What got you into anime, and kept you there?

[yip]

I found the plots and animations very good and interesting, plus it taught me english and japanese at the same time.

[セニョール]

when i was a kid , it was yu gi oh and digimon 
at the time i was watching it in dub version on the tv and did not even know that it's called anime 

in high school i met a friend whom i was playing yu gi oh with and when became good friends and started talking often he introduced me to anime though DBZ and from there it started 

as why i keep watching it till today , well every one has something to do when he is free , for me if im not studying or going out with friends then its anime , something i enjoy and learn quite a few things from especially since i'm studying Japanese so it helps me a lot 

[NebulaeXard]

IIRC it all started with DBZ. I don't really know "anime" back then and was watching it not because it's an anime but because it's cool. I got hooked into anime since then. Anime provided me with a kind of entertainment that you can't easily find (if there is one) in any live-action TV shows.

[kinesty]

My earliest anime memories are watching the anime movies that used to come on Sci-Fi Channel. It's how I first saw stuff like Roujin-Z and Akira. The shows that really fostered my love for it and made it stick were the shows of Toonami: Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, and Robotech. 

[pint07]

Girlfriend hid the fact that she watched anime from me for the first ~6 months of us being together because she was embarrassed? Finally told me, had her make me a list of ones I should watch with her, did that, now looking for new stuff to watch together.

[tomnook123]

I like the more mature stories and I like a bit of romance in shows I watch. You rarely find that in American animation.

[arc_angel]

Well at the time I didn't know it was Anime, but I started with Star Blazers, Silverhawks, Voltron, Battle of the Planets, ect... Then when the TV networks removed all cartoons years back and replaced it with nature shows a coworker told me to watch "Initial D". I was hooked. I researched back and had to watch all the old favorites again, but I'm about to be 45yo and still watching strong. Animation has come a long way since the 70's.

[Versailles]

Like many people, Sailor Moon was the hook for me. I was 12 when I first caught it on Toonami one day, so I was squarely in the target audience, and I absolutely fell in love with it. After that, I started watching Tenchi Muyo on the recommendation of a friend who also loved Sailor Moon and thought I might like to watch more anime.  (In fact, we became friends because she had some Sailor Moon school supplies and I told her I liked them.)

 

So that was that. Once I had two animes under my belt, I just wanted to watch more and more.

 

 

 

[WIRLYWIRLYPOOL]

Summer break in 2012. Was browsing through Netflix and came upon FMAB. I remembered seeing commercials for it a long time ago. Figured I'd give it a shot... 2 episodes in I was past the point of no return...Glorious day!

[Super Kal]

Dragon Ball Z was the first anime i ever saw, and it's still relatively the only anime i watch... first exposure for me was right before Toonami became a big hit on Cartoon network

[ramensama92]

On 6/15/2015 at 9:05 AM, zephy669 said:

So what's everyone's genesis for anime-watching and why did you stick with it throughout the years?

Saturday Morning Cartoons
First anime is probably either Dragon Ball or Doraemon.

Still watching anime simply because I believe there's still more masterpieces that I haven't watch yet.
Such anime might have been aired, or it will be aired in the future. :3

[Nyard]

So when I was a kid, of course I watched everything that was on german TV back then DBZ, YuGiOh, Pokémon, Digimon, One Piece, Beyblade and all that. Once I got a stable internet connection in 2004 that led to me discovering some low low quality Full Metal Alchemist fansubs which I devoured despite being really not competent in either english or japanese. But I still got it through piecing it together somehow. After the grandious amazingness that was FMA it went downhill for me.

I still remember vividly how around the time when Naruto came out on german TV (late 2006) I was really out of the whole thing. And I started Naruto and it felt stupid. So I just stopped.

Then I got into a circle of friends who all did not watch or like anime much and stayed that way.
And when someone asked me if I was into anime I always said "Nah, not anymore. Naruto killed it for me."

 

Well skip ahead a couple of years: 2015 - Since I am still big into JRPGs despite not watching anime I had to get around to the Persona games. Specifically Persona 3 and 4 at that time.
When I beat Persona 4, realizing it was my favorite game, crying my eyes out over how beautfully crafted it is and how deeply it resonated with me I realized something: Fuck, I might have liked anime all the time, but I convinced myself that I didn't. (Due to my circle of friends not being into it, due to me being part of the horribly closed-minded and chauvinist Metal-Music fandom in my area)

Then I talked to my girlfriend who is into anime and let her show me just a random anime, we watched it together in one sitting. It was "The Devil is a part timer", which is not exactly amazing, but nontheless I enjoyed it and realized: well, might as well try to tear down this wall between me and anime.

Slowly over the years 2015 and 2016 I climbed back into anime, always still unsure as to wether or not it is for me.

I watched the Persona 4 anime. Liked it. I watched Highschool of the Dead, kinda liked it. I started watching all the 10/10 favorites of my friends and convinced them to join MyAnimeList so I can view their favorites. I liked most of the stuff, but still.. I had my doubts.

