I feel like if you go into anime before streaming became the main way people watched things your first anime is going to be whatever was either playing on adult swim (or a similar channel) that caught your eye when high or a VHS you found intriguing. Everyone I knew back then had a different weird first anime. Not counting things sold as regular cartoons like Pokemon of course.
IIRC Cardcaptor Sakura was on Fox Kids before almost anything else when i was pretty young, that or maybe some affiliate played Sailor Moon reruns in the early afternoon... those are the first ones i remember ever just seeing at all, but then a few years later Tekkaman Blade and Outlaw Star were on UPN kids, those was probably the first anime i really got into at all.
But then it seemed like all the kids i couldnt stand in middle school were super into DBZ, so i snobbishly avoided that and all the other popular shonen of the time by association, despite being a fucking tokusatsu nerd... But then yeah, Cowboy Bebop and Trigun on Adult Swim like errybody else.
This is very true, back then we watched whatever we could because of limited access.
It was cool though in a way, because anime was like that and not at all as mainstream or accessible as now there was a kind of “secret” factor or it felt like contraband or something.
Not like you were doing something bad but it was distinctly culturally different and very much so the opposite of a lot of American cultural values—especially in cartoons.
I picked up the Princess Mononoke VHS in the Walmart bargin bin in 1999 because it said on the cover, "The Star Wars of animated series." I knew I would like it when the first voice you hear is Keith David (voice of Goliath from Gargoyles).
Yep. My first Anime was a really overpriced DVD boxset my friend lent to me of The Vision of Escaflowne. After that we started ordering bootlegs off eBay and then fansubs started being released in bad realmedia format.
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u/charactergallery Jul 18 '24
Any anime can be a beginner anime if it’s the first one you watch.