Anime and Language...

Though I don't necessarily agree with it, because I'm technically an American and language is not a big deal in America much of the time because we take it for granted here in "normal" American society, because language is very important in Japan, there actually seems to be this mindset that if something is speaking or written in Japanese, that "automatically qualifies it as anime". Well, I'm not going to debate, that language is crucial to Japanese culture in the opinion of nearly all (if not all) Japanese, but language should not be the only thing that defines anime.

I'm starting to learn how to speak a little bit of basic conversational Japanese in my spare time. I'm not fluent but I know a few basic phrases.

These cultural differences between anime in Japan and anime in America is probably something important to take note of though. Many American anime fans don't speak any Japanese. This fact isn't meant to offend the Japanese. It's merely a cultural difference, not an insult. Speaking from observing the fan community...Japanese is a hard language to learn in the eyes of the American public and media, but not impossible if you have good linguistics skills (in general) and a desire to learn foreign languages as a gaijin...