What got you into anime?

[Aaron]

I know this isn't a very creative topic, but I'm not entirely bothered xD

Why did you start watching anime? Is it because your friend convinced you to? Or maybe you stumbled upon an anime one day and decided to watch it? Or maybe you played an anime-based game that made you want to watch the anime it came from?

What got me into anime was actually Eyanland. Before becoming really active on Eyanland, I knew anime but I'd never had any overwhelming desire to watch any. Heck, before coming here I didn't even know DBZ was an anime - I just thought it was a regular cartoon! But I saw everyone here loved it so much and they talked about it a lot, and I didn't want to be left out so I watched Attack on Titan. Now I'm super interested in watching lots of different types of anime~!

[ozzi9816]

I was into pokemon, and the pokemon and anime fandoms kind of intersect, so I watched an anime, and I haven't looked back

[Tuxy]

I became interested in anime shortly after temporarily leaving Eyanland about three years ago. Friends made me interested, and now I'm a bigger weeb than some of them. The first show I watched was an Ecchi harem series called "Heaven's Lost Property". Yeah, not too proud of that one.
When I was younger, I wasn't ever really interested in the "mainstream" anime (Naruto, Pokémon, etc.) and they played no role when I started watching anime.

[Starry]

I watched a bunch of Dragonball, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! as a kid, and I heard the term tossed around a little bit. Since I liked those ones, I just looked up more, and started watching sorta basic stuff like Sailor Moon and whatever, and then boom.

[sonriopoby123]

i distinctly remember watching stuff like inyuasha and bobobo-bobo-bobobo on toonami way back when and it sort of evolved into pokemon and then now

do i regret it? maybe the world wanted me to watch me anime. dont question me boi

[Bricktoad]

I was talking with Mark, I'd seen a bunch of stuff about Madoka on his tumblr and decided to watch it.
It was the first anime I'd ever watched and I marathon'd it. I've never been the same.

[Growth]

I was simply looking for something fun.

At the time, I had grown very tired of the games I played and I needed a change. It's funny, because I used to be against the very idea of anime because of ecchi stuff (which I still severely dislike) and I was influenced by the people around me's view on it. However, this all changed when I started watching my first anime - Death Note. Everything changed. I craved more. I went full weeb and wanted to learn japanese, find more cool anime, and more anime watching friends. In the end, I met up with a bunch of weebs and it just went from there.

Tengen Toppa was my second anime, and is also one of my favourites to this day. Had I not seen that after Death Note... I might not have been as interested as I am today.

[ShadowMr.L]

Prior to me actually getting into anime, thanks to someone named Kyoushiro, I saw Ginga Nagerboshi Gin and Densetsu Weed. Which were fun, but it didn't drag me in.

What further made me see more anime was in someone named TrainerDor's Water Pokemon Legend series, where he had an opening I found insanely catchy. It was 11eyes's Arrival of Tears, so from there I saw 11eyes, but I still wasn't hooked in.

I listened to Bleach Opening 9 (Veloncia) a lot. And one day, I gave in being all like "Let's check out Bleach." I did, and I saw the first episode, and was disappointed, but yet something about it interested me, so I watched more and instantly fell in love with Bleach. Bleach was the anime that pulled me into anime 5 years ago, and its been a crazy ride. I owe it a lot, even though people speak so ill about it. It's special to me.

[Dragonite]

Couple friends spent the majority of senior year talking about One Piece, so about halfway through it I decided I wanted to know what they were talking about and started watching it, too. Best decision ever.

There was also a bit when I discovered Pokémon had a television show and started watching that, too, but we won't speak of that. People say it got bad around Advance Generation, idk, Episode 1 was pretty bad and it all went downhill from there . . .

[SuperSceptile]

You weebs kept talking about it and my friend was like, you should watch SAO, and I did. I enjoyed it, so I went to watch more of the popular ones. That's pretty much it.

