Gateway Drugs. Or How I Got To Know Anime.
 

No, you tools, this thread does not belong in the Sewers where Capo and I can spam the shit out of it using asinine cocaine and marijuana references. This thread is good old-fashioned query about what exactly was it that got you into anime.

Since the conception of Japanese animation there have been people who have become hooked on this stuff. Much like heroin junkies who have fallen prey to just "taking another fuckin' hit", we (as in a lot of us, not the entire population) too have become addicted to a makeshift drug that's perfectly legal and fun to boot: ANIME

So discuss, kids... I assume that most of you who post in this forum know what this stuff is and I'd like to know. What anime/series/manga got you into this cel-shaded / pen-sketched culture of awesome?

If I were to track my interest in anime far enough back, I would end up blaming my much-older brother whom I looked up to a lot, and tried to emulate in many ways, particularly in making myself interested in the things he was interested in. One of these interests of course was in Japanese culture.

From there(many years later), I just took my own liberties in interests, and before I knew it, I was hooked on Dragonball Z. I think one of the things that drew me to that show over other shows playing at that time was the fact that the shows were serial, rather than episodal. I had never before encountered shows which followed such a format, and I really liked it(even though the pace was gruelling), and thus I bit the hook.

Then, not too long afterwards, I went to an anime club meeting at my high school (wow, I'm dorktastic), and saw the original Ghost in the Shell, with the (at that time) complex and challenging plot, and I liked that even more; the hook was set, and the rest is history.

Why am I up so late?:-(

XD back when i was in 3rd grade, like 8 years old...damn that was forever ago...
I used to get up early every morning to watch XD SAILOR MOON! and when i say early, i mean like 4am early to watch it, i was that addicted XD...yeah i know, most people would probly say DBZ or somthing like that, but nope...my first anime love was Sailor Moon!
But what brought me back into anime after is stopped airing at 4am-5am week day mornings on channel 4 XD
was Escaflowne on Fox at 9:30 satureday mornings, which that airing contract recently expired! and they are trying to resell it! meaning Escaflowne might be coming to a CN near you :P this was also bout the time tonami started, back when it was decent. and it pulled me into alot too

Hey! I do not spam!

Oh my! My first AnimeSpeck post! Exclamation points!


Actually, the first anime I fell in love with was Sailor Moon, and I continued to harbor indecent fantasies for Sailor Mars for the next 5 years!

This pretty much puts me back 8 years ago as well. The two series that really got me into anime were Martian Successor Nadesico and Record of the Lodoss War. A friend of mine had the videos and we often watched them over at his place and eventually founded the anime club at our high school where it's still going on strong. At the time, I thought the plot lines they covered was a lot more interesting and that the humor was better than what was available on American cartoons. From there, it went on to Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and the rest is pretty much history.

I got back into anime in '99 when I saw pokemon. I still remember my first episode too, The Kangaskan kid. And this is when it was still on fox people, so I got up early enough and caught it right before school.

You see, in '98, I read an artical in this magazine about the porygon episode giving people sezures....I though the cartoon they were talking about seem interesting...what can I say I was a morbid 9 year old. Then I remembered the ads I saw for the Red and Blue games (I thought those ads were animal cruelty back then). That Christmas, my dad brought the blue game for my mom (at that time I wasn't in to video games). I got a hold of it and started playing it and I fell in love with it. Sometime around mid...I think it was March or April my mom had on the TV and I was flipping though the channels and came acrossed this cute little....thing that turned out to be a baby Kangaskan so I desided to leave it on and see what it was and I fell in love with the show that day.

I saw a few other anime at that time, but I just seemed to chalk them up to being pokemon rip offs and never saw more then 2 seconds of it. I seriously thought that pokemon was the only anime out there at that time. But sadly as I grew older (A.K.A 12) I found the pokemon anime wasn't doing much for me after it made the big move to WB kids and the orange islands arc was weak. So I moved on, even if I still like the games and play them when ever I can. I'm not as big of fan of pokemon as I used to be. And believe me, I was a fanatic over it when I was younger.

The series I moved on to were Tenchi Muyo and Outlaw Star. Yeah...That was a big jump. Pokemon to those two shows. I watched them on toonami every day it was like my TV time. This was some time around late '00 early '01. Those two shows alone opened the door to more mature anime and broke the notion that all anime were copies of pokemon, just like how pokemon broke down the wall of thinking that anime were just adult cartoons that my dad installed in me after sneeking in on him watching Akira.

