Kind of figured this out a while ago. There are several clues left by Toriyama-san: Son Goku's name uses the Kanji that in Chinese means Sun Wukong, the monkey from Journey to the West, a Classical Chinese work. Gohan mentions that his mom makes Dim Sum, a Cantonese food consisting of small bite sized varieties of dumplings, steamed stuffed buns and other steamed foods Shenron, or Shen Long is a Chinese style dragon and the dragonballs resemble dragon pearls in Chinese folklore Table manners in the series are more Chinese style in some cases, in Japan you would not shovel rice into your mouth with the bowl close to the mouth itself. You all are welcomed to correct or dispute this if I got anything wrong, especially anyone here who knows about Chinese culture more than I do.

Yes Grave of the Fireflies is very sad but powerful at the same time. Also, the anime that Studio Ghibli creates gives a strong impression to the viewer and makes them realize things in a different light. I guess that could be a reason that the movies have such a wide range of viewers. I still need to watch Karigurashi no Arrietty at some point.

Witchblade is the only one from that list that I actually viewed. Overall it was quite enjoyable, I especially liked the ending. But as Rezikai already said: it's relatively far from the comics, both in art and story telling. So if you are a fan of the comics, don't expect too much of it, otherwise it's a nice anime to watch, when you don't want something challenging ;)

I use to wrestle in high school. My coach did jiujutsu and judo so naturally we learned a few things from those arts. When it comes to self defense you want to be practical and realistic. Most fights end up on the ground at some point so something like jiujutsu and judo are great for that. Karate, boxing, and others of course are great if it's a stand up fight. You might even want to consider an MMA gym since most do a mixture of those arts and then some.

I have to admit that watching anime is great and i enjoy watching anime a lot. However some people let the emotions of a favorite anime get to them. In my opinion in this world there exists a line for girls. A line kind of like a scale for the type's of girls there are. You have: Not attractive <---------------Middle---------------> very attractive great personality but usually a bitch and thats the way it honestly is. the people who make anime characters make them as perfect as they can. (especially the females :3 (poor guys). Not only that they make the plot as touching as ever, Like almost a never would happen kind of plot (unless your like 1 in a million who wins the lotto type.) So people try to desperately find people like that in the world, and complain when they cant find it and blah life sucks it does. I know anime is Like, amazing and you wish you could be the person that you idolize the most from it, But dont get so infatuated with it that it mentally depresses you because you cant find that perfect girl (which is most likely big breast, amazing body, ILY so much (your name here) kind of girl. Sorry, But a dream girl will always be a dream girl unless you can come to realistic terms of what the girl is, or you want her to be.