JapanForum.com - I want to learn informal(anime) japanese, where should I start?

Hi,

I recently started watching anime and what bugs me is that I don't understand it and have to use English subtitles. So I decided to learn Japanese for sole purpose to understand anime.
BTW its the same reason I learned English (I am from poor European country), I wanted to understand movies, TV series and games in English. So obviously I started learning English the "informal" way from games and series instead of the proper way from textbooks.
However informal English is not that much different from the formal one, I just replace some phrases with formal ones and its done so I learned the formal way of English soon after I learned the informal one. There is no other way to say I or You etc.

So to my point, I started learning Japanese the formal way using Michel Thomas method, everything is good and after one hour I listened to it yesterday I am able to order food/drink, buy stuff and offer drink/food as long as I know the name of the thing or I can point at it. I think if I continue with this method I could learn to survive in japan in a few months.
But that's not what I'm aiming for, I will never go to Japan, the flight ticket costs double the average month salary of my country.
Now the problem is that Japanese used in anime is completely different from the formal one (at least from what I've seen and read so far) and anime is what I want to learn to understand.

So please someone help me, Will I eventually understand anime Japanese if I continue studying formal Japanese, if so is it after I master the formal language or somewhere on the way?
I have a temptation to just learn the Japanese used in anime, however informal it is, just to be able to understand.
Remember my sole purpose is to understand anime, nothing else.

Thank you, Steve.