There are few among us, I think, who have not at some point in their life, wanted to do something totally cool and popular, but have no idea how to do it.  Hitler, for instance, wanted to be an art major, but his mastery of crosshatching was laughable at best, and so he went and started the Nazi party, as well as Hardee’s.  Napoleon just wanted to play ball for the Lakers, but owing to his tinyness, they didn’t let him join up and he ended up conquering Europe.  I myself once wanted to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, but Kleebdar the Dungeon Master just laughed at me, so I had to club him senseless with my +7 Truncheon of Nerd Vanquishing.  By such examples, I think we can all see that not knowing how to do cool stuff can lead to all sorts of genocide, conquest, and sucky fast food restaurants.  In the interest of averting further human suffering then, I have decided to go you, my readers, a bit of a leg up on doing something that just about everyone seems to want to get in on these days, Japanese Cartoons, or as our friends in the land of the rising sun call them, Anime.  Let’s take a quick look then, at some of the elements that help to contribute to a successful Anime movie, show, comic book, or shamelessly over-marketed trading card game.

            First, it has to take place in Neo-Tokyo.  For whatever reason, good ol’ Tokyo original recipe is never around anymore in Anime.  Maybe it was destroyed in World War III, maybe Rodan ate it (the giant pterodactyl, not the famous sculptor), maybe it just fell down behind the sofa and by the time Japan found it again, they’d already gone and bought a new one; in any case, Neo-Tokyo it is.  It usually looks a lot like regular Tokyo (like I’ve ever been there to know what I’m talking about) but with a lot of neon signs, and people addicted to weird sci-fi anime drugs that turn you into a monster, and a lot more cyber-hookers then there are these days.

            Next, giant robots.  Seriously, in Anime, giant robots are like cell phones, everyone has one, and all they ever do is fight with them.  Nobody ever says “See you tonight Hon, I’m taking the kids to school in my giant robot!” They just run around the city, knocking over hotdog carts, fighting either A: other giant robots, or B: giant freak-beasts from some other planet or dimension bent on destroying Neo-Tokyo, which, much like Original Tokyo is built on top of some kind of weird cosmic giant monster bug light that just brings them in like boring people to a quilting convention.  Also, most of the time, the main giant robot has this one totally awesome super attack where it like, combines with other robots, or creates a sword made out of antimatter, or unleashes a maelstrom of atomic awesomeness, that invariably completely destroys the other giant robot.  The only thing is, it takes like, five minutes for it to power up and look all cool while it’s doing this, but it’s okay, cause the other robot/monster is always either too polite to interrupt, or is just so completely tripped out at the very sight of it that its unable to rouse itself adequately to go on fighting.

            Then, we have the invariable progression from lighthearted, happy plotlines, to unbearably dark, depressing, Ashton Kutcheresque plotlines.  It doesn’t matter what the show is about, saving the very world from hideous space monsters hell-bent on the annihilation of mankind, or maybe just about the wacky exploits of a bunch of middle school kids, one of whom is a robot, and another one of whom has a pet bunny that turns into a starship, the show starts out all light and happy with humorous romantic tension and wacky situational comedy, and by the end of the second season, the entire world has become a fiery pit of doom and everyone’s family is dead and for about the last five or six episodes, everyone is just hanging on as things get worse and worse and death draws inevitably nearer, and then everything just gets really weird and bizarre, like a Tom Green movie.

            Creepy androgynous arch-villains.  Now, usually your anime sub-villains are normal enough, but there’s always the one totally evil mastermind villain, who is usually a guy who looks like he might be a girl, and all he wants to do is destroy everything.  Not take over Neo-Tokyo, not get revenge on those who wronged him, but just wipe out all of existence for weird and ill-explained reasons all his own.  Then, when he’s finally within striking distance of annihilating the world, the hero finally confronts him and he always does something completely surprising but also utterly nonsensical, because Anime writers have only the vaguest of notions about what constitutes a good plot twist and what just confuses people.  Like a normal arch-villain plot twist would be like this: “Luke, I am your father!” While an Anime plot twist is more like this: “Aha, in truth, I am not the evil ninja emperor, but rather some weird combination of a benevolent nature spirit and a self-aware computer program who was in fact created from your very DNA and a pile of burritos ten thousand years before you were even born come at last to wreak fiery vengeance upon the great and immortal yak-spirit who sired you!”  And after that, things get weird, and you have all this impassioned shouting and people start to just up and melt, or catch on fire, or both, and then there’s like, a huge floating eye up in the air, and then they have some weird, out of context Christian imagery, like Jesus in a Waffle House, and it all just gets too bizarre to even think about and then the world explodes and you hear a little girl recite a haiku about springtime and your just sitting there going, “Huh?”

            Finally, you must have Pikachu.

            So there you have it, a handy and easy to follow guide to making your own hit anime series, so you won’t screw it up and end up becoming an inhuman dictator or something.  All you have to do now is throw in a ridiculously big sword, and a few scenes in a bath house with a panda, and you’re in business.