Uh, so where do I start off? I'm filipino, though born in the U.S. I'm in college right now, so it's understandible that the work don't stop. Some of my interests include snowboarding and sleeping.... but snowboarding out-prioritizes sleeping. Every time. I'm quite the slacker, but I won't let it hinder me when it counts.
I think like most kids that watching anime in the 90's, Dragonball Z was the first one to start it off. I did remember seeing My Neighbor Totoro, but I barely remember what happened. I'll get around to watching that someday. Anyways, after that Toonami came along and then I got smacked in the face with Gundam Wing (one of my favorites). Also, Heero Yuy is quite manly. I digress. It was then that Tenchi Muyo! became my first harem series as well as Rurouni Kenshin being my first favorite shonen series. The Big O was my japanese Batman and Outlaw Star had me at Hiru no Tsuki.
Time passed and [as] came around to expand Cartoon Network's anime selection. Yu Yu Hakusho became my new crack and all this new late night anime became my next addiction. The Gundam series following Wing and G left me wanting more, Cowboy Bebop simply had me in awe, and FLCL threw me for a loop and brought me back.
If I really wanted to say what really catapulted me into wanting to watch more anime, I'd say it was thanks to one game, Initial D. Initial D lead to forums. One Initial D forum brought me around to this video:
I looked at the opening image for the video and I asked myself, "What's this? Is that Nami... but who are those other guys?". I IM'd a friend over on AIM and he told me it was from BLEACH. "The fuck is BLEACH?" Mind you, this was 2005 and YouTube was relatively new to the majority of the internet, so I decided to go there and take my chances... and with any luck I got started on this new show.
Now this in turn added another link to the chain. Subtitles and Fansubs. When I first started watching BLEACH, I thought "Why was this not in English?", I soon realized the show wasn't dubbed yet and so I thought, "Well since there's subtitles there, I'll just bear with it and wait until it hits stateside". Now that I started watching BLEACH, I eventually wanted to see more shows. At the time, I was too afraid to attempt getting stuff via Bit Torrent so DDLs were the the way to go. I stumbled across this place called Anikei and suddenly it became Problem Solved. (for the moment, anyway)
A couple of years fly by... I look back and noticed where this thing called anime took me and what it introduced me to. Music oddly enough, was next on the line. Yes, anime got me into music. Who knew?
Hmm, I guess as far as music is concerned I guess I started getting into listening to it after I was done performing it. That is, is that I started music by just playing the sax in my school's concert band and later singing in my high school's Chamber Choir. I never really got into talking about bands and artists because the only music I concerned myself with were the songs I played or sang.
So here I find myself starting late in the game, but I haven't let my lateness stop me. I thank watching Fullmetal Alchemist and BLEACH for starting me off with the whole "getting into bands" thing. And yeah, I guess the first bands I started listening to were ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION and L'Arc~en~Ciel. When Samurai Champloo started rolling around, Nujabes, fat jon the ample soul musician, and Tsutchie came next.
When I got into college, I met up with someone who liked listening into japanese music and recommended ELLEGARDEN to me. Right there I was surprised to notice that there are japanese bands that exist who sing songs in (almost complete) english. And later on, I came across MONORAL who I liked just as much (because japanese artists singing in full english are just that awesome).
... and then I stumbled across Last.fm. The whole recommendation thing got me into listening to more bands that I remembered from way back (the pillows, etc.) Hell, I even got into listening to english bands like Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Fall of Troy, etc.
So just to wrap this up, I'd like to enjoy my time here with you all as much as possible talking about anime, japanese music, and the like.
See you around. |