I agree that you need to define what characteristics you use to define a subculture before we can classify anime as such. Tentatively though (in my extremely uninformed opinion) I'd say that it qualifies. Anime is like.....belonging to a secret club. A lot of people don't let on that they watch it, but every so often they'll let hints drop that signify their membership in the ranks of those who every week check the torrents to find the latest episodes of their favourite series. Then there are the people who are the proud supporters of anime, the ones who are the presidents of the anime clubs, who plaster areas with bright anime posters, who use japanese words in regular conversation, who call together all those like-minded for conventions and special anime events. Granted, these are the extremes and most of us probably fall somewhere in the middle, but the fact remains that even though anime is gaining in popularity it isn't quite mainstream. Bah, I have to go. And I totally forgot the point I was going to make [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]
Ah well, I'll come back to this later.