Forum - View topicHow did you get into anime?
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Hannish Lightning
Posts: 376 |
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For me l was either 6 or 7 and l got up to watch Saturday cartoons and it was nothing, but repeats. So, I was looking for something else to watch when l saw it...Akira. Ever since then l became infatuated with the genre.
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Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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For me it was Toonami. I remember coming home after school and watching these crazy cartoons and just wondering what the hell they were. Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing, Voltron. The days when all I needed for entertainment was A giant robot or lazer beams shooting out of a guy's hand. I miss Toonami so much.
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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For me it started when my brother purchased the Record of Lodoss War, But it really started when I watched Adult Swim/Toonami when I was in college, leading me to purchase DVDs of my own.
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Overlord Z-ko
Posts: 34 |
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It wasn't one particular thing that did it. I grew up watching anime on broadcast TV with the shows Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon ans Dragonball Z and I continued to watch the the last two on Toonami but I wasn't aware they were anime until Pokemon came out. Mostly I just got into anime because it was what I grew up watching.
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The Kudoo
 Posts: 8 |
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I got into anime in a kind of roundabout way. I'm a huge fan of video games and I love their music, so I started a downloading binge of VGM (Video Game Music). I branched out into hip-hop, rap, classic rock, rock and then I tried some OST's from some random anime from a site I cannot mention here. I found an album called BECK. I first I thought it was the band from the U.S. and thought "whoa, this could be unique". Little did I know how unique and how awesome the music was, enough so that I bought the anime. From there it snow balled into a minor obsession. I think I watched 50 or so TV series in less than a year, not including movies and OVA's.
Before I found BECK, a girl from school let me borrow her box set of NGE. I though it was pretty cool but it didn't encourage me to go out and find more anime. On a side note, I still don't understand the seasons and when they start and finish and how many there are or where to go to find a list of what's coming out in that season. Which brings me to a realization. For the last 3 or 4 years now that I've been into anime, I've been looking backwards, trying to watch all the shows I missed from decades past. I've never really caught up to be able to look forward to any shows. huh...weird. |
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xia83
 Posts: 137 |
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UPN picked up Sailor Moon back in 1995, very early in the morning. As a fifth grader, I knew it wasnt regular american cartoons, and after becoming totally obsessed with it I started looking for other stuff.
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David.Seth
 Posts: 453 Location: near SF |
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The very first exposure (if you can call it that) was way back in 98 or 99. I was walking the aisles of the local mom and pop video store, when a particular vhs mixed in with the "action" movies caught my eye. I was pulled in. Something about this seemed very mature. On the box was a woman holding a gun, with purplish skin, and a large bust that was only covered by the sub-title of the film. It was a far cry from the Disney movies I had seen, starting with Little Mermaid (which I saw in the theater).
I looked at the title of the movie, repeated until I was sure I wouldn't forget what it was called (being 14ish I don't think my mom would have rented it for me). I remembered for a while, hoping for the day I could rent it on my own. Of course I totally forgot the name of the movie, but the box cover image stuck. a few years later I was talking to my friend at school when he brought up anime. I told him I wasn't interested in DBZ or Sailor Moon. He laughed at my ignorance. That is when he pulled out a VHS of Ghost in the Shell. Staring at the familiar image, my memory clicked! I had to watch it. He lent it to me and I watched it that night (along with perfect blue). 65 series and almost 30 movies later, I'm still hooked! 
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LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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If it makes you feel better, I don't think that's weird, actually quite the opposite really, more of normal. As I would rather focus on what is available to me now then whatever "x" show is going on in Japan, simply because I don't have a legal option to do so (although that to is changing), so maybe I'll leap on board some of the legal streaming more but it doesn't give me the same feeling as watching a DVD oddly, it feels cold and lonely to me, which while yes can happen with watching a DVD by myself, I can watch a DVD with others easier than I can with a stream orshow off anime better to others, for example, walking into were I live you will see my anime collection first, hard to do that with a piece of streamed media. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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As a fan of animation in general, my anime fix came about from renting Akira (on VHS). The story was intriguing, and much broader than any US cartoon.
Back then, anime was hard to find, so it was "hit or miss" based on what I could rent. Cartoon Network began airing this thing called "Adult Swim" and featured a series called Cowboy Bebop. Not sure if you've heard of it (  ), but this series resparked my interest in it.
