Forum - View topicHow you started with anime?
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gsilver
Posts: 618 |
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My "first wave" of anime was over a few different channels:
Sci-Fi Channel - This is where it all started, with movies like Galaxy Express 999 and Robot Carnival Hastings - Mostly Record of Lodoss War. I couldn't rent this show locally, but whenever I had to stay overnight in the city, I'd rent the next volume of it. It was quite the adventure. I saw things like Armitage III, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, and Vampire Hunter D this way, too. Teh Internets - Things like streaming, bittorrent, or really any practical way to watch entire shows didn't exist back in the mid-late 90s, but I found a small image board, consisting largely of official artwork, and fell in love with the character designs of Oh My Goddess. That show became the first thing I ever bought on VHS, and really, the only notable thing. Tape trading - I didn't get too many things through this method, since I was broke, tapes cost $6 for 4 episodes, and CD trading (second wave of anime) was just around the corner, but I did get introduced to wonderful shows like Kodocha, Yu Yu Hakusho, Flame of Recca (hey, it *started* badass, especially for a new fan), and Rurouni Kenshin this way. Also, I picked up the movie cut of Please Save My Earth, which I treasured at the time (and is surprisingly unavailable even today via digisub). I didn't go past the first volume on anything, though. Pawn Shops - I blind-bought some anime through these. Some of it was better than others. The only things I can remember were Bubblegum Crisis and Street Fighter 2. I'm sure that there were others, but those were the only ones that were any good. I was aware of things like Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon, but I really couldn't get into those, and don't consider them part of what got me into anime, at all. I gave DBZ a second chance some time after formally becoming an anime fan. I'm thinking of giving Sailor Moon a second chance now, but it's lost somewhere in the middle of my vast "to watch" list. ...That right there is my first 3-4 years as an anime fan. I picked up the hobby really quickly. The "second wave" really started with Now and Then Here and There and Berserk, at the dawn of the digisub era, but that's a whole separate post. Coincidentally, I did watch the first episode of Berserk during the "first wave" ...and absolutely hated it  Wow. That first episode was hard to get through. I only gave it a second chance because of a huge amount of internet buzz, and boy am I glad that I did 
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darkslayer709
Posts: 55 |
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I have several channels to thank for beginning my still rather budding interest in anime:-
CITV = aired Pokemon. The first anime I had ever seen. It also aired Digimon and Card Captor Sakura though I tended to miss the latter two due to school. SkyOne = aired YuGiOh. The second anime I really got into that I was able to watch through without missing an episode thanks to it’s weekend slot. Toonami = ahh the ill-fated UK Toomani channel. It was where I met the un-censored Outlaw Star which to this day has remained one of my favourite series of all time. I do not doubt that is in part due to it being the first anime I had ever seen that had not undergone the 4Kids treatment. Pity that Toonami decided to replace cartoons with live action American shows before being re-designed into CN/TOO that even now just seems there to air all the junk that Cartoon Network won’t touch. Anime Central = I miss this channel, I really do. I was introduced to Fullmetal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell and it provided me with an extremely nice, lengthy anime block each and every night… then the repeats kicked in, they didn’t get any new shows and then the channel was axed to be replaced with a nothing-channel that at the time just showed nothing but movie promotions. Anime Network = this was technically a 2 hour slot that was slipped into an un-related channel but it was good all the same and was on during the same period as Anime Central (and sadly disappeared around the same time too). I met shows like Pani Poni Dash and Azumanga Diaoh there. These days I’ve long since given up on anime ever being aired on British TV and I’m a lot more savvy about where I can watch anime, when new shows are going to start airing etc so while it would be nice to still have a dedicated slot / channel it is something I’ve learned to live without. |
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RHachicho
 Posts: 897 Location: Essex, UK |
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My parent's exposed me at a young age to the old Super Robot shows and the love I developed then has never really waned.
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geishageek
 Posts: 571 Location: Pleasant Valley, NY |
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It all started with Transformers as a child. I was in love with those strange cartoon.s But my real love didn't spurt until the mid 90's when the Sci Fi channel aired their Saturday Morning anime block. My friend and I would call each other every Saturday morning and talk on the phone while watching what was on. Iria and Roujin Z were out favorites. That is also about the time I started collecting Fushigu Yugi on vhs, ordering from a catalog, with very slow shipping times and very expensive prices. I shutter to remember how much my father paid for some of those early vhs purchases before Media Play came into our area and I could buy them myself. I really miss Media Play.
Pokemon was always around but by then we were a tad too old to enjoy Pokemon (just finished 9th grade), but we always put it on to belt out the theme song (You teach me and I'll teach you.....POKEMON!!!!!) and then proceed to change the channel. |
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Pixelationist
 Posts: 111 Location: London, UK |
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I knew this thread was going to make me feel old and man, was I right.
I was born in Hong Kong in the 80s and there was a lot of anime on TV. Captain Tsubasa, Kinnikuman, Doraemon, Obake no Q taro are amongst my earliest anime memories. I also distinctly remember Madoka from Orange Road stirring up some pretty strange emotions within me that I couldn't quite comprehend back then. Upon revisiting the series as a grown ass man I was please to find that Madoka is just as awesome as she had been in those cloudy pre-teen memories. |
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RHachicho
Posts: 897 Location: Essex, UK |
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Yeah I think Transformers had a lot to do with it for me as well. As well as the more zany kids shows like He-Man and Ghost busters. I loved those outlandish settings you only really get in Animation. And Anime is the pretty much the only well funded fully realized source of mature Animation.
As a Side note the spell checker recognized He-Man as a word and not Ghostbusters. I call discrimination! |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7985 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Some other contributing factors for me sticking with anime were;
As a kid I was already a huge fan of the science fiction genre, regularly watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5, and Star Wars, so when anime came around and offered another different culture's contribution on sci-fi I was all for exploring that new territory. I saw great stuff like Robotech, Gundam, and Bubblegum Crisis as well as many others and found that anime was ripe with tons of shows in the genre to try out. Also as a kid I was pretty sheltered from watching "violent" works by my folks, so naturally when they stopped doing that because I was old enough I was curious as to what I'd been missing. So naturally the more raw and uncensored side of anime was also intriguing. I hadn't seen many domestic animated shows that took themselves so seriously, showed what anime showed, and didn't shy away from certain subjects which anime had the balls to tread in. |
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Riddley
 Posts: 536 Location: Ireland |
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Pfft you were born in the 80s, youngster. I was born in the 70s 
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Saffire
 Posts: 1256 Location: Iowa, USA |
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Dragonball Z on Toonami. Picked it up almost as soon as it started airing and it pretty much single-handedly converted me.
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Petrea Mitchell
Posts: 438 Location: Near Portland, OR |
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My first encounter with anime was as a kid walking through the dealers' room at a science fiction convention in 1983 or 1984, stopping and staring at a TV that was playing the Daicon III short.
Soon after that, it was seeping into my consciousness in all sorts of ways. I read Elfquest (the first Western comic to be strongly influenced by manga) and Mai, the Psychic Girl (actual manga) at my cousins' house. I watched Mysterious Cities of Gold. I got Go-Bot toys at the local hobby store, where they often had anime playing. (I have a particular memory of seeing something that I identified years later as Dirty Pair, and just a few weeks ago, thanks to this column, as Affair on Nolandia. Now I'll have to get the DVD so I can finally see the whole thing.) My favorite RPG in my early teens was Teenagers From Outer Space, so I inevitably learned that it owed a lot to some obscure Japanese show called Urusei Yatsura. A couple others I became familiar with were Battletech and Mekton, which are both about giant robot combat. Mekton in particular also included tips for creating anime-like characters and plots. With all that going on, I'm not sure exactly when I became aware that there was this specific thing called anime with a specific fandom. It was probably when I started to notice the table for the local anime club at the local anime convention, which was well after everything above. My formal introduction to anime came in college when I took a summer class on Japanese sf on TV and in movies. Samurai From Outer Space was on the syllabus, and our teacher actually had the author come to our class and give us a lecture on the history of sf anime, which included showing us the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. |
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EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
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The fan-made Daicon III adventures, or the Daicon IV short that united us all?
(Back in the club days, most people still associated anime with the fact that Robotech and Voltron still seemed badly dubbed and the cheapest thing a local station could show in the afternoons-- When the bunny-suited Miss Daicon started fighting Darth Vader and Voltron, it just symbolized our whole mentality that anime/J-culture had arrived and was about to start kicking some hinder with everything we up till now had thought was fan cool. In the clubs, you hadn't officially "graduated" to membership until you'd seen the D4 short: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyVqIkJ69VA ) |
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Petrea Mitchell
Posts: 438 Location: Near Portland, OR |
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Daicon III. No bunny suit, no Darth Vader, although IIRC the Death Star is one of the numerous space stations and ships that get blown up in it. |
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Pixelationist
Posts: 111 Location: London, UK |
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Comforting to know that I'm not the only oldie stuck in perpetual arrested development around here. 
Classic. That's why seeing the Densha Otoko intro all those years later and hearing ELO come on just gave me chills... http://youtu.be/uJHRtklMRwc |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9853 Location: Virginia |
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A pure blind buy in a comic book store in a mall. I picked up a couple of VHS tapes that looked as if they might be interesting. OH! My Goddess OVA vol 1 and Ranma 1/2 TV vol 1. It was all down hill from there. That was in Aug 1997.
For what it is worth children, I was born in 1945. The war wasn't quite over then. |
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Takokujin
 Posts: 266 |
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When I was younger---though older than my two brothers---I was introduced to DBZ. I only saw my brothers in the summer, so DBZ didn't stick with me. I also remember InuYasha being the second anime they introduced me to. Anime didn't really mean anything at the time, but that was my first introduction.
In 2003 I was introduced to anime for the second time. I was in college, so buying $30 DVDs with a few episodes was out of the question. Some guys I played Magic the Gathering with allowed me to watch Excel Saga with them, which really shocked me due to the odd nature of the show. However, one Anime Legends they showed me would become my favorite of all time: Cowboy Bebop. Sadly, anime still didn't stick. I then tried manga. It was more affordable. However, I hated that I couldn't find everything I wanted. Stuff that everybody was reading was already OOP. Also, following/buying manga was/is a heck of a lot harder to do than anime. Manga didn't stick. About my senior year of college I found Death Note (which I read some of) and watched it via a torrent. I loved every thing about that show. Still, as you can guess, anime didn't stick. In 2010 I wanted to watch Death Note again. I purchased it. My wife even watched it with me. Then I purchased a bookshelf full of anime. I probably had about $1,000 worth of anime in a few months. I watched anime pretty heavily throughout 2010 and 2011, but then I hit a financial wall and had to sell all of my anime. Well, I wanted to get rid of some of it. After that, I was so upset I stopped watching. I knew I shouldn't have sold my collection. Lo and behold, I'm here again. I miss anime. I've learned a lot about purchasing too much anime, and this time around I only plan to purchase that which I have to own. Adding something to your collection that you may never watch isn't a good idea, even if you're into having a sick room full of anime. You'll eventually run out of money or room, especially if you get married. Well, that's my anime story. |
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