I just felt one thing was missing for me, and that was that one hook that really shows you the power of the medium. Basically I needed my first real 10/10. That came to me in the form of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in late 2016. Since then I have watched over 150 anime series and movies.

TTGL might be the most perfect story I have ever seen. Not to say it is the best for everyone, but for me definetly. It picked me up at a phase of my life where I didn't have the power to fight the power to keep it short and simple. And it appealed to all my ideals that I started to bury beneath nihilism due to everyday life.

Well it got my right out of that. Since then, not a single season of anime has passed without me checking out most shows. And i slowly started to catch up on classics and older great shows.

 

I even started Naruto recently (while skipping filler) and I can truly say:
Boy, was I a jaded annoying prick. Naruto is actually quite good and I just was pretentiously denying it back then.

This I would consider the point of my full recovery.

[alrasheerdamsik]

Rurouni Kenshin Kyoto Arc was the first anime that got me hooked and got me to the anime verse

[HellBlazeR]

the first anime i ever watched was Inzuma Eleven (the one with 127 episodes) then i stopped for a while and while swapping channels on TV i ended up on animax and fairy tail was going on during that time (i fuckin loved the fights) then a friend from school offered me his naruto manga to read, i liked the story then he gave me the animu and after that....legend continues

[Raizen]

First 3 episodes of Gundam Wing when I was a kid. YTV did a test run for the first 3 episodes to see if people like it before translating the rest, so there was a half an year delay, forced me to look on the net and found out about anime. I watched dragon ball and stuff before that but just thought it was English cartoons, never knew what "anime" was until Gundam Wing, 

[Terence]

I'd say childhood TV got me into Anime, BitTorrent kept me there in the past decade, and I've recently been re-introduced to recent Anime shows by great Youtubers like Gigguk.

[KiyoshiStar]

Childhood didn't really bring me into it. As a kid I was introduced to Dragon Ball and I got into the DBZ games from that point on. Also watched Pokemon here and there on TV but I knew nothing of what anime was or the 'anime scene' itself.

 

I got into anime in recent years (also as a teen. About 15-16 so 2013-14.) when the teen shows I watched on TV ended and I didn't really care for anything on TV anymore. For awhile I watched reruns/on demand but eventually that ran it's course for me and I ended up trying out my family's Netflix subscription and watching various stuff on there. At some point I ended up running over the anime section and I think my first was the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! (I knew of Yu-Gi-Oh! from childhood. Collected the cards. Never watched the series though.) and I just kept going anime to anime on Netflix. [Note: They only had S1 at the time. Later they got S2. After that I just watched S3/S4/S5 on Hulu. It was still free to watch from PC.]

 

I was regularly enjoying what I was finding in this newly found 'anime category' and ended up fully diving into it from there pretty much. I watched on Netflix I think for about a year or so before their library kinda ran low and dry. (Bear in mind I didn't binge watch. So stuff lasted awhile. Plus some new additions here and there that'd I'd watch) After Netflix I took to the internet and found kissanime I believe, watched from there for awhile before I ended up moving towards downloading and that's where I've stayed. Although I still stream (not from kissanime though) on occasion, primarily for OVAs/OADs/Specials that happen to come out after I finish a series. I don't really see much point in downloading a single special or two when I can just stream it. Especially if the sites get it before it ends up on torrents, I usually like to watch right away and knock them out.

 

Especially came in handy having locally downloaded for when the internet is out (it happens) so I can still get my serving of anime. I like watching whenever I eat a meal primarily, so it'd rather suck not having anything to watch if the internet was out... so I also kinda stockpile just in case. Outages are rare nowadays for me but they still aren't completely extinct and plus sometimes internet bill doesn't get paid... so there's that, lol.

[Stormness_1]

I loved Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball growing up, but it never really went much further. 

 

After I lost my pregnancy, I was pretty depressed and was looking for something to cheer me up, so I re-watched the original Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, before looking for something else to keep that escapism going. I fell upon Ouran High School Host Club through some recommendations, and that was it really, I was totally hooked! Right now I'm watching Bleach, after burning through a ton of other animes. Anime can be so light-hearted and fun, and the emotions creep up on you. It's slowly helping my heart to heal. I have so many half-read books and half-watched movies around the place because I just couldn't stand to finish them, it hurt too much. But there's something about anime that lets me feel again, rather than seeing it coming and wanting to run away from it, I'm eager for the plot twists again. I even watched a really sad live-action movie the other day, and I got all the way through. Anime is healing my heart in a way no other media could do - not movies, books, comics, music, anything. I don't think I'll ever stop watching anime now!

[CyborgIcarus29]

Fun shounen shows like DBZ , One Piece and Naruto introduced me to the medium as a kid. Action packed shows like FMA:B ,TTGL and AoT got me hooked and unique "mature" shows like Ergo Proxy, GITS:SAC,Monster,Steins Gate and The Tatami Galaxy kept me there.

Edited January 20, 2018 by CyborgIcarus29

[spot]

Hajime no Ippo was how I got started