Well, I think I'll take a stab at the anime issue. For starters, I'd like to preface my comments by saying that I genuinely like anime, although I am more of a manga person. However, I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this stigma that Chris speaks of refers not only to anime, but to manga as well. I like to consider myself as a conisseur of comic books and cartoons, and I don't feel that you can adequately appreciate the medium without appreciating these offerings from the far east, and I'll go as far as to argue that some of the best stuff, if not most of the best stuff being done artistically in the comic/cartoon world now are being done almost exclusively with anime and manga. However, having said all that, I agree that there is a stigma that is associated with anime (I'll use the group term here) and this stigma needs to be examined more seriously. Namely, I think the popular perception of anime, and where the stigma comes from, is from the image of prepubescent boys, hunched lustily at their keyboards, watching explicit pictures of scantily clad Japanese anime characters while getting their jollies. I think a lot of people with no knowledge of anime, especially westerners, consider anime as such, to be a "dirty" business. The irony though is that the collection of playboy magazines is in contrast, glorified in western culture. I mean, it is almost considered an American rite of passage to purchase your first Playboy (if not have it handed to you by your father). As such, the notion that westerners reject anime simply because they see it as dirty does not really work. The deeper answer, I suspect, has to do with the unerlying racism that is present in our society. The fact of the matter is that the demographic that anime appeals to most is the teenage asian male (for no other reason I suspect, than initially cultural reasons), but he is a much maligned figure in our society, and is very low on the social totem pole, if he exists on it at all. People love making fun of these people and in most cases, the asian male is too weak (physically and perhaps even intellectually) to fight back. Now, of course, in this day and age of political correctness, it is not okay to come right out and say "I think all ch!nks are [fill in the blanks]" or things to that extent, but to attack and dismiss what they value, is a far subtler, and more effective way of putting the Asian man down. Thus, skeptics of anime are not so much criticizing the art and the story telling capabilities of anime as they'd have us believe, but rather, they are attacking the asian man in general, through this part of our culture.

Whew, never thought I'd be championing the cause of anime. And I didn't even have to wRiTe LiKe diSs.