How did you get into anime?

[pink-tiger]

Oh! Oh! So it was fifth grade and my best friend Midori Chi was sitting two rows in front of me and was reading Chobits Volume 1. We were taking a cursive test and we had finished early so our teacher let us move and I walked up to her and started talking to her. She hooked me into anime and it was also at that moment I made who is until now my bff. <3
Ha! Never gave it a thought! :D

 

[jbthedelirious]

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 It was many years later that I discovered that Voltron was originally made in Japan and it was called "Beast King GoLion".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.

.

Amazon has the original episodes of Beast King GoLion. I know the first volume (episodes 1-18) is about $20, but I don't know about the others.

 

[AresTheAwesome]

I got into anime awhile back when I was a noob watching naruto in the living room on CN. Then I discovered the amazingness that is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. But i learned to become a real fan, and watched ToraDora (My first Sub) which had me watching others non-stop.

Death Note
Bakemonogatari
Dragonball Z
Naruto (subbed)
Nisemonogatari
Ikkitousen
Angel Beats
Soul Eater

I still obsess over anime and watch it in most of my free time when im not playing pokemon, writing fanfics, or just gaming.

 

[Pppgggr]

I started off with pokemon and Yu-gi-Oh on Cartoon Network when I was little. Then I started watching Toonami on Saturdays and that introduced me to Naruto and Dragonball and the such. FRom there, I started watching adult swim Anime, and upon discovering Bleach, I found Anime websites that allowed me to watch the story up to that point. Now Anime and the History Channel are all I watch.

 

[DominusValdo]

I started off with Dragon Ball... ahh the classic. Toonami was the gateway to all things anime. Dragonball Z and later Gundam blew my mind! I slowly started watching Naruto and then stuff like FMA, Soul Eater, Gurren Lagaan... other stuff.

 

[yevon15]

I had a friend that was into it, he told me I should try it out and I thought "sure, why not?"

 

[ThisOrTheApocalypse]

Pretty much growing up watching the main ones: Dragon Ball, Pokemon, etc. and eventually branching out to some of my favorites like Full Metal Alchemist, Clannad, Angel Beats, and Claymore.

 

[Pyrax]

I don't really remember how I exactly got into the anime, but I guess it stemmed from the fact that a lot of the shows I watched when I was a kid were anime (Dragonball, Voltron, etc).

 

[Palamon]

What got me into anime? Well, if I recall correctly read a manga and decided to watch the anime and then I got in to anime for good.

 

[sherreamethyst]

Well, when I was little I watched Pokemon, but I just thought of it as a cartoon, I never really knew what anime was until I was older.

Actually about a year ago I hated anime. Most of my school is asian so they all like the manga/anime kind of drawings, but they don't really watch anime or read manga a whole lot. Because of it been such a popular trend, I grew tired of it and thought it was stupid. Then last summer, I was bored, so I called up my friend and asked her about this movie I saw a looonnngg time ago (Spirited Away!) but I couldn't remember the name(During the summer I had been watching Pokemon, but I wasn't addicted to anime.). So she brought it over, we watched it, I loved it, so I looked up more movies by Hayao Miyazaki. I found Howl's Moving Castle, and it's now my 2nd favorite movie!
I started watching strictly anime movies in fall of 2011, and on November 21 2011(yes I remember the date, LOL) I saw my first Bleach episode.
Since then I've seen completed about 20 animes, i've completed Bleach of course, and i've recently started reading some manga.

It's weird but now im a pretty big fan of anime/manga. It's actually helped me figure out what I want to do in life and it keeps me inspired for it! I'm very thankful! :D

 

[YungKnowledge]

Toonami after school and Hang out with My older cousin that was into Salior Moon and Dragon Ball. I can't forget Pokemon was the big reason.

 

[Uecil]

Around 4 or 5 years old, I started to watch Card Captor Sakura, then I started to move on to Pokemon. Which then led me to my fandom growing on to Pokemon, then watching other series like Dragon Ball, Ultimate Muscle, Mew Mew Power, Yu-gi-oh and Beyblade, but once I had found this forum a friend of mine here introduced me to Full metal alchemist. Once, I had finished that I wanted to try out more and different series of many other genres in anime. I also had a friend at school who lived not too far from Japan; she was an anime fan, a HUGE one and she then started to give me some suggestions of what ones I should try out and then eventually I ended up where I am now. And that is how I got into anime.

