First exposure to Japanese animation

[Dr. Cakey]

Let's see. Pokemon was first, without a doubt, followed by Yu-Gi-Oh!. Then Spirited Away, and I saw Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa around that time as well. Then it wasn't until 2007 I think that I saw Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (the first anime I saw subtitled), followed by Death Note. After that comes about a hundred other things.

I think.. Around when I was 18-ish, I watched an anime called Elfen Lied. I remember it as being pretty bloody and dark, and thankfully very light on the usual anime tropes. I'm not someone who regularly watches anime, having pretty much just watched Elfen Lied, Fullmetal Alchemist (Both original and Brotherhood) and some DBZ. Even those, I at times could barely get through. Never finished DBZ, and it was only the great story that kept me going with FMA: Brotherhood. All the "Aaaah!" and eye-wobbling and shit, I just get so tired of it. So, it's not because the stories are bad, but because the tropes of the genre are so incredibly annoying to me that I just can't be bothered.

The irony is that Elfen Lied is very heavy on anime tropes. Just not the ones you're used to.

 

[Sixcess]

I still preferred Monkey Magic though.

Monkey was good, but The Water Margin was the best.

OT: Probably Battle of the Planets, but as a distinct genre probably much later, when stuff like Legend of the Overfiend got a (heavily edited) UK video release. For a long time I equated all manga with those extremes of sex and violence.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

I can't exactly remember what show it was. It was either Pokemon, Dragonball Z, or Yu Yu Hakusho. Damn, now I've got nostalgia overload just thinking about them. While digital animation looks smoother, there's still a part of me that misses the older hand-animated shows. I don't think that's just the nostalgia talking either, I just kind of find charm in antiquity, to a certain extent.

 

[DRTJR]

That I remember, Laputa: Castle in the Sky on Toonami, and I have been a devoted fan of Traditional 2-D animation since.

 

[FalloutJack]

I grew up on Robotech when it was on TV in the 80s.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Damn I'm old compared to folk in this place!
Voltron was my first exposure and I'm proud of it. I'm not sure what else I saw since then, but Moribito is a really good story.

 

[Greg White]

First introduction to anime was My Neighbor Totoro on VHS(which I swear they've re-dubbed since then) and then later Toonami.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

First one? Pokemon. As a kid, I was obsessed, it annoyed my parents to no end. I only played a little bit of Blue, I couldn't figure out how to get past the fat guy lying in the street (I never thought to go in the mart, the game did a terrible job pointing where you needed to go). Eventually fell out of it, noticing how terrible it really is. I watched Bleached on Adult Swim as a teen, again, less do it's quality and more do to hormones and lack of girlfriend (the latter has sadly not changed).

The first one I liked for it's actual quality was Soul Eater.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

Samurai Pizza Cats.
It's sad how disrespectful that localization was.

We recently had discussions about drag queens and blackface and all that. I'm reminded of that when I think of Samurai Pizza Cats. I feel like the intend of the entire dub was to mock anime. Which is sad, because it is something that helped me fall in love with anime.

I also, like many kids, saw My Neighbor Totoro as a kid. It was a great start.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

mine was ..unfortunately.. and regrettably.. sailormoon... and that show sucked ass...then it was Digimon...though i was really young and didn't even know about the word anime... for me i choose to think of my real first exposure being Fullmetal Alchemist,FlCL and Ghost in The Shell:SAC on Adult Swim when i was in highschool... oh and i think dragon ball Z was on when i was young too and it sucked then and it sucks now... so i've always chosen to ignore it in favor of good anime. dubbed anime of course

 

[Dragonbums]

Pokemon, Digimon, Zoids, Yu-Gi-Oh, DBZ, and basically everything on Toonami.
That was my first exposure to anime before even knowing what it was.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

My first was almost definitely Voltron re-runs in the early 90's, but since I wasn't aware that Voltron was anything but a really cool cartoon at the time, Super Mario Bros was probably my first Japanese videogame (although it honestly could have been /anything/ on the NES, I think most people my age would have an easier time figuring out for sure what their first Western made game was), with either Sailor Moon or Dragonball Z being my first anime. And I want to say the first really was Sailor Moon, especially because it ran earlier in the morning on whatever network it was -- it was either the WB or UPN, both of which are now known as the CW thanks to a merger years ago.

That's right, I'm one of those guys who watched both of those shows before Toonami was a thing. I got the joys of seeing people sent to the "next dimension."

 

[xshadowscreamx]

first anime of course was pokemon and dragon ball z

first exposure to japanese media, playing super mario world on the snes.

 

[Username Redacted]

If we're counting Mysterious Cities of Gold as anime then that's the answer. Watched it when my family was living in Australia when I was ~6 years old. I am also disappointed that the new season has taken so damn long to get off the ground.

If we aren't counting that as anime then it's a toss-up between the original Bubblegum Crisis in all it's glorious 80s-ness and Ranma 1/2.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

mine was ..unfortunately.. and regrettably.. sailormoon... and that show sucked ass...

NO... HUH-UH. NO. THAT OPINION IS WRONG.

You will repent to the goddess right now, sir. Here we burn unrepentant heathens at the stake.

 

[z3tzilla]

Hmmm... As a kid I used to watch a certain TV channel that would show some old anime TV series, like Speed Racer, G-Force, UFO Robo Grendizer. I used to draw grendizer battles when it wasn't airing
Not that I knew that these shows were japanese. To me, they were no different from other cartoons like Transformers, or, say, Exo-Squad.

Somewhere around the time I was in middle school Sailor Moon and Pokemon boom happened. Almost everybody watched those, but not a lot of people were willing to admit that ("you watch sailor moon? what are you, a girl?", "you watch pokemon? what are you, a five year old?"). But yeah, these were the ones i watched and knew that they've come from Japan.

 

[Saelune]

First blast of japanese stuff? Mystical Ninja starring Goemon. I later on in life realized that game is why I love japanese culture. It is still my number 2 of my all time favorite games ever. If you mean anime, then I started with the standard DBZ and Sailor Moon.

 

[Brainpaint]

Ox Tales. I was a toddler and everything else I watched was British, Canadian or Australian so there's no doubt about it.
Horribly chopped up and dubbed, mind.

After that, it was when I borrowed my dad's cousin's copy of Psychic Force. I was eight and I thought it was friggin AWESOME!

 

[mbarker]

The english dubbed Macross. I used to wake up at 6:00 in the morning every Saturday to watch it. I was so young I didn't even realise that it was an anime when I watched it.

Saw the same series later in life on the Space channel. The animation sucked, but the story was still top notch. It's nice to know I wasn't viewing the show through rose coloured glasses.

I also watched the Jungle Book, Littlest Prince and a number of other shows I'm not sure which one I saw first, but I have the fondest memories of Macross.