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How did you get into anime? (And why you love it)


AlwaysSearching

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Lately I've felt that none of the popular discussion on here really grabs my attention just because a lot of it is... mundane I guess?

So I figured it'd be a good idea to make this new topic because I feel like it's something that EVERYONE here has some deep connection to, and it'll really help us understand each other better! (I think)

I got into anime when I was about 7 years old (2004) when my sister stumbled across Toonami for the first time. She showed me a few epsiodes of Inuyasha and all I could really tell about it was that as far as cartoons went, this one was WAY MORE DETAILED and intense than anything else I'd seen!

I didnt immediately fall in love though, it wasn't until I stumbled upon "Naruto" the very next year that I found any sort of "love" for anime. My life wasn't very rough, but at the time I was starting to get bullied a bit at school, so seeing Naruto being treated like an outcast for something he couldnt control felt... familiar to me.

Seeing someone I could relate to like that was already eye-opening enough ESPECIALLY with how emotional the show can be in softer moments, but watching Naruto stare his problems in the face without backing down and becoming someone people admired and looked up to after being a silly goofball his whole life really gave me confidence that I could do the same things with my own life!

And I guess that's both how I got into anime AND why I love it. I got into it through pure chance really, but what keeps me around is the emotion, the inspiration, the messages to not back down and to make the most of your life.

That's what I love about anime 😊

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I got into anime when I was 16(26 years ago...geez!). I was a junior in HS. One of my teachers showed me some episodes of show called DNA2(squared). As I was part of the Magic the Gathering group that met in his room during lunch, he always showed us new and interesting things. It was at this moment that I realized that some of my favorite "cartoons" from my childhood were anime. Robotech, Voltron and Thundercats just to name a few. I had always instinctively recognized the anime style, but now I had a name for it and a point of origin. I started collecting immediately. LOL. Have been a die-hard fan ever since.

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My own anime journey spans 4 decades

it all started for me in the late 70’s/early 80’s when I saw Star Blazers (the Americanized version of theoriginal Space Battleship Yamato) while getting ready for grade school. From the subject matter, to the story continuity to the art style, eveything about it stood apart from the other “cartoons” that airedaround it (primarily Hana Barbera & comedic shorts like Loony Toons, Tom & Jerry, etc. ) I became so fixated with it I would even set my alarm clock for 6 am over summer break so I could watch it & go backto bed afterwards. Even when it went into reruns (they only had the first two arcs: Journey to Iscandar & The Comet Empire) I made it a point to watch every weekday when it aired. I remember seeing thedubbed version of the Galaxy Express 999 movie on tv around the same time & noticing it had the same style of characters. Battle of the Planets(Gatchaman) would also air sometimes before orbetween sporting events to fill air time, but I neverreally got into it. Over the years that followed , Iremember various other “cartoons” with similarities,some of which I now recognize as anime, thoughsome technically weren’t. Examples: Voltron, Mazinger Z, Thundercats, Beast Wars (TransformersCGI series), Mighty Orbots, Cyber 6, & Escaflowne.The one besides Star Blazers that had the biggestimpression on me was Robotech. That one getssome hate from hardcore otaku because it was 3 unrelated mecha anime (Macross, Southern Cross &Genesis Climber Mospeda) that were splicedtogether. But I enjoyed it & even read the novelizations that bridged them. My family didn’thave cable tv growing up, so my exposure was limited to edited/Americanized versions.

My next phase started in the mid 90’s when I had my first full time job & started exploring anime on VHS tapes. Memorable titles from that phase includeProject A-ko, Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Tenchi Muyo, Nadia-Secret of Blue Water & Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Moved on DVD with titles like Outlaw Star, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop & Saber Marionette J. Thatwas also the phase when I started exploring subtitled anime more.

Around 2010 my interest in anime waned. DVDs werestill petty expensive & increasingly things seemed tobe shifting to streaming. I lived in a rural area at thetime & although we had cable tv, a lack of reliable high speed internet made streaming not a viable option. I still enjoyed anime, but didn’t spend much time on it.

Then around 5 years ago, my life underwent a pretty big shakeup. In the aftermath, I moved into town &started watching more anime again as a way of trying to recapture nostalgia. However, the increasedfreedom of streaming led me to explore a wider spectrum of what anime has to offer. I’ve found a number of anime, sometimes a single episode other times an entire series that seem to resonate with what I went through or where I am right now. Plus many others that addressed complex topics. Of course there’s plenty of the more escapist variety as well.

