A japanese animation is like a normal 90's action film and
you favorite cartoon mixed together. They are known as "japanimations"
or "anime" to fans. To people who don't watch them, they are often
called cartoons, wich offends most anime fans. A japanimation is
generally "a cartoon" wich unlike smurfs or batman includes deep
storylines and much violence and death.
Violence is a big part of japanese anime, characters swear at,
fight and a lot of the time, kill each other. There are peacefull
anime, such as Ranma 1/2. But most, like "Akira" and "BubbleGum Crisis"
include a lot of killing. Characters rip off each others heads,
punch through skulls and shoot each other with very big guns. There
is samurai, kung fu, and every other style of fighting involved.
The storylines are very deep, including love, relationships, saving
your spouse, saving the earth and anything you could ever think of.
They are not like cartoons either, they don't talk nice all the time,
some have manors, some don't. Characters have real life personalities.
Mechs, can be considered the techno part of anime. The mechs and
robots of anime can be from just bigger than human to the size of
planets. They launch spectacular sized weapons and hold anywhere
from 1 to a whole team of people. They can do any job, and usually
go anywhere.
Not all anime has all aspects, if you get into anime, you will
soon find this out.