The Evasource Guide to Anime

This is the Evasource Guide to Anime- where we'll attempt to define pretty much everything anime related we can think of. Entries will continuously be added as we think of them, which probably means we'll give up on this shit within a week.

UPDATE: We are now going to define anything that amuses us.

Quick Links: # A B C D E F H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Alucard

A character who DOES exist in Hellsing. He is the definition of badass (See: Badass). Alucard is a vampire, cool already. He wears a trench coat, top hat and sunglasses, more cool. He uses a really long gun (and later on gets two guns). Fuck thats cool. He can turn into a puddle of blood and reform his body. WTFBBQ??!!??! I would have his alarmingly powerful badass babies if he was capable of reproducing and I were female.

Arucard

A character who doesn't fucking exist because any fool can see why the name is wrong. Stop emailing us.

Anime Convention

Usually on an annual basis, all the anime fans in an area will congregate in one location for the weekend and scare/annoy the living crap out of the natives, as well as totally rape local traffic patterns. I imagine if I had no conception of anime, I'd wake up one morning and look out the window to see a bunch of unkempt people dressed in garish costumes and black shirts, and instantly conclude that the Pagans had finally taken over. Then I'd get the fuck out of town before they began the Satanic ritual sacrifices of goats or whatever. Given the anime convention goer's tendency to jaywalk, I similarly imagine that if I was in a car at a convenient time, I'd floor it and take out as many heathens as I could before they ate my children. Those two scenarios ignore the fact that I'd never get up before noon, and I have no children. Finally, if I were a World War II vet, I'd conclude that all my efforts had been for jack shit, and that my stupid ass grandchildren were just handing the country over on a silver platter anyway. Then I'd shoot myself. Ignoring all that, anime conventions generally play host to a plethora of events, the majority of which are in fact anime related. Staples include the Anime Music Video contest (See: Anime Music Video), Cosplayers (See: Cosplaying), and the Dealer's Room. The latter is generally full of bored and irritated looking people waiting to either sell you something or distribute free shit to you so that they can sell you something. As every Evasource member can attest, getting free stuff is massively addictive, to the point where theft seems like a viable and natural extension of the process. In addition, some conventions have kareoke and videogame contests and generally have multiple rooms showing anime and asian movies constantly, as well as numerous panels and guest events where you can meet or listen to people that are undoubtedly more important than you are. You'll probably also see something called Megatokyo, which is popular for reasons I really can't comprehend.

Anime Music Video (AMV)

A fan work constructed from select anime clips and music of the creator's choice. Extremely variable in quality, and watching some of these has forever ruined some animes for me (See: Dancing Vash). The best AMV of all time is undoubtedly Euphoria, which can be found, along with many others, at http://www.animemusicvideos.org.

Badass

A term used to describe various anime characters that are badass. (See: Alucard)

Batman

Young Bruce Wayne's life was shattered forever when his parents were shot to death before his eyes during a routine mugging, leaving him a multi billionaire handsome playboy. Driven by his subsequent anger towards the criminal establishment, he trained himself to be a total asskicker and spent the rest of his life scaring the crap out of people while dressed like a giant bat. Meanwhile, some kid in the ghetto watched his parents shot to death before his eyes, and lacking any resources whatsoever, just went on to became a drug dealer. On a somewhat ironic note, he eventually got the shit kicked out of him by Batman.

Boss Fight

Generally occurring towards the end of a series, the boss fight in many animes generally spans several episodes; at least two of which are flashbacks. When the actual fight begins, it will be stopped 90802349 times for various forms of shit talk. Usually the boss will cream the hero a billion times, and when it seems like the boss is about to shove the hero's balls up his ass, he gains the will (See: Will, The). The hero will then proceed to own the boss like a whiny little bitch till the boss pretends like he's sorry for all people he's killed and shit. The hero, for no apparent reason, will believe him and let his guard down, only to get ultra back stabbed. The fight will continue till the hero lands his ultimate attack (See: Ultimate Attack) which debilitates the boss. A three episode talk will then occur between the hero and boss till he finally dies. The hero will now either die, pass out, or walk away into some super badass background scenery.

Childhood Friend, Female

If a character in the anime has a childhood friend, you can be damn sure she grows up to be ludicrously hot and attracted to the main character, who has somehow remained a loser over the years.