After those two shows moved to Adult Swim, That opened alot of doors to other anime like Cowboy Bebop (even though at first I thought that was copying OLS so it took me a while to like it.) and a few other shows. Then from that launching point I started to discover series on my own by reading the manga then finding the anime on DVD. And here I am now.

Since then, I have gone back and wached OLS un-edited. I still have yet to see anything outside of Tenchi Muyo in Love un-edit. But I hope to find the Tenchi DVDs one day and finaly get to see my second anime, and the true series that got me into anime, un-edited.

Sorry for the long post, I really am...

I guess I was getting into anime before I knew it was anime. I used to watch Speed Racer whenever I could catch it on, and once my family finally got Cable I started watching Cartoon Network about the time they were showing DBZ, Sailor Moon, and the series that REALLY got me into anime, Voltron. After that it was just a matter of searching the internet and finding out about this-series-and-that, and once the fansub community became as big as it did I only watched more and more.

Nowdays I've cut back on my watching. I used to binge-watch whole series at a time, now I just watch a few episodes every now and then. I still enjoy it just as much though.

I'm not ashamed to admit that it was the ALMIGHTY powers of Pokemon that got me into anime. It was like around 1999 or something when it was really popular, and I just got hooked, both by the game and the (terrible) TV series. But I was young at the time so I didn't care. All I knew was that the animation was (in my opinion) far better than the Saturday morning Disney lineup that I just had to watch it. Then came along Digimon, where I discovered that there's more to anime than the aesthetics -- the story (whatever story Digimon had for it's audience).

Then I realized after some bad searching that you can download these things, and I discovered other rather popular shows that are shown in the US - Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, NGE, etc. The first series I've downloaded and watched in its entirety was Fushigi Yuugi, and even then I thought it was literally da bomb.

I wish I had a more colorful start to anime, but these series were enough. What really got me into manga, though, was Hikaru no Go. But that's another story altogether, since manga for me is much more diversified.

You are totally forgiven due to the awesomesauce that is your sig.

I didn't really fall into anime on purpose, one of my girlfriends was rather fanatical about it and dragooned me into watching it on a regular basis. I drew the line cosplay (despite the fact she looked damned fine in it, as opposed to some of the washing machine sized Yunas that have reared their ugly heads in the cosplay thread in the Sewers.)

Mind you, I was a devoted Tranformers fan back when I was a kid, as was every other guy at my school. Agro's cartoon connection and then Cheez TV later on fueled it a bit with Teknoman, Macross, Voltron, (both lion and vehicle) Samurai Pizza Cats and Astro Boy, so I'd been watching anime for longer than I thought.

I tend to stick to anime of the giant robot and comedy varieties though, not many others really catch my attention.

What got me hooked into anime was American Dubbed versions being aired on TV. Then, with some help from my friends who hax the intranet, I woke up to fansubbing.

A 10 year trek of anime exploration. I guess it took me a while.

My first exposure would've been video game ads in the mid 90's that advertised an anime art style (Lunar, for example). I really liked the art style in all those that I saw. Then a couple years later, Sailor Moon came on Cartoon Network, in a time slot that was right after school. My sister watched it, and I started watching with her, as we only had one tv. I then started watching DBZ, which was on either right after or before, when that summer rolled around. I think this was around '97 or '98. Those two had me hooked, and eventually I seeked out more.

I'm so oldschool that I used to watch anime without even knowing that it was anime. I don't remember the details, but as a child I would watch Robotech. I actually went to some random video rental place that no longer exists and rented the videos. I was really into it. Then there was Transformers - totally hooked. I can't forget about Speed Racer and Samurai Pizza Cats (this needs a DVD release RIGHT NOW). Oh, and how can I forget about Voltron - which I used to watch on the Spanish channel, I think, even though I don't speak Spanish. I eventually watched Sailor Moon and DBZ. I finally figured out that anime was anime around the time that YTV started showing DBZ. Oh, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. I was so into that show. I'm sure that I'm forgetting about other things that I used to watch as a kid, but I've basically been watching this stuff all of my life.

omfg.

Robotech
Voltron
Thundercats
Speed Racer
Transformers

Those started me off when I was still barely able to walk I do believe =p But I think the very first time I saw anime might've either bee the latter Unico movie or Nausicaa. Both of those were conceived in the early 80s... Hardly remember them but I do recall being exposed to them often. My oldest brother, who has five years on me, absolutely adored the Nausicaa movie.

