What was your first anime show or film?
For me? The first anime related thing I saw as a kid was Spirited Away on VHS, I was awestruck from the animation and quality of the film.
For shows it would’ve been the usual Pokemon and DBZ. As I grew older I suppose my first proper anime show was watching streams of Neon Genesis Evangelion due to people talking about it at school.
So what about you? What did you see first?
Probably Bee Maja, Wickie and the strong men or Heidi. Tons of classic German children’s shows are actually animes.
Same thing goes for the animated Moomin-series - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin_(1990_TV_series)
A classic for kids in Sweden.
It was the year of our lord 1990, I was 5 years old, and the time was somewhere after midnight. I had snuck out of my room and into my grandparents basement to sneak some late night tv.
The original Vampire Hunter D was playing and I had no idea what it was, but it was amazing. The guy had a hand that ATE things!!!
I didn’t realize what it was until around 8th grade when I started getting into the standards of DBZ and Sailor Moon… I expanded drastically from there once I realized I could, spent around $4000 on manga throughout highschool and found a little hole in the wall DVD rental shop on the local college campus with a wall of anime DVDs and VHS tapes.
I think my first late night tv adventure was seeing Akira and having absolutely no idea what was going on.
Dude, you could relive that, watch it TODAY, and still have no idea what was going on.
Almost like watching it for the first time again.
Death Note, sometime in 2009 or 2010.
I remember when it came out, people on forums kept talking about it nonstop. I had no idea what it was, so I just blindly torrented something called Death Note… it was the live action Japanese adaptation lol. I didn’t even know it was an anime until years later. Just for years I thought everyone on the internet was obsessed with that live action movie.
dbz and pokemon as well but only when id catch it between other activities. Didn’t actually sit through an entire anime until high school where my friend borrowed me Cromartie High.
First film was probably the first Pokémon film in theaters.
Outlaw Star was my first, on early Toonami. I got into DBZ because outlaw star came on later in the night and I refused to miss any of it! It was so… different from everything else on TV.
Still one of my absolute favorites to this day, I prefer it over Cowboy Bebop 😘
Outlaw star was an early watch for me too, was amazing. Really solidified my love of everything space related.
It was either Cowboy Bebop or Princess Mononoke - I was first introduced in an after-school anime club.
I also watched Pokemon and DBZ when I was young, not even knowing about anime.
In highschool I thought “What is anime? Let’s give it a shot”. I opened up Hulu and somehow picked out Non Non Biyori. Looking back, it was a banger choice.
Akira. I saw it playing on a TV behind a table at a pop culture market and got my own copy (on VHS. Yes, I’m so old that bits are starting to drop off) to find out how it ended.
Edit: Now I come to think about it, I used to watch Science Ninja Team Gatchaman on TV as a preteen. Can’t remember the english title.
Pokemon for TV, movie would probably be Laputa.
Show - Robotech, it was on Sunday mornings on sci-fi channel for a while in the mid 90s. Film - Ninja Scroll, dad had a descrambler and saw it on PPV in the early 00s. Good times.
First show was probably Voltron. First film was probably Vampire Hunter D.
Toonami became a big part of my life, and there was a small theater downtown that did showings of Miyazaki and such. I remember seeing Metropolis there, too.
I owe a lot to those scrappy little enterprises, taking a gamble that there would be an audience for this stuff.
I remember watching Totoro as a child not knowing it was an anime. Later I watched The Guyver (1989 OVA) on VHS at my cousin’s. Evangelion and Lodoss War were the first fansubs I watched knowing they were Japanese.
Evangelion was pretty early on my list too, stuck with me though to this day as my all-time favorite anime.
CBN licensed the 1966 Kimba sequel in the mid 80s. My family was super religious around that time and I remember watching it then.
Pat Fucking Robertson was responsible for my introduction to anime.
I watched sword art online because I read a little about the plot and it sounded interesting to me. Second was High School DxD I believe I picked because there wasn’t much else dubbed (I don’t watch anything dubbed really now).
I went through a big binge of practically everything after that but only really watch the odd airing one now.
My parents bought me My Neighbor Totoro when I was a kid. I absolutely loved every second of it. Then I came across Ranma 1/2. Next came Kiki’s Delivery Service. It kind of snowballed after that.
