Back when I first started up The Fandom Post, coming from previous sites and relaunching things in a way, I did the 30 Day Anime Challenge as a good way to re-introduce myself a bit. It’s been a decade since I did the challenge and while I suspect some of my answers will be the same I’m also curious to see where I’ve diverged in the years since. The first-day challenge is a bit more conversational than a lot of the other questions because we want to know what your first anime was and through that your first anime experience. Was it a late-night show? A VHS someone slipped you when you were a teenager? The discovery of a streaming site? Or a high-profile film in theaters?
For myself, my anime introduction came in a couple of stages. I mostly missed the late 70’s and early 80’s stage of Starblazers, though my next-door neighbor was hooked, and I had watched Battle of the Planets at like 6 AM every day because nothing else was on before school and the like. But where I became aware of what anime was came in the form of Robotech. That was the show that I raced home from school every day to catch and one that my mother watched with me since, considering the times with what else was on, show a far more mature approach to war, relationships, and more and she heartily approved. My direct anime exposure resulted from that with the acquisition of the Macross movie bootleg at a local science fiction convention back in the mid-’80s. I ended up seeing a few other things over the years from that scene (and a whole lot of hentai for this impressionable lad), but it was when the comic book store I used to go to, Bop City Comics, started offering licensed VHS tapes from Streamline and AnimEigo. I had things like Lensman, Akira, and Wicked City. But it was the arrival of Bubblegum Crash, yes, Crash, that cemented me as a fan who wanted the authentic experience. While I adored the Macross movie and how it diverged so heavily and was so stunningly beautiful, Crash was where I really got a good dose of translated, subtitled, and annotated anime that showed me there was so much more. What made me the long time fan that I am now though? The double whammy combination of Kimagure Orange Road and Urusei Yatsura. These are the foundations of my anime fandom and they continue to all be shows that I can go back and adore – and overlook their faults!
So, where did others writing for the site come from?
Kestrel Swift, Staff Reviewer, Fandom Post Radio
First grade is about as early as a person can be expected to really be into anything, and the fact that the passions I dedicate my life to over two decades later can be traced directly back to what I first got into in first grade is a testament to either my consistency, my refusal to grow up, or the power of anime. It’s probably some of all three. So what anime franchise were American first graders really into at the end of the 90s? It was Pokémon, of course!
My parents had generally kept me away from those buy-buy-buy media franchises up to that point, but it became impossible to avoid by the time the card game had made its way to the US at the beginning of 1999. I wasn’t watching it on TV yet and didn’t have a game console, but once I convinced a friend to give me some extra cards on the bus, I was in.
Within the next few years, I had not only managed to start my card collection in earnest but had seen some of the anime on VHS at friends’ houses, at school (somehow), and rented from the Blockbuster when I would stay with my grandparents. Eventually, I managed to convince my grandparents that a Game Boy wasn’t one of those video game things my mom didn’t want them getting for me, and I had my very first video game experience, which was appropriately a Pokémon game.
Pokémon naturally led directly to the anime obsession that has consumed my life ever since. The card component faded away over time, but that was also instrumental in introducing me to my other big gateway series that also had card games and cemented me further in this anime realm. Now, I don’t play video games nearly as much as I watch anime, but I’ll always make time for the latest Pokémon game, and I love them just as much as I did 20 years ago.
Brandon Danial, Staff Reviewer:
I was enamored with Eastern media well before I knew about the origins of my favorite TV shows and movies. I have my dad to thank for that. When he migrated to the US in the ’70s, Marvel comics were his main source of entertainment, but he also had a soft-spot for kung-fu flicks, super sentai, and kaiju movies. I grew up watching plenty of Power Rangers, Bruce Lee, Speed Racer, and Godzilla. But my self-made interactions with anime would come later.
Flash forward to the early 2000s. The PlayStation 1 was my bread-and-butter; I was playing many games with anime-inspired visuals like Final Fantasy, Xenogears, and Tekken. And of course, I bought into the trading card scene, filling binders with Pokémon and Digimon cards. But I was still an anime-fledgling. I was an avid watcher of Cartoon Network, and like many others, Toonami was my first real contact with anime. I still remember coming home from school and catching the first episode of Big O. Watching the mighty piston-punch of that giant robot fueled an excitement in me like never before. From then on, it was anime every day: DBZ, Sailor Moon, G Gundam, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hamtaro, Shin-chan, Tenchi Muyo… so many of these shows are ingrained in my young mind.
But it wasn’t until a few years later that it all clicked for me. The similarities between Power Rangers and Sailor Moon, Godzilla and Big O, G Gundam, and martial arts… there was a connected culture that brought it all together. That’s when I realized the difference between Western and Eastern media. That’s when I truly discovered the power of anime, and it has been an integral part of my DNA ever since.
Lori Lancaster, Staff Reviewer
I’ve been watching anime for as long as I can remember. In Jr. High and High school my family used to take trips to the local video stores and rented various shows for us. The first series that ever really ‘wowed’ me would have to have been Sailor Moon. Serena was a normal girl who suddenly had her world turned totally upside down and reacted just like anyone else would… she panicked. Watching her evolve during just the first two seasons alone was very interesting. Sailor Moon’s main draws for me have always been the storyline and the character development. They were more than just plain two dimensional drawings up on the screen. They had real problems that could coincide with real-life situations. The character designs were also very easy on the eyes. There was simply nothing like it at the time. The ending point for the second season drove me more than a little crazy. It simply made little sense to end it after a minor battle when there was still the rest of the war to be fought. I found myself wanting to see the rest of the story. I also wanted to see if there were any other shows out there like it. I had officially become a fan of the mahou shoujo genre at that point. After that, I would go on to try out other shoujo series solely due to the genre’s hallmark traits.
Kate O’Neil, Staff Reviewer, Fandom Post Radio
I watched too many cartoons as a child in the ’80s but somehow missed Voltron and Robotech because I was in my little girl ‘My Little Pony’ phase. I did watch ‘Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theater’, but it was years later before I realized the country of origin for that franchise.
Flash forward to my freshman year of high school. I’d arrive home at my house at exactly 2:23 in the afternoon, plop myself on the couch, and flip on the TV to watch the Disney Afternoon and snack. One day I caught the tail end of Sailor Moon, a show I was only familiar with through terrible commercials. I believe it was the cruise ship episode, and I remember thinking the show was horribly lame. Yet I watched it anyway because, hey, it was either that or soap operas.
A week or two passed with me watching only the last five minutes before I hit episode 24. Let’s just say that episode doesn’t have a happy ending, and that’s when it hit me. There was a deeper plot to this monster-of-the-week show. From that point on I started taping it and watching the whole thing when I got home from school. Guilty pleasure that it was, I was sucked in, there was no escape.
What followed was a descent into anime as a whole. Mixx(Tokyopop) came into existence and I started buying the manga. I discovered Rayearth and seventh-generation VHS fansubs. The internet was young and full of fan sites with artwork and information and, more importantly, where to find more. I hit college right when Toonami took off and ended college at the first Anime Boston.
All thanks to channel 56 airing Sailor Moon in the afternoons.