This is part two of my Geek Origin Stories series. Last week, I wrote about Magic. This time, I want to write about one of my oldest and most treasured fandoms — anime. I actually still have my diary entry from the first time I watched anime. At the risk of embarrassing myself, I will post it in full right here:
12/10/1999
Wow – 11 days ’till my 13th birthday. Cool. Today was a good day, but I’m remembering it backwards. I was just over at Sharon’s and since her sister was not there, we watched some Japanese animated cartoons – “The Slayers.” It was translated to American [sic] only in the print at the bottom, so we tried to listen to Japanese words and make up phrases. I learned how to say, “That is a secret” because one character, Xello [again, sic] said it. He said [illegible attempt at spelling Japanese]. Sharon is a lot more obsessed with anime than I will ever be. I guess it’s because I don’t have a sister who owns those anime video tapes, and where else could I get them from?
Er yeah… embarrassing. But I wanted to post this in full since it shows how far anime has come since I was first initiated. For Sharon and I, the only source of anime was Sharon’s older sister or the video store at the mall, which sometimes had anime VHS tapes for $40 each. I cringe to think I spent once spent a year saving $120 of my allowance to buy Evangelion tapes!
This also explains why I didn’t have a lot of friends who liked anime back then. Today, the proliferation of anime on Hulu, Crunchy Roll, and other streaming websites has made the barrier for getting into anime less imposing than ever. But back then, you had to have a bottomless wallet or a benefactor. And even then, we had it easy compared to fans from the 80’s! In college, I interviewed Stan Sagan, a dealer at Katsucon, about his start in the fandom:
Sagan, 56, discovered anime while he was a theater major in college.
“One day somebody brought an anime tape into the studio, and as I watched it I thought, this is way better than what’s coming out of Hollywood!” he said.
Sagan was hooked, but back in the 1980’s, he said, getting anime wasn’t easy.
“There weren’t stores that sold anime, and you couldn’t download it from the internet. We watched it on VHS tapes that were copies of copies of copies that friends passed around. That’s why it was so great to go to a convention,” he said.
Back to my origin story, it’s clear that I wasn’t very good at predictions. I’m pretty sure Sharon hasn’t watched anime in years. (Another brilliant prediction from my diary: “I spend a lot of time on the Internet now. I will grow out of it soon.”) From there I watched whatever my friends and I could get our hands on. Gundam Wing was a big one, since it was dubbed on Cartoon Network. Same with Tenchi Muyo. I am sure it involved a lot of money pooling, but we also watched the entirety of Magic Knights Rayearth. I attempted Evangelion, but I never could afford to watch it — not until college, when I was able to buy it on DVD!
I didn’t hit the anime convention scene until college, either. My parents, understandably, were confused by why their daughter wanted to watch foreign cartoons and discuss them with strangers. They weren’t comfortable with what an anime convention was or could be. Usually, I indulged my interest by printing pictures of my favorite characters and pasting them in my diary. I also drew pictures as often as possible! But as interesting as THAT would be to see, let’s save a tiny bit of my dignity for the next post.
Next in this series: video games!
Share your own anime origin story in the comments.
17 Comments.
my anime origin story coincides with yours :) I remember hanging out with you guys and watching evangelion. i also remember how difficult it was to get a hold of the mangas & tapes! that’s probably why i fell off of the anime bandwagon a bit earlier than you guys. i’m slowly getting back into it, though. can’t wait for otakon this year!
Amanda, you’re going to Otakon? I am SO excited to see you there! I have not made up my mind if I am going to work the whole time or just relax.
Whenever I think back upon our old days watching anime I feel like such an “Oldtaku.” “In my day, we had to walk 20 miles uphill to get a beat up old anime VHS tape!”
I was introduced to anime via DDR. I got really into DDR when I discovered this thing called the DDR Project, which took the megamix from each DDR soundtrack and made one long AMV of the whole thing. The one segment I saw was from the anime New Dominion Tank Police and it looked awesome, so I found and watched it. From there it was on to Ranma, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and I haven’t looked back since.
I can’t believe we’ve been friends for 8 years and I didn’t actually know this! You know, I still have yet to watch Ranma, but I have read most of the manga.
The manga is better than the anime, but they’re both good, as long as you know what to expect from a Rumiko series.
Lauren: I’ll definitely be there this year! I vote that you relax instead of work, but that’s just the slacker in me talking.
I totally forgot about Dominion Tank Police! That, Vampire Hunter D, and Project A-Ko were probably the first animes I truly got into. This is about 3rd, 4th grade, when they’d show anime once a week on the Sci-Fi channel. I thought it was awesome, but never thought to share my findings with anyone. I had no idea my friends would have gotten so big into it a few years later :)
Oldtakus FTW. I just can’t get into the appeal of some of the newer animes out there. I’d gladly take Trigun over Naruto or Bleach any day of the week :)
Amanda: Those were awkward times (photo for proof: http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v48/78/61/41004440/n41004440_30528854_7635.jpg ) but at least we had some sweet anime shows. I LOVE Vampire Hunter D and still read the novels as they come out!
