex and violence. I mean every movie has that in it, and I don`t think we should let our children be watching movies.\" Will you believe that? No, you`d go \"Excuse me, but that will not apply to all movies leave me alone.\"































Another rationale why people could be against anime is the fact that certain companies make only anime that a whole lot of us do not want to watch; then when folks get introduced to anime, they unfortunately see it from these companies, which is like taking an Amish person to a shoot-em-up movie. That Amish guy won`t think well of movies there after!















So realize that just as certain publishers publish certain books, and certain movie companies put out certain movies, so certain companies put out certain anime.