Anime -- The Item Itself and Why It Sucks You really have to watch a lot of anime to know what I mean sometimes, but trust me, it's true.

Sections click bullets Inferiority of Animation Inferiority of Plot Inferiority of Characterisation False-Foreign Anime Japanese National Lolita Complex

Anime are mass-produced. This is reflected in the purchase price-- It costs about three times as much for a television station to buy an episode of an english cartoon than of an anime. Anime have extremely low frame rates, which makes the animation look halting and stiff. There is very little detail in the drawings.

Yes, I'm sure you're saying that some english cartoons also have very little detail. But you are probably thinking about produced-for-television shows like Dexter's Lab (which, by the way, is excellent without needing visual detail, but that's not the point, now is it?). But if you take full-length cartoons, such as Disney ones, they have a much higher production quality than any anime, even "good" full-length anime such as Princess Mononoke. Even the backgrounds are cheaper in anime. You'll notice the backgrounds on anime are all still, while in english cartoons, everything in the background is moving and varied. Take Bambi, for example. The leaves flutter in the background, birds fly, etc. Now, take an anime like Princess Mononoke, which is good compared to most other anime. Movement in the background is very limited. A couple trees might blow in a repetitive back-and-forth pattern, but that's it. In fact, anime often have flashing patterns or still watercolours for backgrounds.

The characters move only slightly more than the scenery. The movement of anime characters is usually limited to their main joints. For example, they bend their knees, elbows, shoulders, etc. In english cartoons, characters move smoothly, their smaller joints and facial features as well as their main joints. The movement makes them look more lifelike and natural. Take Bambi again. In the first few scenes, if you watch the little deer when he hears a noise, his ears swivel just before he turns his head. Very lifelike, a detail which would never have been added to an anime. For Disney cartoons, the artists often even do research before drawing. When they made Timon from the Lion King, for example, the artists went to a zoo to observe real meerkats. Of course, the character Timon wasn't particularily realistic in design. He was exaggerated and cartoonish. But still, he retained a very alive, real-animal air which is never found with anime animals. For example, compare Timon with the animals from Princess Mononoke. Even compared to animals of less realistic design, the animals in the anime Princess M seem stiff and artificial.

I wish I could show you guys little videos so you could see what I mean...

Anime has more distinct genres than any other type of cartoon or show I've ever seen. Furthermore, each show in a genre almost invariably has the same clichéd plotline as all the other shows in that genre. In fact, if you name any random anime (that I've seen), I'll be able to tell you why the entire plot is unoriginal.

To illustrate this, here is a lovely table-o'-clichéd-plotlines. Of course, it's very hard to actually summarise the plot of each anime. But you can see how they fit into the categories perfectly.

Genre	Examples	Generic Plotline
Magical Girl	Sailor Moon, Saint Tail, Card Captor Sakura	Girl seems ordinary during the day, goes to school, etc. Can transform magically into an evil-fighting superheroine. Nobody knows her true identity.
Romance-Comedy	Fushigi Yugi, Oh My Goddess, Marmalade Boy	Girl and boy pretend not to like each other. They really DO like each other. In most of these, every so often the two characters get into an almost-showing-their-affection scene, in which they are suddenly serious or about to kiss or something. Then they're interrupted, normally by something that's supposed to be funny.
Pseudo-Dystopian	Key the Metal IdolAkira, Violence Jack, Gundam Wing, Battle Angel Alita	Normally set in future. Characters are supposed to be really serious, normally rub off as silly or corny. They live in a really dark world that has garbage or rocks or broken walls all over, with ridiculous amounts of danger threatening them. Sometimes there is a war going on.
Gross Sex-Comedy	DNA2, Golden Boy, Junk Boy	No plot. I think this category is self-explanatory.

English cartoons are much more difficult to categorise, and generally have more original plotlines. Try grouping shows like The Simpsons, Sheep in the Big City, Ed Edd & Eddy, Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo and Yvon of the Yukon into categories with other shows. Well, The Simpsons is a realistic-type comedy. You could probably group it in with some of it's rip-offs like King of the Hill. Sheep in the Big City is just weird, and a comedy. You could probably group it into a very wide category of "weird" cartoons, along with Dexter's Lab and Johnny Bravo and the other two. But that's pretty much the best you can do. The actual plotlines of english series don't follow a distinct pattern, like they do in anime.

And remember, I'm only talking about english cartoons here. Adult shows are also included in anime, while here adult shows are normally live-action. That means that if we included live-action TV with the english cartoons, we would have even more diverse subjects, genres and plotlines. Also, english shows generally have a different story each episode. This makes them less tedious. An anime, especially a romance-comedy, takes the entire series to get to the point and conclude. In english cartoons, there is a sense of conclusion after each episode.