 

[Turn-it]

When I was younger I was looking for cartoons on a saturday morning and I saw Dragonball Z Tree of Might movie. ( I didn't know that it was that at the time though) :D and I've been hooked ever since! lol

 

[blackmorale]

I used to watch anime such as Pokemon, Yu Yu Hakusho, etc. with my siblings when I was very young. But back then, they were simply "cartoons" to me.

But the person who really got me into anime was a classmate of mine back in the 5th grade. I was late during the first day, and there were only a limited number of seats available, one of which was next to this girl who also had been in my class the previous year. She was an "anime addict" (as what she likes to call herself), and introduced me to shows such as Digimon and Cardcaptor Sakura. Since then I began to watch more via Animax. But since we switched cable operators, we don't have Animax anymore, so I don't watch anime as much as before.

 

[Scuki]

I think Dragonball Z was the very first anime that I got in to. It was just wow for me that time ( and it still is ) The high speed battles, beams and flying and etc... That was all awesome! But I didn't know what anime was back then so I just called it cartoon lol

The earliest memory i have that I got into anime and I was AWARE that it is an anime is I think Inuyasha. From there on I got an addict lol XD

Currently I am watching Acchi Kocchi.... I really wish I could talk japanese XD

 

[Archenoth]

Kirby... I never had many consoles or games, since I was just a kid, it was up to my parents if I was able to get one, so all I had was an NES and a bunch of games for it. One of those games was "Kirby's Adventure"... It was fantastic!

Fast forward a couple years and much obsession later, I noticed another girl in my class drawing Kirby in higher quality anime style alongside many anime characters that I never recognized at the time. I eventually grew to love the style, but never watched anything with that style until Beyblade and Yugi-Oh came out. I loved it.

Fast forward a couple years later when I discover that there is a lot more of that style out there then I had imagined. So during that period of time, I tried to find many animes to watch and ended up watching the entirety of Fullmetal Alchemist, and then K-On, and then Pokemon, and then Dragonball.

I had just become an Otaku.

 

[Dragonzord]

Sailor Moon was my first exposure to the medium, and I loved it. I loved the animation style; the over-the-top tokusatsu-esque fight scenes, the finishing moves, and the henshin scenes all mesmerized me as a child.

I learned of what anime was in 1997, when Porygon Shock occurred. My mother was learning of the incident through what I can only assume was an issue of TV Guide, and asked me if I knew what Pocket Monsters was. This being prior to its US launch, I was unfamiliar with the brand. She explained that it was a Japanese cartoon, and I suppose that was the moment when it dawned upon me that these shows are a foreign import.

It's funny to look back upon my innocence now. As someone who works with film and is very production-minded, I can't imagine a time where I was so ignorant to cuts in quality, glaring paint jobs, and obvious edits. Watching Pokémon and other similarity-adapted anime now, it is glaringly obvious that these shows were put through the ringer again; and while I have fun picking apart such edits, I largely prefer the original unedited versions.

 

[double trouble!]

Pokémon and Toonami.
For some reason, I went into an anti-anime phase for a while after middle school started.

It was probably because of all of the annoying kids with their Naruto headbands and stuff like that.

A few years ago, I decided to start playing Pokémon again, which led to me checking out the anime again. I now watch Pokémon in Japanese as well as a few other shows every season (I skipped winter though).

 

[Cariad]

I started watching Beyblade on TV when I was about... 5 or 4. My cousin's were also very much in to Pokemon, so they'd give me games and trading cards now and again. That then led me into watching it on TV, collecting all the games I could, and all the merchandise I could lay eyes on. I don't even think that's changed since then. xDD

It kinda spread to Dinosaur King and Naruto, and then I started watching any anime I could find.

 

[Yoshikko]

My cousin was watching Death Note and I watched along over her shoulder, found it really interesting and tried it a few months or so later, since then DN has been one of my favourites too.