Why anime?

CrackTheSky · Post by **CrackTheSky** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 4:49 pm

I'm going to assume that all - or at least most - of us here share an interest in anime. My question is - why? What makes anime your form of entertainment of choice? What is it that got you into anime in the first place, and is that still a factor now?

I myself am not really sure. Like, I can remember way back in like seventh grade when I first saw anime like Ronin Warriors, Gundam Wing, and DBZ on Toonami. That was my first exposure to anime, but after that I didn't watch it for a long time. I remember watching a few episodes of Trigun on late night Toonami (I don't think it was called Adult Swim yet), but other than that I kind of ignored it. Then I slept over at my friend's house one night my junior year of high school and he kept on insisting I watch Evangelion, so I did...and I was hooked. I borrowed the series from him and watched it all the way through. I was obsessed with the psychology behind it and actually decided that I wanted to major in psychology thanks to Eva (although I've since changed my mind about that).

I think the reason I like anime is because no matter what I'm feeling, there's an anime out there to match that feeling. It's a nice way to escape sometimes, and there are a lot of really imaginative concepts presented through anime that I like to explore. I know that sounds really broad, but it's the best I can do because sometimes I really don't know what exactly draws me into anime, what makes me want to watch as much anime as I possibly can.

What about you?

CodeZTM · Post by **CodeZTM** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 5:19 pm

It started for me with a little known anime known as Pokemon (Well known being indirect sarcasm

) Anyway, after the 3 milllonth, 545 thousandth, 454 hundreth episode, I got just a slight bit irritable with it, so I moved onward to digimon, beyblade, and all the other toondisney anime. That was about 4th grade, and anime just kind of went away until my freshmen year in high school. That's about when Eva came on Adult Swim, so I bought it's entire series over the internet. While shopping for it, I came across several other sweet anime that I bought. I found this forum in March, and decided to keep up the anime fandomness. Dunno where this will take me from now.....

sprueill · Post by **sprueill** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 7:58 pm

...cartoon network otaku..BAH!

I first was interested in anime when I was seven as well and my uncle gave me his robotec VHS collection...that was what, 80? I did more research into just what it was and found that it was japanese, so I leanred as much of the languge I could. after that I began searching for more because the collection was only so large....searching for titles became difficult it was like treasure hunting, and it soon developed into a passion. by the time I was 16 my father's navy freinds were sending me titles like city hunter and blue sonnet. it was this way I learned about ranma and through that I learned manga. it forced me to learn to read in japanese, somthing I still have trouble with today. with the advent of the internet my hunts became easier, but then cartoon network had it's toonami block. by then I was not happy. while these titles seemed old to me now when I thought about the work I had to do to get my hands on some of the DBZ episodes, and seeing the edited to the point there was no gore version being delivered to kids on a platter I was not happy at all.

then anime became a fad, I got pissed, and here we are today. I still look for the 'unpopular' titles or hard to find because of poor sales and the like.

freddy12354 · Post by **freddy12354** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:40 am

while i was little i wacthed Pokemon, dbz, digimon and beyblade and at a moment i got tired of it and stopped.

then years after my cousin came and showed me Neon Genesis Evangelion, and there it started, i got bitten and now im here.

I found this forum on google i tired to find some anime trailers and ran into a AMV from this page, checked the page out and now im completely consumed...

Reikah · Post by **Reikah** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:40 pm

Unlike a lot of people on this board, I'm relatively new to anime. (Yeah, I know... sorry.)

My best friend introduced me to anime just a bit over a year ago - my mother had just died and along he came with an armload of CDs in an attempt to distract me. I guess it worked: I've been addicted, (and very distracted), ever since. I'd watched Astro Boy, Belle and Sebastian when I was really young, and had seen and enjoyed Cowboy Bebop and Mononoke Hime (in English) more recently, but he came by with Fullmetal Alchemist, Trigun, Samurai Champloo and another half a dozen titles. It was love at first sight. Since then I've seen a healthy amount, probably polishing off 50-60 titles in the last year.

The reason I've stuck with anime, and continue to enjoy it probably stems from cliche's. They abound in so many series, and I love it. Characters are cliche'd, storylines are cliche'd... But cliche's exist for a reason - they're strong models on which to base a series: the tragic hero, the misunderstood antagonist... I guess these models are allowed free reign in animes, and viewers are able to suspend their disbelief and simply enjoy the story.

The animation allows for exageration, and the fact that so many of the best animes are series allows for an amazing amount of character or storyline development. Unlike animation stemming from much of the rest of the world, anime understands that much of its audience is comprised of adults and gives them the credit they deserve.

This doesn't apply to everything, but I find the same similarities popping up in my favourite titles.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:06 am

It is relevent to my interests...

Cornwiggle · Post by **Cornwiggle** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:32 am

I believe the first anime I watched was Sailormoon, it was about 2 years before Pokemon. Though I didn't watch it just because it was anime, I just..enjoyed it, and soon found that I enjoyed most other Japanese cartoons.

Krisqo · Post by **Krisqo** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 10:33 am

It started with The orginal Transformers and eventually moved to Sailor Moon since my sister watched it EVERY DAY. At one point, I had the episode where Sailor Venus appeard for the first time memorized word for word, action for action. Then I got caught up int the Pokemon craze up to the Indigo Pokemon League which was when I strted watching Digimon more. Then one friend of mine kept talking about this show where some guy was gonna blast the world to pieces if he used an attack but then teleported down and blasted the bad guy's head off. We all know what that series is. I started DBZ when Vegete got taken over by Babidi. Then I was addicted, recording every episode I could on VHS. My First DVD was Coolers Revenge. I branched out a little when Toonami put on Eva and Nadesco one week, but I hated both at the time.

It was four years ago when I started watching Adult Swim (I wanted to see what Was On it) and I started likeing Outlaw Star and CowboyBebop. Later in the year, they announced Inuyasha which I began watching religously at 11 every night. That was followed by FLCL. I stayed the same Until I stumbled across Slayers The Motion Picture after seeing it in an AMV. So I bought it and got introduced to a new series. I got The Book of Spells around Christmas of 02. I forget what happend there, but I gradually started getting more DVDs and eventually got back to Eva when I got The End of Evangelion. I think the show was so hevily editig on CN to the point it sucked, but I loved the uncut version so I bought some of the orginal DVD. From there, I don't know what happend but I got hooked and now my collection has grown from five DVDs in 2003 to about 200 as of right now.

devilmaykickass · Post by **devilmaykickass** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:34 pm

I don't watch anime because it's anime, I just happen to watch and like certain series' that fall under the classification. Just like there's non-anime series/movies that I love, though not half as many seeing as anime has the widest range of animation aimed at a wide/non-child audience.

Liking anime because it's anime/calling yourself an "otaku" is quite possibly the most retarded thing ever. Next to being a Republican.

Ijnek5 · Post by **Ijnek5** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 10:48 pm

...hrmm...where to begin... well i sorta knew about anime in general growing up and being in a japanese dominant school, a number of my friends kept talking about them so...i did some research and basically found out about all of the wonderful types of anime that are out there, however, since my internet connection was (and still is) rather poor, i was unable to really do anything (ie. download) and watch them, so, i waited for the various stations to air their own respective anime series and have been doing as such for the majority of my life now, however, because of the above mentioned internet connection, i also got into manga and have kept up with a number of series on groups.msn.com along with stoptazmo.com. so with all the manga along with the random series that i borrowed from my friends or those censored and poorly dubbed episodes, that are well, basically everywhere, i kinda sorta used the connections that friends of mine had and borrowed their torrneted anime...yeah...thats about it... cheers!