Current Events > Westerners / Europeans, what got you into manga and anime?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Were you comic readers 1st and just picked up manga along the way or what?

Digimon and Pokemon probably.

I remember seeing my mother's boyfriend's daighter watching the original Bubblegum Crisis when I was like, 8? and I thiught: that art is cool. I also grew up watching Techno/Tekkaman on TV when I was a kid (bless you, WPWR TV). It lit the fire. First anime I bought was around age 12, and it was Neon Genesis Evangelion. The rest was history.

The Vision of Escaflowne which aired on Fox Kids.

my younger brother was really into manga, and that got me into them, iirc.

mostly stuff like, Ranma 1/2 & Berserk, at first, and then I started branching off on my own.

High school VHS sneakernet and Saturday morning cartoons.

My brother introducing me to it while I was growing up. Idk how he got into it.

Saturday night block on Cartoon Network about 20 years ago. Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho, and .hack//SIGN.

I was watching anime long before then. I just had no concept of it at the time.

Toonami during the mid 2000s. Fox kids technically before that but Pokmon, digimon and other such anime they aired were interchangeable to cartoons to me.

I accidentally downloaded a hentai off of Kazaa when I was looking for real porn and wondered wtf I just watched

My parents were weebs in the 80s, so we had a bunch of anime stuff.

The first one i can remember ever seeing was Kikis Delivery Service
The first i have real memories of was Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland
The one that really got me hooked was Neon Genesis Evangelion

It kinda spiraled into an obsession and made me a collector.

Nothing so far.

I watched Pokmon ang YGO as a kid, and I've seen some Studio Ghibli films, but that's all.

I casually watched various anime throughout my younger years, but I actively started loving anime (back in 2011) when going through the full Neon Genesis series after someone on here told me I needed to watch it. NGE connected with me in a very real way, and after that, I needed more.

T o o n a m i

C a r t o o n
N e t w o r k

or Toonami on Cartoon Network.

The fuss over Endless Eight was intriguing but now enough to start watching Haruhi

NGE was only 26 episodes so it all led from there.

Battle of the Planets (Gatchaman), Starvengers Force Five (Shogun Warriors) and Star Blazers (Space Cruiser Yamato), I believe, were my first exposure to anime.

Robotech, Voltron and Mighty Orbots sealed the deal.

Yes, I'm old.

Probably Pokemon, Digimon, and Toonami...

Then I got big into manga... Which I also buy and read more than I sit and watch anime...

I was watching anime long before I knew what it was. Stuff like Transformers but also Pinocchio and Peter Pans dubs aired here, but we also had domestic anime. Heidi, Nils Holgersson, Moomins and Alfred J. Kwak were Euro-Japanese collaborations and nearly everyone has seen those I wager. After that came localized stuff like Teknoman. It wasnt until Pokmon and DBZ that I really got what anime was, and with Naruto I really got into it. For manga Naruto was also where I started, the filler garbage pushed me to it and I quickly spread out from there genrewise.

Zwijn posted...

I was watching anime long before I knew what it was. Stuff like Transformers but also Pinocchio and Peter Pans dubs aired here, but we also had domestic anime. Heidi, Nils Holgersson, Moomins and Alfred J. Kwak were Euro-Japanese collaborations and nearly everyone has seen those I wager. After that came localized stuff like Teknoman. It wasnt until Pokmon and DBZ that I really got what anime was, and with Naruto I really got into it. For manga Naruto was also where I started, the filler garbage pushed me to it and I quickly spread out from there genrewise.

So I wasn't the only one. Was there a reason why the final episode was never aired?

Xenogears15 posted...

So I wasn't the only one. Was there a reason why the final episode was never aired?

I think it just got canned, wasnt it more than that even? Sequel and the special never made it here either as far as I know.

My first anime was probably either Pokemon or Speed Racer, but Digimon was the one that made me realize I preferred cartoons with a plot that reaches a conclusion over episodic series.

One day in like 1996, I saw a random episode of sailor moon. It looked interesting. I slowly learned about other anime.

Zwijn posted...

