The Japanese word anime is a butchering of the English word animation. The Japanese have a knack for doing that to English words. Terebi = ? Television. Pasokon = ? Personal computer. And so on. The Japanese are known for borrowing good ideas from other countries and improving on them. But not always. Japan might be decimating the English language but their anime is setting the pace at home in Japan and in other countries.

Here are my 9 picks (in no particular order) for anime that have found a following outside of Japan and one animator that should gain a following.

1. NaNaruto – the stealthiest ninja in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. He’s hyperactive, unpredictable, and always searching for recognition. Even old folks are doing that in real life. This anime has been around since 1999 and is licensed by Viz Media in North America.

I’ve never read or seen the actual story but the pictures are drawn very well. It’s about a boy going to ninja school to become a great ninja some day. He also possesses the spirit of the fox demon. When he was little, a giant fox demon attacked the village and the elder ninjas entrapped its soul into the infant Naruto. It is internationally popular because of its ninja background.

ne One Piece – a story about a bunch of ragtag pirates in search of the ultimate treasure – One Piece and to become Pirate King. Do you know anybody in search of an ultimate treasure?

The time is the Great Pirate Era, which started when the Pirate King Gold Roger announced to the world before his public execution about his treasure he acquired, “One Piece”. It is wealth, power, honor, anything one can name connected into “one piece”. Many around the world were driven to the sea in search of “One Piece”.

A young man by the name of Monkey D. Luffy, the protagonist of the story, decides to become a pirate and explore the world in search of “One Piece” and to become the Pirate King at a young age when he meets “Shanks the Red Hair”, the captain of the “Red Hair Pirates”. Shanks was a great and powerful pirate and later becomes one of the strongest and prominent pirates of the era. Luffy’s encounter with Shanks leaves the little boy with admiration towards the pirate and a strong ambition to one day conquer the sea like the one he respects. Shanks gives Luffy his straw hat telling him to someday become a great pirate and bring the hat back to him.

Ten years after this encounter, Luffy sets off to sea to start his adventure. Other characters join him as the story goes on and later he is called”Luffy the Straw Hat” of the “Straw Hat Pirates”. Luffy and his gang travel the “Grand Line”, which is the most famous and notorious sea for being dangerous having the strongest pirates roam and fight against each other to become the strongest of the seas. But that is also because “Grand Line” has the highest potential of where “One Piece” is located. The “World Navy” is also another branch of power within “Grand Line” that fights to protect the sea in which Luffy must encounter in order to achieve his ambition.

There is also another trait in the story which is the “Devil’s Fruit”. How and where it comes is still yet to be revealed, but when one eats the “Devil’s Fruit” they gain special powers of the Devil but in return “gets hated by the ocean” and loses the power to swim in water, a fatal state for a pirate or boatsman to be at sea. Luffy by accident ate the “Fruit of Gom Gom” and became a rubber person being able to stretch his body and devise attacks incorporating his special state. There are others with power to turn into smoke or fire, or becoming a physical explosive being able to bombard anything he touches. Others may transform into other animal forms and use their abilities as well as combining their human skills with it. These super human battle styles spice up the whole battle sequence within the series.

3. DeDeath Note – a series about a high school student who can kill anyone just by writing their name in his notebook and imagining their face. Creepy, yeah. Who would you write in your notebook?

In a world full of boredom for its peace and efficiency, a typical neighborhood in modern Japan, a high school boy with prodigy intelligence and high IQ picks up a black notebook with the title “Death Note” on the cover. He finds instructions inside, noting that any name of a particular person written in the notebook will result in the person’s death. The boy tries it out and to his horror, it was true. Soon afterwards, a Grim Reaper appears in front of him who was the one that left the “Death Note” for anyone to pick it up. The Grim Reaper too was bored in the “Death World” where all the Grim Reapers did, were to write humans’ names of whom their deaths were approaching. Otherwise they had nothing else to do. The Grim Reaper Ryuk, being bored of this task decided to leave a “Death Note” on earth “to see what would happen”, and to his delight, the young genius Light Yagami found it.

Now Light is ambitious to cleanse the outside world of crime and murder. The basic rule to use the note book is to know the target’s name and to see and image their face. Light uses the media to find and see criminals around the world on the media and starts to “punish” them in the name of justice visioning himself as the New God of the world. Ryuk aids him but only by amusement. News of an invisible killer is known immediately to the public and the police both national and international, for the case was expanding into a global level, gather a team to uncover the killer. Light starts to attack these forces as well reasoning that they were stopping his act of justice. A secret detective called only by the code name “L” who is the last resource for great international crime cases also joins the team to hunt the killer. However, Light is at a greater advantage. Not because he was highly intelligent and possessed a lethal weapon, but also because his father was the head of the Japanese police department and Light uses this source to counteract his opposing forces. Later after completing college he becomes part of the whole investigating group playing a two face character, the intelligent good son of the police chief and the ruthless killer.

Lies and deceits cross over along with many deaths as the two, the two face killer and the detective fight within the same team to uncover the truth.

4. Pokemon – (Pocket Monster) started out as a video game for Game Boy. The player/protagonist would find and train pocket monsters making them learn knew tricks, skills, attacks and had them fight each other. They would evolve into stronger creatures as they were trained and the player could fight other players with their individually trained pocket monsters by connecting their game boys with a special chord. The game came in different types containing different pocket monsters so players were able to exchange their pocket monsters to each other. The object of the game is to finish the story and to collect all the pocket monsters which were about 150 when the first game came out (now there’s a lot more). The TV anime is based on this but I have no idea of the actual story. There are a lot of toys and merchandise for Pokemon as well.

