What is Anime?
In a nutshell, anime is basically a Japanese cartoon. The designs for American cartoons were actually inspired by anime. Big eyes, crazy hair styles, and even the silly sound and visual effects (person's jaw dropping farther than their waist, surviving anvil dropped on head, etc) are all either inspired by or from anime. They are usually in Japanese (duh) but some are translated to English and most are edited to have English subtitles.