What easy animes do you know one could use to supplement the japanese studies? Doing RTK all day is kinda boring. I do have Densha Otoko and Doraemon comics. But what anime shows are "easy" to get?

Focus on "shoujo" and/or "shounen" anime. That way if you ever want to read the manga (which is usually 90 times better than the anime), it'll have furigana on all the kanji.

You said "popular" anime... most shounen "fighting" anime is pretty easy.
Try Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Inuyasha or *gulp*...Naruto for shounen anime.

Anything run in Shounen Jump is going to be easier, and most have anime.
Try looking here for anything that looks interesting. Any series with a Wikipedia link is probably at least semi-popular and has an anime.

For shoujo, Card Captor Saka, Tokyo Mew Mew, Magic Knight Rayearth or Karin.
Daa Daa Daa ( Dub:UFO Baby) is also pretty funny and easy but it's not as popular.
For shoujo try looking for series that ran/run in Nakayoshi.

For the most part, shoujo anime will have more "daily life" scenes with more useful phrases, but it often has more focus on the romance part of the story than Shounen anime does.

I like them both, but they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

As for manga here are my suggestions (descriptions are copied from mangahelpers):
1. とらぶる (To-Love-Ru)
Desc:

mangahelpers Wrote:Rito is a high-school boy who just can't confess to the girl of his dreams, Haruna-chan. One day when coming home and sulking in the bath-tub a mysterious, and barely clothed girl, appears out of nowhere. Her name is Lala and she comes from another planet...

Pretty simple harem manga. It's almost episodic feel makes it easy to understand and the art is really pretty =D Probably not safe to read this at school or work though.

Shame but the manga got cancelled at chapter 162. Don't bother with the anime it was rubbish =(

2. Fairy Tail
Desc:

mangahelpers Wrote:Cute girl wizard Lucy wants to join the Fairy Tail, a club for the most powerful wizards. But instead, her ambitions land her in the clutches of a gang of unsavory pirates led by a devious magician. Her only hope is Natsu, a strange boy she happens to meet on her travels. Natsu’s not your typical hero-he gets motion sickness, eats like a pig, and his best friend is a talking cat. With friends like this, is Lucy better off with her enemies?

Pretty typical shounen manga. Easy and fun to read.

An anime adaptation started airing recently (up to episode 5), and I managed to extract some subtitles from a few episodes ( check http://kitsunekko.net/ )

3. Super Mario-Kun
*Very* easy to read. (though only 20~ chapters)

Anime:
I don't have any specific reccomendations since none of it is "easy", but generally try anime that you've already seen (in english) or that you've read the manga of. That way you don't really have to worry about figuring out the story as you watch it. As Bokusenou says, shounen or shoujo would probably be easier to understand.

Try looking here to see if there's anything you like. Raws for the current season will probably be the easiest to get. (Btw check out そらのおとしもの, the anime responsible for this epic ending sequence)

wow, this is great guys. Maybe with some work one could transform this into a "where to start reading" article on the wiki.

But そらのおとしもの ending on youtube? Flying underware, WTF?!
I'll try Super Mario-Kun then... as I suppose my Japanes is not that good. I'm lucky to own an Iphone (though an ipod touch would do too), so I can use denshi jisho on that device. I've got pretty good at typing japanese on it. And drawing characters with it's character recognition worked well in Hong Kong. I guess I'll stop adding new kanji to my current (~1100) point on revtk, until I've less failures every day. And do something that's more "interesting" to keep me motivated, And maybe start adding new kanji next monday or so.

Ohh and do you have experience with Mahoraba? As that's the one that is used along the howto read a manga http://mangahowto.dnsdojo.org/howto/begin.html

Chi's Sweet Home!

Okay, it's not popular, but it -is- easy. And cute.

Personally, I'd stay away from fighting manga/anime- a lot of the words aren't that useful (like all the names of the jutsu, specific words for fighting, explosions, etc). I found Deathnote to be more interesting, though I still only made it through 3 of those. Manga hasn't held my interest. I will definitely second 時をかける少女(The girl who leapt through time). One of the few things that I've been able to watch a second and third time (as well as となりのととろ）.

