Anime: Japanese for "animation" or "cartoons." In American fandom however, it's used to refer to any form of animation produced in Japan. Anime comes in the form of animated TV shows or movies, video games, and comic books (see Manga). For a much more detailed description of what anime is, click here
AMV: stands for Anime Music Video. AMVs are videos made by fans that feature scenes from anime together with audio from another source such as English songs, dialogue or music from another TV show, or movie trailers. The best AMVs are praised for their good video editing techniques and cleverness in choosing the best anime scenes to go with the chosen song or dialogue.
Baka: Japanese for "stupid," "idiot," or "fool." One of the most common Japanese words used by many American fans to describe people who are, well, bakas!
BGM: stands for "background music." This refers to the background music of an anime TV series, video game, or movie. They're usually fairly common and popular tracks among many anime soundtrack CDs.
Bi-: a prefix denoting beauty. A "bishoujo" is a young and beautiful girl and a "bishonen" is an attractive and often effeminate boy.
Cel: during the early years of modern anime, each anime show and movie was mostly hand-drawn, colored, and put together using thousands of animation cels made by the original animators. In the early 2000s, all animation studios switched to digital animation and cels were no longer necessary. Nowadays anime cels function solely as collectors' items and can be sold for high prices, especially if they feature popular characters.
Chibi (CB): Japanese for "small," "little," or "young." A "chibi" style drawing of an anime character usually depicts them as being baby-like, with smaller, chubbier bodies, larger eyes and head, and shorter arms and legs. Chibi characters are usually made to be extremely cute and endearing, and it's not uncommon for even villainous characters to be drawn as such. CB is an acronym for Child Body, and is a prefix indicating a chibi style. Artists draw their characters like this from time to time as a sort of "self-parody" (fans love them as well).
CLAMP: an extremely famous and popular all-female manga creating team made up of Nanase Ohkawa, Mokona Apapa, Mick Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi. Some of their most famous works include Magic Knight Rayearth (which was their first breakthrough hit), Cardcaptor Sakura (which became the #1 shoujo manga series in Japan in 1996), Clover, Angelic Layer, and Chobits. All of their works are focused mainly on the characters' relationships and inner conflicts, and the sheer beauty of their stories show that you don't need tons of fighting and action to get an impacting message across.
Cosplay: short for "costume play." Cosplay is the act of dressing up as an anime character. Many fans tend to do this at big anime conventions such as Anime Expo.
Doujinshi: Japanese for "fanzine." Doujinshi refers to unofficial manga produced by fans. These fan-made stories can use already existing anime and manga characters or original ones. They're usually distributed online, but in Japan, some of the better doujinshi is sold in stores.
Dub: refers to editing out the original dialogue of a foreign TV show or movie and replacing it with dialogue of a different language. In the anime world, the "dub" refers to the English language version of an anime.
Ecchi: derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the letter "H" (from the Japanese word "hentai," which means "pervert"). It refers to anime with an amount of sometimes humorous indecency, usually involving gratituous nudity and sexual situations. However, it's milder than hentai (see Hentai.)
Ending theme: also called an "ending song" or "outro". Refers to the song sung at the end of every episode of an anime series while the end credits role, along with a sequence of animation that usually flows with the words of the song. Almost every anime has an ending theme that usually changes each season or if the anime's plot changes significantly. The ending theme is almost always followed by a preview of the anime's next episode, and is usually more calm, slow, and gentle than the opening theme.
