I won't lie, I like cowboy bebop samurai champloo and Afro samurai.

No. It's aimed at teens but includes "edgy" themes.

@Quartzmonkey
...go see Kotoura-san
or Code Geass
or Mushishi
...
tbh
90% of the anime I watch is better on every level than Western Cartoons...
better Plot
better Characters
better Character Development
better Themes
better Execution
better Storytelling
and unlike Western Cartoons which 50% of the time feel utterly cut&paste
every single Anime I have watched is quite unique in some way

Anime defines a Japanese Animation Production, Manga defines a Comic or Anime based off a comic.

On this topic, I have seen Anime 10 times as bad as the worst Mangas like that Blue one or Golgo.

Blue is Anime sold by a Manga distributor so while you may think "Manga" it's actually a horrifying Anime so this entire generalization is wrong.

Golgo is Manga sold by the same distributor yet blue is 5 times as bad for real, through more intent and less dramatization.

I used to watch anime when I was a teen. A **** load of it. Titles you've probably never heard of because they're so old. Back when trying to tell people that I liked it, maybe one in fifty people had even heard the word anime. Then I grew out of it and looking back on it, its more mature than typical American cartoons which are aimed at 10-12 year olds, but there is not one title that is actually aimed at 30+ year olds. That's not to say there aren't still some 30+ year olds that like some anime. But they are not the base demographic for any particular series or movie.

I'm not trying to be insulting in the slightest. I'm just giving some perspective. The only people who I ever hear say anime is for adults are young.

tl;dr.

Anime=Animation, can be anything.
Manga=Comic based animation or simply just a comic.

Computer generated effects are used in horrors so I don't see how "animation" can be classed as "kids only" when 90% of hollywood scary movies use animated effects, some less extreme, some far worse than can be deemed "MA".

Animation is better because it is cheaper to show someone cool effects and you can put more effort into coming up with ideas than drawing them, hollywood is limited by their pressure to perfect effects rather than come up with scenes to spam them.

I think Anime is like comparing short films to hollywood, short films often have better stories or concepts but aren't long enough to be "family material" and animation has lots of awesome stuff, but you get sick of story lines when sometimes its more focused on showing off style and effects than putting a story through and the scenes of fights take longer than Goku takes to go Super Saiyan 4 (about 3 episodes).

Ummm...what does this have to do with anything?

Anime...kids/manga/adults....social stigma...education/manners...kanji!

Piers. lol this got me