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Anime (pronounced "annie-may") comes from the French word for animation and has become synonymous with Japanese Animation. And while cartoons are a part of anime, they are not to be confused as one in the same. But before you can understand anime, you must first understand manga, Japanese Comic Books.

Kenshin manga MANGA
In Japan, manga is a well established and wide-reaching form of story-telling. Although much of the target audience is the pre-adolesent teen and young adult age group that is targetted by American Comic Books, manga is read by all age groups and by both men and women, much like fiction novels in the U.S. And like fiction novels, there are all sorts of different kinds of manga, from action, to fantasy, to romance, to horror, to comedy, to suspence, to sci-fi, and even more and of course, there is much crossing and blurring between these catagories.

So much in the same sense of how manga has similarities between fiction novels, anime has similarities between cinema in terms of role in society and social accpetance. In fact, many anime directors often view themselves as traditional film directors and direct live action films as well. So anime, like U.S. cinema, can deal with all the complex issues and themes, stories and relations that show up in manga, or fiction novels. And while anime is often times based on manga, that is not always the case, again just like how movies are often but not always based on novels.

DIFFERENT FORMATS OF ANIME
Something important to note is that anime comes in three major formats: TV series, Movie, and OAV (Original Animation Video). Although they are all anime, there are important distinctions to the different types.

TV series are anime produced either daily or weekly for Japanese Televsion and are often constrained by budget and scheduling and often times looks much cheaper (by animating poorly, having inconsistant art design, and overly exessive uses of animation cheats), but on the plus side, allows for better story pacing and character development. TV also reaches the largest audience and as a series' popularity increases, so do it's production values ^_^x TV series tend to be adaptations of manga.

On the opposite end of the anime format spectrum are anime movies. They are theatrical releases with huge budgets but are constrained by the hour to two hour running time. Sometimes, movies are recaps of a tv series with an alternate twist, side stories of a tv series, or completely original stories with original characters.

    Some examples of Movies

  • Macross: Do You Remember Love?

  • Ranma 1/2: Big Trouble In Nekonglong China

  • Tenchi Muyo the Movie: Tenchi in Love

In the median of this spectrum lies OAVs, direct to video releases of anime that have a limited number of episodes ranging anywhere from 1 to 16. They often have much higher budgets than tv series and sometimes movies (at least for the entire series run) and do not have the running time constraints of movies or the crazy hectic production schedules of tv series. But if a series is unpopular, the animation budgets can be cut so series can end up looking lopsided or even unfinshed! OAVs are usually either spin off stories of popular TV series or completely original stories.

    Some examples of OAV Series

  • Macross Plus

  • Ranma 1/2: Akane and Her Sisters

  • Tenchi Muyo (anime where the OAV came first!)