Jenn: Fruits Basket is an incredible show. I also find the end strangely erotic (though Andrew thinks I must be smoking something whenever I point that out. But remember when Kyo turns into a monster or something?) I think a lot of people have this gap where they love it in middle school, forget for awhile, and pick it up again.
Kailer: LOAD THE DATABASE! I keep track of my book collection that way. I would love to see it, if nothing more than to serve as a library for things I want to borrow! =D
Sadly, I think my first foray into anime was Pokemon (1st generation). There, I said it. Be embarrassed for me if you like. I had a friend who loved Sailor Moon, so I saw some of that too.
But I didn’t really get into it until college with Cardcaptor Sakura. I borrowed the complete series from Will and watched it in a week. Then I was borrowing a whole bunch of other shows, most significantly Fruits Basket, which in turn launched me into manga.
You know my origin story already – we went through the initiation simultaneously. And then I watched Record of Lodoss War, which Sharon’s big sister had lying around, and then I went and bought the first VHS myself, and it was all downhill from there…
Now I’ve sunk obscene amounts of money into this hobby with no sign of slowing. I don’t think you’ve ever seen my DVD collection, have you? I guess I could load my database onto Googledocs if anyone was curious, and show the world how pathetic my life has become.
My first anime… well that’s actually really hard to figure out. I remember watching Dragon Ball Z before it was on cartoon network. I believe it was on really early on Saturday… I would get up early to watch something else can’t remember what exactly and saw a few episodes of Dragon Ball Z in the process. I might be remembering this incorrectly. For sure though I used to really enjoy watching Cartoon Network when us people from the boonies first got it in the mid 90’s. My best friend Wade got cartoon network and so I convinced my parents it was worth paying extra for… then lucky with in the year it was made basic. But after school they would have really crappy cartoons like Josey and the Pussy Cats, and Jabber Jaw, and Voltron Defender of the Universe. Voltron really reminded me of Transformers and giant robots have always been a turn on to me, so I started really enjoying that. Then Toonami happend… I was in 6th grade when it started, it continued Voltron at first with Dragon Ball Z and something else I can’t remember. I watched Toonami religiously, enjoying Dragon Ball Z (In hindsight I don’t get what I liked about that show,) but then fatefully they added Gundam Wing to the list of shows and I was hooked on anime from then on. Also in hindsight Gundam Wing is one of the weakest Gundam shows that I’ve watched due to terrible plot point and pontificating about peace while piloting giant mechs. The action was great… for the time and the characters are strong… I think I’ve talked enough now.
I am into strong female characters from my comic book fandom. If I had only two comics on my pull list each month (it is about 10, actually), it would be Batman and Wonder Woman. A friend of mine says you should try Anime. I bought Devil Hunter Yohko from Amazon and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Then, I discovered a convention called Otakon (the day of the 2003 convention), so I swore I would make it Otakon 2004. I also started watching Cutey Honey 1994 OVA and Ghost in the Shell at that point in time. I gofered in pretty much video rooms all weekend of that first Otakon and I started to developed what I liked and didn’t because of that first con.
It was a pretty quick evolution of fandom from there. I got introducted to Evangelion at the next con I went to Anime USA as a free giveaway during the (then) ADV panel. I saw how badly they ran registration, so that is kind of how I started on the path to my current role in anime fandom.
Tom, I wondered how you got into con running! Especially since you started into the fandom later than a lot of people do. Maybe one of the next geek origin stories will be about convention attending/running.
I got introduced to anime back in middle school when the only things you could get were Ghost in the Shell (still one of my favorite series ever) and Vampire Hunter D on beat up VHS tapes. Can’t even fathom how many times I watched those movies. That being said, technically I watched a lot of anime when I was younger and didn’t even realize it considering Japanese animation studios did a lot of 80s cartoons. I still consider Ghost in the Shell and Vampire Hunter D to be my first real, true exposure to un-Americanized anime though.
And then there was my first viewing of hentai when my friend got a copy of Urotsukidoji when we had no idea what it was about…
C. L., heh, I guess the first hentai is just as etched on one’s mind as the first anime. I remember watching shounen ai for the first time and being so shocked!
Wait, you thought Kyo as a monster was erotic? I think I have to agree with Andrew. Unless you mean after he changed back. Then I guess I could agree with you (kind of. I don’t think it’s erotic, but it’s definitely…not normal, haha). It depends on what point exactly you’re pointing this out.
But one of my favorite shots is just after that, when Tohru’s holding him as a cat. They’re so cute together :)
Jenn, not exactly, I meant the scene where he is shirtless… And admitting that about a presumably high school age cartoon character is probably going to get me arrested o.o
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