I was watching my brother read manga online when I was 10. Got interested and started reading online too by memorizing the website (it was onemanga!!!)
Then, like, half a year later, some friend went to my house and watched Dragon Ball Z with me and I remembered seeing Dragon Ball Z in a manga list... Then everything clicked and I realized that anime was indeed manga in movie form... (=.=) And I began watching more anime stuff

________________
Simply another normal human being...

Errmmm i can't even remember now=| i think i saw Golden Boy on the tv....and after that my brother watched Deathnote at home....
Later on i found a ftp with anime in my local net...and just started to watch everything)

Manga is another story....i just can't remember how did it started=|
I guess my frist manga was Kodomo no jikan...

i watched anime since i was little (the word anime wasn´t very well known back then) and after i found a gundam wing amv on the internet when i was 13 (i thought Linkin Park made their in the end music video with gundam wing) i found a lot more anime, first watching them on myvideo.de with german subtitles. Soon there weren´t enough subs, so i started watching those with english subs (my english got much better thanks to that). The first time i read manga was in the library when i was 13 1/2, i saw Tokyo Mew MEw there and since i just saw the anime i gave it a try. Later i bought MAnga myself and read those i couldn´t afford in the booksop for hours. Then they nearly threw me out, so i googled where i could read them and found scanlations.^^

________________

currently reading: Nyotai-ka
please support me

Other, as i got into anime and then manga on my own. I always watched cartoons and Japan produces those and i already read US / EU comics and Japan did those too.
Easy as that. I have been following anime / manga for 2 decades now and have streamed the new anime as they came out for 1 decade. DSL and all.
I got other people into this hobby though.

________________
I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

My first manga was the Pokemon Adventures Series: RSE Arc. My first anime was Voltes V.

Voted for "other" a.k.a myself.

I was really bored, and didn't even know what anime was at the time, but for some reason the term was stuck in my head, so i googled it. The journey began ^^
Oh, and i got into manga cuz my internet volume ran out and i couldn't stream videos anymore xD

I grew up in Taiwan, so stuff like Pokemon and Doraemon and Doremi were my childhood cartoons. Inuyasha also aired pretty often, but it was a bit too gory for my four-year-old self.

The first time I watched "anime" knowing it was from Japan, and acknowledging it as a separate medium from American cartoons was in middle school, when a family friend showed me a bootlegged copy of Naruto. From there, I watched everything in his collection (mostly shounen action or harem series, the latter of which I avoid religiously now) and then found my way into finding stuff on my own on youtube. (Remember when people used to upload split parts of fansubbed anime to youtube? Ah, memories.)

The first manga I read was actually volume 9 of DN Angel. Because I watched the anime and thought I would understand the manga if I bought the latest volume. I was wrong. From there, it actually took me a few years before I started reading manga online. Now, I've learned to buy only series I actually like. (I wish someone had told young me about this. I still have so many series I own that I want to get rid of now.)

I was about 13 years old and accidentally clicked on an anime video on youtube. That got me hooked. As I watched more animes, I somehow learned about mangas. It was a secret obsession of mine, till I accidentally heard from one of my friends that she also likes mangas and animes. That was when I learned that it is not bad to like mangas and animes, but even now I feel sometimes a bit embarassed when revealing this little secret. I learnt about conventions when I was about 18 years old and visit the LBM ever since. Walking between people who all like the same stuff is really nice Now I even read a bit of Yaoi and a shocking truth was revealed to me...my mom also likes animes and mangas, especially shoujo!(she did not have such things in her childhood, it seems like I got her hooked on it, LOL). All these years I have successful hidden this passion of mine, and 4 years later I learn that it was all in vain, what an irony.

As a young kid, I watched Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. At the time I didn't know that they were Japanese. When I was in middle school, I found out they were anime when they started re-airing on Toonami. I occasionally watched anime on Toonami throughout middle school, but stopped during high school. It wasn't until my junior or senior year of college that I got into anime again. It started with me just wanting to watch the Japanese version of Sailor Moon instead of the American dubbed version I grew up with, but after that I started searching for other anime I would like.

The very first anime I saw was Voltes V. But what really got me into anime was Full Metal Alchemist.

The first manga I read was The Pokemon Adventures vol.17 (Ruby & Sapphire story arc). What got me interested in manga were "The World God Only Knows" and "Bloody Monday".

Edit: Whoops. I already posted a comment here sometime ago.

Ive been familiar to anime and watch them growing up but casually like a normie. Watching whats available on tv but never really indulged over it to find some myself. But have indulgement towards searching for hentais to watch online LMAO

So I guess the one pushed me or should I say, influenced by my cousin. Seeing her room for the first time filled with Naruto merchandise with Shounen Jump magazines and figurines was just an eye opening. But then again, I wasnt still convinced and still disinterested and stuck with hentai.

When I discovered yaoi, its the main reason why I got interested into anime/manga as a whole.

________________
i immediately regret posting this

I probably started reading manga when I was 10. I was an introverted kid (still am) and I moved to a new school in grade 5. Being super introverted, I wasn't really able to talk to my new classmates and I just kept to myself most of the time. I would spend most of my time in the school's library as a result which is where I read my first couple of mangas. The two that I read were Beet the Vandel Buster and Dragon Drive. However, the school didn't have all the volumes so I searched for them online and which lead me to even more manga. After reading many series I was hooked on Manga. It's been 7 years since then and my interest is still going strong.

I was 16 my friend's brother had an Akira VHS tape, cuz ...you can never have too many dystopian future sci-fi movies. I had junkie eyes from the first scene on motorcycles all the way up the full TETSUOOOOOO.
then I went to Blockbuster video, they used to have those :/
and found 10-20 tapes to watch across genre; with those done I was forced(I had no choice in the matter really)to go to 25-30 more Blockbusters in a 1hr driving radius until those were all done.
Then I found a specialty store which had 2000 tapes. Which introduced me to additional genres which had been neither appropriate and/or profitable to line the shelves of your mom & pop movie store, and also the super creepy cliental that made me want to wash my hands as soon as I exited the store.
I bought manga to. I just know the owner would put out merchandise on the same day my video's were due back and would bump the price of it 300% knowing it was something I'd see and have to have.
you kids have it so good nowadays with your Netflixes and what not.

Watching french dubbed DBZ as a kid during holidays and understanding nothing has always kept me interested in anime, especially as it was so different from everything else I knew back then. Years later on, when anime became more available to me, my interest continued to rise ... until I discovered manga. At least to me the proverb about the book being always better than the movie is almost every time true.

________________
here and there