Cartoon heroines with glistening eyes as big as wading pools. Leather-clad outcasts fighting their way through apocalyptic cityscapes. Lots of robots and rocket ships.
These are stock elements in the Asian animation style known as Anime. Starting Monday, Cartoon Network will be showing more of it as it expands its “Adult Swim” programming from two to five nights a week. The schedule, aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds, includes the new “Lupin the Third” at 11 p.m., “Inu Yasha” at 11:30 p.m., “Yu Yu Hakusho” at midnight and “Cowboy Bebop” at 12:30 a.m.
And if all these titles exist under the same name, they don’t necessarily have a whole lot in common.
“We’re actually talking about an entire multinational community in Asia that produces hundreds of animated shows every year,” said Sean Akins, executive producer of Cartoon Network’s “Toonami,” an afternoon block of Anime and action cartoons. Since “Toonami” launched in 1997, Cartoon Network has introduced more than a dozen Anime series to the cable airwaves.
If you want to know if the cartoon you’re watching is Anime, Akins says there are some telltale signs. “The male heroes always have very sexy hair,” he says. And yes, there are those big-eyed girls with tiny mouths the size of dimes, like “Sailor Moon,” a Cartoon Network staple that’s on hiatus.
“Cowboy Bebop” and “Inu Yasha” are good examples of different styles of Anime.
In “Cowboy,” a group of bounty hunters prowls the galaxy in their ramshackle spaceship, the Bebop. In “Inu Yasha” which translates as “Dog Demon,” a long-haired antihero is freed from magic enslavement by a girl who gets flung back in time to Japan’s feudal age.
“It’s a fantastic, magical tale and it’s a lot of fun,” Akins said. “It’s probably one of the last handful of Japanese shows that are cell-animated. Everything is going digital now.”
