Short version: Friend at school showed me Naruto -> watch more Naruto -> Google Naruto (fansites) -> Starting to know the word 'Anime' -> Google it -> Watch more -> addicted.
Downloaded Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children randomly from ApexDC++. Then looked it up and found anime.
Also I guess Naruto to an extent since that was the first thing I downloaded after seeing the first 20 something episodes like 10 times on some Cartoon channel.
when i was 11 my friend forced me to watch elfen lied. i liked it but i still wasn't into anime at the time, then last year i was extremely bored and i felt like watching elfen lied again. i watched it again and got hooked, searched up for other animes to watch and found death note.. and yeah. got addicted.
When I was a wee child, my cousin introduced me to anime. That was when I was about 4 years old. I had been watching Sailor Moon around the same time, but it was only after my cousin told me about Dragon Ball Z that I started seeking other things like it; Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher,Tenchi, Gundam, Cardcaptors, etc.
Toonami and Adult Swim ended up being heroes to me of sorts, ha hah. If I saw that characters had "those weird eyes" then I'd watch it. There's never been a year when I wasn't watching anime after I was first introduced.
Well in November 2011, I discovered Death Note and Cowboy Bebop thanks to IMDb's Top TV series page. And I think I also watched Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) in December 2011 or something. Death Note should've been the anime that would've made me watch more anime, but I just considered it a TV show I enjoyed and hoped to find more TV shows (either animated or live-action) I'd enjoy just as much, instead of an anime I enjoyed and hoped to find more anime like that. And I also didn't consider watching anime outside of mainstream anime. It's weird, since I loved cartoons since I was a child, so I really should've went into anime sooner. I think it's because I also wanted to discover and watch more Western shows, and wouldn't have time to watch both Western shows and non-mainstream anime.
The mainstream anime were either hit-or-miss for me, and probably made me hesitate whether I want to delve deeper into anime. Even then, I didn't know about any anime websites that listed its Top Anime, and didn't know the existence of MAL until 2013, so I didn't know what anime were worth watching.
From 2010 to mid-2013, I had watched at least the first episode of about 26 anime series (mostly mainstream), alongside Western TV shows. I can even name them all:
Inuyasha
Death Note
Cowboy Bebop
Samurai Champloo
Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball Z
Dragon Ball GT
Dragon Ball Kai
Pokemon
Digimon
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
Fullmetal Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Monster
Naruto
Bleach
One Piece
Fairy Tail
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Berserk
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Code Geass
Trigun
Outlaw Star
Slam Dunk
Bakuman 1, 2 and 3
In 2013, I finished Dragon Ball Z for the first time, and was interested in watching other battle shounens like it (instead of just One Piece, which I was watching since 2012). I also was interested in watching anime adaptations of Weekly Shonen Jump manga that were being published. So in late 2013, I watched stuff like Gintama, Beelzebub, Kuroko no Basket, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho and HxH (1999). I also discovered MAL and its Top Anime list, and it helped me discover a lot more anime that were worth watching outside of battle shounens. Now anime is all I watch nowadays.
So it's difficult to really say how exactly I got into anime. I just slowly watched more and more mainstream anime over 2 years, along with Western shows, and then found MAL. Death Note was the first anime series I ever completed (in February 2012), while Bakuman was the first anime I watched (and finished) almost all of it subbed, at a time when I was eerie of subs. I could've just stuck to watching battle shounen anime that'd take awhile to finish or catch up to anyway, but decided to give anime of other genres a shot once I discovered MAL. By the end of 2013, before I joined MAL, I had watched around 30 anime series in total and considered myself an anime fan.
Of course I watched anime when I was younger, like Dragon Ball Z in 2000, when I was 8 years old (which was just a cartoon to me). But there was like a 9-year gap before watching anime again.
Back in 2013 i saw my friends watching this clip/video of bleach while i was walking past them. Back then Bleach was really popular lol. So later that day I went home and watched a few episodes...... I instantly liked it xD
Anime had been around me for as long as I remember, since in Hong Kong, anime was just really a set norm. It continued even when my family moved to Canada, titles like Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan and most Ghibli films were some of my most-viewed anime back then. I have to say that I already thought quite highly of anime at that time, since Princess Mononoke is still probably my favourite film. I would say that my family is probably one of the main reasons on why I like anime so much.
Seeing anime in both Cantonese and English from the television was what kept up my anime watching time. Pokemon, Spider Riders (Spider Riders! Lets ride~, part of the OP that I remember) are some of the titles that I really liked as a child. For Cantonese dub, Condor Hero and Cooking Boy took was what I looked forwarded to during the weekends.
