I watched Dragon Ball anime without knowing it was an anime. What really introduced me to this fandom was Kaze no Stigma anime which forced me to google it... and after reading few interlinked articles on Wikipedia I came to know about manga, anime,etc... Wikipedia helped me to choose my first manga/anime: Death Note.

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Well anime is so easy to get access to since TVs became a household item for over a couple of decades (likely much more). However, it's probable that most of it was dubbed anime.

Anime is my first introduction into the fandom (dragon ball z, sailor moon, pokemon, card captor sakura) but when really got me into it is manga the couple years before I started junior high which is the reason why I chose manga in this poll.

I don't particularly understand why Manga/manhwa/manhua is separate. I understand that they are different due to regions (japan, korea, china) but they're all still east asian graphic novels. It seems unnecessarily singular.

Technically my first anime was Digimon in early elementary school, though at the time I thought it and the subsequent incarnations were just the most awesome cartoons I'd ever seen and didn't realize it was made in a different country. Years later when I was in middle school I started watching Naruto from the first time it was on Toonami. That's how I was introduced to One Piece by waiting for Naruto to come on one night. Some time later there was a night when both were off the air and some new show called Bleach was on during the Adult Swim block. I was angry they'd taken my shows off for something named after a cleaning/sterilizing solution. I watched the first episode so I could be justified in my hating it and was blown away. From that point on Naruto and One Piece took a back seat to my love of Bleach. I stayed up til 2:30 AM every Saturday night for a year or more, even though I had to get up at 8:00 AM for church later that morning. When they took it off the air waiting for the most recent season I was distraught. I took to the internet to find spoilers, and that is how I learned about manga. Eventually manga became my number one. Now I read tons of manga (but not as much as I used to) and rarely watch anime.

Cardcaptor Sakura, 10 years ago when I was 10 years old.

I picked up a volume from a games shop - and it was really expensive too, cause I was really poor back then. hahahahahaha. I can remember being surprised all the links led me to ff.net... ah, that was back when Geocities was still around, and there was a site called "top 100 cardcaptor websites" or something, and "cardcaptors unsensored". I didn't know how to read manga or watch anime online back then, so I just read fanfiction and looked a fanart. And read episode summaries. Man, this is nostalgic. Cardcaptors led me to looking up things online... and it's be a downward (or upward!) spiral from then.

For me, it all began with JRPGs. Starting, specifically, with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior for the original NES, back in 1990. Though really, I can't say it's what got me into the fandom. I liked them because I'd already been a fan of RPGs thanks to games like Ultima, A Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, and Wizardry, and the fact that they were Japanese was completely irrelevant to me.

I didn't really start getting into Japanese everything until I watched my first anime, when I rented a copy of an old Ranma 1/2 VHS tape from my local Blockbuster in 1993. Little did I realize at the time that such things would end up becoming such a big part of my life. As far as my other firsts in the fandom go...

I didn't start reading my first manga (which eventually became my preferred medium of this fandom) until 1997, when I picked up a copy of Ah My Goddess at the bookstore in the mall that my teenage self used to hang out at (because in those days, hanging out in malls was still cool).

I played my first visual novel in 2003, a pirated, translated copy of one called True Love. To be honest, I like the games, and particularly enjoy that type of gameplay, but due to the fact that most of the ones I've come across are all hentai/eroge, I find them to be a little awkward to play.

I actually didn't read my first manhwa until maybe a year or so ago when I picked up Girls of the Wilds. I can't really say I'm a HUGE fan of manhwa. but there are a few I enjoy (particularly The Gamer, which is probably my favorite).

I've still never bothered to read any manhua, I don't care for non-animated Japanese television, and I try to avoid Light Novels as a general rule (I can't really say why, I'm just averse to them for some reason... too few that I'm interested in are translated enough for me to enjoy them, I think, and the ones I am interested in, I'd really just rather read the manga adaptations). I also want to add that even though it's not on the list, I've had a particular fondness for beautiful women in cosplay for a number of years (though I can't really say when that began, though it probably stemmed from the fact that I've ALWAYS been attracted to women with brightly or unusually colored hair). That counts too, right?

Back when I was a kid I watched all the anime in America without even knowing it (WB, FOXkids, Toonami, Adult Swim, etc etc.) but what got me actually into all this was watching YuYu Hakusho.

I didn't even know about the existence of manga until a friend of mine brought a copy of YuYu Hakusho to school. I asked to borrow it, and look at me now haha 🤣

It's obvious that anime and manga would consist of over 75% of the votes by far. I'd bet that most people were turned on to this, uh, "fandom" (I'd say Japanese-style entertainment, as manhwa and manhua came about after Japan had success with it, though that'd be an educated guess) by DBZ. Pretty much the rest fall into the battle monster/card category with Pokemon, YuGi-Oh (however it's spelled), etc.

