User:Zero/Sandbox

This is an open sandbox. Changes may be whacked with a hammer, but I'm mostly open if anybody else wants a crack. =Anime=

Japanese animation (colloquially: anime/アニメ, ) strictly speaking is (are?) animated shows or movies made in Japan. Related to this is manga (漫画, or ), which are Japanese comic books. However, the style itself originated from Disney, in the US. From there the animation shipped over to Japan and was altered slightly to save the fucking expensive cost of animation while changing the styling (i.e. much lower frame rate, repetitive action, late lip synching, emphasis on artistry, exaggerated body parts).

Blasphemy!
One of the things anime likes to do is use religion as inspiration. In the 1990's, a wave of titles using the bible as inspiration hit to which Japan gave a collective "meh" or "this is pretty awesome!" but in the west might be seen as utter blasphemy. (And include some stories about Evangelion here...), hence why many Japanese media don't make it to the US. In fact, the Japanese seldom practice Buddhism or any religion like Christianity or Musliminism.

But it's all porn!
Hentai (変態, lit: "strange appearances", with the common Japanese meaning "pervert" or when used adjectivally "perverted") is the English name for a sub-genre of anime that is pornographic. In Japan the word "hentai" isn't used this way; they mostly use English loanwords like "ero" (from "erotic") or, for some reason, just the letter H. Where it tends to get a bad reputation is the animation style that tends to make characters look younger than the age of consent (at least in the US). To explain how complicated this is, the age of consent according to Japanese Penal code is 13. Most prefectures (the Japanese equivalent to State or Province) override this to their own of 18, unless there is a serious romantic relationship going on. More complicated, marriage age is 16 for women and 18 for men with parental permission or 20 for both without. So you could say pre-marital sex is encouraged by their laws.

Stranger still is the censorship policies that prevent the explicit showing of pornography leading to original works having mosaic censoring or black bars upon release. This was pre-baked into the Japanese Constitution (Hey, Americans wrote it!) but has been much more lax about enforcement, with exported titles having said censoring removed.

Outside of the porn there's still sexy stuff to be had. There's a genre of anime called "ecchi" (lit: "dirty") that is not explicitly pornographic but still focuses on sexy scenarios, outfits or whatever while fanservice scenes litter some shows that aren't specifically for children. Though profile shots of mechs are also considered fan service which gets one rational wikier off. (Joke too harsh at my own expense?)

Fandom
Much like (superhero) comic book fandom and furry fandom, there is nothing intrinsically harmful about this fandom. It may feel a bit more sexualized than say superhero comic book fandom.

Cosplay
Despite being a fusion of two English words (Costume-Play), cosplay is the hobby of dressing up as a character from any sort of media and not strictly associated with anime itself.

Controversy
See "porn" and "blasphemy" sections above. Also: what the hell was with season 2 of Haruhi Suzumiya? (You mean apart from just being bad?)

Also, there's this one episode of Pokemon that caused mass seizure attacks.