I’m not sure where things will go from here, but seems highly unlikely I will ever completely outgrow my love of anime :P 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Ohayotaku

About the only thing I’d add to this previous response is that I’ve always been fascinated with animation as a medium because of it’s ability to give form to worlds that only exist in imagination. Even when dealing with a realistic topic/subject, art style & character designs  can add a level to it not found in the natural world. While this is not exclusive to Japan, the sheer amount of anime that is created on a seasonal/annual basis & the variety of genres explored seems many times greater than what other cultures produce when it comes to animation. Granted certain genres have been over represented & there are too many knockoffs without any originality in tecent years, but I still feel anime is the best representation of the medium’s potential.

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40 minutes ago, Otaking66lives said:

It was at this moment that I realized that some of my favorite "cartoons" from my childhood were anime. Robotech, Voltron and Thundercats just to name a few.

So you were into anime before you even knew it, it's funny how many people end up loving anime almost on accident like that lol. What about those shows really pulled you in?

36 minutes ago, Ohayotaku said:

 

My own anime journey spans 4 decades

it all started for me in the late 70’s/early 80’s when I saw Star Blazers

I think the most interesting part of your story to me at least is that for a long long time, it seems like your connection to anime was like the connection people have with a hobby that they typically use to just have a nice relaxing time. But more recently even though you recognize a sort of creative exhaustion within anime as a whole, you've found more ressonance with and a deeper personal connection to anime since you got back into it 5 years ago. So you were kind of on both sides where for a while it was just a nice hobby, but these days it sounds as though you feel anime is more a part of your identity than ever before. Is that right, or kind of a stretch on my part?

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What pulled me in was the fact that the art was so different, so much more crisp. Also, none of the anime shows were just episodic. The episodes built on a grand story that the show was trying to tell. American cartoons were not doing that at the time.

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In 1996 I discovered anime by accident while channel hopping on my TV. One of the channels was showing what I took to be a cartoon of some sort, but after a few minutes I realised that it was nothing like any of the cartoons I'd seen before, the artwork and animation were far better and it was obviously part of a long running story so when the episode ended I took to the Internet, or the World Wide Web as it was known then, it wasn't as big as it is today and it was a lot slower. In those days access was by dial-up connection and even at 56K pages took a while to load, but at the end of my search I knew that what I'd been watching was called 'anime' and it came from Japan.
Much to my disappointment the TV channel stopped showing this 'anime' thing after a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks after that I found out that a local record shop sold anime series on VHS tapes and one the the series they had was one of the ones I seen part of on TV, so I bought the wholes series, which was about 5 or 6 VHS tapes.
The rest,as they say, is history.

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2 hours ago, Otaking66lives said:

What pulled me in was the fact that the art was so different, so much more crisp. Also, none of the shows were just episodic. The episodes built on a grand story that the show was trying to tell. American cartoons were not doing that at the time.

And even putting the show structure aside, there's a lot to say about the power of a show that can draw people in with nothing more than pure fuckin' style. Outlaw Star is a perfect example, I have almost zero clue what's going on in that show, but I really dont care because the world and characters are just so easy on the eyes and really capture your imagination. So when you say the art was a good hook for you, I totally relate to that lol

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Honestly for me, I saw something I thought looked cool, I watched it, got hooked and continued watching things like that (aka anime). 

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2 hours ago, Animedragon said:

In 1996 I discovered anime by accident while channel hopping on my TV. One of the channels was showing what I took to be a cartoon of some sort, but after a few minutes I realised that it was nothing like any of the cartoons I'd seen before, the artwork and animation were far better and it was obviously part of a long running story so when the episode ended I took to the Internet, or the World Wide Web as it was known then, it wasn't as big as it is today and it was a lot slower.

And just imagine if you didn't manage to catch that show when it was still being broadcast on that channel, and you weren't introduced to anime for another 2, 3, 4 years. There's a chance by then you could have already been given a bad impression either from heresay or from talking to friends and you wouldnt have been able to view it in such a curious unbiased way.

But because all the stars aligned you're here with us today. That's just the fucking coolest 😎

4 minutes ago, Metro said:

Honestly for me, I saw something I thought looked cool, I watched it, got hooked and continued watching things like that (aka anime). 

