In part one of our three part series on “The Significance of Our First Anime,” JP (Japesland), Casey (CutsceneAddict), and Jack (R86) share the first anime that they had ever seen. From Christian-bashing of mainstream imports of “Japanese cartoons” to simply wanting to know what all the hubbub was about, each member of our panel offers a unique perspective on the entry point to the world of otaku-dom. What was your first anime? Comment below!
As always, every episode of The TangleCast will be covering a different topic, from anime reviews, to discussions on spirituality, to listener mail, and everything in between. Please feel free to join the conversation by commenting below, submitting a question to podcast AT beneaththetangles DOT com, or chatting with us on Discord!
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ahh…old school toonami. good times. i think that was back when gundam wing was a thing
😛
Pokemon in the morning during high school. Then saw bits of DBZ, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, and Ronin Warriors when at my friend’s house on CN’s Toonami channel.
Nice! I was always pretty limited in what I could watch when I was younger, since we only had a local antenna. That ended up forcing me to watch what I saw, but I’m sure things would have been different if I had had better access to television!
I also only had an antenna, but still at So. Cal. on the UPN 13 channel, they showed Pokemon and Monster Rancher of all things! I was surprised later to see Cardcaptor Sakura (albeit the butchered version), DBZ, and Pokemon on the WB Kids channel for a while, before that went south.
Oh, and how can I forget Digimon and Escaflowne on Fox Kids! Unfortunately, Escaflowne never got a full run.
Oh wow it’s so funny because I was a pastor’s kid too like some of you guys were! My father let me watch pretty much anything with discernment, so Pokémon and Yugioh grabbed my attention at a young age.
Sounds like me!
The first anime which I watched without knowing anything about the genre had to be Robotech, which was the English name given to Macross. My brother loved it much more than I did and even bought the TV series some years later.
I’ve still only seen one of the Macross films, though I keep meaning to revisit more of the series! Any recommendations?
I can really only recommend The Macross Saga, but the latest installment in the series has been getting some good reviews.
Yu-Gi-Oh! here. I got into the card game first, but my friends finally cajoled me into watching the show, which I then stubbornly stuck with through the first two spinoffs. (Luckily my parents were fairly tolerant of it.) I knew it was from Japan, though I don’t think the term “anime” had quite entered my vocabulary when I first became aware of it.
Never got into Pokemon, I’m afraid, and because of that I’ve always felt a bit culturally illiterate. Alas!
It’s never too late!
Heh… I feel so old, even though I’m only slightly older than you all.
My first anime: “Starblazers” aka “Space Battleship Yamato”
Of course, I didn’t know that this was anime. I was 8 years old. A natural early bird, I would get up at 6am each morning without prompting. My mother is a night owl, so I was basically the only person up usually until my father would get up at 7am.
So because of this I was pretty much on my own, and when browsing TV I discovered this show that came on at 6:30am every morning.
I was enthralled by this show. If fact, it’s probably one of the most impactful shows of my early childhood, and one of only three that I really remember. (The others being Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood, and The Cosby Show).
I can still sing the opening song (English version), and I remember how haunting the ending (in Japanese) was. Starsha singing The Scarlet Scarf. Derek Wildstar and Erik Venture’s friendship.
I also remember certain scenes even now. Particularly the one episode where they cross the heliosphere boundary and could no longer contact Earth, and the final goodbyes the crew gave their families. Though I never got to see the ending and find out if they made it to Iscandar, since the show moved to 2:30 am and try though I did I just couldn’t get up early enough to keep up with it. I learned how to program the VCR to try and tape it, but I missed a few shows, and I really hated going on without knowing what happened in between.
So in many ways, I’m the youngest member of the anime generation that came BEFORE Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon. Let alone the Pokemon craze.