'Mation or Anime as it is more often called refers to Japanese animation, let me explain:
Anime or Japanimation are basiclly cartoons. People who grew up in th 70's thru the latter 80's have watched some cartoon show or another that was produced in Japan, and later dubbed in english for the American viewing audience. One example that comes to mind is the TV show "Speed Racer", The show was on in Japan during the early to mid 60's and then worked its way to America, after english ws dubbed and most of the violence was edited out of course.
Besides "Speed Racer" there were a few shows that came across to make their mark on Saturday mornings. To my knowledge, and where I live, the following shows were on the tube: "Voltron", "Battle of the Planets" and "G-Force" are the same show with different names, don't ask me why but they changed the name a couple of times. I beleive the origional name in Japan is "Gatchamon", the Cartoon Network was re-running this series for a while, I hope they bring it back on a more permanment basis.
More recently Cartoon Network has taken all these shows along with some more popular shows and started this thing called "Toonami". Its pretty cool, all the shows I grew up with in one chunk.
However, the anime that I currently watch more often is the stuff that won't get air play on television. Shows like: "New Dominon Tank Police", "Appleseed", "Slayers", "Armitige III" and my personal faves, "Akira", and "Ghost in the Shell". "Akira", and "Ghost in the Shell" are of course, full length movies.
Like I said before on my home page, I live in Toledo, Ohio and the selection of Anime is scarce, a friend told me that the SCI-FI channel is running all those shows plus feture films of Japanimation without being edited, except being dubbed in english.
If you havent heard of "Akira" here's the description on the back of the video box.
Inthe 21st Century, 30 years after a devastating global nuclear war, mankind is once again on the brink of total annihilation. In a world populated by rival motorcycle gangs and petty politications, a powerful psychic force known as "AKIRA", suddenly resurfaces in Neo-Tokyo. Tetsou-a young, inexperienced biker-driven beyound the boundaries of sanity by the power of AKIRA, is forced to conjure up demons laying within his subconscious...
"Akira" has been taken off the market in the VHS format but I've heard its available in DVD. Here's some screen shots of "Akira".
"Ghost in the Shell" is made by the same people who made "AKIRA", and the quality shows. Just like "AKIRA" heres the plot from the back of the box:
In a world caught in the grip of information overload, where artificial intellegence is more than the real thing and cyborg cops spend their lives surfing on an electronic sea of living data, only the Ghost - the indedefinable element of human consciousness - exists to determine who is alive and who is purley a creation of the net.
Major Motoko Kusanagi is an elite officer in the Section 9 security force: a cybernetic agent so heavily modified that little more than her Ghost remains. Along with fellow cyborg Bateau and the mostly human Togusa, Kusanagi is set on the trailof a computer-criminal known as the Puppet Master, a data theif skilled enough to hack into the very minds of his victoms. His human marionettes live out existences that are nothing more than computer-generated fantasy, unwhittingly committing their master's crimes while the Ghost-hacker hides in the darkness.
But as Kusanagi digs deeper into the walls of secrecey surrounding the case, it appears that the Puppet Master has a special interest in her alone. And when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shadowy Section 6, enter the scene, Kusanagi becomes tangled in a web of plot and counterplot, and realizes that the true identity of her invisible assailant lies at the center of a vast and lethal political conspiracy.......
"Ghost in the Shell" is a thriller/political mystery which emphasises the vunerability of data, reguardless if its stock information or a person's memories. Of course I have some screen shots of the film, while you still can get it on VHS I sugguest you buy it.
Ever since my hard drive crashed, my bookmarks to anime sites have been hard to rebuild, after all it took months of visiting sites like this one to pick them up. So, here's all that I got so far, more links are more than likely on the way.
Mangais the distributer of "Akira", and "Ghost in the Shell"
Cartoon Network is the home of Toonami and a few other cartoon series
This page was last edited on july 25th, 1999
Blank Redge is my name and if you have any more sites that I should post, please let me know.