How It All Began

[the_wolfs_howl]

How did you get into anime? Was it a certain show you saw, a manga you read, a trip you took to Japan? Share your story!

For me, everything started with Pokemon. We were visiting some Chinese-American friends of ours, and they were watching some Pokemon episodes. I'm not sure what it was, maybe the animation style (or maybe it was Pikachu), but something pulled me inexorably into Pokemon fandom. For a couple years, I was all about Pokemon. I mean, I watched it whenever it was on, I played video games, dabbled in the card game, daydreamed about it (this was before I'd discovered fanfiction, or I'd have written a bunch of fanfics too). That was pretty much all I knew about anime until a couple years ago (I'd grown out of Pokemon by then). That was when I started seeing Yu-Gi-Oh! on TV some, and found a Yu-Gi-Oh! manga in a bookstore. I was thrilled with the concept of reading a book the opposite way from what I normally do. About that time, I also saw several Hayao Miyazaki movies and totally fell in love with Japanese culture. My brother (who gets me interested in almosteverything I'm a fan of) discovered Fullmetal Alchemist, and we watched it together. Before I knew it, I was an anime fan!

There's a funny story about how I got interested in FMA. To decide whether we were interested, my brother and I watched a fansub of a later episode before we saw the first one. It was that episode where Martel gets killed, and Al is all sad. I couldn't figure out why everyone was referring to him as a 'he', when OBVIOUSLY that was a woman's voice! It was only later I realized that both Ed and Al are voiced by women in the Japanese version. But that episode convinced me FMA was good enough to watch, and since I had no idea who anyone was, nothing got spoiled for me.

[Mononoke]

I watched the cat returns, hooked since then thanks to "Craner"

[Tommy]

DBZ.

I loved it when I was 7.

[Aruiko]

Silver Fang. It was the wery first. I saw it when i was around 5. When i was oldr came all the Pokemons and Digimons.

After that was a looooooong break. But then my friend introduced me to... NARUTO. It was the time when it was in 20th episode in Japan. Hooked ever sicnce.
It was the beginig of real hobby in the world of anime

[mitsuki lover]

Saw Silent Mobius on Anime Unleashed when it was still Techtv.

[Radical Dreamer]

It sort of depends. I used to watch Superbook at age like...4 or 5, I don't know. I don't often count it, though, since I was so young. XD I didn't really know what "anime" was until I started watching Pokemon and DragonBall Z in 5th grade, and I enjoyed those, but not enough to look much further into anime as a whole. About two years later, I saw a couple episodes of Trigun, and went for about 2 years without watching any more of that.

When I did see it again, I was starting to warm up to the idea of anime because I had really gotten into drawing the style that I had seen in the games I had been playing, such as certain games in the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, and Chrono Cross. I caught about 6 more episodes of Trigun, but I ended up falling out of the habit of watching it. Again. XD

A few months later, I caught the first episode of Rurouni Kenshin on CN. The show seemed clean enough, the art was nice, and I decided to start watching it. That's really the show that got me really interested in anime, and it was also my first manga, too, so I generally count it as my first. XD

[KBMaster]

Digimon got me started, along with Anime Fridays on Fox Kids.

[Mithrandir]

I had a hard time sleeping one night, and I flipped past Vampire Hunter D on Sci-Fi channel. Years later I found some college buddies who were also into anime, and I've been hooked ever since.

[Blitzkrieg1701]

Superbook and The Flying House were my first step into the realm of Japanese animation back as a wee one, but it was a while before I saw any more. Aside from Robot Carnival (which made a HUGE impression on me, by the way) I never watched any of the stuff the SciFi channel showed, and we had about the only cable provider in Atlanta that didn't pick up Cartoon Network, so no Toonami for me. Then we moved adn didn't have cable at all for several years, which didn't help either. For the most part, my interest in anime was fed vicariously through video game art and the internet. Oh, that and the occasional visit to my grandparent's where I could catch a few episodes of DBZ, Tenchi, or Robotech. Then Pokemon happened, followed closely by Digimon: the first anime I ever went seriously fanboy over. From there, I completely devolved into an otaku pretty quickly.