That's when I noticed more anmie was available to me, so I've been sucking it all up as much as I can. Last year, I found *ahem* fansub sites which opened many, many new doors to me, prompting me to purchase those DVDs. After this, my cable company started the Anime Network on demand service, showing me even more! Now, it's an obsession. From figures, merchandise, and DVDs, my collection is growing faster than my wallet can handle!
Just yesterday, I spent yet another $135 on the 1/4 Haruhi bunny figure, a Shana figure, and a Yuiji (Moonphase) plush. 
*sigh* And it's still not enough. |
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Mike On Top
 Posts: 298 |
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I was grounded in the house and for a compensation for being equally guilty as my younger brother was, I was allowed to watch TV while he was still playing outside. Guess who scored the epic win with discovering Grendizer and who cried non-stop till the next airing
Last edited by Mike On Top on Sun Mar 22, 2009 1:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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animebrainyanic
 Posts: 213 |
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I could say the art and the content of the story made me more to liking anime, an example of it, Ranma 1/2, Dual Parallel Adventure was quite about mecha and everybody knows that this is a comedy genre, and I was abound by it. The story made me like this, with the random story made me like liking the 1st steps of anime.
Naturally, I am more to a tragic and sad stories, Ima, Sokoni Iru Boku and Ayashino Ceres was first to impress me this genre, I knew yet this anime is deep, my feeling with this while watching tend to like more to have to watch this kind of anime, from then I understand the way of directing the series, having the thought of the anime made me clear that using art as a tool for viewing every moves to directing. Not only Comedy, Drama, I can say that Adventure surely gives me a hit plus Military for Gundam Seed and Aria for Slice of Life are a good example. This is my impression that I go deeper to anime. Yu Yu Hakusho was the first to impress me with an impressive storyline and fantasy fighting, and of course, who would've thought of liking B'tX when I was a kid. And now I'm obssessed with anime will satisfy me with a great storyplot. |
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RedSwirl
 Posts: 344 |
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Hard to say really. There wasn't any one "huge" initial exposure, so this is gonna be a long one.
Some of my earliest memories are of when I was four or five years old being exposed to Transformers and Voltron back in 1990-92. I know now that there is only light Japanese involvement in those shows, but despite being totally oblivious to that back then, I could still recognize that the shows were inherently different from "normal" American cartoons in some way. At the same time however, something that WAS overtly Japanese that I was being exposed to in my formative years was Sho Kosugi's films. I actually credit him as being the original source of my interest in Japan's culture. Even before I'd ever heard of anime I still had a heavy interest in traditional Japanese culture throughout most of my childhood. From there I spent the early and mid 90's catching stuff like Ronin Warriros, Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, and Teknoman whenever I could. I still wasn't completely aware that the shows originated from Japan, but I could still recognize that they were "different" in terms of look and subject matter and I enjoyed the shows for that reason. Those shows were very rare to see on TV though, and I heavily prized each encounter while Nickelodeon still made up the bulk of my Television consumption. The first single anime show I was majorly interested in was probably Dragon Ball Z when it aired on Fox starting in 1996. I still was not totally aware the show was Japanese and hadn't ever heard the term "Japanimation," but it was like nothing I'd seen before. One thing that contributed to my absorption in the show was that I wasn't used to the whole "one big story arc" tendency in anime shows. I'd known about "multi-part stories" in regular cartoons and resolved to record this entire story for however many parts it went on. I ended up recording the entire first season. Some time after that I think I finally started to recognize the stuff as Japanese in origin when I stumbled upon the "Japanimation" section in the back of my local Blockbuster. I was exposed to a whole shelf of stuff that looked cool but that I'd never heard of, including a VHS called "Akira" which my brother said he'd heard was "badass." From there, I decided to stick with what I knew and rented whatever was adapted from videogames I'd played. That meant the first Fatal Fury movie which I must've watched 20 times. Yeah, I think that was my first complete exposure to anime even though it hadn't 100% hit me that the stuff was Japanese. From there I went on to check out adaptations like the Battle Arena Toshinden and Street Fighter II movies. SFII is still considered a classic today even by many non-anime fans. I still remember my friends obsessing over each of those movies' shower scenes. After I'd watched each of those movies multiple times I decided to go out on a limb and rent one of those strange movies that looked the coolest. I chose some Patlabor VHSs that I now think were probably the OVA. They were subtitled only but I didn't care despite only being nine years old. I watched those a few times and then finally decided to see what Akria was all about sometime in 1998 when I was 12. Needless to say, my mind was blown. Like every other