Naruto and Bleach were from my middle school times, but I wouldn't call it the catalyst, but those 2 were probably one of my earliest titles that I watched online. While watching those two primarily and sharing the hype with some friends, I started browsing the web in search of more anime to watch. It soon brought me to MAL, after using the top list and watching titles like Clannad, My Bride is a Mermaid, and Da Capo (I remember I copied out Kotori's song to sing it sometimes), and thus my user name and it just went up from there.
So, if I was to name one event, I would probably point of to romance anime, but that itself is not significant enough without what lead up to it. Typing this out was quite fun. *puts into my "about me" section*
I remember that i had just rewatched Pirates of the carribean when i remembered about a show about pirates that i had seen on the tv when i was little.So i searched a lot and finally found that it was called One Piece so i started watching it and i was hooked immediatelly.Writing this reminded me that i can't wait for the next Pirates of the Carribean movie i miss Jack and that monkey :D
FatefulLove said: Anime had been around me for as long as I remember, since in Hong Kong, anime was just really a set norm...[/s]
I am British-born-Chinese & anime has pretty much always been part of my life as well. My family would rent videotapes & watch stuff on TVB etc.
Doraemon, Yamato Takeru, Creamy Mami, Cooking Boy, Sailor Moon, IQ professor etc...
Later my sister introduced us to the Shonen classics like One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho & other popular stuff like Cardcaptor Sakura.
I must have watched a good 40+ titles before I got fed up of watching things other people recommended.
Stopped watching for a few years, then after my trip to Japan 2 years ago I got curious & started looking for shows that interested me. Have been addicted since.
I am British-born-Chinese & anime has pretty much always been part of my life as well. My family would rent videotapes & watch stuff on TVB etc.
Doraemon, Yamato Takeru, Creamy Mami, Cooking Boy, Sailor Moon, IQ professor etc...
Later my sister introduced us to the Shonen classics like One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho & other popular stuff like Cardcaptor Sakura.
I must have watched a good 40+ titles before I got fed up of watching things other people recommended.
Stopped watching for a few years, then after my trip to Japan 2 years ago I got curious & started looking for shows that interested me. Have been addicted since.
That's nice to hear, but yeah, TVB was a really important part of my childhood. The titles you mentioned looks quite familiar, especially IQ professor, though I don't remember much about them. I do remember part of the opening from IQ professor, but I somehow can't remember me actually watching it. Old Master Q was also an important one and some other non-Japanese made cartoons.
I was influenced by my brother on what ever anime he would be watching, I'll be watching, though I'll probably put only Crayon Shin-chan on him. Looking back, they were quite the fun times to be in, especially Doraemon is still a series I really think highly of. It just doesn't get old.
I got into Naruto after I found out a friend of me watched it. I was watching some AMVs of Naruto and I saw this AMV:
I watched this show because it looked interesting. I searched for it and found out that there are a lot more anime, so I watched a few of them and ever since than I as hooked.
When I was little I started to watch Yu-Gi-Oh! until my mother quit letting me because she's an awful person, and when I got older I watched Yu-Gi-Oh!, DBZ, and InuYasha at about the same time. That + me discovering the internet = here I am.
My friend got me to watch Inuyasha when it was airing (english dub) on tv back when I was in 5th grade and didn't know about subs. (It's funny that I'm more into anime than my friend is now).
I did some drugs, got pretty fucked up -- ended up in the hospital for a while. I was lookin' for a good fap in the middle of the night when I came across some nice hentai, and damn I jerked like a mad man to that hentai. Anyhow, after that I accidentally clicked on a somewhat hardcore ecchi show. Unwillingly, I started down the weeaboo path! Oh the misery that followed!
My interest for anime started back in 2012 when I found the first episode of Sukitte Iinayo on a certain site and decided to watch, only to try because I was bored. I got absolutely stuck with anime since then.
For some reason, I can vividly remember my experience with first getting introduced to anime. I was the sort of kid that watched a lot of different random cartoons as a child. Yes, I watched THE original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon...as well as shows like Garfield and Sonic SatAM. A lot of those shows were kinda going to the wayside during the late 90s and I wasn't enjoying a lot of new shows.
Then, I just decided to tune into Fox Kids one Saturday morning and they (as of a week prior) started showing anime style shows. The first one that aired that I watched was a show called Escaflowne. I was FUCKING ENTHRALLED! The show was amazing! Then, I saw a few others like Digimon and Monster Rancher. I really liked Digimon and give it the credit for getting me into anime because Escaflowne was cancelled shortly after I started watching it, but Digimon was on for practically ever. Monster Rancher kinda sucked...I really liked the intro...but the show itself was pretty terrible.
I didn't have cable TV as a kid (I grew up in a poor family where all we had was an antenna). I rediscovered my love for anime in college when I would watch Adult Swim and Anime Unleashed.