How did you get into anime?

[Mr Cat Dog]

I'm genuinely curious about people's responses to this question, so fire away! :D

 

[for him.]

That's a hard one because I have been watching anime for a long time. I think, my first serious experience with anime, as in I would look online for them, would be Naruto and Bleach. From there, I began to expand my horizons and even re-watched the anime I had watched in English dub in Japanese.

The first anime I ever watched is hard one to answer because if you watched Toonami and Kids WB when you were a kid, there tons. However, I remember watching Cowboy Bebop with my uncle way before I began watching cartoons on T.V., so I guess I would credit it with being the first anime I ever watched.

 

[psyanic]

I first watched Pokemon, then quite a few others when I was a kid, I just can't remember most of them. Back then, I didn't even know they were called anime. After that, I got into watching movies, especially Studio Ghibli films, and it just went that way. The interest kind of died down after a few years.

However, it resurrected when I got Netflix and I saw there was an anime section. So I checked it out and I guess I "seriously" got into anime since.

 

[Kano Shuuya]

I believe I just said nearly the same thing in the "What was your first anime?" thread, but oh well!

My best friend at the time was Japanese, and when were about 9 back in 1998 she introduced me to Pokemon and Detective Conan. They were on a VHS tape that she had, that a friend of hers from Japan sent every now and then. They had no subtitles, and so she'd have to tell me what was going on, but I liked the idea of them.

I knew they were weird Japanese cartoons, she tried explaining what Anime was to me, but I didn't understand it until I was about 13. I was real into Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yuugi, and Cardcaptors, and some friends in my class kept telling me "They're all anime, that's what anime is!".

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Sailor Moon was probably the first, though I didn't recognize it as anime back then. Then there was Pokemon and the butchered "Cardcaptors" they showed on WB Network, but my current anime obsession didn't start until I stumbled upon a copy of Ah My Goddess Volume 3 at my local Wal-Mart in 2005. I thought it looked cute and picked it up and enjoyed watching it at home. The rest, they say, is history.

 

[DarkIceForever]

That's an easy answer for me. I only recently got into anime. I didn't know what was considered "anime" when I was a kid (I DIDN'T KNOW DBZ AND POKEMON WERE CONSIDERED ANIME UNTIL MY LATE HS YEARS).So i gave Naruto a shot when I was in jr high. I hated that show so much and from then on I didn't bother to watch Anime.

Thing was that my friends were into that sort of stuff in jr high and that's all they would talk about. I ditched them because they were considered the "werid" crowd. Anyhow, I really didn't get into pokemon and anime all throughout middle and high school. I never played pokemon after RSE, and I stopped watching pokemon anime just before Pokemon Battle frontier because Pokemon was considered for little kids.

i got into pokemon again realizing it was my cherished childhood memory and I didn't care what people though of me. I watched an "New" pokemon episode at the time where Flint was trying to get Volkner to battle Ash. I felt the story matured and I liked Volkner's character. Ash was a bit better and Infernape went super sayain. After channel surfing on a late night I stumbled upon a episode of Full metal Alchemist brotherhood. I loved it and I watched the whole series.

Soon enough I gave other animes a try and finally became a Anime Fan. Not all Animes are terrible like Naruto. I even watched a documentary on Anime that made me love it even more! So I guess I got into Anime from watching Full metal Alchemist Brotherhood as a freshman college student.

 

[RedJ]

One word:

Toonami.

I rest my case.

 

[Shinigami_]

Rurouni Kenshin and Dragonball Z!

That's what got me started with anime; both shows were awesome at the time and they still are today. :D

 

[Joshawott]

From all of its exposure on the Internet. I thought to myself, "What's so good about this anime thing?" I watch Fullmetal Alchemist, and sure enough, I'm hooked. Technically I've watched shows like Pokémon since I was four-years-old, but I see that as more of a cartoon.

 

[Mario The World Champion]

What was my first Anime? Wow. That is kind of a hard question to answer because there are three different Anime that I know that can fully qualify for that spot.

Back when I was a child growing up in the 80's, I remember watching "Voltron: Defender of the Universe" on TV. At that time, I didn't know that it was Anime because I thought Voltron was an American show. It was many years later that I discovered that Voltron was originally made in Japan and it was called "Beast King GoLion". And I also learned that the original version is much more violent and dark compared to the version I grew up watching. BTW, I still enjoy Voltron and one day, I hope to see the Japanese version and see all the differences.

