In the mid 90s when I was still a fledgling anime fan, I thought about how I would summarize anime to other people. In the end, I came up with something along the lines of “Anime looks really awesome but the story tends to be the weak point. They’re confusing and make no sense.”
When you think about it, you could almost argue that anime is the opposite of what the pre-teen me said. Anime tends to use a large amount of animation shortcuts to save money on already sparse budgets, but make up for it through storytelling and visuals which support that storytelling. It all makes sense though when you consider that my main exposure to anime at the time came in the form of Chinatown bootleg VHS tapes, whatever my brother could bring home, and Blockbuster rentals, the era of MD Geist and friends. If you told me that I would receive a million dollars if I could recall to you the plot of Armitage III, I would be walking away none the richer.
It’s about uh… a girl and stuff…
But there I was, summarizing the entirety of anime as if I knew so much when in fact I had such limited experience with the subject. It’s so easy to think that what you see is everything there is to know, to believe that your little island encompasses the entire world.
OGIUE MANIAX 
Yeah. I might quote this when I try to introduce a good friend to anime.
The best Animes stand out from the crowd by selling me an epic story that would probably be too cheesy if attempted in live action.
My favorite books have a lot of trouble in live action because acting / props/ costume design has its limits before looking ridiculous. On the other hand an anime can sell me an outlandish setting pretty easily.
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You must realize this means you need to watch Armitage III again.
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I’m not sure what my summary of anime would have been back in the day, but I probably would have left out the weak story part. People already have a distorted view of anime as it is and, being the fan that I am, I wouldn’t want to make them think any less of it. I would just try and explain what makes it so great and leave the negative parts for another day XD
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“Anime? You mean like PokéMon and DragonBall-Z right?”
– Me circa late 90s
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If you go by what you could get in Blockbuster in 1994, it was nonstop blood, sex and violence… But now I want to watch Armitage III again. I used to love the song “Phantom World.” :)
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