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Naruto

First seen leaping around his hidden forest village like a hyperactive monkey after defacing the sacred statues of its greatest heroes, 12-year-old Naruto Uzumaki is a mischievous kid with Bart Simpson hair and an attitude to match. He's also a ninja in training, with a great deal of skill and power, though he tends to use it for clowning and teasing as much as anything else. His masters say he just wants attention—as an orphan, he feels alone and friendless. But he's also an outcast, for reasons he learns in the first episode of the long-running fan favorite Naruto. When he was an infant, a nine-tailed fox—a powerful, angry spirit—almost destroyed his village. The spirit of the fox was bound inside his body, and his people avoid him, worrying that it may someday escape.As the series opens, a greedy rival reveals this information and more to Naruto in hopes of using him. But thanks to his plotting, Naruto finally manages to pass his initial test, become a first-level ninja and learn the powerful "Shadow Clone" jutsu, or ninja technique. This lets him duplicate himself many times and attack with many bodies, and combined with his homemade "sexy jutsu," which makes him briefly look like a buxom naked woman covered only by a few strands of strategically placed smoke, it's a devastating attack against weak-minded men.But knowing these jutsu makes Naruto overconfident, and his arrogance and impatience to become a hokage, one of the highest-ranked ninjas, make him careless. While he's remarkably patient with Konohamaru, the even more hotheaded, incompetent and ambitious grandson of one of the village hokage, Naruto's first days of full ninja training go poorly. Assigned to a training group with his crush object, hyper-competitive Sakura, and her crush object, grim, quiet Sasuke, he launches headfirst and without thought into everything from winning Sakura's affections to defeating his sensei and completing his training.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Nickelodeon's animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender begins by introducing a couple of familiar enough kid-show stereotypes: Smart, capable Katara is almost a generic anime heroine, while her brash, foolishly arrogant brother Sokka serves as standard strident comedy relief. But very early on, Avatar starts to distinguish itself from other shows with its depth of story and the complexity of its characters.It begins when Katara, in a moment of annoyance at Sokka, accidentally uses her nascent elemental power over water to destroy an iceberg floating in the freezing waters near their South Pole home. Inside the iceberg are a 12-year-old boy and a giant wooly "flying bison," both frozen in a sort of suspended animation.
Narrative depths and visual homages alike are just gravy on the meat of the matter: The fact that Avatar is simply addictive.

The boy, Aang, is a casual, cheerful sort who takes his awakening in stride, even when Sokka stirs up local sentiment against him, and even when soldiers from the aggressive Fire Nation—whose people have elemental power over fire, just as some of Katara's Water Tribe kin control water—come to capture him. It seems Aang is the Avatar, a legendary figure reincarnated into every generation with the power to control all four elements: earth, water, air and fire. The Avatar's job is to maintain balance among the four tribes of the earth, but the previous Avatar disappeared a century ago, and in his absence the Fire Nation has come close to dominating the earth under the Fire Lord Ozai. Ozai's son Zuko and brother Iroh are in charge of the party who find Aang, and their attempt to seize him and take him back to Ozai reveals his true power for the first time since his awakening.Aang was raised as a monk of the Air Nomads, and his air-control powers are already considerable in spite of his youth—which is just as well, since the Fire Nation may have already wiped out all the other Nomads. But to fully come into his power as Avatar, he must learn to master each element in turn. So he, Katara, and Sokka set off together to evade the Fire Nation and learn what they need to know to stop the war.

Guide Review - Ghost in the Shell

In the year 2029, man has developed a new relationship with computers. The net has become a new, "borderless" reality and humans, altered by the same technology can reside in a new universe, a virtual universe. Here memories can be stolen and replaced. Humans can download themselves into another shell. And the ghost, the soul, is left to question its very existence. Enter Major Motoko Kusanagi, top cyberspace agent for Sector 9, a government agency responsible for eliminating criminal activity. Kusanagi is a warrior, half human and half cybernetic, and is charged with the assignment of what could be the world's greatest criminal yet. Known as Project 2501, this secret agent was created by the government as the ultimate spy. Entirely a virtual personality, Project 2501 can travel the net without a shell, hacking into the brains of top officials from rival governments. Having recognized his own consciousness, Project 2501 has an offer for Kusanagi that she can't refuse? Or can she?

Card Captor Sakura

With its Japanese debut in 1996, Card Captor Sakura is one of the hottest Anime series out there and one of Clamp's longest running mangas. Why all the fuss, you wonder? Well, besides the action and adventure you might expect from a Clamp series, there's a bit of magic thrown in the mix as well. Just for fun, you know. But its not magic that brings victory to our heroine, Sakura Kinomoto. No, no, no. Its her own determination and bravery that wins out which, I might add, is perhaps the best story of all.
The story begins with Sakura finding a book known as The Clow in her father's library. A mysterious book it is, containing magical cards that escape. It is up to Sakura to capture them and return them to the book before chaos befalls mankind.
Just what kind of magical cards, you ask? Well, let's see... there's the Shadow card which can gather the shadows of others and use the power for its own purposes (light, by the way, releases the captured shadows). There's the Illusion card which creates, yes you guessed it, illusions, but more so what the person wants to see. The Thunder card, the Storm card, Time, Shield, Sword.. you get the picture. Each with its own powers, each destined to be captured by Sakura.

Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball... Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z is everywhere. Action figures, t-shirts and, to my son's delight, Playstation have all joined in the DBZ frenzy. But just what is a dragon ball? And why all the fuss?
Dragon Ball Z, at its core, is a classic good over evil story. Action, a little romance and some off-the-wall humor make this series one of the top Anime titles watched in the States today. Goku, Gohan and the rest of the Z-fighters protect the Earth from villain after villain with their ever-growing power and strength. This power doesn't come from magic, but rather concentrates the natural energy that surrounds and binds the Universe (who says Anime isn't deep?). And while we all know that the Z-fighters will eventually triumph, it is not without some hardships along the way. As the villains get tougher (and boy, do they ever!), the casualty rate grows. Not to fear, though. Lives can be restored through Shenron, a mystical dragon created by the people of Namek and summoned by collecting the seven dragon balls hidden around the world.
Originally released in Japan in the 1980's, Dragon Ball was the creation of Toriyama Akira and was the beginning of what would become a three part series: Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. The first series, Dragon Ball, begins with our hero, Goku, as a small child. Sent to Earth from his soon-to-be dying planet, Vegeta, Goku is a Saiyan and one of amazing strength. He and the rest of the DB gang roam the lands, looking for the dragon balls and getting into a multitude of battles along the way. Closely following the manga (that's the Japanese equivalent of a comic book), Dragon Ball is full of strange characters and taboo subjects (parental guidance is suggested). In Dragon Ball Z (my personal fave), Goku is grown and married. He has two sons -- Gohan and Goten -- and his character is truly the epitome of a good guy. You'll see some faces that are familiar as well as some that aren't, and the battles between good and evil continue. Dragon Ball GT (the Grand Tour) throws a twist in the series as Goku is returned to his youth through magical forces.