I originally posted this on bluesky, but thought I'd go deeper.
In high school, I was co-founder of the Anime and Video Games club. Genuinely, it was an excuse to hangout with my friends. It was my friend who had the videos and games for us to play.[1]
The first anime I saw was probably Dragon Ball[2], but I'd rather consider Pokemon instead. I distinctly remember being annoyed my normal after school show (which I can't even recall anymore - maybe it was the godzilla cartoon?) was taken over by Ash boarding the St. Anne. I was hooked, though.
Digimon showed up sometime after and was way more my shit. Some of the earliest fanfic I read was for Digimon. I cannot stomach rewatching it, though. The filler is too bad. Weregarurumon though...
Dragon Ball Z was something. I watched all of it, up until just after Kid Buu shows up[3]. I'll never forget reading about story elements that hadn't reached America and pronouncing Goten's name wrong. Once. It was never my personality, but I did compulsively watch it.
I'm not sure which came first for me, Toonami or Evangelion, but I did watch the original VHS tapes for NGE. I could tell it was fucked up, but I wouldn't fully undersatnd why until many many many years later. I was obsessed with the art though. I even got a sticker to cover my PS2 with Rei. Oh my god.
Cowboy Bebop was second to my EVA obsession. Toe to tip, it's a bop. I didn't bother to watch the live-action. The casting looked great, but I didn't trust the finished product.
Sailor Moon, as I mention in my bluesky thread, is mostly on here because, as I was using AOL chatrooms[4], someone called Sailors Neptune and Uranus lovers. I'm sure part of that felt wrong to me at the time, although I was not unfamiliar with gay as a slur by then, I was mostly indignant because they were shown to be cousins! Why would the people who brought it to America change anything? Which of course I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be cousins still and that sounded worse. Thankfully I didn't shut down or log off and actually learned what happened.
Completely forgotten in the mix is Inuyasha - a show I wish had more impact. However, with this retrospective I'm revisiting a favorite album of mine while I write. Wind - Symphonic Theme Collection which is symphonic arrangements of songs from the show. You'd think a show about a tsundere half-demon wolf boy would get me, but I guess Shonen isn't my jam.
Cardcaptor Sakura is also a show that should have been on here, but just missed the mark. Maybe if I wasn't raised so boy-coded it would have been. However, Yue using The Wood absolutely helpe unlock some things about me. I didn't read managa, but I did try to get into Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and I really wish it stuck.
I still don't know that I understand what the hell FLCL was. Esthetics. Art.
Yu Yu Hakusho was wild. This one I didn't get too far into, turns out tournament arcs aren't for me. But I think about it every often. It was my first hit-by-a-truck anime.
Ghost in the Shell I keep coming back to. Themes, visuals, all of it really. I need to watch the new one that's way more like the manga. I remember ordering packages from japan that had mixed merch of Masamune Shirow's art. What a perv.
Anyway, I could get into all of these a lot more but this is just a for-funsy journal. Maybe I can do a deep dive another time.
-
I was a bit of a personality at the time and brought in the members, but that's a different story. ↩
-
When I watched Dragon Ball proper, the memories didn't line up but it's the closest I can associate them to. ↩
-
I'm just now reading I stopped like five episodes from the whole series wrapping??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ↩
-
You can just lie when people ask A/S/L. I can't believe nothing traumatic (evil) happened. I was 12 or 13 when I started using the internet daily. ↩