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Anime

Anime refers to Japanese animated video. The word is written in three katakana characters a, ni, me (アニメ). It should be pronounced "ah-nee-meh" (the "me" sound is not long, it is like a truncated pronunciation of "men"), but in America is typically pronounced "an-ee-may" ("an" pronounced as in "hand"). Ironically, the word is an English transliteration of a Japanese term, which in turn is generally supposed to be an abbreviation of the Japanese transliteration of the English word animation (shortened, as many foreign words are; for example terebi is the Japanese word for "television", or in Japanese pronunciation "terebishiyon"). However, some anime fans state that the Japanese word comes from the French animé, meaning "animated" although no Japanese believes it. The voice actors for anime are usually called by the Japanese equivalent term seiyuu.

Anime is known for its variety of genres and unique artistic style. Just as with live-action cinema, it spans various genres: science fiction, children's stories, romance, medieval fantasy[?], erotica (hentai), and so forth. Anime is an expressly commercial art form, and most anime are produced and marketed for very specific audiences, with well-defined categories for shonen (boys) and shoujo (girls) genres, as well as teenagers and adults.

Outside of Japan, most of the audience for anime is among boys and young men, so most anime which is translated tends to belong to the shonen style, including titles like Bubblegum Crisis, Tenchi Muyo and Gundam. On the other hand, shoujo anime has more recently made some showing in the West in the form of Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, and Revolutionary Girl Utena. Unlike U.S. animation, there is a sizable faction of anime especially tailored to adult audiences, and numerous titles are classified in the United States as not suitable for minors.

In North America, the public reaction to anime is still unsure with lingering stereotypes of classic television series like Speed Racer combined with sensationalized reports of the more risque adult entertainment productions. However, anime series have become a staple of cable television like the Cartoon Network for both their childrens and adult programming block and anime is a strong seller on home video[?]. Furthermore, anime fans hope that the positive publicity of Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed film, Spirited Away winning the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature might spur further mainstream acceptance of the form. The strong North American sales of the title have been encouraging enough for Disney to announce the video release of two more Hayao Miyazaki features in late 2003 after years of the Company seemingly ignoring them which can be a positive sign.

For extensive list of Japanese anime, see List of anime.

Table of contents

Anime in the United States of America

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

Notable names in anime

Genres

See also

External links

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump