How did you get into anime?

[wildpurplechild]

Oh, Scamper would be my first then too! thanks ThatDude I had no idea! Great movie btw.

[rocklobster]

I started with VOltron. I didn't know that was Japanese at the time. IN fact, I didn't even know what anime was until Sailor Moon arrived. Then I saw Ronin Warriors and Dragonball. Before I knew it, I was hooked.

[ShiroiHikari]

Oh yeah, I was pretty big into Ronin Warriors too. I don't know why I always forget about that.

[Lady Kenshin]

Fruits Basket. I like it, but I'm glad I've moved on.

[MangArtist]

If we wanna take it aaaall the way back, you could say my first experience with anime was Superbook when I was all of 3-4 years old. XD

Haha! That was one of my first! XD Along with The Littlebits, The Hobbit, and a bunch of others who's names I can't remember.

I got into anime 2 or 3 years ago. My interest was peeked when my older brother rented Final Fantasy XII: Advent Children and later on one of his friends let him barrow the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. Before that I was taught anime was evil(probably cause of the porn side of it) even though I watched the anime I listed at the top and played games like Zelda and the like.

[Roz]

Wow. A lot of people here were probably watching Super Book and Flying House as 4 and 5 year olds at the same time!

I was watching Super Book and Flying House before I knew what anime was. I never saw anime again till I was 15-ish and was watching tv and about to turn it off when I saw a clip of Nausicaa (on TCM of all places) and decided to set it to record because I liked the music . I googled it and the rest is history.

It's kind of funny though, at first I thought anime was only movies. When I heard about anime with episodes I was like, "Man, that must be lame". Epic face palm. XD

[blkmage]

I started off on my cousin's complete 42-volume set of Dragonball in Chinese, not that I understood a word that was written. Then I got into the Pokemans and Digimon, which I felt had a more coherent storyline. After that was Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing on TV. So I guess that's how I started.

Later on, I got into more modern stuff like Gundam SEED and Naruto thanks to my cousin, my friends, and the Internet. This led to other shows like FMA and Bleach and manga reading since I wanted to find out what happened in Naruto. It wasn't until Azumanga Daioh and Haruhi that I broke out of the shounen anime bubble and I started diversifying into other genres.

I watched a fairly small amount of shows up until Lucky Star and Gundam 00. After I'd finished those two, I realized I didn't have anything to watch and I launched into my current hobby of watching currently airing shows. I've really broadened the kinds of anime/manga that I watch/read because of it.

[christianfriend]

I grew up watching Sailor moon, Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, Pokemon and also Rurouni Kenshin, But I had no clue they were Anime until I was around 13. Then I got into Magic Knight Rayearth, Inuyasha and of course Hayao Miyazaki Films!

[Maokun]

My frist animes were actually on Nickelodeon ^__^ There was Sstabon and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, The Little Prince, Brother Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, and those cute koala cartoons ^__^

I didn't know they were anime back then, but I remembered the art style in later years ^ ^ Sailor Moon and DBZ were probably next on the list ^^

Heavens! Someone who also watched Brother Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics

Mine was a two-step program brought upon me by two very popular local anime's in its day: Heidi: Girl of the Alps and Robotech, which was most people from my generation's first start at anime.

Heidi was originally produced in Japan but exported to Germany. South Africa bought it from Germany and dubbed it into Afrikaans. It still shows on TV and it's available on DVD as well. So popular was this anime among people of all ages that South African Prime Minister John Vorster (a fairly unpleasant, hardhearted character by the way) called off a cabinet meeting so that he could go home and watch it.

And Heidi! *cries* I finally feel amongst my peers.

I was fortunate enough that in my country, back when I was a small kid, they filled most of the kid's programmation on TV with anime. I watched countless anime series like the mentioned Heidi and Tales of the Gimm Brothers, Mazinger Z, Arbegas, Banner and Flappy, Cobra, Gekko Kamen, Honeybee Hutch, Tom Sawyer, Heart, and many many others. Obviously, back then I called them "japanese cartoons" which I quickly learned to differentiate from the rest of cartoons. I liked how they narrated a continuous story as opposite to the episodic character of series like the Flinstones and the such and they were quite a deal more dramatic. After that I never looked back, I quickly learned it was called anime, by the time I was a teenager I was already dealing in the shady underworld of the bootlegged fansubs (back in the time of VHS!) and shortly after came the Internet wich expanded my horizons to the infinite.

[coffeehubby]

A friend of mine watched Spirited Away and Princess Nausaci/ Valley of the Wind. It got me interested in the past year in Miyazaki's works. I bought a few videos and have noticed I watch nature more, clouds, breezes in the trees, that sort of thing that I used to overlook.
Years ago I liked SuperBook and there were various battle fighting save the universe Anime series on. I loved how unique the series were. Very different slant or viewpoint from the stuff I saw in the regular network cartoons. I liked the character and story lines far better even as a kid.