I watch 毎日かあさん (Kaasan - Mom's Life) on crunchyroll.com with my son. It's the easiest one I've seen, because episodes revolve around everyday situations that kids and parents get into, and they use regular, everyday Japanese (as far as I can tell).

I used to watch a lot of modern anime, but they are kind of tricky to follow, and sometimes very disappointing...

I'm a big sucker for catchy theme songs, so I mostly stick to anime made before the 90s, 97 at the latest. I'll let my current playlist tell the tale:

Urusei Yatsura
Candy Candy
Akage no Anne
Creamy Mami (pretty easy to follow, decent writing)
Bakuretsu Eto Ranger (I particularly like this one because it features a lot of classic fairy tales, both western and Japanese)
Legendary Giant God Ideon (this one took a while to get used to or like. :/ Sometimes I feel like the only reason why I'm watching this show is because the director of Evangelion mentioned once that this show influenced his work. [but the show is actually pretty old-timey/dreadful to watch])
Flanders no Inu
A little princess Sarah
Alps no Heidi (I'm a sucker for the Tokyo Famous Animation Collection)
(also, these are mostly girls shows... so I don't know how the guys will feel about watching hour after hour of Candy Candy...)

... and the occassional Anpanman/Sasae-san/Doraemon/Chibi-Maruko/Detective Conan
I used to watch a lot of Detective Conan, but after episode 300 or so it was getting too hard to understand and the writing kind of went pretty flat.. Then again it might just be that the show lost its charm after 300 episodes of "Someone suddenly dies/will die near Conan, and then Conan solves the case."

... I used to actually stay away from old shows like this because they were "boring," but in terms of understanding stuff, or I mean, understanding if you are really understanding everything I think their level is appropriate for an intermediate learner. Maybe not Urusei Yatsura (it's not a continuous story, so it can be kind of confusing), but Creamy Mami has certainly helped me a little, and Eto Rangers I really enjoyed because there was so many different personalities portrayed that it wasn't hard to find a character I could relate to or cheer for.

Death Note?

Recently one of my friends reminded me about おるちゅばんエビちゅ. It's quite old and I can't believe nobody mentioned it earlier (so says the mighty search). Maybe you had just forgotten about it like me

It's truly a gem: it seems to be quite easy language wise (they don't speak fast and main character is a hamster that talks like a kid), it's content is strictly adult only and it's funny as HELL!!!

Or maybe its just me and I'm weird.

Mushi-shi since they speak really slowly.

If you are into shoujo anime: Nodame cantabile!

nothing could ever be quite as easy as デジモンアドベンチャー, and it was popular for a while (at least where i live) ^^
then again, the only word you'll learn from it is "進化!!!!", which isn't really all that useful
-----
on a more serious note:
*"fruits basket" has easy to understand and clear dialogue.
*"けいおん!" is entertaining and easy to follow.
*i seem to remember "セイバーマリオネットJ" was easy to follow, though not particularly good.
*"苺ましまろ" is very easy to understand, though annoyingly cute (for some reason i can't stop my little sister from looping the damn series over and over)
*someone mentioned "蟲師". It's not really all that easy (vocab isn't particularly begginer-ish), but it is very good, imho.

but in the end, what matter's is not what's easy, but what's enjoyable. I'd much rather watch a show i really like understanding 10% (a bit more each time i watch it again), than a really boring show understanding 100%.

My dream is to one day work up the courage to be arrested for shouting 「ワイルドウィースル、進化！」 Okay, not really. But the idea has crossed my mind.

デジモン is just about pure fluff and brain candy, and certainly better before translation. Admittedly, a bit over the top at times (フロンティア being the worst offender--I swear there isn't a problem in that show that can't be solved by finding the right head to stab) but just about the best nostalgia trip for us younger folk. セイバーズ has more challenging dialog, but, at least in my opinion isn't as much fun as アドベンチャー and テイマーズ were.

I found K-ON very easy to understand, as it deals with real situations and only about 1 or 2 sentences per episode would completely stump me. subs2srs'ing the first few episodes really helped me push through a wall in my learning.

As for manga, Yotsubato is by far the easiest I've read. It's also hilarious, and made by the same guy as Azumanga Daioh.

Basically I'd say you should stick to slice of life stuff as it will have a lot of vocabulary you already know and deal with simple situations that are easy to follow.