What does OVA mean? What is the difference between an OVA, a Movie, and a TV Series?
In Japan, there is a very large direct to video market (more so than here in the US, though that is slowly changing). Many Anime series start life as an OVA, or Original Video Animation, and are released directly to the home video market. Sometimes it works the other way when a popular TV series will be followed on or continued by a shorter OVA release. Tenchi Muyo is a great example of a series that has seen production in every format. It started off as a 36 episodes OVA series (but only 13 episodes were ever made), released directly to video and not shown on TV, then 2 complete TV series where produced (another one is coming), and finally 3 high quality theatrical productions that appeared in Japanese movie theaters. As a rule of thumb, an OVA is usually a higher quality production with better animation and music (since it is not produced to the rigorous time constraints that TV products are), but will be shorter than a TV series, usually from 2 to 6 episodes (sometimes more).