[byrocat]

OK, I'm showing my age (55 this year). Started off with the Mickey Mouse Club and Walt Disney. Saturday mornings was AstroBoy and a pile of other Japanese series (you could tell by the big eyes of the characters). Did catch some of the various series through the years.

Rediscovered anime with Sailor Moon (sort of like watching a trainwreck in slow motion -- can't believe that she's that much of a Klutz). This was at the age of 30 or so.

Two years ago, I bumped into Hanakyo Maid Tai on Youtube, and the rest is history. Piles of DVDs in the cabinet (learned how to tell the real from the pirate), and have gone through over 110 series or movies.

One of my fellow modeller (RC model airplanes) described his daughter as an "animemanganut". I'm just an animenut, plain and simple.

Today starts a new chaper. I was the first person at church to watch "The Last Sin Eater" and one of the elders joked with me that not returning it on time meant a $50 late charge. I jokingly responded that I hope that the church library accepted anime, so I'm now looking for series that are appropriate to put in a church library. SOmething a bit more advanced than Vegetales.....

[LadyRushia]

so I'm now looking for series that are appropriate to put in a church library. SOmething a bit more advanced than Vegetales.....

Read and post in this thread for recommendations.
https://www.christiananime.net/showthread.php?t=40642

[the_wolfs_howl]

My first animes I ever saw were superbook, and a movie called Scamper The Penguin which was my favorite movie for the better part of my childhood.

*faints* I, too, had no idea that was Japanese, though now that I think back on it, it makes sense. My little sisters used to love that movie]story[/i], and I liked that. My brother and I also played a lot of Super Smash Bros. with our Chinese friends, and I was always Pikachu. After we went home, my brother and I would watch Pokemon whenever we could find it, and got really into Pokemon. We played video games, we watched the movies, we even dabbled in the trading card game. But after a while, as I started to discover other stories that were more complex than Pokemon, my interest slowly dwindled away.

In the intervening years, Japan always seemed to be on the radar. I learned that Pokemon was originally Japanese, and I realized too that all of the N64 games we played were made by Japanese. As my brother and I discovered DeviantArt, we also heard a lot about "anime" and "manga". I learned what the Japanese style of drawing was, and finally we figured out the difference between anime and manga. As I moved into my teens, and started playing Final Fantasies, I realized that these Japanese people sure can tell a unique story! I watched The Last Samurai (even though it was rated R and I was like thirteen or something), and I was really intrigued by the Japanese culture displayed in that story.

The momentous year was when I was fifteen. It started out with my brother finding out about Spirited Away. We bought it blindly, watched it, and...wow. Then we discovered that My Neighbor Totoro was made by that same guy, and I quickly became a Miyazaki fan. Soon after, my brother chanced upon a really cool fanart of Edward Elric from FMA, and it interested him enough to check out the anime. We watched the first five minutes of the first episode and were instantly hooked. I fell completely in love with FMA (and I'm still an avid fan), and that's led to all the other animes I've seen.

[Blitzkrieg1701]

Like a surprising number of other people here (I thought I was the only one!), my first taste of anime was Superbook and The Flying House, followed by Brother Gimm and the other Nick Jr. stuff. Of course, I had no idea any of it was Japanese in those early days. Ironically, by the time I realized what "anime" was, I wasn't really watching any. I had the misfortune to grow up with the ONLY cable provider in North Georgia that DIDN'T carry Cartoon Network, so no Toonami for me. Syndicated stuff like DBZ or Sailor Moon and The SciFi Channel's Saturday morning anime weren't a part of my childhood either since they were either on too early or at the same time as something else I watched.

What really fed my early interest in anime was video games. I was a pretty avid gamer back in the day, and I learned to appreciate anime's art style from playing lots of Japanese games (and reading the import ads that used to be in the back of EGM). Every now and then, I did manage to catch a few episodes of DBZ, Tenchi, Robotech, or whatever else Toonami was playing when we'd visit grandparents who DID get CN, and that always served to remind me that this anime stuff seemed kind of cool. There was also one weekend where SciFi showed Robot Carnival and Lenseman in the afternoon, the former of which was one of the most awe-inspiring things I'd ever witnessed (and remains an all-time fave)

Still, I wasn't really INTO anime yet, it was just something I'd have LIKED to get into at some point. That point finally came when Pokemon conquered civilization as we know it. I was never really a huge Pokemon fan, but in the dinky rural North Carolina town I was living in at the time, that was all one could get one's hands on, so I ate it up. Thankfully, as we all know, Pokemon spawned a small army of imitators, and I watched 'em all. Digimon in particular became a personal favorite, and that's where my decent into Otakudom TRULY began (I've still got a corny Digimon fansite floating around the internet somewhere). Not long after, we moved to a new town and, more importantly, got Cartoon Network. With Toonami and Adult Swim suddenly a part of my everyday routine, anime's grip on my life was complete.