Is it cool if I ask what hooked you? By all means you dont have to dive into it but I AM curious lol

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2 minutes ago, AlwaysSearching said:

Is it cool if I ask what hooked you? By all means you dont have to dive into it but I AM curious lol

Mostly the art style, the stories that are told within the anime, the music. General things 😂

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7 hours ago, AlwaysSearching said:

And just imagine if you didn't manage to catch that show when it was still being broadcast on that channel, and you weren't introduced to anime for another 2, 3, 4 years. There's a chance by then you could have already been given a bad impression either from heresay or from talking to friends and you wouldnt have been able to view it in such a curious unbiased way.

But because all the stars aligned you're here with us today. That's just the fucking coolest 😎

Is it cool if I ask what hooked you? By all means you dont have to dive into it but I AM curious lol

Your first point is very true. Here in the UK anime got a VERY bad press due to the actions of some distributors (no names, no pack drill) if I'd read that before I actually saw any anime I most likely would never have started watching it.

What hooked me into anime was the quality of the whole package.  Artwork, characters (their design and personalities), the storylines and the background music and the way all these elements are blended together to create a whole experience.

If you read a book by, for example, J.K.Rowling, J.R.R.Tolkien or Agatha Christie they go to great lengths to create the character's personalities and situations for their stories so it's easy to believe that Harry Potter, Gandalf and Miss Marple etc are real people and when you reach the last page and close the book you know that somewhere those people are carrying on with their lives and I get the same feeling at the end of an anime series.

Someone once said that in Western animation the storyline dictates the character's actions, while in anime it's the characters that drive the storyline forward. It's a very subtle, but very important difference.


I could probably waffle on about other aspects of anime that I like, but I've waffled enough for one post. 🙂

 

 

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7 hours ago, Animedragon said:

If you read a book by, for example, J.K.Rowling, J.R.R.Tolkien or Agatha Christie they go to great lengths to create the character's personalities and situations for their stories so it's easy to believe that Harry Potter, Gandalf and Miss Marple etc are real people and when you reach the last page and close the book you know that somewhere those people are carrying on with their lives and I get the same feeling at the end of an anime series.

That's actually a fantastic point, there's so many stories and shows that miss the mark with their characters because they tried to write them AS CHARACTERS first, and as PEOPLE second. So the result is often that you cant take anyone in the story seriously and none of whats happening feels like it really matters just because no one is acting in a believeable way.

Unfortunately the more saturated the market gets, I feel like more and more anime are getting made that way. Fewer stories about people, and more stories about characters that exist to sell figures and posters :/ You can really feel it when you go to Artist Alley at an anime convention, it's the biggest draw at nearly every convention and it's just looooooaded with fan-service and the whatnot. Anything that can have a characters face slapped on it, and bonus points if they've got massive titties 🙃

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52 minutes ago, AlwaysSearching said:

That's actually a fantastic point, there's so many stories and shows that miss the mark with their characters because they tried to write them AS CHARACTERS first, and as PEOPLE second. So the result is often that you cant take anyone in the story seriously and none of whats happening feels like it really matters just because no one is acting in a believeable way.

Unfortunately the more saturated the market gets, I feel like more and more anime are getting made that way. Fewer stories about people, and more stories about characters that exist to sell figures and posters :/ You can really feel it when you go to Artist Alley at an anime convention, it's the biggest draw at nearly every convention and it's just looooooaded with fan-service and the whatnot. Anything that can have a characters face slapped on it, and bonus points if they've got massive titties 🙃

A while back I read somewhere that some anime studios produce series just to sell merchandise, they're not really bothered about the story just as long as its got cute girls they can sell models and other stuff of. The trouble is that if they keep doing that eventually people will get fed up with generic series and stop buying them.

About 10 years a go I used to regularly atend anime conventions and I saw the contents of the dealer's rooms slowly change from quality original Japanese merchandise to items produced by Western companies who were jumping on the merch bandwagon. Some of the stuff was good, but most wasn't.

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23 minutes ago, Animedragon said:

A while back I read somewhere that some anime studios produce series just to sell merchandise, they're not really bothered about the story just as long as its got cute girls they can sell models and other stuff of. The trouble is that if they keep doing that eventually people will get fed up with generic series and stop buying them.

About 10 years a go I used to regularly atend anime conventions and I saw the contents of the dealer's rooms slowly change from quality original Japanese merchandise to items produced by Western companies who were jumping on the merch bandwagon. Some of the stuff was good, but most wasn't.

That's just awful man...

Anime at its best is such a wholesome, spiritually enriching and thought provoking thing. Its a medium that built on emotion, the human condition, teaches life lessons that actively help the viewer on their own day to day lives.

It sucks so hard to see how much of it ends up commercialised to hell and back for a quick buck. And honestly I feel like streaming didn't help the problem one bit because the rate at which anime is being churned out is so blindingly fast now that you can just feel how little soul actually makes its way into most shows.

Animators should be paid more to work less, produce a lower quantity of anime and take longer on each individual project.

How well do you remember the kind of merchandise you could find at conventions say... 10 years ago?

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Well I guess I'm reasonable new to anime, I've only been watching anime seriously for about 2 years, before that I'd watched four shows (from the best of my recollection), the first was Yamato remake this was around 2015 as I know I'd just seen the Force Awakens with my Brother when it released and we both left feeling pretty deflated from how generic and unoriginal it had been. He'd later stumbled on Yamato 2199 and watched the series and suggested I'd like it. We watched the show, and I enjoyed Yamato, however I did remember thinking there was a little too much fanservice at times. So skip a few months later and my brother was telling me about a show he'd seen clips off online called Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I decided to check it out and after four episodes found myself really enjoying the show and so me and my brother sat through and watched LOTGHs the new thesis. 

But it was a few months after that when my brother suggested we watch a show he binged in one night called Goblin Slayer. We watched the show, I enjoyed it and that was it for about two years. I ended up re-watching those three shows maybe another time, as we caught rumour that a new series for both the Yamato and LOTGH series was scheduled to air soon. 

Eventually my brother suggested we watch Neon Genesis Evangelion. So we watched the show, then the movie End of Evangelion. 

At this point anime went on the back burner as at the time I was in the middle of college and I was also doing some play throughs of some PC games like Fallout, KOTOR and I think Halo MCC had just released on PC. 

Eventually however I came back to anime, and this time for a pink haired anime girl I'd seen all over the internet...

See the source image

For some reason, Apocrypha had gripped me like no other anime series before. I wasn't even mad when Astolfo turned out to be a guy. Now I just wanted more anime. So I watched Fate/Zero, Steins Gate and then Ergo Proxy, Fate Unlimited Blade Works and then watched Psycho Pass, Wolfs Rain, the first two Heaven Feel movies, Parasyte the Maxim, Monster and so, so many more. At this point now I've watched 90 + shows, and most of those were in the last two years. I guess the way I got into Anime is pretty unusual (it was a real crawl and then a sudden sprint) and Fate is certainly the series that defines me most as an Anime fan.  

As for why I love Anime, I just think the stories in the shows and the characters are compelling. Plus the characters often look really good (I mean Fate packed with stellar character designs) and the action and animation flow in most the shows I've sat down to watch are super enjoyable. Also as my former primary passion of Games and Films have become too casual and commercialised for me to personally enjoy much anymore, (for films I say I began losing interest in the late 2000s, and as for games the late 2010s) Anime and all the decades of content were an easy medium to fall into. 

I do worry that one day I'd have watched all the good anime, as I've been working my way back through the years and sooner or later I'll run out, as I've yet to find a seasonal anime I'd really want to sit down and watch with only a few ongoing series that interest me, such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Madoka Magica and the Fate franchise. Also I do hold out hope that the Hunter X Hunter anime may return as I'm currently about to embark on the Greed Island arc and well at that point I only have the Chimera Ant arc and the Election arc to watch. I know there's the Dark Continent arc and the Succession arc so I hold unreasonable hope that it may one day be adapted up to the newest arc. 

A man can dream. 

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3 hours ago, AlwaysSearching said:

How well do you remember the kind of merchandise you could find at conventions say... 10 years ago?

The anime merchandise available at conventions 17 to 20 years ago largely consisted of art books for various series which had some really beautiful pictures in them, all the text was in Japanese but that didn't matter the books were worth buying just to look at the pictures. Other items were original soundtrack CDs with most of the track lists in Japanese (sometimes I could find translations on the 'Net), enamel pin badges were also a common item. There was usually a small collection of character figures and model kits, the the size of the packaging meant that the dealers couldn't get many of them in their cars. One year there was a stall selling anime plush toys and I got a rather nice Totoro who stands about a foot high to the tip of his ears.
17 to 10 years ago the rot started to set in with more and more dealers selling locally produced stuff and not all of it was properly licenced, and some of the soundtrack CDs were pirate copies, some of which were really professionally produced and not easy to spot.

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1 hour ago, MediaConsumesMe said:

Well I guess I'm reasonable new to anime, I've only been watching anime seriously for about 2 years, before that I'd watched four shows (from the best of my recollection), the first was Yamato remake this was around 2015 as I know I'd just seen the Force Awakens with my Brother when it released and we both left feeling pretty deflated from how generic and unoriginal it had been. He'd later stumbled on Yamato 2199 and watched the series and suggested I'd like it. We watched the show, and I enjoyed Yamato, however I did remember thinking there was a little too much fanservice at times. So skip a few months later and my brother was telling me about a show he'd seen clips off online called Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I decided to check it out and after four episodes found myself really enjoying the show and so me and my brother sat through and watched LOTGHs the new thesis. 

But it was a few months after that when my brother suggested we watch a show he binged in one night called Goblin Slayer. We watched the show, I enjoyed it and that was it for about two years. I ended up re-watching those three shows maybe another time, as we caught rumour that a new series for both the Yamato and LOTGH series was scheduled to air soon. 

Eventually my brother suggested we watch Neon Genesis Evangelion. So we watched the show, then the movie End of Evangelion. 

At this point anime went on the back burner as at the time I was in the middle of college and I was also doing some play throughs of some PC games like Fallout, KOTOR and I think Halo MCC had just released on PC. 

Eventually however I came back to anime, and this time for a pink haired anime girl I'd seen all over the internet...

See the source image

For some reason, Apocrypha had gripped me like no other anime series before. I wasn't even mad when Astolfo turned out to be a guy. Now I just wanted more anime. So I watched Fate/Zero, Steins Gate and then Ergo Proxy, Fate Unlimited Blade Works and then watched Psycho Pass, Wolfs Rain, the first two Heaven Feel movies, Parasyte the Maxim, Monster and so, so many more. At this point now I've watched 90 + shows, and most of those were in the last two years. I guess the way I got into Anime is pretty unusual (it was a real crawl and then a sudden sprint) and Fate is certainly the series that defines me most as an Anime fan.  

As for why I love Anime, I just think the stories in the shows and the characters are compelling. Plus the characters often look really good (I mean Fate packed with stellar character designs) and the action and animation flow in most the shows I've sat down to watch are super enjoyable. Also as my former primary passion of Games and Films have become too casual and commercialised for me to personally enjoy much anymore, (for films I say I began losing interest in the late 2000s, and as for games the late 2010s) Anime and all the decades of content were an easy medium to fall into. 

I do worry that one day I'd have watched all the good anime, as I've been working my way back through the years and sooner or later I'll run out, as I've yet to find a seasonal anime I'd really want to sit down and watch with only a few ongoing series that interest me, such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Madoka Magica and the Fate franchise. Also I do hold out hope that the Hunter X Hunter anime may return as I'm currently about to embark on the Greed Island arc and well at that point I only have the Chimera Ant arc and the Election arc to watch. I know there's the Dark Continent arc and the Succession arc so I hold unreasonable hope that it may one day be adapted up to the newest arc. 

A man can dream. 

Well I'm glad we both have siblings that kept finding anime for us to get into, or else neither of us would even be here lol

It really is interesting how you got reintroduced to anime SO many times before you found something that really "stuck" with you. Goes to show I guess that we should be more willing to withhold judgement on certain things until we've more thoroughly given them a chance, because we could really easily miss connecting with something that we would end up loving for life.

The commercialism side of things is really a bummer though, you're right on about that. Is there a game series that comes to mind to you as something that really got ruined by the modern landscape of things?

I'd have to say sports games stand out to me in that regard, the yearly release thing really hasnt been kind to the genre lol

5 minutes ago, Animedragon said:

The anime merchandise available at conventions 17 to 20 years ago largely consisted of art books for various series which had some really beautiful pictures in them, all the text was in Japanese but that didn't matter the books were worth buying just to look at the pictures. Other items were original soundtrack CDs with most of the track lists in Japanese (sometimes I could find translations on the 'Net), enamel pin badges were also a common item. There was usually a small collection of character figures and model kits, the the size of the packaging meant that the dealers couldn't get many of them in their cars. One year there was a stall selling anime plush toys and I got a rather nice Totoro who stands about a foot high to the tip of his ears.
17 to 10 years ago the rot started to set in with more and more dealers selling locally produced stuff and not all of it was properly licenced, and some of the soundtrack CDs were pirate copies, some of which were really professionally produced and not easy to spot.

