I (have convinced myself that I) have a taste for yuri, magical girls, shoujo in general, JK comedies... I suppose what really gets me are series that aren't as specifically anime-ish: SF with interesting worlds, anything that reminds me of superhero comics (in a good way).
My life in otaku terms:
Born in the era of Robotech. Reached the golden age of everything around the time Evangelion reached the West. Never watched anything like that then. In the 1990s, I knew anime was taking off, but the art style kept me away. I had some Western comics, but rarely saw the inside of a comic shop until many years later, so I was unaware that manga was also just taking off (the flopped era). It was possible to live my life as if it didn't exist.
Late 90s: Toho monster flicks. Took me a long time to realize it, but these were probably significant. Yes, they're cheesy, but I realized they were cheesy in exactly the same way old comics and low-budget Western SF movies were.
Early 2000s: An explosion of anime imports is occurring, but I still don't pay attention. All family members' TV watching drops to the point we cancel cable. We will sustain on home video for a long time, in gradually dropping quantity.
Uncertain time, but I'll put here anyway: Knowing I often like guides to things even if I don't care about the subject of said guidebook, my family happens across just such a book on Speed Racer. Once again, it doesn't feel very foreign, more Sixties than anything. No, I've still never seen the show.
I finally get Internet access. My first major use? Involvement in Lego fan communities. Having only recently outgrown true play, this came at the right time to complete my transition to fan/hobbyist.
Lego fans are nerds. Many nerds are otaku. I'm exposed to many anime-based and just anime-style models, mecha the commonest. Several years of this means that, though I don't develop an interest in anime per se, I stop rejecting something just because it comes from that source.
2008 (maybe earlier): I discover TV Tropes, probably around the time my movie/TV consumption drops to almost nothing.
By this point, I had firmly articulated a love for crazy ideas, and the site's made for that. This gives me a chance to learn about manga and anime in a non-conventional way, a way that can interest me. Many Japanese-sourced ideas go into my files of cool and weird ideas to inspire an adventure-science-fantasy story I'm trying to write.
2009: TV Tropes leads me to my first manga, a doujin no less. Must've been a scanlation, though I didn't know what that was. No, it wasn't hentai. Densha de D.
Aside: I hate 4chan memes. Had I been aware this was the source of one, it might've turned me off.
I discover scanlation and some of the main reader sites, still through TV Tropes.
Having articulated a preference for cute female types, I embrace some of the moe archetypes (some were, and remain, turnoffs). This is what finally pushes me over into devoting time to reading manga and classifying myself an otaku. Top right in my avatar: Zero no Tsukaima, the first "normal" manga I read.
Having also finally allowed "every straight guy likes girl-on-girl" to break through homophobia (I was/am a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes, which led me to my first yuri shipping ~2008), I want a discreet source. Thus, yuri manga.
From there, a headlong rush into many series I'd been waiting to read.
2010: Time pressure and decompressed series put me off manga for a few months, but I'm able to get back into it for one last period where it's fun. I openly admit my otaku status. I read my first print manga.
Manga reading starts to get tiring. Now saving series for future reading, I actually read series that are much farther down the priorities. I need something exciting and different.
My distaste for video media is overcome by a desire for non-mecha space adventure. Having liked David Weber before getting sick of him, I start at the natural place. Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
2011: Since I became seriously interested in manga and anime at the same time, I've been waiting longer to watch anime. I maintain a policy of "don't watch anime when it's based on a manga readily available to me", but that still leaves a substantial list. Since I don't favor long-running shounen, many series I want to see are anime originals, or based on something other than manga. Or simply, because both official and fan translators are much more likely to do anime, there is a manga but not in English. My anime-watching rate increases, eating away at the time I allot to reading manga.
I don't pay much attention to technical qualities of anime. My reviews aren't going to be about that.
I wish more older manga and anime were available in English. Even fan groups tend to ignore them.