[marissachu]

I really enjoyed Pokemon and Yugioh as a kid, so I guess those were my first baby steps into anime via 4kids' fantastic English dubbing.

Years later (late middle school or early high school, probably?) I remember using Hulu to try to find some series to watch over the summer. I ended up picking up Fruits Basket, shortly followed by Death Note and Ouran High School Host Club, which got me to the point where I actually had some idea of what anime was like and that I enjoyed it. Later on when I befriended several people from the forums who enjoy anime I ended up going back and picking up a few more series, followed by even more when the bae and friends wanted to watch stuff together or would suggest things I would enjoy.

[X!!]

Three years ago, a classmate told me to watch Sword Art Online. At the time, I didn't know which site I should go to to watch anime, so he gave me a link. I really, really enjoyed it, especially since it was my first anime, and my standards were really low (they still are pretty low, I think, but not as low as before). I think after that, ShadowMr.L told me to watch Accel World, which I also enjoyed. Then the same classmate who told me to watch SAO told me to watch Guilty Crown, which was also great. I don't remember how, but I randomly found Baka to Test, and that got me laughing really hard. I think after that, I started searching for anime to watch or asking people for anime to watch instead of watching anime only because someone told me to watch it.

[EpicCh33se]

When I was like 4, this show called Bomberman Jetterz aired on Chinese television with a Cantonese dub. It was one of the only animated shows, so I watched it. I remember being so interested, and everything like the explosions was just so awesome.

Here's the OP; it's freaking awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovZE56Hi4IY

I missed some episodes, but I mostly saw every single one of them.

Around that same time, this show called Code Lyoko aired. It wasn't Japanese, but it was a French anime that got super popular and aired in so many countries. I loved it more than Jetterz and I still love it to this day.
I didn't know what anime even was either, I considered those shows the same as any other ones.

I hadn't watched a single anime except for like, Pokemon, until 6th grade, when my friend told me to watch Clannad, so I did.

i feel like i'd disappoint her today

[Ayra]

A certain forum member made me watch Madoka in Nov 2013, and a black friend irl got me to watch Death Note this last February.

[Kyoits]

Dragonball was the main thing that got me into anime. I watched it all the time when I was younger and I thought that it was the best thing ever. After that I started to focus on other shonen anime and then after that I became a weeabo started to love anime.

[Majorasfan]

Back in like 2009-2010 or so, I found a peculiar flash game called Nanaca Crash (http://megami.starcreator.com/nanaca-crash/) (If you recognize the name, it's because it was on the previous site's arcade for the below reasons). It's an interesting game like the polar bear / baseball flash games from years ago, but this one had anime sprites and voices. What struck me as so odd about this game is that it was fully voiced by a bunch of different people, and the art looked really professional. I realized it couldn't be just from a flash game, and I eventually found out it was from a Visual Novel called Cross†Channel. After finding out about it and finding it had an English patch, I downloaded it and read the VN. I also got most of the staff at the time to read it as well, because we were completely ignorant regarding Visual Novels, like most people. It was pretty interesting, and we even changed our Skype avatars and names to match the characters (I took a sub-par character because I didn't want to use a female character as an avatar. Oh how times have changed..) and made numerous groups about it.

After that, I became acquainted with the person who translated the game; Zach and I had a conversation with him, which was pretty neat at the time, and I got to share a crazy fan theory I had regarding the game, which he said was entirely possible (Making me pretty happy for a 16 year old). His friend Kael, who I found the translator through (I found one of the games songs on YouTube, uploaded by Kael), introduced me to some other VNs, namely the two major TYPE-MOON works, Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night. I enjoyed both, but I realized F/SN was on another level from the other two I had read, and really enjoyed it. I loved the characters, the setting, and the routes. Rin was quickly becoming one of my favorite fictional characters, and all was going well.