I'd say only those who live in the far East picked something besides anime and manga. I'm surprised Japanese RPGs has about 3% of the vote ATM. I suppose that when your fighting with/against a female character and you see her huge, scantily clad, bouncing tits, that would make certain people inquire more about this style of entertainment. Haha, I kid. JRPGs were ok, but I'd prefer fighting games. Much better and more realistic fighting styles. Not just high punch, low punch, high kick, low kick crap. Plus, the female's tits would bounce all over the place, like a person with Parkinson's Disease holding a gelatin mold lol! So unrealistic it was funny. Made me wonder if any Japanese game designer actually seen tits bounce, let alone large ones (ba-zing). I'd also bet that if you made "hentai" a choice, it'd hit the double digits 🤣

Anyways, I pick anime because DBZ was, ahem, IS the shit and was the first actual anime I watched religiously. I remember watching Toonami on Cartoon Network back in the day. Hated Sailor Moon, but dealt with it because DBZ followed after it.

Jeez, after scanning a few other comments, I realize how old I am... 😢

-No longer do I quote great scholars, the famous, etc. Kids feigning wisdom ruined it.
--I wont type a post like a college report. If you don't read it just for that reason, you don't have to post why your hoity-toity ass refused to. I swear, so many people on this site are so full of themselves. A lot seem to think they always have an "intelligent and/or logical" point or show signs of a superiority complex. They never admit they're wrong. Maybe partially, but excuses abound! :\
-Stop mailing me about my comments. I don't read them.
/sigrant

Quote from strixflash

I watched Dragon Ball anime without knowing it was an anime. What really introduced me to this fandom was Kaze no Stigma anime which forced me to google it... and after reading few interlinked articles on Wikipedia I came to know about manga, anime,etc... Wikipedia helped me to choose my first manga/anime: Death Note

Nice...yours scenario is similar to mine...
I also watched [color=Green]Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Transformers(anime), X-man(anime) and many more[/color]...without knowing and understanding them being anime when I was a kid...

It was 2003(probably), when I was 7, Naruto and One Piece on Cartoon Network introduced me to Anime...being An Proud Asian, I actually somewhat heard the term sometimes before that time, but, didn't knew any specifics...and got to know them specifically while Googling for their wallpapers(I saw a tag on on/for a OP Wallpaper)...ya^^

Then I watched many...like [color=Blue]Death Note, Kochikame, School Rumble, Digimon, Bayblade, Full Metal Alchamist, Renma 1/2(maybe), Monkey Typhoon, Samurai X...etc[/color]

after sometime I watched [color=Red]Kaze No Stigma[/color] on AniMax and enjoy it...and was excited to watch the season 2 as well...but, my happy moment ended when I saw the news on ANN...that the author died because of illness and he was on the halfway on manga...and the anime itself was completed with the help of manuscripts left by him and a little guessing...so, a horrible cliffhanger...maybe it(cliffhanger) was for good...well, I'm still waiting and Will watch it, if it comes, however worse(like DBGT's failure) may turn up...

[color=Black]•: Still Watching Anime/Cartoons...Still Reading Manga/Manhwa/Manhua...Still Playing It(The Games) Hard, Regardless Of Being Related/Unrelated, Online/Offline...Will Do So, Till Death Do Us Part :•[/color]

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Tv Tokyo - Anime & Manga ~ [color=red]MinatoAce[/color]

I devoured Rurouni Kenshin, part of Yu Yu Hakusho, and at least a quarter of Inuyasha as script only translations.

This is not counting, as others have said before, pokemon, dragon ball z, or sailor moon, as years passed before I realized there was any connection.

Like some others, I had watched Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, etc. on TV without knowing much about anime or anything about manga. I was introduced to the fandom by some boys at school after I drew a picture of a Vision of Escaflowne character in art class. They took me to the anime/manga store and we started watching anime together, but they refused to ever watch Vision of Escaflowne - said it was too girly. 🤣

I started out watching the cartoons (anime) on SBS late at night, back when I had to sneak out after bedtime (so I was around 6)

Vampire Hunter D
Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
Cowboy Bebop
Ghost in the Shell: laughing man saga

these are all I've been able to remember and name

later on I watched Zoids, Inuyasha, Samurai X, Pokémon, Digimon, Bayblade, Sailor Moon, Dragonball, Dragonball Z and so on.

Smiles Conceal Knives - Lynn Flewelling.
There is No Such Thing as BAD Words.
[img]http://dragcave.net/image/qzwAT.gif[/img] [img]http://tinyurl.com/n4rj47q/.gif[/img]

Sailor Moon was my first. I loved it since I was 6. I bought my first manga -- Furuba -- when I was 9, and I'm completely in the anime/manga/Japanese RPGs/Vocaloid since I was 12.

“If I'm going to just live taking someone else's place, then it'd be better if I could just be a pebble. That way, there'd be neither misunderstanding nor confusion, and then even you wouldn't know me.” — Eine Kleine (Kenshi Yonezu)

Lodoss OVA or TV?