What was your first anime show or film?
For me? The first anime related thing I saw as a kid was Spirited Away on VHS, I was awestruck from the animation and quality of the film.
For shows it would’ve been the usual Pokemon and DBZ. As I grew older I suppose my first proper anime show was watching streams of Neon Genesis Evangelion due to people talking about it at school.
So what about you? What did you see first?
My parents bought me My Neighbor Totoro when I was a kid. I absolutely loved every second of it. Then I came across Ranma 1/2. Next came Kiki’s Delivery Service. It kind of snowballed after that.
First show was probably Voltron. First film was probably Vampire Hunter D.
Toonami became a big part of my life, and there was a small theater downtown that did showings of Miyazaki and such. I remember seeing Metropolis there, too.
I owe a lot to those scrappy little enterprises, taking a gamble that there would be an audience for this stuff.
Show - Robotech, it was on Sunday mornings on sci-fi channel for a while in the mid 90s. Film - Ninja Scroll, dad had a descrambler and saw it on PPV in the early 00s. Good times.
Pokemon for TV, movie would probably be Laputa.
I remember watching Totoro as a child not knowing it was an anime. Later I watched The Guyver (1989 OVA) on VHS at my cousin’s. Evangelion and Lodoss War were the first fansubs I watched knowing they were Japanese.
Evangelion was pretty early on my list too, stuck with me though to this day as my all-time favorite anime.
Wagamama Fairy Mirmo De Pon!, an obscure anime that is basically The Fairly Oddparents if it was a shoujo. When I was in elementary school, it was on regional TV right after classes ended, and I loved it. It was the first ever media I could get my hands on that had an intriguing plot that I wanted to follow. I missed the series finale, tho :(
Some time ago I went back and rewatched it, complete with the finale and all. It was nostalgic but also kinda hard to rewatch because it’s so clearly made exclusively for children. It was so obscure that the only full download I could come across online even had the logo of the regional TV channel where I originally watched it as a child.
Probably “Alfred J Kwak”. A Dutch cartoon produced in Japan. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLITzooyl5h5GKwvnwe3zSVXjnrDOiO_5P
Or “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Adventures_of_Nils_(TV_series)
Back in the 70’s and 80’s it was common to outsource the production of animation to Japan. So many European cartoons were basically anime. It had the typical Japanese animation style of that time. For example the same company that produced “Alfred J Kwak” made the 1990 version of the Moomin TV-series.
I’m surprised only a handful of people have mentioned Ghibli movies. For me it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, it’s probably one of the first movies I remember watching in general. Still my favorite Ghibli movie and I must have watched it dozens of times as a kid.
The source material for it is a manga by Miyazaki himself and it’s much longer and deeper (the movie only covers about 1.5 out of 7 volumes, and changes a lot of details). Highly recommended.Very first was probably Inuyasha, Dragonball Z, or some Gundam way back on adult swim as a kid. My first real one that I engaged with as a semi-adult was probably Death Note.
Death note
dbz and pokemon as well but only when id catch it between other activities. Didn’t actually sit through an entire anime until high school where my friend borrowed me Cromartie High.
First film was probably the first Pokémon film in theaters.
I watched sword art online because I read a little about the plot and it sounded interesting to me. Second was High School DxD I believe I picked because there wasn’t much else dubbed (I don’t watch anything dubbed really now).
I went through a big binge of practically everything after that but only really watch the odd airing one now.
It was the year of our lord 1990, I was 5 years old, and the time was somewhere after midnight. I had snuck out of my room and into my grandparents basement to sneak some late night tv.
The original Vampire Hunter D was playing and I had no idea what it was, but it was amazing. The guy had a hand that ATE things!!!
I didn’t realize what it was until around 8th grade when I started getting into the standards of DBZ and Sailor Moon… I expanded drastically from there once I realized I could, spent around $4000 on manga throughout highschool and found a little hole in the wall DVD rental shop on the local college campus with a wall of anime DVDs and VHS tapes.
I think my first late night tv adventure was seeing Akira and having absolutely no idea what was going on.
Dude, you could relive that, watch it TODAY, and still have no idea what was going on.
Almost like watching it for the first time again.
Outlaw Star was my first, on early Toonami. I got into DBZ because outlaw star came on later in the night and I refused to miss any of it! It was so… different from everything else on TV.
Still one of my absolute favorites to this day, I prefer it over Cowboy Bebop 😘
Outlaw star was an early watch for me too, was amazing. Really solidified my love of everything space related.
Akira
