Your anime experience, and how you got into anime。。。

[SupaaFreek]

7:00 weekdays Cheese TV.
i miss the days of cheese tv and none of that bakugan crap.

[DragoZERO]

DBZ...when it was on 6:30am on Sundays and stopped when shortly after Goku arrived on Namek. Then later came Gundam Wing and the other anime shows Cartoon Network aired.

What really got me into it was a friend in school teaching me about IRC.

[otaku_trev]

When I was in high school a friend of mine was reading Ah! My Goddess manga. He let me look at it and I was immediately interested in the characters of Keiichi and Beldandy. I decided to go to the library and I checked out all their Ah! My Goddess manga books and read them all. I loved the Manga so much that when I learned there was an anime series, I just had to watch it! The rest is history.... I have been hoked on anime ever since. I never considered Pokemon to be an anime, even though I watched that series a lot as a young kid.

[thevil1]

I would say that when I was younger, I would watch anime with a friend, back then I was not interested, and made fun of my friend for it. Then after watching part of Noir and Madlax with him/her, I made even more fun, but then about two years later I finished both Noir and Madlax.
And now, on my list of anime history, I have almost 40 titles. (I think that's pretty satisfying.)

[ChainLegacy]

My first anime was the original Dragon Ball series, which aired very early in the morning and I have faint recollections of since I was quite young. The series was eventually canceled, and drifted into the back of my memories. Shortly afterwards the Pokemon craze hit America; I was originally intrigued by the card game when I was 8-9 years old and quickly moved to the game and then the anime. At the time, I didn't know what anime was. Then came Dragonball Z, which really intensified my interest in anime to the point that I went online and figured out that it was actually from Japan and the like.

Around the age of 12-13 I started joining Dragonball websites/forums, which is where I learned about the still relatively new Naruto. Naruto was the first show I can remember watching in Japanese with English subtitles. Intrigued, I learned about torrents and eventually made my way on to animesuki, which is where I learned about most of the shows I watched at the time (the original Fullmetal Alchemist was an early draw, and actually the reason I signed up for these forums). I kept watching anime pretty rapidly as one of my main hobbies until around 2006. Since 2006 the amount of anime I watch has steadily dropped with each year, and this year the only series I watch that is currently airing is Dragonball Kai, kind of bringing me full circle. I still check out other series from time to time, but much less frequently. At my peak I would watch a new series every two weeks or so, now it is probably every 3-4 months.

I use anime mostly as a relaxing activity when I don't have anything else to do. Since I'm usually occupied with school, work, and my other hobbies the opportunity doesn't arise much anymore, which probably has contributed to my decrease in watching. I still think of anime as one of my favorite past-times, though. I think the anime industry has also begun to veer away from my preferred topics/styles, which probably also plays a factor in me watching less.

[TnAdct1]

A timeline of my early days of anime fandom:

1980's: Watched Voltron as a kid (but wasn't aware of it being a Japanese cartoon yet)

1990's: Began hearing about Japanese animation and how more "mature" the content is when compared to American shows.

1995: Watched Akira for the first time, and then became a fan of Sailor Moon (with me sometimes waking up early on weekdays to watch an episode of the show).

1998: Began watching Pokemon, with me watching that show regularly.

Summer 2000: Started watching Cardcaptor Sakura (under the dubbed title Cardcaptors), as well as watched the S and SuperS seasons of Sailor Moon (which were finally arriving in America at the time).

Fall 2000: After finding out that a local college was hosting anime club meetings every other Sunday, I attended one out of curiousity. In the end, I became a member of the club and started buying anime DVD's a few weeks later.

March 2001: Attended my first anime convention.

August 2001: Attended my first Otakon, which has become an annual summer event for me.

[Mephisto2k]

My first was the armitage movie on german late night television. I couldnt stop thinking of it but was to young to think of where to get more anime. Nowadays i Watch anime on a regular basis together with a small group of friends. we plan to visit a convention as soon as there will be one near us.

[EmilePrimrose]

Originally Posted by SweetPrincess

hmm.. How I got into anime: DBZ Then I got into Sailormoon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon
My experience so far with it is pretty good.
Also I am pretty much average, there are times when I will do nothing but watch/read anime/manga and times when I will be to busy

I think a lot of people in the twenty-something age group got into anime with Dragonball Z and such, but had watched it as a kid and didn't know what it was Always the story I hear, and it's my own too *high five?*

[zebra]

As a child I watched anime without knowing it was that - just belonged to all the cartoons. My best friend is to blame for getting me into anime for real.
I watched a little dubbed anime in TV (DBZ, Ranma 1/2 ...) but she was the one that got me into subbed anime and all that. She pestered me to watch this or that and gave me DVDs to watch xD She was hooked since Sailor Moon. I was only a casual watcher and can't remember anything from it

I generally watch anime via streams or download them - but some are there in my shelf. I like to buy things I really like(d) ... and are available. The available is the problem most of the time, right after the money

[EmilePrimrose]

