gay. He thanks her because she helped him to discover his own sexuality. He states that if a relationship with her does not work out, it would not work with any other girl. Japan Adult animation is known in Japan as . In both English and Japanese, the word "adult" may carry connotations of a sexual nature, but anime on serious topics such as Akira or Ghost in the Shell are often referred to as "adult" in Japan as well, even when sex is not a key part of the story. Akira is also seen as a pivotal film in the cyberpunk genre, particularly the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre while James Cameron cited Ghost in the Shell as a source of inspiration for Avatar, and called it "the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence." Some have argued that since the 1980s, Japanese animators have been "grounded in complicated, nuanced stories for decades," including those created by Studio Ghibli like Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle, The Wind Rises, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The latter were spread to a U.S. audience with distributors like GKids. Others stated that anime changed by the "increasing importation of Japanese animated adult erotic fare" beginning in the 1990s. Animated works of an erotic nature have come to be described in western fandom as hentai, the Japanese word for "perverted", while in Japan they are more likely to be referred to as or . Although some associate all anime with sexual content, hentai only makes up a very small portion of the Japanese animation industry. As the result of the misconceptions about Japanese animation, some video stores outside Japan have classified children's anime as for adults only. Many video stores have also categorized all adult-oriented animation as anime, including the works of Bakshi, the French animated film Fantastic Planet, the Canadian animated film Heavy Metal and the HBO television series Todd McFarlane's Spawn. In the case of Spawn, Todd McFarlane directly listed anime as an influence, particularly Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, and stated his hope that the show would help encourage the rise of adult animation on North American networks. This in part led to the involvement of the Japanese studio Madhouse in the production, in an attempt to "combine" the Eastern and Western styles. Some of the earliest manga magazines were aimed at adults,