Anime/Manga What got you into anime?

Like everyone else, as a kid, I didn't know what anime was and just considered those television shows as more cartoons. Then in sixth grade, my friend explained to me the difference and told me about Death Note and Fullmetal, which I started with, and what made me grow into the no-life nerd that I am today.

Started out like everyone else watching things like Cardcaptor, DBZ, Sailor Moon, etc.. It was actually my parents who told me what anime was around the time I entered 2nd grade. After that I started noticing the differences in anime versus cartoons and decided I liked those differences. It wasn't really until about 6th grade that I really got into watching anime though, since that was about the time that I got my first laptop and would spend hours binging through shows on animefreak.

My friend: Watch SAO
Me: Ok
Haven't finished it, after the romance I stopped watching it on TV and Crunchyroll has too many ads xD

Everyone went crazy over Yuri on Ice. Up until that point I had never really watched much anime except Pokemon, and then (absolutely ages after it came out) someone suggested it to me and I watched it. Then...yeah.

I used to love watching Naruto on TV when I was 7 or 8 though I had no idea it was considered an anime. In 7th grade, I found out from one of my classmates that Naruto was an anime and she, along with some of her friends gave me some anime recommendations. Checked them out and that's how I started branching out into other anime such as FMA. :)

I always enjoyed anime, though a bit more casually than lately.
Steins;Gate is the show that really opened my eyes to how great anime can be.

My first anime was DBZ, and I still love the Dragon Ball franchise. InuYasha is likely the first anime I got into while knowing it was anime. I promise that, while I'm not enough of an elitist to pretend I don't like a good Shonen (Hero Academia has quickly become one of my favorite anime/manga and it and One Piece are the only manga I try to keep up with) I have expanded my anime horizons in recent years.

The first "anime" I watched were Cinderella Monogatari and The Legend of Zorro. And Fushigi Yuugi too, iirc. These were back in the days when I definitely was too young to know what anime was (I called them cartoons with "sharp chins" haha) but I definitely was a fan of the aesthetics. Definitely knew there was something special about them even as a 4-5 year old kid. Something about these attracted me in a way Tom & Jerry never could.

A few years down the line, Toonami started and I finally started getting into it a little bit more with Pokemon, DBZ, One Piece etc. STILL didn't quite know what anime was but I knew I liked them. Fast forward 3-4 more years (I was probably 12? Or 11. I'm not sure) and Animax started their broadcast in India - this is when I finally was exposed to a whole range of shows I never knew existed. And a whole new world. Some of the earliest shows I remember watching include exD and Inuyasha. Definitely loved those - ironic how I never managed to actually finish any of those despite them being some of the first shows I watched knowing they were "anime".

Anyway, yeah, same ol same ol. Got into it with mainstream stuff and then eventually got into the broader category. The only thing that differed was the fact that I started watching SUPER old anime at an age when I couldn't comprehend english and watched them only because they had super attractive characters and nice romantic stuff going on (Fushigi Yuugi, Cinderella, Diego x Lolita was my first ever goddamn ship before I ever knew what ship was haha). Even as a kid, always was a hopeless romantic. Sigh.

Should probably get around to at least finishing Inuyasha, yeesh. :b

Probably Sailor Moon xD I first saw her at age 7, and got really into the whole style to the show, then, years later, at age 10, I started going on webpages about Sailor Moon. They linked me to sites about other cute anime, too. I was pretty fasanated by all of it.

Years later I started admiting to myself I love Pokemon and Digimon too (i deneyed liking them as a kid and would rather not get into WHY....).

I also got into shounen anime for awhile, but cute, girly stuff seems more my style. Though I wouldn't say i'm against the shounen stuff either (for awhile, i might of been, but i'm softer on things I don't like now thanks to my crush on korrina. She's a fighting type specialist and uses more 'macho' pokemon, so.....)

Same as any other guy my age; DBZ on Toonami back in the day.

I think it was the old Ocean dub that I first saw, and even a filler episode that got me entranced.

Well, the lead-up to me really getting into anime was a slow, slow burn of Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon, DBZ, the odd Naruto episode, and some other assorted things - it's always been a part of my greater entertainment experience. And then, of course, I binged all of Ouran and that was a true experience, let me tell you.

I would have to say that the thing that tipped the scales, though, was probably Code Geass. It had just the right amount of mechs, mysterious candy-colored-haired semi-goddess women, Pizza Hut product placement, and pseudo-psychology in it that it became one of my favorite series, and remains so to this day. But all it really did was inspire me to get off my butt and watch all of Evangelion, and that's the one that really hooked me, since it actually demonstrates the artistic efforts of its creator and in general is just pretty amazingly well-done. Plus, it doesn't hurt that there's vaguely implied symbolic gay romance for like one scene!

So yeah, Eva, I guess. Now I spend my days literally agonizing over the fate of a pink haired oni girl in a blatant, um, spiritual successor to Eva - everything really does come full circle.

shugo chara! and shakugan no shana were my first shows watched independently, but my genre preferences quickly took a turn to the "edgy" side in secondary school, and what ultimately drew me into anime was death note, closely followed by code geass.

i started following anime season-by-season around when tokyo ghoul s1 was released. have enjoyed since then excellent shows such as durarara!! and samurai champloo and steins; gate :^) took me time to get to those, but i got there eventually.

note about anime films: i enjoyed ghibli films immensely growing up, never aware that they fitted the term "anime films". for this reason, they aren't included.

When I was a very small kid, I was watching one of the cartoons that I have no idea what it is, even though I still remember a certain scene in particular. Years later when I watched some videos, for some reason I watched that scene again and finally realized it was from Nekketsu Saikyou Gosaurer.

As I grew up, my childhood was filled with Doraemon, Chibi Maruko Chan, Ninja Hattori, Perman (known as P-man in where I live), Beyblade, Pokémon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Let's & Go and occasional Digimon among others, even though as a kid I used to thought of them as regular cartoons like Tom & Jerry. As years gone by I started to hear the term anime, and it turns out I have watched anime for long without me realizing it at first.

Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and then stuff like Digimon, Pokemon, and Toonami later on. My dad had an uncensored (so pretty gory) Ruroni Kenshin VHS too that I watched a lot lol.

I used to be way more into anime but I just really don't sit down and watch things much anymore because I'm so busy with college and work. Last anime I finished was re-watching Madoka (the first series) and Kemono Friends.

My old YouTube friends were really into anime and kept bugging me until I gave it a shot. They made me watch High School of the Dead and some other show I can't remember the name of. I hated it at first honestly, but watching Full Metal Alchemist and Stein's Gate changed my mind. There's still some things I don't like about anime, but it's starting to slowly grow on me now.

One of the first I could recall besides Pokemon was CardCaptor Sakura, Moomins, Shin-Chan,Medabots, Ultimate Muscle then followed by DBZ and Beyblade. Shows like that would appear quite early in the morning before I went to school, when I was a child, so I was automatically pulled into it. I got my bigger push when I got a computer and started watching 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya' and 'Lucky Star'. Later after I was nearly done with those, a member here would suggest different series and gradually after that, I liked finding specific series with my favourite voice actor and a few friends I had at school, which I found out at a very late time also liked anime, too and they would make some suggestions. Now, I'm here. Many years later.

my sister made me watch my neighbour totoro and i thought it was the coolest animated thing I've ever laid eyes on. after that i've always had this mentality that anime is cool. then a few years later, on a boring may night. i had this urge to watch some sort of romance anime. i went to myanimelist to look up well-rated romantic animes and saw Toradora. watched the whole show in a day. it got the ball rolling and to this day im still watching different kinds of anime