I was on the bus, and on it was a group of kids probably no older than 13, discussing plans to make some kind of successful manga and anime. I couldn’t hear them too well, but some interesting things came up.

The conversation had clearly been going for a while. Then one of the kids starts talking about how “there’ll be a manga,” which gets another kid whose been part of the conversation to ask, “What’s manga?”

A third kid sitting across said, “Manga is like anime,” which then prompted the response, “WHAT THE FUCK IS ANIME?” The kid who knew nothing about anime was clearly annoyed that they’d been discussing the topic for a while and not teaching the uninformed what these unusual words meant. The third kid tries to explain, by having him compare the words anime and animation to see if the point gets across, and then going into some details, describing the difference as only kids in junior high can. It appeared to be unsuccessful overall, though in the end the non-anime kid had one thing to say:

“Manga? IT’S A COMIC!”