When did you first get into anime?

[averygamerdude]

I'm bored right now, so I thought I would entertain myself by having a conversation with you guys about when you first got into anime. For me, the first ever anime I watched was back when I was 3 whenever I watched Pokemon: Indigo League. Then, I began to watch the Toonami block on Cartoon Network. I saw shows like Gundam, Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, etc., and I loved them. Later on, when I was 10-12, I figured out that there were actually big anime conventions across the United States since the 90s. I never got to attend one until I was 14, but I began to watch all kinds of anime that I've never seen before. Soon enough, I got really into it, and I began watching anime on a daily basis. I used to watch more modern anime, but I just seem to like classic anime a lot better, probably because it brings back nostalgia of my childhood. I'm a lot more into video games nowadays than I am with anime, but I still love anime compulsively. I think I may be the only one that is like absolutely OBSESSED with it. Though I may be wrong. How about you? When did you first get into it?

[Sixth]

Doraemon. The first anime that aired in my television.

[SuitUp]

2007, when I first discovered Death Note (wich is apparently like the default entry level anime for a lot of people ).. Then I stopped and got into anime again in 2010 I think, when I discovered the wonderful world of SoL anime and I haven't stopped ever since. Now I'm into reading tragedy manga

[DOmus]

DBZ, Trigun, Sailor moon and Samurai X when I was younger(around 2000?) then-
Like 3 year ago with HOTD and Btooom! Since then I kept watching till this day.
I will be always grateful to that good friend of mine that made me watch them.

[AntonKutovoi]

He first contact? Pokemon, back in 2001-2002. It has been shown on a central channel in the prime time.

But I became an anime fan much later, when I saw Rurouni Kenshin, Shaman King and Grenadier (although this had waaaaaay lesser influence on me then the other two).

[RichardFromMarple]

I've been in & out of anime over the years.

The first ones I remember watching was Battle Of The Planets (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman reworked) & Star Fleet (X-Bomber, OK not an anime as such as it was made with puppets, but created by Go Nagai).

In the 1980s there were a few series which could be classed as semi-anime as they were animated in Japan but written elsewhere (France mostly) such as Ulysses 31 & The Mysterious Cities of Gold. Belle & Sebastian (Meiken Jolie) was another.

After that I was too busy to watch much TV due to studying & the main channels in the UK not showing as much anime. Somehow I had heard of stuff like Dragonball Z & Sailor Moon in passing without knowing much about them. While I was too old to get into Pokemon when it arrived it was impossible to miss around the end of the 1990s.

More recently I started to read the manga With The Light (Hikari to Tomoni) & had a girlfriend who liked the Studio Ghibli films.

In the last 2.5 years I've really got into anime in a big way, the first series oddly enough was Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei thanks to TV Tropes making a lot of it.

Since then I've not looked back, especially since I started cosplaying with other anime fans.

[DragoonKain3]

As a kid, I watched the first episode of Robotech like a bajillion times that the tape got worn out. Only later on would I finish the series (Do You Remember Love with them showing Earth pretty much wiped out still has a big imprint on my kid self), but still, I think Robotech/Macross is still the single most influential show that has affected my person. To this day, I absolutely love mecha, music, and melodrama, and it's what I still look for in shows.

Growing up, I've seen your usual stuff like Dragonball Z, but I think it was Sailor Moon that caught my eye the most. I still remember being so awed that the princess was actually Sailor Moon. In hindsight, it was pretty darn obvious, but as a kid my jaw just dropped lol.

After Sailor Moon (I really didn't enjoy it starting R), there was a huge gap in aired anime. It was only until Gundam Wing where they started again, and I loved it.

Then at the dawn of digital age fansubs, it was Boys Be and To Heart that got me obsessed with anime, with the anime version of Kodoma no Omocha shortly after. I downloaded the first episode of each via 56k modem, when file sizes of 100 MB were considered enormous, but I regret nothing. It won't be until later when I will finish these shows (back then it took like YEARS to finish subbing niche anime series), but I'm pretty sure that these shows (along with JRPGs) are the reason with my obsession with childhood friend couples.

Finally, when I did get broadband, the first thing I downloaded was Twelve Kingdoms that I saw in my anime club. Downloaded the entire thing through torrent, learned IRC to show support for fansub groups, until I wanted a forum where general fansubbed anime could be discussed. Which brought me here, and the rest is history.

[Akito Kinomoto]

DBZ, Pokemon, or Sailor Moon during my early childhood, didn't know what anime was. Around my teenage years it was Naruto, One Piece, and some other shows that aired on Toonami that I knew were different from western cartoons. [adult swim] introduced me to anime in proper, but around 2006 is when I started watching on teh Interwebz and then everything just writes itself.

