The year is 2070. Hajime, a curious and outgoing second-year class rep at Misumaru Middle School, leads what he thinks is a quiet and ordinary life in the town of Tenmo. But, one day, two events turn all of his conceptions about the world around him upside down: the appearance of a giant white mecha fighting off an apparent alien invasion, and the arrival of Muryou Subaru, a transfer student with a predilection for old-fashioned (for the time) school dress and remarkable talents for combat and use of telekinetic power. As Hajime soon discovers, Muryou isn’t the only person at Misumaru with special powers and responsibilities, either. How is it all connected to the alien Galactic Federation and the strange white giant called Shingu?
Categories
Action
Action anime usually involve a fairly straightforward story of good guys versus bad guys, where most disputes are resolved by using physical force. It often contains a lot of shooting, explosions and fighting.
Androids
Androids are robots created to look like humans. A very famous example is Data from Star Trek, but they need not be as human-like as him.
Asia
Asia is the world`s largest and most populous continent.
Earth
That big mud ball that most of us live on.
Japan
Last stronghold for humanity, if Tokyo falls, it`s all over. Tokyo tower will undoubtedly fall anyway.
Mecha
Mecha in Japanese basically means mechanical things; everything from an electric whisk or a car to a spaceship or a robot. Here however we limit it to the more exotic things usually referred to as mecha anime: robots, whether controlled by a human or not, and their ilk.
Middle School
Also referred to as junior high school (or lower-secondary education; compulsory in Japan) covers the grades seven, eight, and nine. The students are typically twelve to fifteen years old.
Anime with school setting centre on Middle School students when younger, possibly more naive and `innocent` (less worldly wise) characters are required.
Original Work: New
Not based on anything, the story is a new work, usually made up by the people involved in creating the anime. Generally if an original work (原作) credit is given, it will be to the studio, or director, or other members of the production team.
Plot Continuity
Consistency of the characteristics of persons, plot, objects, places and events seen by the viewer.
A single linear focused plot is highly continuous.
A truly random plot is highly discontinuous.
Romance
Romance describes a story that deals with love between two or more characters typically also having an optimistic ending.
School Life
Since a large part of the anime audience still takes part in school life or is visiting college, it is only natural to choose a setting the audience can identify with, be it elementary, middle, or high school. For the older viewers a college setting with more mature real-life problems is appropriate. And since clubs take up so much time in the lives of students, these are obviously also important.
SciFi
Science fiction stories usually focus on how situations could be different in the future when we are more technologically advanced; due to either our own achievements or having met with other civilizations whom we have learned from.
Shipboard
Beam me up, Scotty! Space stations (think Death Star) also count. Basically, this category is to tell if the setting takes place onboard a spaceship in space. This category is not applicable if the spaceship lies on a planet and never actually gets into space.
Space
The final frontier.
Super Power
Be it an ancient Greek Hercules, a cybernetic muscle-man, or a fourteen year-old girl in a mini-skirted sailor suit. As long as they have super powers, they`re in the show.
Time: Future
Anime that fall under the future category are the ones that have a society that could have originated from ours. In most cases it should go hand to hand with sci-fi since we expect the future to consist of advanced technology, however, in the case where it`s explicitly stated in the story that the anime takes place "x years into the future", the state of technology doesn`t matter as long as it`s long into the future. The anime can be set in an alternative universe not tied with our own, as long as it has a futuristic feel to it.
This category sports quite a lot of anime, mostly stemming from SciFi, but not necessarily only from there.
