TL/DR version : Action Anime ! emulates perfectly anime genre with story driven and character development. It s a solid generic system.
You don't need to be a weeaboo or an otaku to enjoy RPGs based on animation/manga, of course some are more well known than other, the granddaddy of all is BESM (2nd & 3rd edition) is the first of generic take on anime genre, then came OVA RPG which tasted like how should have been the cancelled BESM Vanilla. So why should you pick AA! ? First of all, most of anime genre can’t be emulated with BESM or OVA without major tweaking, and without name dropping titles, subgenres or mixed genres, here is some which are not so easy to adapt with the rule systems previously named ; such as : rom com, space (soap) opera, drama, sport, slice of life or even ecchi and their infamous tentacles, oh my ! To sum up, any genres heavily story driven and characters development is more important than the rules themselves, and AA! shines in those domain.
AA! diceless system works pretty well, and the use of the “drive” makes a lot of sense, as in most anime/manga genre, most of the protagonist are fuel by sheer will, and the players are encouraged to use this ‘’drive’’ as a mean to achieve their goal. It uses also some conditions impacting your character in a good or bad way for many things. AA! also give a lot of flexibility to manage bad conditions depending of the conditions and can fits a lot of genre as well. I see clearly AA! focusing less on combats, it can handle them well and it will rely mostly on narrative than tossing dice. A diceless system has also the advantage to be played on forum or chat, and i'm even sure you can use it for a GMless for a cooperative narration, as its form is really close to a freeform rp.
The character creation can be easy and quick once you have your character concept in mind and use minimum stats and traits to describe your protagonist. But, because there is always a but, the “specials” can be a bit tricky to handle when you’re creating them, personally i had some difficulties to understand the creation of one described with the character exemple, just to name the special special i had some issue with a healing power. Otherwise, the specials add a lot of personality to your protagonist and can make them very unique if you manage them well, in the book you have a lot of examples to create your owns depending of the power level of your series, from slice of life genre to super equipped heavy mobile armors (in short mecha).
I have also to mention Curtis Lyon (the author) is always eager to answer your question about the rules, he also helped me a lot to understand this silly ‘’healing power” i mentioned earlier, he also gave me a tip to use dice if it fitted better my player's playstyle.
And here is a free hack for AA! if you want to add some spice to challenge’s resolutions (and if you really want to use dice), you can use a 6D instead of using a drive point for a plus/push (if you use the game it will make more sense), just by using dice like that, it’s a kind of wager for those situation.
AA! is a really good system and became my third favorite one to emulate anime genre. Curtis Lyon really loves anime and give you a lot of tips in the book how to run a series.
Purchase also the cards if you want, because it helps a lot to track down most of your character's conditions instead to use tons of different color chips, and it’s also a bit funnier to handle cards sometimes.
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