American who saw it then, my entire perception of what was possible in animation was shattered. I had no idea what the hell was going on in that movie the first six times I watched it and I could tell the dub was bad but I didn't care. The movie's sense of style and energy was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It's still my favorite anime movie. Somewhere around this time I came upon a comic book that looked like the sickest thing ever. It was called Blade of the Immortal. I could only ever find one issue of it but I kept re-reading that issue. It was one of Dark Horse's issue releases and my only exposure to manga for a while, but I still wasn't really aware that it was actually from Japan. Even now as manga floods the shelves of bookstores, Blade is still the only one I've continued to invest in. Throughout the 90s though, anime (it wasn't even called that then) was still somewhat of a rarity in the west. It was fleeting and only a minor but shining aspect of entertainment in my life. When things really shifted was probably when I moved to Germany and lived there from 1998 to 2000. This was around the time of the Pokemon explosion in the US that was trickling over to the army base I lived on. Along with that, going to middle school in Germany was the first time I encountered people who could be called "Otakus." By this time sites like Animenation had arisen and that's when the full message finally hit me that this stuff was from Japan. While in Germany I actually didn't see much anime outside of Pokemon, but that's probably when I became fully aware of it and started to actively seek it out. That's also when people my age in general had become aware of it, though most of my friends hated it because all they had seen were bad dubs. It just so happened that I would return to The States in time for the anime explosion that occurred here over the early 00's. By the time I'd moved back in the summer of 2000, I'd completely missed the fall of Nickelodeon and was saddened by the state I suddenly saw it in. I guess that in a way I've been filling the void with anime ever since. That's when a longtime friend of mine introduced me to Toonami by forcing me to watch Sailor Moon with her every day. Before this the only anime I'd been exposed to was the heavily popular or Americanized stuff like Akira, Voltron, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball. It was here though that I first caught sight of the "inside" stuff like Gundam and eventually Tenchi Muyo and Outlaw Star. I spent pretty much all my high school years doing that while encountering other fans who wore Gundam and Eva T-Shirts while downloading fansubs. Eventually I moved on to buying DVDs, then lightly downloading fansubs, and here I am today. I've never actually considered myself an Otaku though and I still don't. If it's available, I will still mainly watch my anime in English even though my impatience has started to get me on fansubs. Even then however, I'm still fairly critical of the way many Otakus and "weeaboos" act in regards to American culture in contrast with Japanese culture. Today, I see many people watch anime purely because it's there or because it's anime. I also don't normally hang out with Otakus because I've met too many who hold biases for Japanese culture, though I still put up with the crap from my oldest friend who has gone completely weeaboo in recent years. In choosing what I watch, anime fatigue has taught me to stay true to the specific reasons I watched anime all those years ago - for eye-catching animation and mature-themed narrative that you don't normally find in western media. |
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dewlwieldthedarpachief
 Posts: 751 Location: Canada |
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It was somewhere around 2000/2001 when I was in Colorado. I was in sixth grade and my exposure to entertainment was limited to whatever was in the movie store; I would read about a lot of cool things I wanted to see but for one reason or another I never did see them.
One day I'm talking to this guy about fantasy films and he brings up this crazy sounding one called Princess Mononoke where a guy shoots an arrow that blows another guy's arms off. I think to myself "holy sh1t, that sounds fantastic" and then I promptly forgot about it for several months. I happened upon it in a movie store eventually and rented it on glorious VHS. Fortunately the dub of that movie is very good and the entire thing just blew my mind. I watched it twice. I NEVER did that before. It ended up being my very first DVD, after which I acquired GitS and saw Akira. Then things took a turn; I become hooked on the Love Hina fansub. In my defense I was 13 at the time. Anywho, all of this exposure lead me to a greater interest in Asian stuff. Looking back it's mystifying how I lived so long not really appreciating that I was missing out on so much awesome stuff; it's like it was custom engineered to bring me joy. |
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Analog_Now
 Posts: 211 Location: Montréal, Québec |
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For me it started by watching DBZ on tv and pokemon that got me to look for more shows that were similar and that's when I realized what Anime was. The first show I really feel in love with was Fullmetal alchemist because he played on tv.
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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For me it would have been when I moved to Japan. Because that's all the animation that was on television at the time. I watched it regularly, got to see quite a few series, but was never into it like when I got back from over there.
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