The Anime/Manga thread (quote, Bell)

[boo boo]

Well I think that's a horrible generalization, not all anime is marketed towards kids, hell Otaku culture is predominately adults.

Most of the anime that comes to the states or wherever you live is only a small portion of it, it's easy to dismiss anime if you've only seen the stuff western culture is most familiar with, like say DBZ or Sailor Moon or Pokemon.

Most of the localized anime is just one of the sub-genres of anime, Shonen. It's marketed towards kids 10-17, it tends to be the "we got to fight" variety of anime. Most of it is crap like Naruto and Yu Gi Oh, but theres some good Shonen too like Bleach and One Piece (though 4Kids butchered the hell out of it with the english dub), shows like Death Note and Full Metal Alchemist are broader forms of shonen, so it can offer some really awesome stuff from time to time.

Theres many different varieties of anime. Mecha like Neo Genesis Evangelion and Mazinger Z is probably the second most well known, you have Shojo which is the really girly anime like Sailor Moon, western influenced anime like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, gory stuff like Elfen Lied and Beserk and just plain surreal oddball stuff like FLCL. Anime is incredibly diverse overall.

You just gotta know where to look, it's hard to find good recs, I'll give you that, because I won't deny that 90% of Anime fans on the internet are retarded.