The second Anime that would qualify for the spot of my first Anime is Robotech. I never saw Robotech on TV because it was on back in 1985 and I don't remember anything before late 1986. I mainly read the comics at that time, but I had a feeling that it was Japanese. What drew me to Robotech was the mecha. I never really got into American cartoons that had robots, but Robotech and Voltron got me interested in big robots. Hell, so did the Transformers.

The third Anime that can qualify is Akira. My friend told me about that movie being Anime and that would qualify for it being the first Anime I have seen, but Voltron and Robotech all have their points.

But if I REALLY had to choose a winner... it's Voltron. It beat both Akira and Robotech by years.

 

[Alice]

Mainly adult swim, although toonami as well to some degree. When I was still in elementary school I was watching pokemon, yugioh, detective conan, and inuyasha without really knowing that they were any more than just cartoons... until I started watching bleach when I was 14, then I started to really get into it, and started looking up anime and Japanese music online.

 

[Treecko]

Pokemon was my first anime, but at the time, I thought it was just a cartoon. I didn't know what anime was until sometime around 7th grade. This was around the time Pokemon Advanced Battle. I got an idea to create a story but wanted to included drawing so I decided to learn how to draw anime. I borrowed books from the library and my brother bought a drawing book from a school book fair. I thought I watch more anime to learn more about. The first anime I watched that I knew it was anime, was probably Naruto or .Hack//Legend of Twilight and then I watched more and more anime and became hooked.

 

[Cherrim]

I loved Sailor Moon and stuff growing up, but I didn't know it was anything other than a normal cartoon. My first introduction to anime as something separate from western cartoons was when YTV did a Toonami sort of thing here when I was in grade... 3? They showed a bunch of episodes of Pokemon, Digimon and Dragonball Z. I was essentially hooked from that day and I would watch any anime that was on TV whether I liked it or not, haha.

I think it was once I got into Cardcaptors (and, subsequently, Cardcaptor Sakura once I realized how edited the dub was) that I became obsessed with the genre, though.

 

[CarefulWetPaint]

As a child my favourite part of the day was waking up and watching the cartoons such as DBZ and Pokemon. As I got older I watched Naruto, and was then put onto Bleach which I watched until Aizen was done.
From there I began watching more mature animes such as Devil May Cry and I just love the story lines and the ridiculously OP characters that every anime seems to have and the nostalgia of animes bring me back to my childhood which is why I'm still into them :)

 

[User19sq]

How did I get into anime? That's an easy one! I watched Toonami every Saturday night before it got canceled.

 

[jbthedelirious]

Pokemon.

At that time, I had no idea what an anime was, as far as I knew Pokemon was a completely American production (of course that probably wasn't helped by 4Kids unnecessary censorship, but I digress), then I got into Dragon Ball Z and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing thanks to an older cousin and learned that all of these shows came from a different country and to me, that was amazing and I just had to explore anime more.

 

[Moonmover]

I watched shows like Pokémon and Cardcaptors as a kid. My older brother was really into more violent animes like Dragonball Z, and we could both agree on the awesomeness of Gundam Wing.

For some reason, the kids in my town called them "Japanimation." I didn't get really get into anime as a separate thing from other cartoons until Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is the first show I heard described as an "anime."

~Moonmover

I loved the first episode of Elfen Leid. I keep watching other animes in hopes of finding other scenes like that opening, but so far no luck.

~Bloodmeat

 

[EarthWolfblade]

[SIZE="a"]When I was younger I used to watch DBZ and Pokemon a lot[/SIZE]

 

[Rogue planet]

Literally only because of this. I'm not sure what made me change my mind, because I used to hate anime, but after finding 4chan I just got caught up in all their fandoms.

 

[fatmanjumprope]

Growing Old :(

Like I'm sure a lot of you did I grew up watching some of the classics:

Pokemon
DBZ
DB
Yu-Gi-Oh
and many more

As I got older I'll admit I stopped watching these anime just because I wasn't entertained by the show anymore (Pokemon is the one exception for obvious reasons.) At some point in my life me and my friends started watching the Adult Swim anime way back in 2004-2005 whenever it was...? You know the ones I'm talking about. Anyway after finishing the Adult Swim marathons for these series the first thought that crossed my mind was "There has to be more of this" and my search lead me to the internet. It's been nearly 7 years now of me watching Anime and reading manga regularly. No turning back now!