My bro actually saw the anime first and got hooked after flipping through channels after commercials on Digimon. :]
I remember the original anime. Ah, the good days. Lol. I used to watch it on Saturdays all the time when I was little, at least I think that's when it came on? The anime was great, really touching too. I remember when Ash stood in-front of all those Spearow to protect Pikachu but all of the sudden Pikachu ran up his back, jumped, and shocked the s^it out of the whole flock. Then as both of them were laying on the ground, exhausted, Pikachu licked Ash's cheek. T.T
As "nerdy" as it might sound, I learned some of my morals from watching the Pokemon anime, lol.
I've always been lonely, and even as a young boy, I never had friends and the people I stuck with at school when I was young was only because they had no friends either. But this wasn't "my life", my life was when I threw my bag on the floor grabbed my Game Boy and threw in my big red cartridge and opened my eyes to my world, "the world of pokemon". As I have grown up, with family troubles and school problems, I was always able to close my eyes and open them up in the other world.
Even now, my best friends are the ones I sit at school with and talk about which pokemon we are gonna get when black and white come out and have a real laugh playing mario kart. The only reason I am the way I am today is because of pokemon, they made me see the art in video games and I will never go back.
Me and my friends talk about what Pokemon we'll get when Black & White come out too. Lol. That's wonderful though. A really wonderful story. Same thing with me. I don't ever see myself growing out of Pokemon. It has done to much for me to allow that to happen. Maybe there will come a time where I don't have the time to play anymore, but I doubt it, and if that time ever comes, I can always think back to the hours of traversing the Pokemon World as Red in my Red Version back in '96.