[Negotiatrix]

The first anime I ever saw was Starblazers back when I was in elem. school (and the earth was still cooling!).
When HBO showed that version of Nausicaa called Warriors of the Wind, and I loved it. I must have watched that 100 times. I checked the tv guide every week to see when it was showing! Then in high school my friends and I watched what anime we could find in the video stores, which wasn't much.
There was a long time that I forgot all about anime. It wasn't until 5 or 6 years ago that I came across Big O and was hooked!
I was also ecstatic when Nausicaa was released on DVD and I still rewatch it every couple of months.

[Fish and Chips]

I'd previously been a nay-sayer of Anime (sans certain Anime films I enjoyed), with its giant robots, magical girl scouts, and endless battles, till a friend reminded me of the 10% rule (that only 1 out of 10 of anything will be genuinely good), so I started looking into it to try and find my 1 out of the proverbial 10. Because I'd heard it hyped up by some online buddies of mine, I decided to check out FullMetal Alchemist, the Anime and the Manga.

And I was hooked.

[Alexander]

I have a vague memory of going to the video renting store when I was six or seven and I saw, what I thought was an American film, "My Neighbor Totoro". My dad wouldn't let me see it because of the spiritual content in the film which never existed when I saw the film 10 years later for my first time.

But my first experience with actually watching anime was one day, when I was nine years old. On Kid's WB, the second episode of Pokemon was being shown. Ash was trying to catch a Caterpi. Which he eventually succeeded in.

I never stopped watching since.

What's also really interesting is I could somehow tell that this animation hadn't come from America because of the style. Something about it felt very distinctly foreign.

[KhakiBlueSocks]

I got started pretty slowly with anime watching the three biggest "mon" series of the day: DigiMON (Where the third part of my Screen Name came from, more on this if anyone asks!), PokeMON, and MONster Rancher. Then, late one night when I was flipping through the channels, I caught sight of Yu Yu Hakusho on Adult Swim(Ironically, the first episode), and from then on, I was hooked on the GOOD stuff! Bebop was on next, than the infamous Pilot Candidate! The rest, as they say, is freaking history!

[Fish and Chips]

Oh, I watched some Anime before my "Convert," but I never really got into it. Catch an episode or two of Speed Racer, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, a touch of Gundam Wing, some Digimon here and there.

[Mimiru14]

It all started with me watching sailor moon when I was about 5 or 6...Then when I got older...I was hooked on the whole Pokemon scene.Ah,the good ol' days..

[KeybladeWarrior]

A relative got me interested in watching a show called Ronin Warrios. Man, I like it so much I bought the action figures of the show. At the time I did not know it was anime, until I was about 15. I been hooked on anime for 12 years now.

[mitsuki lover]

I remember when Digimon was on Fox.I saw bit of it then but didn't know it was anime until AFTER I had been watching AU for some time.

[Jih]

DBZ on the original afternoon Toonami to Pokemon to Digimon to Outlaw Star to Tenchi to Blue Sub No. 6 to Trigun to Kenshin to AKIRA. I'm part of the Otaku generation who started with DBZ. My real induction would have to be when I saw AKIRA after buying the DVD in 2003. Even before that when I bought and watched Jin-Roh. Anyway, I'm glad I discovered the world of anime for better or worse

[Ichigo_89]

I'd always seen anime for as song as I could remember... (SuperBook in sunday bible school, watched Voltron & Megaman, rented My Neighbor Totoro) but it wasn't until Pokemon that I figured out what anime was. I guess u could say my TRUE introduction to anime was when I caught part.1 of "The Real Folk Blues" when I was about 13 (quite shocking at that age, believe me...) so yeah.

[Jessi Ray]

How did you get into anime? Was it a certain show you saw, a manga you read, a trip you took to Japan? Share your story!