5. Samurai Champloo Champloo comes from an Okinawan word, chanpuru, a stir-fried dish made with bitter melons. The series is a mix of action and samurai with comedy, set in the Edo Period of Japan. What makes you laugh?

Champloo … a type of food with many things mixed made in Okinawa. The anime “Samurai Champloo” is just like that. Set in the Edo period of Japan with very loose historical facts, three protagonists, samurais Jin, Mugen(who is from Okinawa), and a girl by the name Foo travel the country with many adventures. However the whole series has a modern hip hop atmosphere to it with Mugen doing break dance moves as he fights and Jin wearing fake glasses. Why? To look cool of course! It’s a champloo of every thing with a samurai seasoning with hip hop-ish pictures.

Three animation directors that were involved in making the Animatrix series(side story episodes of the Matrix Trilogy) joined the production. Mahiro Maeda designing the weapons, Takeshi Koike animating the opening animation, and Shinichiro Watanabe(famous as the creator and director of “Cowboy Bebop”) directing the whole series.

Watanabe’s good taste for modern culture seen in Cowboy Bebop embraced a common Japanese samurai theme and turned it into a never-before-seen “Cool Samurai Entertainment”.

6. Paprika – Paprika – A science fiction film based on a 1993 novel of the same name. A female research psychologist is able to use a device that allows her to enter her patients’ dreams…called, surprise, Dream Therapy. What’s your most recurring dream?

It is the latest movie by the acclaimed animation director Satoshi Kon, creator of movies “Perfect Blue” “Millennial Actress”, “Tokyo Godfathers” and a TV series “Paranoia Agent”. His story plot always has a common theme(except for Tokyo Godfathers), the mixing of dream/fantasy/imagination and reality.

“Perfect Blue”, a suspense story of a Japanese pop female singer being pursued by a killer stalker and driven crazy. She later becomes confused with the real world and the world of the media, or the TV where she is the star idol. But at the same time, her own life is threatened as well by the murderer stalker.

“Millennial Actress” is about an old Japanese actress and a mystery of her trying to be revealed. As she recalls her past, her own personal memories and the memories of the various roles she played as an actress in her life mixes together as if they were from her own experiences.

“Paranoia Agent” I haven’t seen the whole thing so I don’t know a lot. Several protagonists get attacked by a common attacker, the “Shonen Bat”(dubbed Lil’ Slugger), an elementary boy on inline skates with a baseball bat. The police start investigating but despite the fact of the number of victims and eyewitnesses the boy cannot be found. Where and who is he? Does he really exist or is it something that people are just imagining?

Paprika is another one of them. A Japanese scientist creates a device that will enable people to peek into others’ dreams when they are asleep. It is being experimented and studied to be applied as a type of remedy for mental and psychological patients by directly connecting to their subconsciousness i.e. “dream” and fixing it. Doctor Atsuko Chiba, the protagonist is a psycho therapist and uses the machine to interact with her patients, and when she does, her alter ego inside the dreams is a female by the name of Paprika. The story goes on as someone starts to force into others’ dreams and shows them nightmares and ultimately destroying their minds resulting to their deaths. Atsuko/Paprika is on the case to find who’s responsible for it. But as she does, the attacker starts invading her dreams and she also starts wandering in the labyrinth of dream and reality.

7. GuGundam – Gundam – this series has been around since 1979 and has made nearly $500 million. The name is a combination of gun and freedom. My kids loved these little rubber fellows growing up.

The description of the “Gundam” series is quite simple. People ride on giant robots and fight each other. Actually they are called mobile suits and the pilot rides on the chest part of the big humanoid machines. However, the deep story line of the series is one of the big factors of seizing fans around the world. It usually has young under age protagonists(kids) ending up riding on the robots(protagonist ends up riding the Gundams, the advanced types of mobile suits) trying to survive wars that adults started. The story takes place both on earth and in space with space colonies which are artificially built architectures for humans to live in space.

Since its first series was aired in 1979, the Gundam story expanded into different episodes, ones that are connected to each other, and others that are completely independent.

Gundam is famous as anime shows and on manga format but is also widely known for its small scale plastic model figures that could be bought and built. In that way, many mobile suits, mobile armors (bigger mobile suits) and space ships, etc. got known to kids and both fans of the show and making figures.

8. Inu Yasha – the series is about a time travelling middle school female student who is part demon, monk, fox demon, demon slayer and cat monster. The inu part means dog. So, go figure. Where would you like to travel in time?

I have no idea about this story. However the author of the original manga, Rumiko Takahashi is from Niigata. Niigata is famous as a homeland for having a lot of manga artists. If you go to Niigata Train Station, there is a sign with a character in Inuyasha with the greetings, “Welcome to Niigata, the city of water and manga “. Rumiko Takahashi has many works published and adapted into anime including “Urusei Yatsura”, “Ranma 1/2″. I read in something before that said that she was the richest manga/comic author in the world.

S. Akeala – a new renaissance man. I am very partial to this last one. A onetime animator who appears in the credits of the Ghost in the Shell production, S. Akeala is trying to make it as an artist – painter, illustrator, performer, story teller. He got his inspiration from Japanese anime.

It is sometimes (often?) said that Japan has nothing original to offer to the world. Most of what Japan produces is something that was developed/created elsewhere and Japan made improvements to. Think cars like Toyota, Honda, Nissan and electronics like Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba. But, anime, except for the name, is all Japanese. And, the world has taken notice.

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