By the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, I was looking for other media of Fate/Stay Night. At this point in time I had never really watched anime - I'd seen a few episodes of popular Toonami shows but I never really got into it. I thought that anime was really weird, and the fans seemed really weird too. I never liked the most popular stuff of the time (i.e. Naruto) and never wanted to get into it. While searching for F/SN related stuff, though, I came across a site called Unlimited Translation Works, a fansubbing group that had been around for a year or so at that point. The legal anime industry was still being established at that point, and few shows could be streamed legally, so many shows had to be found by fansubbers. UTW, as the name might imply, was made up of Fate/Stay Night fans, and they translated the UBW movie from 2010. They Also were translating Fate/Zero as it came out, so I would download new episodes every week excitedly. I found plenty of F/SN media and became a fan of UTW, but I also found another show - Amagami SS. Specifically, I found the sequel, Amagami SS+ (http://myanimelist.net/anime/11235/Amagami_SS+_Plus), which had just started airing. I decided to take a look out of curiosity, and while it was a rather generic show, the first character arc of the sequel - Ayatsuji Tsukasa - was a character that really sold me.

For those of you who have never heard of Amagami SS, but don't care about spoilers, the first season had 4-episode arcs for the 6 girls, plus two other episodes. The final 4-episode arc revolved around the class rep, Ayatsuji Tsukasa. While she seemed like a perfect honor student on the outside, she was really a scheming, harsh character. By the end of the arc, like every other arc, the MC falls in love with her, and she falls in love with him. It's nothing really special, but it made me realize how much I like the "facade" character archetype, and to this day many of my favorite characters either have traits like that, or have their whole character revolving around a facade. Also, tsunderes seem to go hand in hand with this, which I found out I was a sucker for as well through this show and F/SN.

Now, you may notice I said I watched Amagami SS+ before Amagami SS, and that's correct. I watched the first two episodes of Amagami SS+, which featured Ayatsuji Tsukasa (The sequel went in the reverse order of the original series in regards to character arcs). Because I was watching the sequel to a show I missed, I was quickly introduced to Ayatsuji's true character, and really liked it. I then went back and watched all of Amagami SS, hating most of the arcs until I finally reached Ayatsuji's, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Was it because it was the first anime I had ever really seen? Probably, yeah. Looking back, the show is really sub-par in every way, but it was my first show, and I'll never forget its impact on me.

The rest is history, really. I watched Fate/Zero through UBW, and went to Otakon, meeting Eyan and Collette there - I watched Haruhi and a few other popular shows beforehand, so I recognized some things, but not much. Over the years I continued to watch shows I had missed out on since I arrived late to the party, and my knowledge grew month after month. Now, a poetic circle has been drawn as UTW seems finished with their work. The anime industry has changed drastically, and I stream from legal streaming sites like Daisuki or Crunchyroll, and fansubbers that were popular at the time have moved on with their lives. At the same time, I no longer watch huge amounts of anime at once, but rather enjoy things I've already watched, check out a few shows with friends every few months, and watch what's currently airing. It's been right at 3 1/2 years since I got into anime, and Amagami SS+ was my first show, while Cross Channel was the spark.

[Shaymin]

So I have a unique story to tell about how I got into anime. I haven't told this story in two years, so the details are kinda lost to me.

I had this really bad case of diarrhea late at night in 2007, 2008 maybe and being the person that I am, I couldn't wake up my parents. Since the bathrooms to my room and the master bed room were connected at the apartment complex I was living in, I couldn't exactly go to the bathroom. So I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn't go to sleep no matter how hard I tried. So around four in the morning, I decided "okay screw it, I'm gonna turn on the TV and watch some of my favorite TV shows". Little did I know at the time, I turned to the channel which I knew Cartoon Network and it turned out to be Adult Swim shows. More specifically, Inuyasha was on at the time and I immediately became intrigued due to the art style and less obviously, Inuyasha's ears. I ended up watching the rest of the episode and I even made myself go to sleep at 9 PM sharp just to wake up and watch Inuyasha in the days following it.

Months later, I learned what Inuyasha was and what the term "anime" meant. After that, I started to watch more anime and the rest is history.