If you search hard enough, there are a lot of places that wholesale anime. That's how I buy all mine. Got sixteen dvds and two box sets (thinpak) for eighty bucks, and free shipping because it was over fifty

[EnchantingPrincess]

Originally Posted by EmilePrimrose

I think a lot of people in the twenty-something age group got into anime with Dragonball Z and such, but had watched it as a kid and didn't know what it was Always the story I hear, and it's my own too *high five?*

Yeah my brothers are in their twenties I use to watch it because they would watch it...
*high five..back..?*

[Eater of All]

Although I've been watching DBZ and all that jazz since I was a kid, my real "gateway anime" that brought me into the fandom was Kanon 2006, recommended to me by a friend. Maybe that's why I have a soft spot for Key tearjerkers . The year after that was when I marathoned tons of anime series non-stop until I started getting involved in the community via forums. Looking back at my early years, it's amazing how I didn't even know about the concept of seasons nor what the hell an OVA is; I've sure gone a long way.

[Kagayaki]

I watched DBZ on cartoon network and had friends who showed me Naruto, FMA, Gundam Seed, Kenshin and serveral other series starting in like 2002. They were way more into it than I was, and I would go over to their houses and watch with them. I learned how to use IRC/Torrents to get new Naruto episodes (this is what originally got me on AS). But in maybe 2005 I stopped watching anime. Then, about 2 years ago, I randomly saw some youtube clips of Nanoha and decided I absolutely had to see that series. So I went and reinstalled my torrent client... That made me remember why I had liked anime so much, although my tastes had changed significantly. I've been watching constantly since then, and branched out into manga, vn's, etc...

[EmilePrimrose]

Originally Posted by SweetPrincess

Yeah my brothers are in their twenties I use to watch it because they would watch it...
*high five..back..?*

Yeah my brother was the one watching DBZ and all of those also. We would rush home every day off the bus and didn't miss a day of homework in school because we weren't allowed to watch until we showed our agenda and each homework sheet was done

[zebra]

Originally Posted by EmilePrimrose

If you search hard enough, there are a lot of places that wholesale anime. That's how I buy all mine. Got sixteen dvds and two box sets (thinpak) for eighty bucks, and free shipping because it was over fifty

Not as easy here in germany ^^ Region codes and everything - I mostly can only imort from the UK. But it's getting better with Blurays.
But always pretty expensive, even after years of the release.

[Pikasprey]

The first anime I ever liked was Cardcaptors back when I was a kid. Being a person who enjoys a good plot and well done artwork, I started watching more anime than any other kind of show.

[Ryonea]

My first one would be Doraemon. This show's so legendary in my country but back then, I've got no clue about the difference of anime and cartoon. I also read many manga, still clueless about them.

I think I'm starting to delve deeper into anime world after watching Gundam SEED. Started to join internet forums and it's from there that I knew many things.

[Telmah]

I originally watched a few episodes of the light-forsaken Cardcaptor Sakura dub. The art work really intrigued me but the voices were so awful--and the plot was so mangled I really never pushed too far into it. (The episode I watched was actually two episodes grafted together, urgh.)

The planted the interest in me, so in college, when my roommate pushed Ranma 1/2 (dubbed) and Fuushi Yuugi (subbed) on me, I pretty much took to it. They were terrible VHS tape quality, but I eventually became increasingly interested in anime in general.

I've pretty much rampaged through anime ever since. I go through hot periods and cold periods, and even gotten a few friends into the hobby. At first it was mostly watching it on TV or looking at fansubs, but I've become increasingly willing to buy what I like as anime has become more accessible and the deals seem better (I don't mind dropping 20 or 30 dollars on a boxset for something I may or may not like, when it was 80+, I really wanted to sample before I bought more.) I am currently coming back from a slow period--there's plenty I'd like to watch but I've been rather busy of late. I am sure once I finish with school, my time should improve as should my interest.

[larethian]

being watching chinese dubs on TV since kid-days without knowing what an anime was, like Ranma, Orange Road, etc. after watching a few episodes Flame of Recca on AXN on cable TV in '99, started buying and really getting into it.

[SilverSyko]

I find it interesting that practically everyone here has garnered an interest in this hobby in the past decade, but I suppose anime never really made itself well-known overseas until the turn of the century.


Anyway, like most I watched Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Cardcaptors back when I was in elementary school when those shows were the "in" thing. I had no idea they were called anime nor the fact they originated from Japan.

What truly got me into anime/manga happened about 2.5 years ago when a friend of mine had a very strong obsession with "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni". I was more of a video gamer then and had little interest whenever she talked about it.

At one point I was in a Mother 3 phase and come across a video parodying the Higurashi Kai OP with the Mother 3 characters. I was pretty baffled when I found out this was something parodying the series my friend was so into at that time, and after watching the original OP though curiosity I became very intrigued and decided to give the first episode of the series a shot.

I ended up getting hooked on the show after that and eventually my like of the series spread out to more anime and manga and I became the fellow you see today.