I get the impression practicallity of what you can find at conventions has sharply fallen, based on what you just said. Like having official soundtracks of shows you love is incredibly practical, as are whole ass books devoted to the visual designs of those shows. It all centers around a love for the show and provides some sort of benefit to you for buying it.

Now don't get me wrong, you can technically get use out of a mouse pad with titties or a body pillow with a waifu on it, but they almost seem more like "gag gifts" than something someone would honestly want to use.

What was the coolest thing you ever bought at a con?

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1 hour ago, AlwaysSearching said:

I get the impression practicallity of what you can find at conventions has sharply fallen, based on what you just said. Like having official soundtracks of shows you love is incredibly practical, as are whole ass books devoted to the visual designs of those shows. It all centers around a love for the show and provides some sort of benefit to you for buying it.

Now don't get me wrong, you can technically get use out of a mouse pad with titties or a body pillow with a waifu on it, but they almost seem more like "gag gifts" than something someone would honestly want to use.

What was the coolest thing you ever bought at a con?

Yes, the practicality of the merchandise on sale at the last couple of conventions I went to had dropped quite a lot. Most of the stuff I bought was more in the way of memorabilia of the series I liked, if I had a model, CD or art book it was like I had 'part' of the series.

I have to say that I find the idea of a body pillow with a waifu printed on it just a tiny bit creepy.

I think the coolest thing I bought at a con was the Totoro.

 

Totoro.jpg

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2 hours ago, AlwaysSearching said:

The commercialism side of things is really a bummer though, you're right on about that. Is there a game series that comes to mind to you as something that really got ruined by the modern landscape of things?

Well I guess if I had to pick one series that stands out to me I feel Halo. The original trilogy to the newest game Infinite really shows how what producers and developers alongside casual consumers value in there product which is shallow, low effort online life service games which is lacking features and core content games with the most functioning part of the game being the in game store. 

Also to clarify, I had enjoyed the anime I had seen prior to Apocrypha. I was interested in continuing those shows but there was no driving force pushing me to delve further in anime. Nothing pushing me to hunt down the next show. 

Why it was Fate? Not sure, I'd guess because I watched Apocrypha I was inspired to watch Zero. After watching Zero I wanted somthing like Zero but not another Fate show as watching two Date shows back to back even I wanted somthing different. 

Yet still anime. 

So I choose Steins Gate. And that was also awesome. And it pinwheels from there. 

For the first few months I watched some really good shows (Ergo Proxy, Psycho Pass, Monster) as well and I think that period shaped my taste for both action and phycological anime.

It was also interesting, and proberbly worth a mention but I remember when choosing to watch Psycho Pass it was down to it sharing the same writer as Fate Zero, Gen Urobuchi, and I think that's definitely an important milestone as like Games and Film before it where I eventually grew to try and learn about the people behind what I enjoyed and sought out there other works I was now doing the same with anime.

I mean by my second year as a anime weeb I sat down and watched a Magical Girl show just cause I found out Gen was involved in its production. 

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4 hours ago, MediaConsumesMe said:

Well I guess if I had to pick one series that stands out to me I feel Halo. The original trilogy to the newest game Infinite really shows how what producers and developers alongside casual consumers value in there product which is shallow, low effort online life service games which is lacking features and core content games with the most functioning part of the game being the in game store. 

Also to clarify, I had enjoyed the anime I had seen prior to Apocrypha. I was interested in continuing those shows but there was no driving force pushing me to delve further in anime. Nothing pushing me to hunt down the next show. 

Why it was Fate? Not sure, I'd guess because I watched Apocrypha I was inspired to watch Zero. After watching Zero I wanted somthing like Zero but not another Fate show as watching two Date shows back to back even I wanted somthing different. 

Yet still anime. 

So I choose Steins Gate. And that was also awesome. And it pinwheels from there. 

For the first few months I watched some really good shows (Ergo Proxy, Psycho Pass, Monster) as well and I think that period shaped my taste for both action and phycological anime.