Damn I feel old. By the time DBZ hit American TV, I was already a semi-seasoned anime lover =I

Mobile Suit Gundam
Dragon Ball / DBZ
Ranma 1/2
Maison Ikkoku
Evangelion.

Those are my first memories of anime, in no particular order. I saw most of them back in my early phase of experimentation with anime. My interest didn't really start to take off until about 2003 though. Up to that point, it was just the occasional anime binge. Now it's an everyday thing.

That's if you're talking about anime that was uncut, uncensored, usually bootlegged, and which I actually understood to be anime. Other than that, I could list the following:

Guyking (Daiku Maryu Gaiking)
Robotech (SDF Macross, Southern Cross, Mospaeda)
Battle of the Planets (Gatchaman)

I watched these when they were on the TV, but I didn't enjoy Robotech much at all after the Macross Saga. I'm much more interested in SDF Macross now. I never got into Voltron, and I don't count Transformers, since it was basically an American production. I love lots of American cartoons too, but that's separate from my interest in anime. Gaiking remains the only one of which I've been unable to see the uncut version.

The first and only anime I've ever watched with what might be considered regularity was Samurai Pizza Cats. I suppose you wouldn't say I'm hooked.

Before I even knew it was anime, Robotech, Voltron, and the Thundercats were my daily afternoons. Absolutely hooked on the shit. "DUDE! His jet transformed into a robot! AWESOME!" "Thunder thunder thunder THUNDERCATS! Rawwwwwwr!" "...and I'll form the head!" Hell yea.

However, I didn't know I was watching anime. Many years later, Chrono Trigger happened into my life. Now, this takes precedence, as it was key in showing me what the difference between anime and standard American cartoons was. Chrono Trigger's art style was the same as DBZ's, so when I saw my first episode of DBZ, I linked it back to CT which I had a lot of fun with. From there, I kept on watching and eventually was exposed to (thanks to Toonami) Tenchi Muyo, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Ronin Warriors.

From there, I kept watching on a regular basis. And in 2001, I bought my very first anime boxset for $109 at Best Buy -- Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Probably about 1995 to 1996, the YTV network started to show pretty old anime series, such as your Dragonball Z, your Sailor Moon, and your Samurai Pizza Cats. This was well, what, grade six? I basically got some of my 'dose' from that, and it stick to me for a while. Come 1999, I never really cared much for the whole Pokemon craze, despite it being a huge marketing success branching in toys and shows and you-name-it. I remember some time where the SPACE channel had their anime showing late Friday nights. I think Venus Wars was one of the very first anime movies I've seen. Holy crap, how could animation be this good? I thought to myself. Now, that movie didn't age so good, if I recall correctly, but at that time, seeing something that was so smooth and carried a more mature theme than your Disney movies was a real treat.

Later on in highschool, one of my friends brought her VHS tapes to me to just check out, since I mentioned that I'm interested in anime. The tapes were, GITS movie, Dirty Pair Flash, and the Patlabor movies. I found DPR pretty dry, but the Oshii films cativated me once again. This was probably back in 2000/2001. I started heading to Blockbuster/Rogers Video to rent whatever anime I could find. At that time, there wasn't even an anime section - it was under "foreign interests" or something like that. The first few animes were Akira (because after reading that it was so lengendary) and some other series that I can't recall. I don’t think I had constant access to internet at this time, so I just went to the library and got a book listing all the different anime series (very old book) and just picked through and saw what was interesting.

I also remember attending the first anime convention at the university. It’s laughably tiny compared to the big stuff you get in Toronto or the US, but still, it was basically one of the best days of venturing into a mini anime land. So many series I’ve never even heard of and so many CDs, Gunpla, OSTs, T shirts, DVDs, movies, toys, trading cards, you name it. Damn, I wish I had a job then.

Around 2002 or 2003, I think that's where I got a few more series through Kazaa or something like that. This was the first instance of finally getting my dose of anime through the Internet. Of course since I didn't get hi-speed service, downloading could take days to just get an episode. Later in university, I didn't watch much anime since I had other interests in mind, namely video games. So this basically brings us to now where I get most of my anime updates from this forum and with the magic of the Internet, I’ve basically watched most of the series that I’ve wanted to check out.

