animemodel

Hentai - And of course, with any art form, when you have a large enough fan base, someone perverts it. Pornographic action figure anime has something that normal pornography does not though, lots of creepy weird tentacles and occasionally a plot. Yes, in line with many of Japan's finer arts, Hentai does try occasionally to inject a bit of intelligence into their mindless sex. And the production quality tends to be higher even than normal productions. Speaks to the nature of porn, I guess. It runs the industry.

Idol - The idol mentality runs the Japanese pop culture sphere. Their singers are everywhere, their movie stars are singers, their movie-star-singers are tv hosts. Their movie-star-singer-tv-hosts are voice actors. It's all cyclical and it means mass exposure in a crowded country of a 140 million. And it leaks over in the shows they make, and the mass production of the shows (usually one a week every week until the show's done...for some shows that's years) and the production values all speak to this.

Jump - Shonen Jump is the monthly manga publication in Japan that broke some of the biggest names in anime figures. Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece, Kenshin and so on. The super popular children oriented anime that rules the charts comes out of this little gem repeatedly. And now it's here in the US. Power in circulation.

Kawaii - Japanese adjective for cute. And that's how you describe half of what they produce. Super cute, to the point of nausea at times. The ability to turn the ugliest, most disturbing things into cute and cuddly mascots is a distinctly Japanese ability. Just look at half of the Pokemon. Butt ugly, but cute nonetheless.

Love Hina - Love Hina didn't invent it, but it did it best - the dorm fantasy anime that is. And it is its own subgenre now. A dorky young male who has no luck with the ladies finds himself thrown into a situation where he's surrounded by women daily, who ultimately assault him and make his life a living hell, at the same time as falling in love with him. Ecchi moments abound and often our altruistic hero ends up with a bloody nose on the rocks outside of a hotspring somewhere.

Manga - Ah yes, the birthparent of the whole thing. Manga is the comic book, hand drawn formula for the whole craze. Started as an offshoot of the woodprint art forms of the 19th century and earlier, Manga took compelling stories and serialized them into fun, easy to read comic books. Not to say that the Supermans and Detective Comics of America didn't help this fad along.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - A derivative of the giant mech anime, Evangelion broke into new legions of fans by being what some anime had dared before, but few had fully succeeded at - mature and intelligent. A common enough theme these days, Evangelion managed to take biblical, complicated social, and personal themes and craft action figure into an often times funny, apocalyptic epic 24 episode series and 2 films.