It was also interesting, and proberbly worth a mention but I remember when choosing to watch Psycho Pass it was down to it sharing the same writer as Fate Zero, Gen Urobuchi, and I think that's definitely an important milestone as like Games and Film before it where I eventually grew to try and learn about the people behind what I enjoyed and sought out there other works I was now doing the same with anime.

I mean by my second year as a anime weeb I sat down and watched a Magical Girl show just cause I found out Gen was involved in its production. 

I liked Halo from 2 through Reach, but after that nothing of the little bits I played felt quite as good. Honestly it's a series that I only ever play for local multiplayer with friends, so as long as I've got one of the Halo games I already like I really dont need any more.

And I'm still waiting to mature to the point where I can latch onto a creator like that and give their other work a chance. Like it would make sense that if I like one of their "mind-babies" then I'll probably like the others. I just get hooked by concepts and visual style and when neither of those can hook me before I've actually watched an epsiode... I have a hard time giving the show a chance 🤷‍♂️

I consume anime really slowly and really take care to only wwtch something if I have a REAAAALLY good feeling I'm gonna like it, I don't take many chances when it comes to diving into new stuff.

I also haven't seen much (if any?) psychological anime. As someone that's developed a taste for it already, where would you say is a good place to start?

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3 hours ago, AlwaysSearching said:

I also haven't seen much (if any?) psychological anime. As someone that's developed a taste for it already, where would you say is a good place to start?

Well Steins Gate, Death Note are good places to start. After that Ergo Proxy, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Monster are definitely the next step up.

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9 hours ago, MediaConsumesMe said:

Well Steins Gate, Death Note are good places to start. After that Ergo Proxy, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Monster are definitely the next step up.

It probably says a lot about me that I forgot about Evangelion technically being a "psychological" anime 🙃

I only ever saw the original run of the show and "End of Evangelion", but when it comes to the other movies and the actual ending I've never gotten around to it :/

Great show of course, but the original "ending" really frustrated me so I'm uncertain about giving it a 2nd chance

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1 hour ago, AlwaysSearching said:

It probably says a lot about me that I forgot about Evangelion technically being a "psychological" anime 🙃

I only ever saw the original run of the show and "End of Evangelion", but when it comes to the other movies and the actual ending I've never gotten around to it :/

Great show of course, but the original "ending" really frustrated me so I'm uncertain about giving it a 2nd chance

When I first watched Eva, my brother showed me 1 through to 24. Then he switched to showing me the film over the next two episodes. And once I watched the film a few weeks later he showed me the last two episodes of the original series.

I think it had somthing to do with End of Evangelion first half happens canonically before either it second half and the original ending with the original ending being the 'good' ending and the movies ending being the 'neutral' or 'bad' ending. 

Makes it sound like a visual novel.

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  • 2 months later...

It really needed to use my brain for this x D

So, I would've been 10 or 11 at the time (I only turned 12 this year 💀) and I was looking through ABC Iview (or whatever it's called). I eventually got to the anime section. I was curious, I kind if knew what anime was already so this caught my attention. Nothing seemed all that interesting to me, until I got to SAO (Sword Art Online). It looked rlly interesting and I was like 'WOAH! That sounds cool!!' So I clicked on it and looked at a few episodes. I saw a picture of Asuna sleeping and I thought she was dead whuck made me 10 times more interested (I was VERY disappointed when I got that episode) X'D So yeah, I started watching it... And I LOVED it. Instead of brain, there was SAO. It was all I could ever think about. At this point I thought I was, like, a full on otaku. Some anime genius that had seen it all (bc I'd already watched the Glitter Forces, some of Voltron: Defender and Pokémon: Indigo League). I was WAY too proud tbh. Anywho, I wanted more of this. I actually wanted to become the number 1 weeb of the world, break world records and all of that. Idk what made me think that was gonna happen but yeah-

I am only now realising how much I've changed since then x D  I'm not planning on breaking world records for watching Japanese cartoons 😅

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I didn't know it until many years later but, when I was a kid in the very early 90s, Nick Jr. actually played several children's anime shows, and I remember that I liked them, so TECHNICALLY I was into anime very young. XD.

But it wasn't until 1999 that I got into Pokemon in a round about way, which led me to my cousin 'forcing me' to watch Digimon, which led me down a rabbit hole, and now I'm an anime fan. :).

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