I grew up with Pokémon, it was a huge craze on my school when I was little, especially the TCG (though we didn't really know how to play the game, we just traded and showed off). My cousin played Pokémon, and I remember being at his home, and he was sitting on the stairs playing Pokémon Blue on an original Gameboy. I asked if I could play and I just clicked some buttons, and I remember not being able to understand the text (I am Dutch and I was very young, so I couldn't understand English yet), but it really caught my interest.
My best friend at the time was also a Pokémon fan (mind you, we were really really young, not even 10 years old), she also lived right above me so I spent all my time with her, and she had a lot of Pokémon trading cards, and we watched the series as well, so I was influenced by a lot of people that were close to me.
One time, I visited my family in London, and it turned out that my two cousins were huge fans of Pokémon as well, and the interest just stayed forever since. It was everywhere around me - my family, my school, and that's kind of how it reached me.
When you grow up with something like that, it really has an emotional value to you, it's not like you can lose interest in it anymore, because with me, it was a huge part of my childhood.