[mysngoeshere56]

I've always been interested in Asian artwork... and I knew a lot of people who were interested in anime. So, I decided to check it out.

Now, here I am, addicted to anime/manga.

[sharikqah]

I used to listen to my friends talking about Evangelion and Samurai X. Sometimes to brush up on my second language I would attempt to watch dubbed reruns of Kimba, The White Lion.

Then I saw Mononoke-Hime. And was hooked.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

I used to listen to my friends talking about Evangelion and Samurai X. Sometimes to brush up on my second language I would attempt to watch dubbed reruns of Kimba, The White Lion.

Then I saw Mononoke-Hime. And was hooked.

Wait, Kimba was anime?! I used to watch that when I was little until my brother teased me for it(and some even after that)

[sharikqah]

Wait, Kimba was anime?! I used to watch that when I was little until my brother teased me for it(and some even after that)

It's a classic actually, from the 1960s. It was created by the great Dr Osamu Tezuka, who also did Astro Boy.

[Anystazya]

I started off watching those TV shows, like Digimon, when I didn't know they were anime. I'd watch my older sibs play video games originating from Japan, and I'd see some of my older sister's sketches of anime characters. That's where I first got interested. Then I'd watch AMVs to some of those videogames on Youtube, and a few animes (but I still didn't really know very well what anime was). And then, when I saw some AMVs to Ouran High School Host Club, I decided to try watching it. And well, basically, that's how I became hooked and started reading manga and watching more anime.

[Cognitive Gear]

It's about time that I posted in this thread.

Not counting the anime I saw when I was too young to know what it was, the first anime series I saw was an episode of Gundam Wing. While I liked the giant mechs, I wasn't really impressed with much else, so it didn't really make me seek out anime.

Fast forward two years, when I have just entered high school. My friend invites me over to hang out. Lo and behold, he has blind-bought a new anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion. We sat and watched the entire 26 episode series in one sitting, and my mind was thoroughly blown by the complexity of the story, the beauty of the art, and the maturity of the show in general. I then entered the world of anime, where I discovered Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, and Serial Experiments Lain.

So that's how I came to enjoy anime.

[Amzi Live]

WOW!
It was so long ago!!! If I remember well it was also in a galaxy far far away. XP
I do remember waking up each Saturday morning like about 4 in the morning.
>.< I even remember the national anthems playing when the station was going to resume programming.

I must have been like around 8 or so maybe a bit older,but I do know that I was like a pipsqueak. The first cartoons that they showed on Saturday mornings were anime and thus I was exposed to Saint Seiya(Knights of the Zodiac),Rurouni Kenshin,Ranma 1/2,Dragon Ball Z,Slam Dunk,and some years later Pokemon.

The ones that really had an impression on me were Knights,Rurouni Kenshin,and definitely Ranma 1/2. I was addicted to those especially the last two. It's interesting because it seems that I wasn't the only one getting into anime at the time. Not just here in PR,but around South America as well. When I meet someone who's into anime in college quite a large number of them recalls the morning anime shows,and tell me how everything started for them also back then. Also I've found Spanish anime fan bases on the net from down south in South America,and much of the first anime fans started back in those days. I figure that it might have been a move made by the media to introduce the genre to these sectors.

Still,(Back to me XP) the day came when my parents subscribed to a satellite
television service,and I drooled at the Toonami shows (O.O so awesome).
I won't write the anime from Toonami cause most of you know already.
Manga is fairly recent to me,and I still haven't completely gotten into it although I try to finish the series I've began already.

wow. Those were the good days.

[Maokun]

Heh, interesting how by the middle of your description I guessed you were from South (or Centre) America just because your experience was so similar to mine. When it comes down to anime we were far luckier than the states. We had huge amounts of anime in TV (the weekdays' afternoons of my childhood were squandered in 3 hours in a row blocks of anime) which contributed to build a bigger fanbase. By the times the US were first hearing of "anime" we were already fansubbing and distributting heavily copied VHS bootlegs of movies like Akira and the first Ghost in the Shell.

[EricTheFred]

By the times the US were first hearing of "anime" we were already fansubbing and distributting heavily copied VHS bootlegs of movies like Akira and the first Ghost in the Shell.

Not too sure about that. That would be the early 80s, before either of these movies was made. First fansub I ever saw was at what we still called a 'Star Trek Convention' (where people cosplayed before the term was invented). It was one of the movies from the Harlock universe (I can't for the life of me remember which one), and the 'subtitles' were sheets of paper handed out to the audience at the door.