Childhood Friend, Male

Any male childhood friend will probably later have a huge vendetta against the main character and want to kill him and/or fuck him over somehow. He'll also probably be cooler.

Clumsiness

Even the most badass anime character is sometimes used as a vehicle for slapstick comedy, which, besides convenient and gratuitous nudity, is a staple of anime storytelling. If there's ever a dull moment in which a character has nothing to do, you can rest assured that eventually he will trip and fall off a balcony/through a roof into some area with naked women. Then he'll get smacked in the head. This concept was no doubt devised by the author of Ranma 1/2 one day when she hit a particularly crippling writer's block, and she subsequently has made use of it every two pages in every single one of her works since. Incidentally, the twin pillars of clumsiness and gratuitous nudity have largely served to define Ken Akamatsu as a writer.

Cosplaying

All at once, cosplaying confirms how much cooler everything in anime is than real life, as well as why that is the case; quite simply, anime doesn't really focus on ugly fat people. On the rare occasions an episode or chapter of a story happens to contain an ugly fat person, it is extremely likely that the character in question is a deplorable villain, some sort of joke, or a sumo wrestler. Yes, I know sumo wrestling is a greatly revered sport with deep historical roots and significance in Japanese culture; regardless of that, the concept of large fat men grappling with each other remains hilarious to me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this point. There was also this one time I read an article about how this famous sumo wrestler married this hot actress that was around 1/9 his body mass and surface area, and I got this really fucked up mental image of their wedding night that made me kind of sick in the stomach. In addition, in any fighting game, the generic sumo wrestler is unquestionably the funniest looking character, especially when he somehow flies across the screen head first. Anyway, cosplaying is cool if you were either fortunate enough to have been born looking like an anime character, or you're hot, which might even mean the same thing. I'll concede that even looking average is passable at this point, given I've seen bearded fat men dressed as magical Japanese schoolgirls, and catgirls that look perfectly capable of eating my car on a good day. Man, I hate that shit. I've spent time considering the possible mental processes of the former; I imagine they go something like "damn I'm repulsive and hairy, and unfortunately at the same time also possessed of the desire to be a transsexual. There's no way I'd ever convince anyone I was actually a female, but at least I have the anime convention, the one weekend of the year where I can let my inner self be free. If anyone questions me, I'll just pretend I'm perpetrating a funny joke just between us anime fans, and hopefully I don't run into anyone wearing an Evasource shirt." There's also usually at least one dude at an anime convention cosplaying as something clearly unrelated to anime, such as Boba Fett or Neo; I can only assume these people have somehow confused an anime convention with Halloween, despite it being summer and well over ninety degrees outside. Maybe next year I'll see someone cosplaying as Batman, and I'll hate him for it.

Dracula

Hey, if you reverse this name, you get "ALUCARD"!

Dubbing

Many companies responsible for the American distribution of anime, especially on television, believe it's a good idea to cater to functional illiterates- or, in other words, American children. Subsequently, they take around five minutes apiece to pull people off the street to serve as voice actors for their shitty productions; this has become pervasive to the point where certain people actually prefer dubbing to subtitles, because they're "too lazy to read." Although that ensures that very few dubbing fans are likely to be reading this right now, I'd like to reiterate my belief that you're all idiots and should be shot before you gain the opportunity to breed. Who the hell wants their anime characters to sound like they're from Califonia?! Incidentally, at every Otakon there are like five or six guests that are American voice actors. WHO THE FUCK CARES? Christ.

Evasource

A way of living one's life. When used in the phrase "Do it the Evasource way", it means to proceed with the action in a more dangerous and hardcore way. The most applicable situation is lighting anything and everything on fire, or performing certain actions while on fire. When used in the phrase "That's so NOT Evasource", it means that the action being performed is not hardcore enough. It may need fire. When used in the phrase "I AM EVASOURCE MOTHERFUCKER", it means the person pronouncing the phrase is clearly the shit or the person pronouncing the phrase is on fire. Either way, he's the shit.

Fansub

A way of subtitling anime that involves a group of otakus that edit the raw episodes to provide all other otakus with their anime for free. These people are Gods. I mean seriously they're Gods among men.. such altruism ::sniff:: I didn't ::sniff:: think it existed. GOD BLESS YOU PEOPLE!!!!

