Anime/Manga What got you into anime?

I feel as if asking the question "what was your first anime" generally doesn't prompt the answer that the question's trying to get to the heart of. For a lot of people, their first anime was Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, or these days, Naruto, Attack on Titan, SAO, etc. And that's all well and fine, this isn't to say anything of those shows; However, most people who did watch those first generally didn't watch them because they were anime. Animation does have the effect of being particularly appealing to a younger audience, regardless of its homeland (hell, just look at how popular Code Lyoko was).

In my case, my first anime could've been plenty of things. Dragon Ball Z'd been airing on Toonami for most of my life, while I can still recall watching the first episode of Pokemon when it originally aired. But these things, for me, weren't anime, they were basically just the same cartoons that I'd already been watching- but different. If we were to talk about the anime that I truly consider my first anime to have been Orphen.

See, Orphen: Scion of Sorcery, was a game I had on the Playstation 2. It was one of those games that we bought just because it sounded cool and that was around the time where I wasn't exactly the most discriminating buyer. I was pretty young, after all. So fast forward a few years and we end up getting Comcast cable, with this wonderful little service called On Demand. See, On Demand was this function that allowed you to watch shows that weren't on air and instead were watched, dare I say, on demand. Crazy, right? Well on this service we found this little thing called the Anime Network, which I consider to be the birthplace of my interest in the medium and the shaper of most of my current interests, probably a lot more. So when I talk to people around my age who say their first anime was something like, say, Mirai Nikki, it prompts an inadvertent raised eyebrow because in my case I had things like Sorcerer Hunter and Those Who Hunt Elves.

But the rest was pretty much history from there. So, back to the topic, what was it that got you into anime? Be it event, a particular anime, or just happenstance, what made you the fan you are today?

A user from PC named Derozio poked and pushed me until I watched One Piece.

I had never been a big anime fan. I would casually watch stuff like Pokemon, and later DBZ, but never got into the less "westernized" shows until I was begrudgingly force to do so. Like machomuu, I don't really consider these shows anime proper. I had younger irl friends who were into things like Trigun, Inuyasha, and the old Adult Swim block but they never caught my eye. There were only two or three that really stuck with me over the years.

Flash to 2014/5 and Derozio has finally exhausted my patience so I decided to placate him with updates on my One Piece progress. Turns out I really like anime! I've since made sure to watch anything of interest to me and now have a respectable collection of finished shows. There's tons of stuff I love watching now and I'm always looking for the next thing!

also ilu dero 8)

I'm not entirely sure what really triggered me getting in to anime "as anime". I started off watching the morning anime block before school. So I was watching stuff like DBZ, Pokemon, Digimon etc. Then because I had insomnia issues I'd see the adult swim anime block at night and would watch Orphen, Evangelion and stuff I don't remember. I also picked up watching Naruto after school. So I guess I got into watching anime just because it was on when I was watching TV and I liked it haha.

It wasn't until years later I got into anime "as anime" though and started exploring the medium specifically. I think I was already on PC at the time and I started watching Azumanga Daioh for some reason - maybe I saw something funny related to it here? I wasn't really expecting to enjoy it but it turned out I did. So I expanded the genres I was interested in and started intentionally really exploring through anime. Thus I ended up here lol.

The first anime I watched was Pok?mon, though as most people are saying I didn't watch it because it was anime, but rather because it was Pok?mon.

I started to knowingly watch anime because it was anime back in 2006 when a friend of mine convinced me to watch the first episode of Bleach. That was all it took to hook me into it. At the time Bleach only had 30-ish dubbed episodes, which I watched before realizing that the subbed version was muuuuuch better. I don't think I've watched any dubs since, with the exception of Pok?mon. xD

When I was caught up to Bleach, I decided to try out some new series. I then started Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto, Inuyasha, Sailor Moon, and Shaman King(the last one because it aired right after Pok?mon on TV here at the time). And I've been watching it ever since. ^_^

I think the first one was Pokemon indeed. I remember watching the show for the first time and being stunned with the designs and the concept in general terms.
I didn't learn the concept of Japanese Animation until I was 13, 14, anyway, which is when I went full otaku mode and started to watch whatever I could catch in my radar.

Crippling loneliness and depression were probably my main factors in why I started watching anime proper. Not even meming.

I honestly can't really remember properly. I'm not sure if I was watching DBZ and YuYu Hakusho because it was anime or because it was actiony and on Toonami in the afternoons when I was getting home from school while home alone at 11 or 12. An older cousin that I thought was really cool was really into both of those shows when I was around that old. Besides that, I started getting into manga around 13/14/15 with Shonen Jump and started watching Bleach and the rest of the Adult Swim anime lineup around 15 or 16. It can kind of trace its roots back to Pokemon and just generally watching cartoons on Friday evenings, though.

Like others my first was probably Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, though I didn't, and still don't count those as anime really. I never really got into Naruto, One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho, ect as a kid. I caught glances now and then but never watched. That being said, I now currently watch Naruto (fillers incl), One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Zatch Bell. Still have not seen DBZ, Bleach, Sailer moon ect.