For me, everything started with Pokemon. We were visiting some Chinese-American friends of ours, and they were watching some Pokemon episodes. I'm not sure what it was, maybe the animation style (or maybe it was Pikachu), but something pulled me inexorably into Pokemon fandom. For a couple years, I was all about Pokemon. I mean, I watched it whenever it was on, I played video games, dabbled in the card game, daydreamed about it (this was before I'd discovered fanfiction, or I'd have written a bunch of fanfics too). That was pretty much all I knew about anime until a couple years ago (I'd grown out of Pokemon by then). That was when I started seeing Yu-Gi-Oh! on TV some, and found a Yu-Gi-Oh! manga in a bookstore. I was thrilled with the concept of reading a book the opposite way from what I normally do. About that time, I also saw several Hayao Miyazaki movies and totally fell in love with Japanese culture. My brother (who gets me interested in almosteverything I'm a fan of) discovered Fullmetal Alchemist, and we watched it together. Before I knew it, I was an anime fan!

There's a funny story about how I got interested in FMA. To decide whether we were interested, my brother and I watched a fansub of a later episode before we saw the first one. It was that episode where Martel gets killed, and Al is all sad. I couldn't figure out why everyone was referring to him as a 'he', when OBVIOUSLY that was a woman's voice! It was only later I realized that both Ed and Al are voiced by women in the Japanese version. But that episode convinced me FMA was good enough to watch, and since I had no idea who anyone was, nothing got spoiled for me.

My word! You have almost 98% of the same story that I have! Accept I didn't watch fansubs and my friend got me further into it (Wolf's Rain, Trigun, and RK mainly) after my Pokemon fandom slowed. I still love the Yugioh manga though!

[the_wolfs_howl]

My word! You have almost 98% of the same story that I have! Accept I didn't watch fansubs and my friend got me further into it (Wolf's Rain, Trigun, and RK mainly) after my Pokemon fandom slowed. I still love the Yugioh manga though!

Cool! I like Wolf's Rain too. BONES is my favorite animation team, other than Studio Ghibli of course. And my brother's got ahold of Trigun and Rurouni Kenshin, but we haven't watched them yet. I'm expecting them to be good, since I only hear praise for them.
Have you seen Scrapped Princess? It's animated by BONES too. I didn't like it as much as Wolf's Rain or FMA, but I loved Pacifica's design.

[Saj]

For me it all started with Gundam wing and DBZ on toonami. Then i saw bits a pieces of Cowboy bebop and trigun, and it grew from there.

[JasonPratt]

How did you get into anime? Was it a certain show you saw, a manga you read, a trip you took to Japan? Share your story!

Does Godzilla count? How about crazy Chinese kung fu movies?

Dad started me watching those when I was _ZERO!_ (um, I mean when it was his turn to feed me at night, before I was even 1 year old. Not during conception... {wry g}) So, between that and the fact that the first movie I was ever taken to was Godzilla vs. Megalon, you could say I was prepped for anime.

Aside from maybe early Christian anime like Superbook etc. (which I recall seeing but never recall actually _watching_), my first anime was very probably Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers) which my little brother and I adored. Especially the 2nd season (which we didn't know to think of as a new storyline.) Speed Racer was being shown on broadcast TV at the time, too, but I didn't like it as much. Did like Macross when it began showing up. But honestly preferred Ultraman (the only season released in the US) and Spectraman (which I could only catch intermittently at the house of a relative who had cable) better. {g}

The next time I ever saw any anime was in college, with Akira (didn't much like it) and Venus Wars (liked it much better). Unless one counts Transformers (probably doesn't count as anime, though the theatrical feature certainly did!), which I was crazy about back in high school.

After college, I didn't get much into anime until a friend of mine (Marie Brennan) started talking about Rurouni Kenshin. (Thus explaining why my sig for the anime forum features references to SBY and a novel from Marie. {beam!}) Even then, I couldn't watch RK until it began to be released on DVD (in non-fansub format--Marie was going to college in Boston, very far away {s}); but I did start collecting all the SBY available on tape (not counting the aborted attempt at a reboot to the series, which I've heard was abominable and never tried to collect), and I also collected the miniseries version of Record of Lodoss War. That took my anime budget for a while. {g} Next up was the DVD release of RK, and after that--anime collection burgeoned. {g}