Fantastic Four, The.

An old Marvel comic created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, recently represented in theaters by a movie in which Jessica Alba strips. Basically, four people- a genius guy, his girlfriend, her brother, and the genius guy's gruff pilot friend- go up into space and get hit by cosmic rays, which give them all super powers; the first three get friggin insane abilities, such as the power to light on fire (in Evasource terms, the power to become infinitely awesome), the power to turn invisible/make force fields, and the power to stretch. The fourth guy gets totally screwed and basically turns into a sentient rock who isn't even as strong as the Hulk, and is forced to look like that for the rest of his life while the other three continue to look like supermodels. I've never seen any superhero so owned in my entire life, except for maybe Spiderman when his uncle gets shot by some dude he neglected to stop.

Female Punch That Causes the Male Character to Fly Across the Globe

Most female anime characters possess the ability to punch a male character across the screen, sky, or planet. She will use this ability in several notable situations: the guy saw her naked, the guy fell in her boobs, the guy fell on top of her (causing her to blush), the guy is hitting on another girl (even though the main girl doesn't admit she likes the guy), the guy thinks about her naked, or the guy thinks about any female character naked. Somehow, the guy will manage to appear again in the next fucking scene with little more than a bandage or a big swelling lump on his head.

Fat Otakon Girl (FOG)

One year, we were in the kareoke room, and two girls began dancing up in the front. Frankly, I don't even remember what they actually looked like, but we went home after the convention was over and mocked them in our Otakon updates. Somehow, one of them found our site and flamed our guestbook, which was probably not a good idea, given that by then we had become extremely proficient in dealing with people who whined to us. After some back and forth shit talking, FOG vowed to never return to our site again. Though its been two years or so since the last sighting, FOG has by now risen to the point of legend material in our minds, and we remember her fondly as the first person we managed to personally offend. Though the term "Fat Otakon Girl" applies to a good percentage of the convention attendees, and thus in theory really describes an archetype, when we say the name, we all know who we're talking about.

Gatsu

The protagonist of the anime/manga Berserk, Gatsu is possibly the most screwed over character I have ever seen. Here's just a partial list of all the shit that's happened to this poor bastard:

1. Orphaned as a baby.

2. Found next to some corpses.

3. Raised by a mercenary leader who let his large black subordinate rape him in the ass for cash.

4. Watched best friend became a demon God, in the process killing all their friends.

5. Same best friend's first act as a demon God was to rape his (as in Gatsu's) girlfriend, rendering her a catatonic retard.

6. Lost an arm and an eye while being forced to watch.

7. Escaped only to watch girlfriend give birth to their child, who has been warped by the demon rape into a monster fetus.

8. Girlfriend hates and fears him after he almost rapes her while under the influence of a demon.

9. Currently wanders world being chased by demons and other weird shit every night.

The only real consolation here is that all these trials have turned Gatsu into one of the greatest badasses of all time, with the ability to carry and easily swing a sword that probably has more mass than he does, as well as a crossbow and cannon built into his false arm. Awesome as that is, if I were Gatsu, that still wouldn't really stop me from hunting down the author who created me and giving him the asskicking of a lifetime.

Holding Back

Near the middle of a close fight, one or more participants will suddenly decide to reveal that they have been holding back the entire time, and are in fact like three to ten times more powerful than they have previously indicated. Those numbers were just general estimates; for certain animes (eg: Dragonball Z) the actual figures probably come close to like four million or something. Dragonball Z sucks. Why the fuck someone would hold back in a life or death situation is really beyond me, but it provides all the other characters present with the opportunity to look shocked (indicated by their eyes widening and their pupils shrinking), as well as some time for everyone to make some comments like "My God! He was only using HALF POWER?!" or "Can even ________ prevail against this?" If there's an anime chick present romantically involved with the dude that wasn't holding back, she'll shout his name and clench her teeth dramatically; then some other guy watching will reassure her and suggest that yes, her man is also holding back. Come to think of it, anime sucks. Fuck this. (See: Ultimate Form/Stance)