This is much more suitable for series which go episode-by-episode, because the viewer doesn't have to see the ENTIRE series. One episode missed isn't a big deal.

Along those same lines, much more happens in an episode of an english cartoon, while a serial anime can have almost nothing happen. Plus, the plots of english cartoons are less regular. An episode of Sailor Moon, for example, generally consists of a bad guy coming, trying to take something, a battle, a win, then the credits. In an episode of the Simpsons, however... Well, I can't describe it. Something entirely different happens every single episode. The best I can do is the say that the main plot will not have anything to do with the first five minutes, and there will be a moral at the end followed by something funny that doesn't spoil the message.

Anime characters all act the same way. Characters are even more clichéd and unoriginal than the plotlines. Here's a partial list of character types and examples...

Silly Girl Sammy (Tenchi Muyo), Serena (Sailor Moon), Devil Hunter Yohko, Chacha (Akazukin Chacha)
Tough Girl Battle Angel Alita, Noin (Gundam Wing), Relena (Gundam Wing)
Depressed Guy Heero (Gundam Wing), anyone from Gundam Wing actually, anyone from Weiß Kreus, anyone from Angel Sanctuary
Comic-Relief Guy Brock (Pokémon), Duo (Gundam Wing)

Any anime character can be grouped together with many others exactly like it. There's almost no variation. Once you've seen one character from a certain genre, you've seen them all.

Have you noticed a trend in many of the more serious anime? They pretend to be foreign, or use foreign characters/settings/ideas. Generally, it ends up seeming ridiculous. It's just like somebody speaking with a fake accent.

For example, Weiss Kreuz. It has a German title, and the characters all have German names. It seems very odd. Brother Dear Brother pretends to be set in an English high-class school (in Japan). They even have a "sorority." I think they're mixing up their ideas, there. I've enver heard of a sorority existing in a high school. Even the song lyrics and titles often have English words, which sound ridiculously out of place with all the Japanese words.

Some of the most obvious examples of pretending to be foreign are when they put "Christianity" into their stories (Japan is predominately... Atheist). Like Saint Tail... In which the magical-girl heroine finds out where bad things are going on from the nun who's in the confession booth. This seems extremely messed-up from a non-Japanese perspective. 1) nuns don't take confession, and 2) confessions are secret. Breaking the secrecy of confession is a very serious matter.

So the point is, would you rather watch a foreign show that pretends to foreign, or would you rather watch the real thing? Besides, pretending to be foreign sure makes those anime look silly...

Japanese National Lolita Complex Perhaps the most disgusting trend in anime is turning very young girls into sex objects. Even in little "shoujo" cartoons made for kids, the girls wear extremely short skirts. Sometimes you can even see their underwear. As the anime girls and the intended audience get older, the girls are invariably portrayed as wearing extremely short skirts and having large breasts. Apparently in Japan young schoolgirls are considered sexy. This is definitely reflected in the anime they produce. I don't care what the Japanese watch, but here in America, it just seems disgusting. I mean, look at the picture of little Sakura from Cardcaptors (right). Really short shorts... At least in that picture they're shorts, normally she wears a really short skirt with her school uniform. Just like that little skirt she's wearing on top of her shorts in this picture... (Did you know that Cardcaptors pictures are fairly hard to find? I couldn't get a full-length one of her in her school uniform...)

Spawn. Printing usually worse. Record of the Lodoss War

The Manga Component, and Why it's Just As Bad Manga, or, as I frequently misspell it, mange, is just as bad as anime for all the same reasons. The plots, characters, settings... They follow all the same patterns as anime. Perhaps the most obvious difference is in the art. Like anime, mange is mass-produced in Japan. For one, they are black and white, while english comics are in colour. No, don't give me a bunch of artsy "mange is black and white because the artists like to express themselves that way" crap. Mange is black and white because they can print it in cheap magazines. However, when they get to America, they certainly aren't cheap. (Not like I read them, but I got some in the mail by mistake once and boy was I impressed!) American comics have better quality art, and they're cheaper. Aside from being in colour, english comics are drawn more carefully, with much more detail. They're normally better technically, too. That is, people's heads aren't squished (I don't mean mange deformations because of the style, but b/c the artist sucks). If you think about it, there are many people who work on a single english comic, except in McFarlane productions. There's definitely more effort that goes into making them. Now, even in one-person comics like Spawn (at least the first bit of it), the art is still really good. Again, I'm not talking about style, I'm talking about detail, how firm the figures look, etc.