I'm probably going to be sticking around this hobby because there's enough in volume and variety to ensure I have something to watch no matter how my tastes change + I'm too lazy too read + I can tell my brothers on teh Interwebz a cool story.

[GDiddy]

It wasn't any certain anime that got me into it (though this was around the Gundam Wing/DBZ era) it was actually a magazine.


I bought Animerica one day, just for something different to read and got hooked and intrigued. I sort of knew about Akira and Ghost in the Shell, but at the time, I, like a lot of folks, figured anime as either arty stuff, porn or Pokemon. Then Tokyopop was around so I bought a copy of that and got into manga seriously.

Gundam Wing was probably the first series that I got into...at the time I used to work late at a job and I'd come home and watch this to unwind. It was like a soap opera to me.

[IceHism]

My first anime was evangelion back in the 1990s. I must say I was very lucky in this regard. I wasn't much of an anime fan though since all I did was watch Japanese dramas and follow the Japanese music scene. Oh and I'm not really old. I was really young when I watched Eva

[Darthtabby]

I had some contact with anime when I was younger, but aside from one series I liked in high school I'd say I didn't really become much of an anime fan until after I started university in 2005. My twin brother joined the anime and gaming club at university to play D&D, but he couldn't make the gaming night and ended up attending their anime screenings instead. He brought some of the stuff they were watching home and the infection spread.

When I first got into anime I tended to look for stuff that seemed really crazy and ridiculous, but I soon found myself liking more serious material. Some of my early favorites included Full Metal Panic, School Rumble, Starship Operators, and the original All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA.

[averygamerdude]

Originally Posted by darthtabby

i had some contact with anime when i was younger, but aside from one series i liked in high school i'd say i didn't really become much of an anime fan until after i started university in 2005. My twin brother joined the anime and gaming club at university to play d&d, but he couldn't make the gaming night and ended up attending their anime screenings instead. He brought some of the stuff they were watching home and the infection spread.

when i first got into anime i tended to look for stuff that seemed really crazy and ridiculous, but i soon found myself liking more serious material. Some of my early favorites included full metal panic, school rumble, starship operators, and the original all purpose cultural cat girl nuku nuku ova.

d&d? Heck yeah!

[TinyRedLeaf]

This is a very familiar topic, and after searching a bit, I realised why: The first anime you ever saw

It's where I made one of my earliest posts on AnimeSuki.

Like RichardFromMarple, though, I've been in and out of anime several times, long before I even knew I was watching "anime".

(I)
The first phase was during the 1980s, when I was in elementary and secondary school. This was the time of Mandarin-dubbed cartoons, like Kimba, Heidi, Gatchaman, Macross, Southern Cross and Mospaeda. In the later half of the 80s, English-dubbed cartoons like Robotech and Voltron also became available on terrestrial TV. I also recalled being enthralled by a cartoon movie on TV about a blue-clad girl gliding through an underground sky on a white glider, and it wasn't until many years later that I realised the movie was Nausicaa.

(II)
I forgot about cartoons by the time I was in higher secondary and junior college. It wasn't until university in the late 90s that anime appeared on my radar once again, this time in the form of movies screened by the Student Union. It was in this second phase that I discovered the likes of Ghost in the Shell and Akira. I didn't think of much about of them at the time, but I was mesmerised by the Kenji Kawaii soundtrack of Ghost in the Shell, and studied for exams while listening to the haunting chorus of Making of a Cyborg. It was also during this time that I first learnt about Princess Mononoke, which was mentioned but not shown in the trailer of a Disney movie. It wasn't until the third phase that I actively tried to watch the Ghibli classic.

(III)
The third phase occurred in starts-and-stops during the early 2000s. I borrowed a Cantonese-dubbed version of Neon Genesis Evangelion from a good friend and was wowed by its deconstruction of the mecha genre. About a year later, I rediscovered Studio Ghibli through Spirited Away, which I watched in cinema with my ex-girlfriend. This was the time when anime VCDs became widely available for the first time in Singapore, thanks to ODEX. I was thus able to catch up on all the Ghibli movies available at video stores. By the mid-2000s, I was a fan of titles like Twelve Kingdoms, Cowboy Bepop, Serial Experiments Lain, Witch Hunter Robin, Scrapped Princess, Azumanga Daioh, Love Hina and Inuyasha. And it was Kimi ga Nozomu Eien that finally brought me to AnimeSuki in April 2006.

(IV)
Even then, anime did not truly become a serious hobby until the fourth phase, from 2005 onwards. This was when I experimented with BitTorrent, and the first anime I "discovered" through this channel was Haibane Renmei, a story that played a major role in turning around my outlook on life. The period from 2006 to 2009 was a "golden age" of sorts, as I discovered a treasure trove of stories, for example: Kino no Tabi, Seirei no Moribito, Mononoke, Hataraki Man and Planetes. Generally speaking, these were all anime pitched at older audiences, featuring stories that were not just distinctively East Asian in flavour, but also greatly appealing in their philosophical depth.