I think it just got canned, wasnt it more than that even? Sequel and the special never made it here either as far as I know.

I don't think it got canned. The episode before the finale got aired then next week...they just started the series over. I watched it again all the way through, and when they reached that one episode...they started it up yet again, I think.

I remember thinking it was super weird as a kid.

Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, etc

Like many, it was when Pokmon, Sailor Moon and DBZ were all airing in 1999, plus occasional midnight viewings of Speed Racer.

Really to me it's just an extension of liking animation and comics.

Never got into it. I dont understand the allure at all.

Xenogears15 posted...

I don't think it got canned. The episode before the finale got aired then next week...they just started the series over. I watched it again all the way through, and when they reached that one episode...they started it up yet again, I think.

I remember thinking it was super weird as a kid.

Im reading it was heavily cut and had 43 eps compared to the original 50. But yeah that happened here too. I think maybe they only had those eps available for broadcasting and kept them on repeat or something.

FlyEaglesFly24 posted...

Never got into it. I dont understand the allure at all.

Its just foreign (sometimes) animation and comics, doesnt necessarily have special appeal.

Toonami.

I watched all the anime that aired on YTV. InuYasha being the only one to not butcher the OPs and EDs planted the seeds for me becoming a weeb, but it was Haruhi and Clannad that transformed me.

Berserk

boshafty posted...

Berserk

Now THAT is one hell of a first entry

Xenogears15 posted...

Now THAT is one hell of a first entry

Reminder that 375 is out.

Zwijn posted...

Reminder that 375 is out.

I think I want to wait until Deluxe volume 15 is out before I continue reading, but it is tempting to read the newer issues for free.

Toonami was what got me started really. But Bleach, specifically is what pushed me towards watching it in Japanese with subtitles. One of the early episodes ended on a cliffhanger, and the next episode wasn't airing until a week later. So since I knew that they were based on Manga, I went online to look that up.

What I didn't know was that there were also episodes in Japanese and that it was waaaaay ahead of where the English dub was. Like, when the dub had just aired episode 17, it was already on episode 110 in Japan. So I discovered that and never went back lol.

I took Japanese in high school as I basically had to pick either that or French and I knew more people in Japanese so went with that. Got quite into Japanese music, so checking out anime followed naturally, though honestly anime/manga never really caught on with me. The vast majority of music I listen to is still Japanese though.

Pokemon, then Digimon, then Toonami. I think at some point, maybe watching Sailor Moon, I understood that anime was something different than American Cartoons and they came from a place called Japan.

Pokemon, DBZ, Beyblade, Naruto, all on TV. The Pokemon manga was likely my first manga, there was also a KH manga that I had a couple of volumes of. Also someone gifted me an English WSJ volume, and it really intrigued me.

Teknoman.

It captured my imagination in a way none of the other cartoons being shown at the time did.

I guess Electric Tale of Pikachu was my first manga. The 1st one I ever read to completion was probably Prison School, which I regret.

First anime I saw was Sailor Moon at 6am on UPN or something lol. Dragon Ball Z is the 1st one I ever finished

The original American broadcasts of GoLion and Macross, aka, Voltron and Robotech. Those, along with Transformers, informed my love for giant transforming and combining robots.

alternate name ideas

MaChrisCross

RoboteChris

VolChristron

one of my roomates back in 2011 made me watch Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo with him.

Then i watched Gurren Lagann and that was the beginnning of the end for me

Motherfucking Toonami, baby.

some characters looking hot and shit

Pokemon & DBZ on a public access channel. The Spanish dBz theme hits different.

Then we got cable & it was a Locomotion, that was the raunchy stuff.

Watching shows when I was younger like Pokmon , gundam and dbz

I needed an escape at the time. Dont need them atm.

Anime: DBZ, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing (90s era Toonami)

Manga: King of Hell and Ranma 1/2. (Cute Girls at my high school)

Ocean dub DBZ, Ranma 1/2, Gundam Wing.

Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and Toonami. What got me into manga specifically back in like 2006 or so was Naruto.

It was on TV in Italy when I was 5 I think.

If you lived in South America in the 80s that's probably where you saw it first, too.