MURRIETA -- The cartoon story thus far: The soul-reaper has immobilized the hero, and is telling him about the good and bad spirits that have been chasing him. The hero interrupts with a question.

"First of all, why do your drawings suck so bad?"

The eight students watching the Japanese anime film, "Bleach," erupted into a fit of laughter. Before some of them lay their own drawings of powerful Asian male characters men with streaks of light beaming from behind them.

Thursday marked the first session of the Anime Club for Teens, a group of enthusiasts of the Japanese animated cartoon art who will meet monthly at the Murrieta Public Library to watch films, recommend novels to add to the library's collection and draw their own characters and scenes for prizes.

Anime art originated in Japan. Anime can be drawings, comics or graphic novels, television cartoons or feature-length animated films.

Fueled by popcorn and pizza, the group at the inaugural meeting discussed which characters were was superior: pirates or ninjas. Failing to settle that question, but having agreed to disagree, the group instead turned their attention to the fantasy culture of anime.

Whether on a DVD, television or in a graphic novel, members of the small gathering said, they'd take it all.

"It's cartoons for older people," said Hayley Girgis, a 15-year-old Murrieta Valley High School student. "When you get older you grow out of cartoons, but you can't really grow out of anime."

Most of the students at the Thursday meeting said they had been watching anime cartoons, which feature characters with exaggerated, glittering eyes and fantastical powers, since elementary school.

Each has a preference for either the original cartoons, spoken in foreign languages and subtitled in English, or the American-adapted versions with English voice-dubbing. Popular anime examples include "Princess Mononoke," which details the life of a princess sent to protect a forest from humans and which became a feature film, and "Ninja Scroll," a series that follows a ninja hired to stop another threatening to disable the Japanese government.

Evelyn Barajas, another 15-year-old Murrieta Valley student, said the problem with watching cartoons that have been dubbed in English is that she may miss the colloquialisms of the Japanese language because they do not translate exactly. Barajas doesn't speak Japanese, but she and other enthusiasts have picked up select words and phrases important to the story lines they follow through anime.

Though the interest in anime reaches all types of students -- jocks, brainiacs, nerds -- all of the teens at the library's anime club meeting had a reason for not joining a club on their high school campus.

"All they talk about is one anime," Garrett Cho, a 17-year-old Murrieta Valley High School student, said of his peers' fixation on the epic cartoon "Naruto."

Shoshana Montgomery, a 15-year-old charter school student, said people on her Murrieta campus are less enthusiastic with the art than she would like.

"Everybody's so into school," she said. "You can't really talk about anything else."

Part of their role as club members will be to help boost the city's anime collection, which holds non-sequential copies of comic books or DVDs, said Laura Davis, librarian of adult and young adult services.

The teens said they would most like to see a full series added to the collection.

"I went through almost every one they have," Montgomery said "I'd like to start from (book) one, and maybe complete it."

Contact staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or nrodriguez@californian.com.

Anime club for teens

- When: 3:30 p.m. every third Thursday of the month

- Where: Conference room at Murrieta Public Library, 24700 Adams Ave.

- Information: Call Laura Davis at (951) 304-2665.