I was at most active on AnimeSuki during this time. But the time has come and gone, and while I still continue to watch anime, I'm no longer as thrilled by it as I once was.

Maybe there will be a fifth phase. For now, I'm just cruising along for the occasional spark of genius here and there.

[Top Sergeant]

1980.

I discovered Star Blazers (yes, I know its actually Space Battleship Yamato, but at the time I had no idea). I would watch it every morning on TV and then dash down the street to catch the school bus to high school.

Also something called G Force, which now that I look back was pretty bad lol.

[RichardFromMarple]

Originally Posted by Top Sergeant

1980.

Also something called G Force, which now that I look back was pretty bad lol.

G Force was a closer dub/adaptation of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman than Battle Of The Planets was.

More recently I've started to watch series on Netflix rather than save up for DVDs of series that sound good & hope they are worth the money.

[kons]

In early 2000 Dragon ball z Adult swim showed on TV later
Trigun cowboy bebop inuyasha gundam I haven't checked out anime's for a while
Lately online anime novels

[sunchips18]

Well, that is a bit of a tricky one to answer.

I, like most people my age, first came into contact with anime during the late 90s/early 2000s due to shows like Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, and Yu Yu Hakusho being shown on Toonami. Being the age that I am (born in '95) Pokemon, Beyblade, and Yugioh were also pretty popular among people I knew. But...I wasn't allowed to watch any of it. When it came to watching TV as a kid, my parents were stricter than most, but not as bad as some. Unfortunately, anime was one of those things that they considered unacceptable for me to watch.

My first REAL encounter with anime began in 2006 when I had just started middle school. My parents were beginning to ease off a little with television, and I happened to meet some kids who were really into Naruto. Before I knew it, I was hooked. This was around the time that I had first heard of YouTube, so I was able to see fan-subbed anime in its original language, which I thought was very cool. I had always knew that anime came from Japan (despite FoxBox trying really hard to make it seem otherwise), but I didn't know how to watch it in it's original language, and I was a bit young to be part of the generation who watched fan-subbed anime on VHS tapes.

Then over the course of high school, I had begun to slowly drift out of watching anime. However, during my first year of college (just over a year ago), I had happened to stumble across an anime by the name of Joshiraku, and I was instantly hooked. From there, I just wanted to watch more. And so I did...a lot more. I don't think that I've ever been as hooked into anime as I am now. I absolutely love the medium, and I have no idea where I'd be without it (probably doing something a lot more productive at the moment, but that's beside the point).

[RichardFromMarple]

Originally Posted by sunchips18

Then over the course of high school, I had begun to slowly drift out of watching anime. However, during my first year of college (just over a year ago), I had happened to stumble across an anime by the name of Joshiraku, and I was instantly hooked. From there, I just wanted to watch more. And so I did...a lot more. I don't think that I've ever been as hooked into anime as I am now. I absolutely love the medium, and I have no idea where I'd be without it (probably doing something a lot more productive at the moment, but that's beside the point).

I've heard of Joshiraku (but not seen or read it) mostly because it's by Koji Kumeta who also wrote & drew Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, which was the first anime I got into in a big was as an adult, even though it's quite an obscure series.

I do have the 1st volume of the manga, but the anime has never had an official release outside of Japan & South Korea, though fansubs exist.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ZetsubouSensei

This lead me into getting interested in Maria Holic, also by Studio Shaft & set in a school, but at least that was available on DVD & now dubbed (I was just too late for that!)

[Fizix]

I'm going to be really typical...

My first anime was Cowboy Bebop some time in the 90's, can't remember what year but it was fairly new. Followed by Ghibli stuff, Akira, GITS and Eva (I didn't like Akira and Eva). I have dipped in and out of anime ever since, depending upon what's out.

[cyth]

^Typical for fans today is "watched some romcom" from 2011 onward on the internet.

As for me, I first took notice of anime because Ghost in the Shell was airing on local TV. I didn't know anything about Japan or anime at the time, except I had this image of Japan being high tech. So I watched it because of that. Didn't understand shit, I was probably 13 or something back then.

Then a year later Dragonball and DBZ came along, watched that religiously. I didn't really like other anime besides DB, I was just into the whole Super Saiyan power-level chuunibyou bullshit.

Due to this I also bought some copy of Spirited Away and watched that.

But when I really got into anime was when I got broadband and downloaded Love Hina fansubs by accident. So I guess I fall into "watched some romcom" category just like most people.