A/M

Kinda went on a nostalgic binge watching anime openings on youtube today. And in the process, I started wondering if early exposure to anime predisposed me towards liking it more in the first place? I mean, I actually don't really like anime stereotypes and find them to be a turn off if I see them in a show, but I can still tolerate watching series that use them more than most people I know probably would. and I started wondering why I like anime/manga in the first place?

Well, looking back on things:

first anime: Pokemon technically, although most people have seen Pokemon at some point so I don't feel like this counts so much.

first anime that led me to downloading anime on the Internet: Sailor Moon in 4th grade, when it was playing on Cartoon Network's Toonami. mancard revocation aside (kinda embarrassed to admit, the last episode of first season made 9-year-old me cry) I was impatient because they weren't showing the rest of the second season on Toonami and wound up downloading all 200 episodes in Japanese with fansubs within a year. I probably should mention that dad got us our first desktop when I was in first grade, and the internet soon followed... which probably was a huge factor there.

The hard drive I had those episodes on crashed because of a virus soon after, and I haven't really watched an episode since... although apparently my memory is still good enough to recognize the audio of a clip from the fifth season playing on Johny's computer. He called me disgusting because of it. :P

Those first sites on the internet combined with whatever happened to be playing on TV at the time led to a bunch of other discoveries:

Elementary School:
Toonami: Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Ronin Warriors, Tenchi Muyo. and Reboot, which isn't an anime, but everyone I talk to has no idea what Reboot is so I am mentioning it here anyway because it deserves more attention.
Saturday morning cartoons: Digimon, Yu-gi-oh
Sailor Moon led to Card Captor Sakura via a group that was subbing both online.

Middle School:
getting impatient for Digimon 02 =>
Detective Conan anime on a site that had clips of both =>
the Detective Conan manga because I got impatient waiting for people to sub the anime =>
waiting for new Conan issues in the Shonen Sunday magazine =>
English Shonen Jump magazine =>
Naruto, Bleach, One Piece mangas

High School:
impatience waiting for the previous mangas in English =>
looking up these series online =>
Hunter x Hunter, Rurouni Kenshin, Monster, 20th Century Boys, and Berserk mangas online
and, the rest is history.

and on a tangential note, the Phoenix Wright game series got me into Haruhi Suzumiya, Higurashi, AND visual novels, but that's another story.

Considering how long I've been into anime/manga, I actually haven't watched/read that much, or at least compared to other people I know and some of the users I've seen online that got into it relatively recently. But I've gotten into enough for people to call me a Japanophile... and even read a number of visual novels, so I probably shouldn't be arguing back anyway.

I have to say, it gets interesting once you're able to recognize common tropes and themes between series and the extent to which some series will make references to and parody each other. Sort of like what intertextuality is to books and movies. Gintama is probably the best anime example of this. So it ends up being: the more I see/read, the more I want to see/read. Like a neverending cycle... although I could say this for just about anything I obsess over too - books, games, tv shows, movies. Anime and manga is just another outlet for me, I guess.

It seems like the driving factor that got me into both is impatience, though. Funny how that works.