Anime

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

To people whose interest isn't in anime, the house is all about "Cute" Girls who screech every day of their lives, Losers trying to get by in high school, making wacky faces in the face of wacky situations, and massive tits. Although this is true to an extent this medium would rather not admit to, it doesn't define the whole of the art form.

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, pink, indigo, etc.), the heads might be larger, and hair can also be unnatural and formed oddly, like unusually spiky. The visual humor of anime also has the habit of transforming characters, making their bodies smaller and simpler in style. When a character's body is one or two heights of their body, this is called a chibi. The shape and style of characters' eyes and mouths can also be changed based on their emotions. For example, a character who just saw something strange might have round, all-white eyes with thick black outlines, a (nearly) rectangular mouth, and three black lines or sweat on the sides of their face, expressing how stunned they are by the tomfoolery or madness that just unfolded before them.

Anime differs from western animation in more ways than visually. An example of this is how stories are told. Western cartoons tend to tell more formulaic stories about the world the characters are in, stories that can be described by plot pages on UnTrash Wiki, while anime focuses more on stories that are about the characters and possibly how they change over timeundefined. Anime stories also typically surround worlds with people who have a variety of abilities unseen in real life, unlike cartoons which normally stay true-to-life in regards to their characters' abilities in fiction standards.

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 and online torment, vandalism of websites — such as wikis — dedicated to anime franchises, and name-calling. An example of such name-calling is the word "weeaboo" (also shortened to "weeb"), a person who isn't of Japanese descent but likes to pretend they are by watching and discussing anime, learning or knowing (or at least faking knowing) Japaneseundefined, and owning multiple object of Japanese heritage like a katana or the flag of the nation. In spite of having a mostly negative reputation among Outsiders, weeaboo is also a form of self-identification to demonstrate pride in that person's interest. Another insult is "otaku", a Japan-originated slang term for people who are obsessed with manga and anime to the point where it becomes blatantly and obnoxiously clear that they like manga and anime.

Anime, America, and You Part 1: 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 fiction. 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 Part 2: A Disturbance
Although anime has a large presence in America, as with all things, 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 that for some, it developed into full-blown hatred for Japan's culture or even its people.