Thinking about it now and I realised that the first anime I ever watched was Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The film was aired on BBC2 and placed on an oddly timed TV schedule and this was when I was 8 years old. Luckily, my mother saw this on the TV and started taping it straight away for me and my sister to watch. The film was amazing, I could find myself watching this one film all the time.

A year later, the next anime I saw was Neon Genesis Evangelion that I bought on VHS in Woolworths. It looked really cool on the front and back so I purchased it without knowing was it was to start with and I REALLY enjoyed it.

Our town was very small and didn't have many shops in which to promote products, I was luckly to find the Eva video when I did since it was the only one at the store and I couldn't find any more. I never saw another anime and that one video stayed on my shelf until I turned 11 years old. New shops had started to open and during my first visit to the new MVC shop, I noticed the other Eva videos and was other joyed.

My collection has since exploded 100x fold and with the move to DVD's and the help of the Internet, the word "anime" soon became apart of my dictionary along with the friends I made in the coming years because of anime.

Boring story, ain't it? :P

I'd say Ronin Warriors officially got me into anime. From there it was Sailor Moon, followed by DBZ a year or two later. I'd actually watch Sailor Moon with my sisters and, on occassion, Robotech (when it hit Toonami). We'd go to these tiny anime stores (and I mean tiny, these stores barely existed in Vacaville and some parts of the Bay Area) and buy the cheapest anime merchandise we could get. Of COURSE all they sold was Sailor Moon and DBZ stuff. Without the Internet, we thought that was all that anime had to offer.

Thundercats is as American as apple pie, guys. It was conceptualized, developed and written in America. The animation may have been done in Japan, but then the animation for most American work is done in Asia. The same goes for Transformers.

Hmm. The producer is Japanese and made quite a few Japanese series hits (Gall Force, Bubblegum Crisis, etc).

All the writers have American names... >.> Figured this was anime pure-and-simple.

You know, I never would have considered Thundercats an anime series, but now that I think about it, fuck yes it was! <3

Anyway, when I was in high school I was never really much into anime. I mean, I’d seen it advertised every so often but I’d never really had any proper exposure to it until I got to my art class my sophomore year in high school. I hung out with this one crazy cat named Daniel. Daniel was your standard-issue pothead and he was always on Cloud Nine, had an amazing talent for color pencils and inks and he was pretty damn good at drawing anime. I mean like REALLY above average artist. He was always talking about it when we’d hang out but back then my stance on anime was, “You’re a fucking moron, Daniel. I’m supposed to be trying to get laid instead of watching cartoons! I’m too old for this shit!”

Yeah... Good one

One day while we watched a film about the bombing of Hiroshima in history, Daniel (whom I also took that class with) told me that he had another movie about the same subject that he wanted to share with me. He said, “Dude... Just trust me. You’ll like it.” I finally succumbed to his constant badgering and decided to give it a try. After school we went to his house and he handed a VHS tape labeled “Grave of the Fireflies”.

I never thought I’d ever cry while watching a cartoon movie; ever. But this movie, while being incredibly well-animated also had a story worthy of a thousand books. I was fucking HOOKED.

After that, I started absorbing as much of it as I could: The Fist of the North Star series, Patlabor, Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, Crying Freeman, Macross, Silent Mobius, Wicked City, etc. I was basically just on a binge. Some of it was OK and some were really really good (Like Crying Freeman), but it was films like AKIRA, Ghost In The Shell, Ninja Scroll and Sanctuary (Not Angel Sanctuary, I’ve never seen that. I’m talking about THIS Sanctuary..) that really captivated me. Suddently, after graduation, this stuff no longer interested me. I was fresh out of high school, was a total pothead and only worked to support myself before I moved to Oregon. It was only back in 2002 that I got back into watching anime with a film that I saw called Cowboy Bebop (The movie only, I didn’t find out there had been a series until 2004 when I watched all of it). The animation was top notch and there was so much story to be told in its eclectic style. Then I started hunting down anime more often. I went back and found things I remembered from back in high school that I never got around to watching. Like 3x3 Eyes, Vampire Hunter D, Record of the Loddoss War and the like. But my favorite series in most recent years has definitely been Samurai Champloo. Samurai and hip-hop are a fucking winning combination. Other series that somewhat captivated me were Lain: Serial Experiments, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Twin Spica. <3 Lately Ergo Proxy has my soul, but the sub groups are taking their sweet time on it.

