Anime, of course, is for geeks, guys who live in their parents’ basement and 14-year-old Japanese girls. That’s a bit of its rep, but anyone who thinks that probably doesn’t understand why Up or Iron Gian or Beauty and the Beast are such amazing works of art. There is so much cheap, crappy animation in the world, it’s easy to write off the entire field. There are even more crappy movies and tv than animation, so it’s a stupid thing to say. Yet it gets said, or thought, so it needs to be answered.

Cheap crap is cheap crap, whether it’s food, tv or animation. The medium of expression is irrelevant to the concept of quality; there are 30-second commercials that are excellent expressions of art and skill. Not a lot, of course, but enough to prove the point that quality is possible in any field of human endeavor. And quality is what sets any work apart, not its form or format.

Azumanga Daioh, for an excellent example, is better television than at least 90% of all the sitcoms ever made. A 25-episode story arc following the lives of a group of Japanese girls in their three years of high school. What it is not is an extended After-school Special, exploring the growing pains and so on; it is, instead, hilarious, silly and, now and then, touching. There’s no boy troubles, no teenage rebellion, just a lot of goofy characters, a few sweet moments and art that is wonderful to watch. Yes, it’s anime so there are many scenes of minimal, and often no, animation. Stills, and the mere moving of still elements, are a major aspect of anime that need to be accepted along with the Coyote’s ability to hover in space until he looks down at his feet.

Shikabane Hime is one of many anime series with young girls fighting demon monsters. Bleach, Renkin Buso, Burst Angel — I’ve only seen a handful. The subgenre is very popular and can be both hokey and beautiful. Makina Hoshimura is the zombie-fighting-for-good heroine of the story, and I have never seen an animated character with more genuine anger drawn into her expression (few real life actresses manage the feat, either). The artists have managed to move beyond the outward elements of anger and capture the essence of the emotion. An amazing accomplishment.

These are two of the many anime series that are available in this country. I’ve been watching Bleach for several years now, downloading subs from the dattebayo website each week. Subs, or sub-titled versions, are infinitely preferably to dubs, versions over-dubbed by English-speaking actors; Americans have almost no ability to speak in “anime” — even if I do not understand more than a few words in Japanese, the sound of the voices is crucial to the experience. I refuse to watch dubs, with one exception: FLCL.

FLCL, or Fooly-Cooly, is a crazed 6-part anime that blows apart all genre identities. The storyline is irrelevant; FLCL is about the art of making an anime that defies definition and yet proves, beyond doubt, that anime can be an art form on a par with any other. The frenetic pace of the story, and the rapid-fire intensity of the visuals (far more movement than most anime) makes reading subtitles a hopeless exercise. Fortunately, miraculously, the voice actors for FLCL actually get it right. They don’t sound like they’re speaking a foreign a; they actually sound as if they know how the characters are supposed to sound like. It’s a tremendous accomplishment.

I’m sure there is plenty of crap anime available, but, like mediocre French wine, it’s probably not exported. That which makes its way to the United States, whether by bittorrent or Hulu or Netflix (Cartoon Network? like drinking a bottle of champagne opened a week ago), varies from good to excellent. Almost without exception, whatever the nature of the story or the characters, anime tends to have wonderful backgrounds; to the extent that animated movements are minimized, care with the actual art is not. Many are worth watching for the beauty of the scene if nothing else; rich, lush colors are plentiful, even in stories involving death and pain.

Anime is a wonderful genre of cinema and television. Anyone who thinks Pokemon, Dragonball or Naruto represents the genre has made the mistake someone might who visited McDonald’s and thought that was all that’s possible with a hamburger. The field is huge and worth getting to know.