Anime/Media

Anime is a form of animation originating and most prominent in its home country, Japan. Starting in the year 1917, anime has numerous franchises made in its art style, such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece.

Differences
For beginners, anime is greatly different from western animation visual-wise. Its characters' eyes, for one, are much larger on average and more commonly are of unnatural colors (like red, indigo, etc.), the heads can also be larger but aren't always, and hair can also be unnatural and formed oddly, like unusually spiky.

Anime noticeably differs from western animation, or cartoons, in more ways than visually. An example of this is how stories are told. Western cartoons tend to tell more formulaic stories, stories that can be described by Plot pages on UnTrash Wiki, while anime focuses more on being as original story-wise as possible. Of course, the basic structure of stories in both mediums is repeated by different franchises. Anime stories also typically surround otherworldly worlds with people who have a variety of strengths unseen in Real Life, unlike cartoons who normally stay true-to-life.

Fan bases
The fan bases of both anime and western cartoons for certain franchises are massive, made up by millions of people who all share similar interests. Although both kinds of communities are very similar in the way of how fans interact, their behaviors involving the other can be somewhat dangerous, leading to people being physically and emotionally hurt. This includes real-life torment, online torment, vandalism of websites—such as wikis—dedicated to franchises, and pathetic, lowly name-calling. An example of such name-calling is the word "weeaboo", or a person who isn't of Japanese descent but likes to pretend they are by being interested in anime, learning/knowing Japanese (Bonus Points if they're fluent), and the like. Another slur is "otaku", a Japan-originated slang term for people who are obsessed with manga and anime to the point where it becomes blatantly obnoxious.

Anime, America, and You: A (Brief) History
Anime, as this page has already established, reached Western audiences. But what it didn't establish is when.

Anime, as well as manga but not to so much of an extent, made contact with America roughly 20 years after World War II with anime like Astro Boy after the tension between Japan and America died down and Americans figured it was alright to like the Japanese and their media. A decade later, more anime, like Pokémon, Dragon Ball, and Doraemon, entered the childhoods hundreds of thousands of Americans across the nation. Fast-forward to the 2010s and the total anime fanbase has gotten larger, more people are coming to acknowledge and admire anime, and the hatedom of anime has also seen a rise.

Anime, America, and You: A Disturbance
Although anime has a large presence in America, not everyone likes it. People who dislike anime likely do so because "its Loony Fanbase won't shut the fuck up about it after talking about it non-stop for the past five weeks". Some of these haters claim that anime has "weakened American youth" while others conspire it promotes mindlessly hurtling money into the Japanese economy. This hatred for anime has grown so deeply within some people, it's practically become a meme just to say "anime sucks" despite the speaker not having any true reasons to believe so.