Fast forward to today and I’m comfortably sitting with a large collection of anime that I’ve spent literally years amassing onto DVDs. Some of it is released in the US but most of it is subbed. Really... I need to get out more. and not be so longwinded MOTHERFUCKER I DIDN'T REALIZE I'D TYPED THAT MUCH!.

WHAT. How could you not have posted more in my beloved Patlabor thread. ;__;

Also, yeah, another Silent Mobius fan. Too bad it's a sucky series now that I think about it.

Dude... I haven't seen Patlabor since 1996, that's probably why. ;__;

As far as Silent Mobius went, I've only seen the first film and I didn't know there was a series. :/

The TV series is a bit better, but craptastic "animation" if you can call it that. It gives more back ground detail to Giglief's summon of the barrier to block out the Lucifer Folk, but it ultimately fails. The ending is pretty inconclusive as well. Very catchy OP theme though. Kinda no Pansee, if I remember correctly. Did you see the Patlabor movies/OVA/TV series, what? I'm more interested in you seeing that.

I only saw Patlabor The Movie. I haven't really caught up on too many of those recently.

I used to watch the Patlabor movies on the Action channel years ago. They were actually kind of boring, but I sat through them almost every other day I had off from school (or cut).

yay. So that's what the movie was. I had to google it after reading that to see if it was the same thing I was thinking of, and it was.
I remember seeing that when I was probably about 3 years old. I didn't know that it was anime though. I also watched transformers.

I guess what really pulled me into the anime was Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.

Then I watched Pat Labor(recently. re runs on the AZN channel) ,Record of Lodoss war and Descendants of darkness. I also watched Detective Conan.

The Patlabor movies are generally aimed at a more mature audience and focuses on quite a bit of detail to yield the full enjoyment of the movie. Still, the TV series is not to be missed, at all. Shit, I just wish DDD had them instock since they're selling pretty cheap.

My first exposure to anime was Ronin Warriors back when they were showing it in syndication. I probably would have been watching more then, but I was just a kid (probably not even ten years old), so it's not like I could go to the stores and buy those kinda shows that were being released by companies like ADV and stuff.

Because of that, I had to settle for the stuff on TV, which of course was still good to me at the time. This was before I even had cable, so I had to wake up at like six in the morning to watch shows like Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, and Samurai Pizza Cats that were in syndication. It sucked to have to do this, but I felt it necessary so I could watch these cool Japanese cartoons.

After this, not only did Pokemon start to come on, but I also got cable as well. This eventually led to me watching a whole bunch of anime. I watched basically any anime that Toonami showed, all the stuff on Fox Kids, and whatever else my local networks were showing in syndication.

It was during this time that I was at the height of my anime fandom. I actually cared more about anime than I did about video games. I started reading about it online and in magazines (I actually had a subscription to Animerica, and before that I used to go to the comic store (which was nowhere near my house) every month just to pick it up), I practically devoured any of it that was on TV (even watching crappy shows like Hello Kitty and Tama and Friends), and I started buying it on tape (this was before DVDs were real popular).

I guess after this, I had an anime overdose, so while I still watched some of it (mainly just the stuff I bought and the good stuff that was on TV, like stuff on Adult Swim), I wasn't so addicted to it like I was before. After this, I had a sort of balancing out to where I am today. I pretty much just watch some stuff on TV, download some of it, and buy some on DVD. I still read about it online, but I don't read magazines or anything like that anymore. Basically I'm just an average fan now.

I blame two series. Gatchaman (back when it was G-Force on Cartoon Network when they were first experimenting with anime as a whole), and Tales of Eternia. One day I was fucking around doing a search with game titles on Kazaa, and found that there were movie files up to 13 with Tales of Eternia as the title. Stumped, I downloaded one to see what I would end up with, and low and behold it was an anime series. Did a little more research, and found out what the wonderful world of anime had in store for me.

Only then did I learn how far back it had spread going as far back as the games I had played, notably the Lunar Sega CD series and the anime scenes that it had. Henceforth, I've gone on to download hundreds and hundreds of GBs of the stuff (yes, I've bought what I REALLY liked too) and love watching it when I feel like I want to watch something really interesting. Beats otherwise watching Spongebob Squarepants, that's for damn sure.

You guys got shitty time slots for those shows. YTV had them in what called "The Zone" from around 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm with some other shows. Of course probably this was before the TV stations thought of this as a "huge viewer market" and put it in crap time slots to add to their repertoire of various cartoons and place American productions during the prime time.

