"And by the way, how did we come up with the term animé to mean Japanese animation?"

What is this I see before me? A question that is not only on track with the thread but that I can answer? Quick, I'll jump in before william gets on-line...

The Japanese adopted the word animation from English. Transliterated into Japanese writing and then retransliterated (?!?) back into English, it would spell a-ni-me-sho-n. But that's all too much of a mouthful so the Japanese abbreviated it to a-ni-me. And when it then came back into English, in order to represent the 'me' as a full separate syllable rather than an add-on consonant plus silent e, it picked up an accent.
See what I mean about English-Japanese-English? Cool, isn't it?