General Notes

First off, naming conventions.

In Japan, surname/family name comes first and would therefore be most commonly used in conversation. For example, "Bleach" character Kurosagi Ichigo's familiar name is Ichigo, but he's referred to in the original (Japanese) anime by most as Kurosaki, Kurosaki-kun, Kurosaki-san, etc. Close friends and family members call him Ichigo. English dubs generally switch the names around in Western style, a la Ichigo Kurosaki, which can be aurally jarring (not to mention irritating) if you're used to watching fansubbed anime and hearing it in the original Japanese.

Subtle variation in the use of names and honorifics in anime and manga is quite revealing of the relationships between characters. This is discarded altogether in official English anime dubs and is a bad thing in my opinion. A comprehensive overview of common honorifics is covered on this Wiki page.

To illustrate what I'm talking about...

In the anime "Mirage of Blaze", Naoe, so often dissed by his master Kagetora and other characters, is referred to as "Naoe-dono" by a high-ranking retainer of another kanshousa Lord. This was an expression of respect acknowledging Naoe as a person of status and power on the same level as the speaker. On the other hand, when Ishida Uryuu first confronted Kurosagi Ichigo in "Bleach", Ishida called him "Kurosaki" without honorifics as a deliberate insult. Since Ichigo couldn't care less about such things, it backfired, and in fact Ichigo routinely pisses off Ishida and even Soul Reapers by using their familiar names without permission. The effect of all this is entirely lost in the English dubs.

Enough on this subject for now.

General anime & manga notes:

Japanese manga is read right-to-left. Korean manwha is read left-to-right. After reading a lot of manga, webcomics and regular comic books require a bit of a brain shift!

Sweat-drops indicate anxiousness/nervousness. Vein pops are obviously irritation. When characters get really angry, evil purple waves come off of them and their eyes flash with lightning & stuff! Giant dragons and tigers loom in the background behind them! When depressed, it's black waves, and sometimes mushrooms grow on them too! Wouldn't that be awesome in real life? Can't forget nosebleeds, either -- when a character is turned on or aroused, blood drips or spurts from their noses (but it can in some instances be from eating chocolate, go figure). All these add hilarity to the proceedings.

Concerning religion and magic, anime and manga have little to no regard for accuracy when it comes to anything besides Buddhism or Shinto, and even then astonishing liberties are taken with the material. Hexagrams, crosses, pentagrams, runic-looking thingys, etc. are all thrown together willy-nilly whenever some mystical shit goes down. You never know what's going to show up. Think "Charmed" on crack. Catholic nuns in the anime/manga universe wear skimpy outfits and use spells & guns, and the priests are all sexy bishounen with guns who are sometimes vampires. I'm looking forward to encountering my first anime/manga rabbi, as the results are sure to be screamingly funny.

A big difference between English-subbed anime and fansubbed anime/scanlated manga is that the latter two tend to contain a lot more Japanese words (and made-up Japanese-ish terms). This can be a bit of a stumbling-block for newcomers, but good fansubbers and scanlators provide explanations for stuff like that. English dubs dumb things down and use English equivalents rather than series-specific terminology, i.e. "Soul Reaper" instead of "shinigami" and "Soul Cutter" for "zanpakuto" (yes, yes, more "Bleach" references).

Discrepancies between an anime and the books and/or manga it's based upon can be distressingly vast, sometimes to the point where it's a completely different story with only the characters' names remaining the same. Perfect examples of this are "Trinity Blood", "Mirage of Blaze" and the "Hellsing" TV series. Censorship is a significant factor in some cases, as with MoB. Lack of ratings for others (like TB) result in a hasty series wrapup leaving viewers scratching their heads and going, "WTF?" Then there's those anime shows that end in the middle of an ongoing manga or book series and leave everyone hanging. Will there be a new TV series or OVA once the plot has sufficiently advanced? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Or worse, the anime will stick in stupid filler storylines that both suck ass and fuck up the general plot (such as the dismal Bount story-arc in "Bleach").

Another irritation is when a good manga either goes on indefinite hiatus or is dropped altogether. This often happens with scanlation projects too, and there are some great titles I love that have no ending in sight because the scanlators dropped it or went under as a group with no raws floating around for someone else to finish the job. *sigh*

When an anime or manga is licensed, fansubbing and scanlation stops. Officially. If you know where to look, some licensed works are still being worked on and distributed online. Don't ask me who, what or where, 'cuz I ain't telling.

Some words on genres:

Manga and anime have a wide range of target audiences, and can be categorized by genre just like movies and books. Here's a list.

Action, adult (also ecchi & smut), adventure, comedy, doujinshi (fan-made works on established titles & characters, often sexual), drama, fantasy, gender-bender, harem (also reverse harem), hentai (more extreme than adult, ecchi & smut), historical, horror, josei (target audience females 18-30, usually smutty romance), martial arts, mature (more extreme than general action category, can have sexual content), mecha (think Transformers), mystery, psychological, romance (also shoujo, shoujo-ai, shounen-ai), school life, sci-fi, seinen (target audience males 18-30), shounen, slice of life, sports, supernatural, tragedy, yaoi, yuri.

Yaoi, shounen-ai, yuri and shoujo-ai deal with homosexual themes. Yaoi is the more explicit version of shounen-ai about male-male relationships, while yuri is more explicit than shoujo-ai regarding female-female ones. Personally, I have no interest in yuri/shoujo-ai, but I loooooove yaoi! *drool* Amusingly enough, yaoi is most popular with the female demographic, and I got hit dead on with that one, lol!

Two categories I didn't include with the above list (because I find them highly offensive) are lolicon and shotacon. These are about sex with children. (Die, child molesters, die!!)

Sex and sexual situations are quite prevalent in manga, and that's not counting all the freaky sub-classifications in hentai. The national age of consent in Japan is 13(!!!), but from what I've seen, most manga thankfully keeps that kind of thing in the 17-and-up range. Speaking for myself, it makes me uneasy when characters in sexual situations are depicted as looking much younger than the age claimed, and I avoid those titles on general principles.

Okay, I think I've covered most of the preliminary stuff. I may add more to this post in the future. Oh, and don't bother asking me where to find fansubs & scanlations because I'm not doing your footwork for you.