Well, that was when local stations were showing the syndicated version of the shows. The show would only come on once a week on the weekends, and at that crappy timeslot, because that's when th local station chose to carry it (I was just glad they had it at all). Once they got on a national channel like Cartoon Network, they generally had way better times, like the ones you described, and they came on five times a week.

Such an arcane topic for me, I'd have to say Slayers Next, since I saw it for rent at a Jumbo Video in the single anime shelf they had while I was 9 or 10. I liked the idea of magic and the colourful cover art so I wanted to check it out. I really liked the story and then started downloading episodes off of Kazaa somehow until I finished the series. Then I downgraded to the original Slayers and then upgraded to Try after that, as well as picking up Naruto. Somewhere after that I found torrents somehow and randomly decided to get Full Metal Alchemist without knowing what it was, then spiraled off from there.

You could count Sailor Moon since for some reason :$ I loved watching that when I was 6, and only moderately liked Dragonball Z (too slow for me in comparison to wacky villains each episode).

Sidebar: La Blue Girl was also on that shelf, but I didn't so much as touch it due to the 18+ stickers all over it.

Sailor Moon was probably my first experience with anime. I saw a few episodes at a friend's house years before another friend began lending me VHS tapes with Japanese audio and English subtitles. That was an interesting experience at the time since I wasn't used to reading subtitles while watching anything.

I had also recently received my own computer and managed to learn a little more about anime that way. It wasn't until a few years ago that I really began expanding my anime library though. I think I have about twenty or so titles now that I still haven't seen. They're either collecting dust on my shelf or on disc somewhere.

No. Please refrain from using this reference again.

Will do. But we all have different tastes. Those are just things I grew up on. I guess I am just into anime based off video games. Though, I will admit, most adaptions are anything but accurate. So, I can kind of see why many people dislike them.

I suppose my love of anime spurred from such great classics as Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, and so on. Essentially I grew up on these ultra-violent masterpieces. I never really got into watching series untill quite a few years later. I'm still rather picky about what I watch, choosing only one or two series to check out every new season.

When I got the internet, I found something called 'anime' which was often connected to games in the search engines. So I dug around and got more information on it. As luck would have it, Sailor Moon was just starting on Toonami, so I started watching it. It started out I watched it just for the sake of watching 'anime', but I was surprised how enjoyable it become on its' own (read: it didn't look like something I would've watched without an initial purpose) It's like, "Great, cartoons...but the characters are actually telling a story and stuff actually happens. Gee, kinda like Gargoyles." Plus, it was a nice looking show compared to what Cartoon Network was running at the time (mostly the older Hanna Barbera cartoons, which I was already more than familiar with) I started watching right at the start of the Nephlite series of episodes and didn't miss one until the show repeated.

Also around that time, I bought the domestic Best of Anime CD, which was my introduction to Japanese vocals and I also got curious about a couple of series' from the descriptions in the liner notes. Especially Urusei Yatsura and Devil Hunter Yohko, which I looked into shortly after.

Then Dragonball Z started and I nearly lost interest in it because of all the filler before Nappa/Vejita came to Earth, but it picked up. I was a fan of DBZ through the Cell Games. During that time, Toonami also ran Tenchi, Outlaw Star and Gundam Wing, which were all pretty cool.

Also, I got hooked on both Ranma 1/2 and Slayers. Thankfully, I found a store in my area that rented anime and they just happened to have both of them in their entirely (or at least what was out at the time...Viz took their sweet time with Ranma, so they only had the ones up through Random Rhapsody) and I just happened to have a second VCR, so...

That looks about right.

I watched DragonballZ when I was, like, seven. Years later at the age of thirteen, I discovered that this stuff was called "anime", and pursued it. Having 56k and limited access to a computer pretty much put me out of the picture as far as watching any went, but a year later I torrented an ep of Evangelion whilst at a friend's house and LOVED IT TO DEATH. I got the boxset for christmas and things pretty much escalated from there.

I still only watch anime if the series is shorter than 30 episodes, though. I can't stand longrunning syndicated crap that's left open-ended and unfinished as long as possible.

ME TOO!!!!! OMG, i didn't think anybody else got hooked into anime by sailor moon too! Well that and gundam but ya w/e.

None, I make my own >B)

That's quite an insightful answer but perhaps it's too in-depth for me to understand it.