Cardcaptor Sakura I was 6 
all i gotta say is Tactics. anyone else heard of it, oddly enough, it inspired me to this life style of anime!!@!
Cowboy bebop was my first anime i watched but gundam wing was the the first i watched all the way threw.
now i own the complete set of gundam wing and catch cowboy bebop every now n then on adultswim.
What drew you to anime? What keeps you watching?
[quote=āMrsRish, post:1, topic:6267, full:trueā]
Iām curious as to what it is about anime that pulled you into watching it. Was it your first anime that made you come back for more? Was it a specific show some time after that made you go āOoh! Ah! I want to watch moreā?
And what is it that keeps you watching now?
Iām particularly interested to hear the answers of those of you who have watched for several years, but anyone is welcome to post an answer no matter how long you have watched anime.[/quote]
Originally posted: July 12, 2012 @ 8:26pm
Giant Robots, Robot Boys and all the techie toys that appealed so much to a wide-eyed young boy in the 1960ās & 70ās.
I saw Gigantor and Astro Boy in Black & White and was hooked. Speed Racer in Color, oh and a lot of radioactive giant monster movies, just drove it home even deeper.
Iāve been a fan for a long long time and I now have my choice of techie marvels, but I still enjoy Anime.
Mark Gosdin
The first couple anime series I watched as a kid, I never realized were anime at the time. They were stuff like Voltron, Sailor Moon, Samurai Pizza Cats, and TeknoMan. But I was a big cartoon fan (and still am) so I probably would have watched those, whether they were Japanese, American, or whatever.
The first things that I watched that I knew were anime, weāre the movies that aired on SciFi back in the 90ās. The two that stuck out the most were Vampire Hunter D and EYES of Mars. They are both part of my collection today, though EYES is only on VHS. Iāve always enjoyed animation with more grown up themes, and thatās part of the reason why I enjoyed D so much.
The first anime that actually got me collecting DVDs was Descendants of Darkness. CPM actually marketed it in gay magazines and catalogs and that was where I initially read about it. I stumbled across it at On Cue (before they all became Sam Goody) and picked up the first volume. I loved the art and animation and by the end of the volume, I was hooked. I immediately went online and ordered the other DVDs of the series. DoD was also the first show that intoroduced me to the notorious āopenā anime endings.
One of the biggest draws to anime now for me, is the fact that itās stuck primarily to more traditional looking animation, while most animation in the US and other places has largely moved to CGI. I donāt particularly mind CGI, but I think itās bit much now that every Hollywood studio is putting films animated that way and that traditional animation has basically died on the big screen. There is a type of warmth and depth that traditional animation is able to portray that is just missing from CGI. The images in the Pixar and Dreamworks movies always seem colder than those is the older Disney, Rankin Bass, Don Bluth, Ralph Bakshi, Hanna Barbera, etc films.
Also, I love the fact that anime combines animation with more adult themes. Itās why Iām such a big fan of Ralph Bakshi films, and things like Heavy Metal. They are willing to touch topics that you donāt see in American animation very often, other than tags in American Dad and Family Guy. Anime series also arenāt afraid to kill of major characters. I donāt care how good a show is, if you go into each episode knowing that none of the cast is going to die, it takes a lot of the suspense out of whatever is happening on screen. In anime, no one is safe.
I guess itās pretty simple for me. ^-^; I quite literally had nothing else to do as my life back then was quite devoid ofā¦ wellā¦ everything. At first I just thought āoh cool, this cartoon looks good. Oh wait, itās called anime.ā I sort of jumpped around on shows (never really watching them all the way through) from Gurren Lagann to Lucky Star until I came to Magical Pokaan (A.K.A. Renkin 3-kyÅ« Magical? PokÄn). Once I saw that one all the way through I decided to pick anime up in general as a hobby.
About half of a year passed until I came to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and to keep a VERY long story short Iāll just say it made me a huge fan of anime. Ever since, I have never really lost my drive to watch anime. I guess this all happened around 2 years ago; Iām still fuzzy on the actual time, so the numbers may be a bit off (small if anything).
I have just kept watching because I like anime; not much else to sayā¦ except Iāve taken a good liking to Japanese culture and folklore. 
That, and what else will give me so much of the cute I love so much? ^Ļ^
Sailor Moon when I was a kid. I even had a fanclub. fml
the impossible becoming possibleā¦the ridiculous being accepted and even anticipated. I wasnāt a big anime fan until I watched inuyasha, then there was āblack butlerā, kaze no stigmaā and chrome regios. so what keeps me watching? Lots of magic, action and a little bit of romance to keep things interesting
I loved Japanese animation and sci-fi movies/series since I was probably 3 years old. Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Thunderbirds 2086, Voltron, Dragonball and Dragonball Z were series I truly enjoyed, but InuYasha is the series that hooked me for good. Now, I still love to watch long series like Naruto Shippuden and Bleach, but most of my anime are shorter running series that I donāt have to invest decades of my life to.
Slick
What drew me to anime: I like the fact that it covers every imaginable genre, and goes into so much more depth than Iām used to with other animation. I also find that anime is less predictable than most other shows. A lot of times, I can predict the plot of a show from the first 10 minutes, but not so much with anime. I also love the animation, and the art style, which is a lot more interesting than anything else Iāve seen.
What keeps me watching: The hopes that anime will continue to captivate me, and keep me entertained, and I havenāt been disappointed yet. Like I said, every genre imaginable, and some I never thought of, and that keeps things interesting. The thing is, I can find something interesting about any anime I watch, so I tend to enjoy everything.
I wrote this really long post and then realized it was only marginally on topic, so I put it in a spoiler tag instead of deleting itā¦
[spoiler]Iāve touched on this a little in my introduction from a couple years ago, but Iāll elaborate a little more. This also doubles as how I managed to find this placeā¦
Little did I know at the time, Iāve been watching anime since I was very young. Mostly the common anime that you would see on TV. Pokemon, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moonā¦ you know, the classics. I didnāt know they were anime, but what I did know is that they were considerably different from the other cartoons I was watching at the time. When Adult Swim started showing anime, I would always stay up late to watch whatever was on. For a while after Adult Swim stopped showing as much anime as the did back when they started, I stopped watching anime for a little while, until high school, when I watched Fullmetal Alchemist.
Fullmetal Alchemist (the first one), was the first anime I watched all the way through. So at some point a year or so after that, I was out of High School, and in college, and I really had nothing to do with my free time. I was talking to one of my friends about anime and mentioned that the only anime I had seen all the way through was Fullmetal Alchemist. He suggested I watch Code Geass, and after doing so, I wanted to watch something a littleā¦ happier. I found Lucky Star filled that niche very nicely.
I wanted to watch another anime like Lucky Star, so after looking around a little bit, I found that Azumanga Daioh was apparently just the anime I was looking for. But where was I going to watch it? Well I found it here, so I signed up, and watched it all the way through. Since then Iāve watched more Anime than anyone else I knowā¦ and thatās that.[/spoiler]
[quote=āPretearHimenoā post=121672]
-_- Hentai isnāt a real genre
I canāt believe I just read a comment referring to Dragon Ball Z as a āclassic.ā Iām not gonna lie. I got a little nauseated right then.
:silly: Well, I wasnāt being serious, if that makes you feel any better. If not, eat some TUMS and youāll feel better in an hour.
Possibly, but I may still need to have you eliminated. Decisions. Decisions.
But if you eliminate me thenā¦ I actually donāt know what would happen. Best case scenario, nothing happens. Worst case, the world blows up.
Do you really want to risk that Cody? Do you want to be the one responsible for blowing up the world?
Um, Codyā¦ If you eliminate my Agent 65, then Iāll have to do the CYB/B lists againā¦ 
My first exposure to anime was also back in the '60s. I also watched Gigantor, Astro Boy, Marine Boy and Speed Racer, but the series that stuck with me was 8th Man-a very film noir series that was āsanitizedā for American audiences. However, I was not a fan of the intervening '70s and '80s anime series, due mainly to the atrocious localizing and just plain butchering of so many series. Also, I was a father of young children then and detested series that seemed to exist only to advertise overpriced toys.
Fast forward to 2005. Iām playing with Winamp TV and stumble across Please Teacher! I have to confess I was expecting something other than what I found , but I found something much better-animation that didnāt insult my intelligence, that looked like it was crafted with care and that told a story. Thatās why Iāve stuck with anime since then.
[quote=āNewshawkā post=121692]My first exposure to anime was also back in the '60s. I also watched Gigantor, Astro Boy, Marine Boy and Speed Racer, but the series that stuck with me was 8th Man-a very film noir series that was āsanitizedā for American audiences. However, I was not a fan of the intervening '70s and '80s anime series, due mainly to the atrocious localizing and just plain butchering of so many series. Also, I was a father of young children then and detested series that seemed to exist only to advertise overpriced toys.
Fast forward to 2005. Iām playing with Winamp TV and stumble across Please Teacher! I have to confess I was expecting something other than what I found , but I found something much better-animation that didnāt insult my intelligence, that looked like it was crafted with care and that told a story. Thatās why Iāve stuck with anime since then.[/quote]
I remember Speed Racer more than anything in the 70ās. I also remember Astro Boy, but I believe Speed Racer was on a lot in the 70ās and 80ās, so that would probably be the first anime I was hooked on. I should have mentioned that Gantz got me hooked on TAN!
Slick