Categories:Elements:Action
Action anime usually involve a fairly straightforward story of good guys versus bad guys, where most disputes are resolved by using physical force. Contains often lots of shooting, explosions...
Subcategories
Adventure
Adventures are exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales. Adventures are designed to provide an action-filled, energetic experience for the viewer. Rather than the predominant emphasis on violence and fighting that is found in pure action anime, however, the viewer of adventures can live vicariously through the travels, conquests, explorations, creation of empires, struggles and situations that confront the main characters, actual historical figures or protagonists. Under the category of adventures, we can include traditional swashbucklers, serialized films, and historical spectacles, searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and "desert" epics, treasure hunts and quests, disaster films, and heroic journeys or searches for the unknown. Adventure films are often set in an historical period, and may include adapted stories of historical or literary adventure heroes, kings, battles, rebellion, or piracy.
Quest
A quest anime contains a single goal set out at the start of the story that directs the action of the entire plot, and is not attained, if at all, until the very end. In its purest case it will be a specific, achievable task, which will be obvious when accomplished. Though the adventure may include diversions, respites, and sub-goals, the driving force and motivation throughout should be a single specific aim.
For example, Gon in Hunter X Hunter is hunting for is father, the party in JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken is out to kill Dio, Ed and Al in Hagane no Renkinjutsushi are motivated almost entirely by their desire to restore their bodies, and Claude and Lavi in Last Exile are trying to... do something lame and boring I don't remember, in emulation of their fathers.
Journey
A journey anime is one where the travelling itself is a large part of the adventure, or even the whole purpose itself. More than just simply moving from place to place, it's about the differences between locations and the varying encounters found along the way.
A bet sends Phileas Fogg Around the World in Eighty Days, along the way the cultral delights include preventing a sati in India, and having their train attacked by 'Indians' in the US. In Mirai Shounen Conan, Conan not only covers a lot of ocean, desert and forest, but also the dystopic Industria and utopic High Harbor. Kino no Tabi doesn't have a specific purpose, but each quirky land has a moral message hidden at its heart. Each stage in Boukyaku no Senritsu has uniquely themed graphics, and the end of level boss gets harder each time!
Ticklist
A ticklist anime is one where there is set of something enumertated near the start of the story, then gradually ticked off as the plot progresses. This might be a list of objects to aquire, a bunch of enemies to be defeated, a group of people to encounter, or anything else of the kind. They would archetypally be introduced at regular invervals, perhaps one an episode in the case of a tv series format. In some cases the number might be implicit, but typically a definate count that defines the adventure is clearly given, and running totals might be kept.
While most glaring in collection anime such as the infamous Pokemon, this is a common device in all kinds of anime, see the twelve Gung-ho Guns in Trigun, the twelve (plus cat) animals of the zodiac in Fruits Basket, the eight 'Devils of Kimon' in Juubee Ninpuuchou, the seven deadly sins in Hagane no Renkinjutsushi, and the eight dog warriors in The Hakkenden.
Guns
Entries with this keyword should contain the use of firearms (that are small enough to be handled by one or two persons).
Martial Arts
Characterized by extensive fighting scenes employing various types of martial arts.
Military
The anime concerns an organised armed force, and its members. Said body should have both the equipment and hierarchy found in military groups, and should ideally be actively utilising their power against an opponent. Characters are either employed as professional soldiers or enlisted on a volunteer basis, for ideological reasons.
Air Combat
Planes and shit.
Boats and subs and shit.
Sports
See main Sports article
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 power, they're in the show.
Swordplay
This is about the art or skill of wielding a sword, esp. in fencing.
Western
Westerns, by definition, are set in the American west, almost always in the 19th century, from the antebellum period to the turn of the century. Many incorporate the Civil War into the plot, or into the background, although the west was not touched by the war to the extent the east was.
Many westerns involve nomadic type characters who wander from town to town, their sole possessions being clothing, gun, and horse (the horse may be optional). The high technology of the era – such as the telegraph, printing press, and railroad – do sometimes appear, occasionally as a development just arriving, and symbolizing that the idealized frontier lifestyle is transitory, soon to give way to the march of civilization.
The art of the Western takes these simple elements and uses them to tell simple morality stories, setting them against the spectacular scenery of the American West. With the best Western directors, the scenery essentially became a star of the movie.
...all of which obvious has so much to do with it as a sub-category of "Action".