Anime protagonists, despite being hardened warriors, are often unwilling to take lives. Eventually this refusal moves well past "respectable" into the realms of "unreasonable" and "bat-shit flat out idiotic;" this is most evident when the main character is inevitably forced to face someone that is as strong as he is, perfectly willing to kill, and has no chance of reforming and spouting pacifist bullshit. When this happens, the fight/situation/encounter is largely resolved by avoiding the issue, such as having the villain spontaneously combust (See: Kenshin) or knocking the villain unconscious and flat out ending the anime so noone can see what happens next (See: Trigun). I tend to believe this is due to creators suddenly realizing their ideologies are bullshit, and being subsequently forced to find some cheap way to finish the story without compromising their characters. Other stupid situations arising from the unwillingness to kill include the classic "Wow, he's going to kill me and kill more people on top of that, but I'm unwilling to kill him first to prevent this potential tragedy because I'm an idiot," and the awesome "Hey, he's totally evil and has little to no chance of ever becoming a good guy, but because I'm unwilling to kill, I'm just going to knock him out- either he's going to escape later or the people I turn him over to will kill him anyway, but at least my conscience will be free." Only in anime can unreasonable and illogical stubbornness be considered a heroic characteristic.

What happens when you start liking anime and/or manga a bit too much. Strangely, while in Japan being an otaku is cause for social concern, in the United States it has somehow become a status of which people are proud.

Power Levels

Probably popularized through the shitty anime Dragonball Z, many anime characters have several power levels. You won't see them change to their next power level until you watch through a shit load of crappy filler episodes about train robbers or pirates. When you finally see the second power level you're like "Oh shit that’s cool!" Generally an enemy will come along that is more powerful than the characters second level. Instead of some interesting plot twist, the character will just move up a power level. Similarly, the enemy will respond by moving up another power level. The two characters will keep getting more powerful till one dies or there's some gigantic explosion with nonsensical colors and noises that cause both characters to revert back to their crappy original forms.

Preteen Girls, Obnoxious

Young girls in anime, when they're not shy, stray towards the opposite end of the spectrum and are precocious as hell. They constantly torment the main character and interrupt his romantic liasons with someone that is actually his own age. Sometimes they'll operate under the somewhat justified belief that the protagonist can be attracted to them. In general, they annoy the shit out of me and need to get thrown off a dry waterfall.

Preteen Girls, Shy

There's usually a young, cute preteen girl that looks up to the main character despite his obvious shortcomings. In general, she falls in love with him first, and is too adorably shy to walk up to him and blatantly declare her interest. Eventually, the main character becomes aware of this, and (uh, I think) unlike real life, begins to consider the thirteen year old a serious romantic prospect. This leads to a series of disturbing yet hilarious incidents where the main character keeps catching the girl naked by accident; usually, she'll run off crying about her lost innocence, but sometimes she'll say something to the effect of "be gentle" or "if it's you its okay." In the latter situation, the pros and cons of the offer are generally seriously considered; bear in mind the protagonist is likely a 17-21 year old loser who, despite being constantly surrounded by partially clothed nubile young women, fails to get laid. The age gap here is equal to like half of the girl's life. On a related and somewhat explanatory note, the age of consent for sexual activity in Japan is apparently thirteen. Japan rules!

Preteen Girls, Well Adjusted

No anime characters are well adjusted, and preteen girls least of all. They're generally neurotic as hell and like in love with their older brother's best friend or something. I'm not sure if this reflects reality. What the fuck.

Protecting

After incorrectly concluding that being cold badass killers is somehow unsatisfying, some anime characters get weaker and shittier. Then they'll invariably realize that having someone to protect makes them stronger, and somehow get strong again. Meanwhile, other characters stay strong consistently, and can protect people just fine without having to turn into a pussy first.

Shower Scene

A scene in every anime in which a female character takes a shower, probably at a totally random time of day. The entire purpose of this scene is bait the viewer into unzipping his pants. The large majority of you people reading this probably have your hands in your pants anyway. You sick fucks, they're 2D!!!

Slow Motion

A process in which an action in an anime, which would normally occur in half a second, seems to span 892348 minutes, involving various skippable flashbacks and commentating from shitface characters that no one cares about anyway.