I really started getting into anime when I started watching Detective Conan in Highschool, I'd say roughly 7 years ago. It became my favorite anime instantly. I tried branching out with little success but enough to get my feet wet in the general anime world though it was more niche stuff I think.

Akwardly enough, Romance anime got me super into anime.

Well, it depends. I've had 3 phases of watching anime.

First phase, I watched Cartoon Network and Toonami etc because of Pokemon, Yugioh, Naruto, Zatch Bell, and Bobobo-bo-bo-bobo, probably others too. Me, my brother, and my childhood friend were watching most of these together because she loved Zatch Bell. She also loved Full Metal Alchemist, but we never really watched it together. I remember in middle school, around 2007 and 2008, me and my brother binge watched Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden after school, it was one or two episodes every day. Eventually we grew out of our Naruto phase. I casually continued watching the Pokemon anime while they were in Sinnoh, but I stopped when they went to Unova.

Next phase was in 2010, we got Optimum Online and a channel we had on there was Funimation. Me and my brother watched Peach Girl, Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicles, Hunter x Hunter (1999), Mushi-shi, and xxxHolic. We loved most of these. Stopped watching anime again after we switched back to Verizon FIOS a year later.

Current phase. In June 2015, a friend at the time (who I hated a few weeks later) showed me an adorable picture from an anime, and I asked him where it was from. He said he didn't know, so I looked it up and it was Jewelpet. I knew it looked familiar because earlier that year, I shared a Jewelpet Kira Deco video on my Tumblr that also looked adorable, and I remember saying I wanted to watch it. So I did. And it was the greatest thing ever. Jewelpet is still to this day my most favorite anime. I watched the second season in 4-5 days, they're 52 episode seasons. Two seasons weren't subbed at the time, so I pulled through and watched a lot of Jewelpet episodes in raw Japanese format.

An ex-partner, my Secondary School Art teacher, and a depressing lack of quality cartoons past around 2003 or so. Mostly the last of those three things. I had to watch SOMETHING. Anime was a good alternative at the time.

Excluding the anime I watched because it was on TV (Pok?mon, Medabots, anything really), my first anime were Naruto and K-ON. I think my sister recommeded Naruto to me, not as an anime watcher herself but she just knew about it, and K-ON I encountered via an image set or something, can't remember properly.

i was so small i dont remember my first anime

My first anime were very typical - Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Digimon. I also watched Shaman King and Beyblade when I was younger. I really liked cartoons with lots of action, so naturally I was drawn into hot-blooded shounen anime.
I suppose it was an effect of liking all those shows. My younger self googled them, and eventually discovered anime as a concept. Pretty sure I watched Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann first before branching out to other shows.

To be honest, I probably just kept seeing people talk about it online, got curious, and looked it up.

I know I watched a little bit of Sailor Moon and Speed Racer when I was very small (4-5-ish), and I absolutely loved DBZ when I was a bit older (8-ish). And then I got into Pokémon and Digimon, renting videos to watch because by that time I didn't have access to the stations they aired on. But I never knew any of them were anime until years later.

I don't even remember what my first anime was after I learned what it was; I rented some movies, but I don't remember much beyond Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, and I know neither of those were the first. Some of the earliest series I remember deliberately watching are the original FMA and Naruto, but I have no idea whether one of those were the first, either.

I started watching Pokemon when I was 4 up until I was 12-13ish. Around that time I momentarily got into the original Digimon series.
When I was 14 I bought the manga for Attack On Titan after hearing about it from friends. I immediately fell in love with it and later decided to watch it on Netflix. AOT is my all-time favourite anime to this day, and opened up the doors to other anime, including Red Data Girl, Your Lie in April, Vampire Knight, etc.

Like many, I started off with the classics for my generation... Cardcaptors, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and DBZ among others. Back then I was around 7-9 years old and didn't really understand the concept of anime though and just assumed these were all regular American cartoons. But soon enough after that I got into Neopets (good times) where I joined a guild and met people so I ended up learning about anime as a concept from people older than me and eventually branched out to other series. Started off with dub but then discovered anime with English subtitles with the original FMA. It went on from there. =)

Well, for me, I don't consider Pokemon as an anime!

What got me into anime were the people in Pokemon Forums and my IRL friends. My first anime ever was Shugo Chara and from there I began to grow a passion for Magical Girls, but talking with these online people made me realize there's more out there than Shugo Chara. Having downloaded the Crunchy Roll App I was overwhelmed with the choices given to me in that app, Where could I start of with? People would talk to me about it and I would take their words for it and from there I began to look at recommendations for me and randomly choosing manga to read from: Akatsuki no Yona and Sankarea, etc.

If I remember correctly it was Dragon Ball Z that got me into anime, back when I was little.

The shows that aired on Adult Swim, in the early 2000's, is what got me into anime. Shows like Yu Yu Hakusho, Blue Gender, Trigun, The Big O are what got me interested enough to search out other shows.

Grew up watching Sailor moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Pokemon dubbed, on TV. The first time I watched properly after being aware of it was High school of the Dead, funny enough. Afterwards, I watched seasonal anime up until now.