[Maokun]

Not too sure about that. That would be the early 80s, before either of these movies was made. First fansub I ever saw was at what we still called a 'Star Trek Convention' (where people cosplayed before the term was invented). It was one of the movies from the Harlock universe (I can't for the life of me remember which one), and the 'subtitles' were sheets of paper handed out to the audience at the door.

haha, really? As I had understood the term "anime" only appeared there by the end of the 80s. That subtitle thing on paper sounds both awesome and sad!

[That Dude]

Man, that's crazy Fred!

[EricTheFred]

haha, really? As I had understood the term "anime" only appeared there by the end of the 80s. That subtitle thing on paper sounds both awesome and sad!

Yes, people tended to just say 'Japanese Animation', 'Japanimation', 'this really cool cartoon from Japan', that sort of thing. The use of the term "Anime" snuck into English somewhere in the mid-80s. (The first time I saw it mentioned in a news story, it was spelled "Annie May", believe it or not.) However, the actual product began getting here much earlier. A few things were shown on TV in the 60s when I was still a kid (Kimba, Speed Racer, Gigantor).

I credit Starblazers and the first US theatrical release of Galaxy Express 999 (in 1980) with attracting the earliest wave of geeks into seeking out Anime that was not officially distributed to the US. After seeing these, they began looking for other stuff, discovering items like the other early Harlock Universe movies and Space Battleship Yamato (which showed up here on VHS while its bastardized English Language version "Starblazers" was showing on TV.)

A friend of mine was hooked on Kimagura Orange Road while it was still in its original run in Japan when someone started videotaping it off broadcast TV in Japan, converting it to US video and sending it to friends over here (I saw a couple episodes; the video quality was hideous.) This same friend was the first guy I ever knew who started taking Japanese lessons because of Anime. This was in the mid-80s, I think.

[Amzi Live]

^^ I'm from the Caribbean.
LOL,yes I remember the afternoon blocks. Insane!


Wow,awesome stuff Fred. It's interesting reading about all of this.
Anyone know if there are books concerning the beginnings of anime in the states or America? xP
LoL,you know,for all those social sciences or humanities students out there I think that this is good material for a college thesis.

[KeybladeWarrior]

Well let me see. Ronin Warriors and Sailor Moon were the first two that I remember. I got into them since I found them enjoyable. I really didn't know they were anime at first, but the genre really interested me. The interest got me into the Pokemon and Digimon series and anime on Fox Kids and Fox Family(before it was called ABC Family). It still is with me to this day.

[Scarecrow]

Well if Scamper is an anime, then I guess yes that was my first anime. But I really don't count that as when I actually got into anime. (I did love that movie though). Also when I was like 5 years old, The Last Unicorn became my favorite all time movie (And it still holds the title pretty much as far as cartoons go...) though I don't technically think it's an anime. Although I think anime reminded me of it a bit and thats why I initially got into anime. Never watched any other anime other than that though. Not even pokemon or any of that stuff.

I didn't start actually watching anime till I joined the forums. Up until then I just liked drawing the characters and the style. So then I finally decided to check them out. And I think the first anime I watched all the way through was Neon Genesis Evangelion. 1... because when I was searching anime, that title ALWAYS came up. 2. Because it was on CAA's do not discuss list... being popular yet taboo on here made me highly curious about it

[Maokun]

[quote="EricTheFred (post: 1315207)"]Yes, people tended to just say 'Japanese Animation', 'Japanimation', 'this really cool cartoon from Japan', that sort of thing. The use of the term "Anime" snuck into English somewhere in the mid-80s. (The first time I saw it mentioned in a news story, it was spelled "Annie May", believe it or not.) However, the actual product began getting here much earlier. A few things were shown on TV in the 60s when I was still a kid (Kimba, Speed Racer, Gigantor).

I credit Starblazers and the first US theatrical release of Galaxy Express 999 (in 1980) with attracting the earliest wave of geeks into seeking out Anime that was not officially distributed to the US. After seeing these, they began looking for other stuff, discovering items like the other early Harlock Universe movies and Space Battleship Yamato (which showed up here on VHS while its bastardized English Language version "Starblazers" was showing on TV.)

A friend of mine was hooked on Kimagura Orange Road while it was still in its original run in Japan when someone started videotaping it off broadcast TV in Japan, converting it to US video and sending it to friends over here (I saw a couple episodes]

Well, I guess this means I had never met a "real" anime geek from the states I had never heard of the events you are talking about. As a matter of fact, I think this is the first time I meet someone from the US who knows KOR. But seriously, "Annie May"? XD And here I was thinking it was bad enough that people pronounced it like that.