Tapes, VHS

Early on, the only way to get fansubbed anime was to order tapes from totally random ass people on the internet, or go to Chinatown and find some shop tucked away in a shopping center somewhere. These tapes had labels created from cheap inkjet printers and glued onto the sides, and were generally of pretty bad quality. I'm not even too sure what process was used to fansub those, as this was before the easily availability of pirated videoediting software and digital raws; whatever the hell it was, anyone that bothered to be a part of it was crazy as fuck and I salute them for it.

Tutoring

Anime schoolgirls seem especially prone towards developing crushes on their tutors, who are usually college age males hard up for money. This childhood infatuation generally lasts until the tutor returns from college with a girlfriend, or the schoolgirl otherwise realizes that the tutor has no romantic interest in her whatsoever, at which point she'll be free to pursue a relationship with the protagonist, who is also usually a broke college kid. Those of you reading this who happen to belong to the "college age males hard up for money" demographic may, by now, have come to the conclusion that being the tutor of a hot underage schoolgirl in uniform sounds like a pretty sweet deal. This would be true if not for the cold harsh nature of reality; generally, people who require tutoring from random college kids are pretty friggin stupid, and unless you're insanely patient, they'll eventually piss you off. The probability of your students being attractive and stupid is also pretty low, given highschoolers who fulfill those requirements are generally too caught up in themselves to waste hours of their time at home being taught remedial math and English; in fact, you will most likely tutor someone ugly and unintelligent, a dangerous combination if I ever saw one. Then again, you're probably broke and alone anyway, so go for it- the worst you'll get is a statutory rape charge. And jail. And being placed on a national sex offenders list or something. And never working again. Knowing the nature of the internet, no doubt at least 3% of you will try anyway. On a related note, an LA Times article I once read stated that all but one of the child molesters caught by the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Police Service were hardcore Star Trek fans. Keep your kids away from any dude dressed like a fucking Klingon.

Ultimate Attack

Any anime character that isn't a random throwaway shitheel likely has a super awesome final attack or technique that he falls back on when he's about to lose. Often, these characters will get the utter shit kicked out of them for the entire fight before using it and downing their opponent, who has proven himself stronger in every way, in a single hit. Of course, this begs the question "Why don't you just fucking use it in the beginning and save some time and pain," which will probably remain unanswered forever. An anime character can also instantly validate his awesomeness by resisting the ultimate attack of another character, brushing it off and saying something cocky like "Oh, was that all?" or "Holy shit, I owned your ultimate attack. Damn I rule." To my knowledge, noone has actually said the latter, but you can tell they're thinking it. Also, don't try to convince someone you have an ultimate attack in waiting if you're ever in an actual fight; they'll probably just assume that means you have a gun and hit you in the face with a brick.

Ultimate Form/Stance

A variant of the Ultimate Attack where a character, as opposed to holding back a single attack or technique, reveals A WHOLE HIGHER LEVEL OF POWER. This is generally used in three situations; when a character is pressed and will lose without it, when a character wants to "honor" his opponent by tearing him an even larger new asshole, or when the character just wants to be an dick and totally obliterate. The ultimate form is generally signified by the character becoming faster and/or stronger and suddenly unstoppable when previously he was getting raped. Characters in their ultimate form have eyes that look evil and usually gain extra muscle mass out of nowhere; they're also often literally on fire, which pretty much proves our belief that anything on fire is more awesome. I would suggest you test this tenet, but knowing you people you'd actually do it and then sue our asses.

Vash, Dancing

At a certain point in the anime Trigun, Vash dances. Funny though this may seem, any appeal or humor this scene once possessed has long been washed away by its overuse in like EVERY SINGLE UPBEAT/HUMOR ANIME MUSIC VIDEO EVER MADE. AND PEOPLE KEEP FUCKING LAUGHING. STOP LAUGHING YOU RETARDS. I CAN HEAR IT RINGING IN MY EARS AS I TRY TO SLEEP. FUCK VASH.

Will, The

A force in an anime character that causes super ridiculous effects when they're about to lose, die, or get blown up. This is generally marked by an increase in strength, speed or verbal ability. The Will is generally accompanied by crying or screaming and may sometimes be used to save the lives of other weaker characters.

Xoom

In the early days of internet anime distribution, some poor fucks decided it'd be a good idea to offer unlimited space for free.