What was your gateway series/movie?

I want to find out from my fellow tropers what their gateway anime series/movies was, either to the entire genre of anime, or a specific subgenre of anime.

For me, the movie that got me interested into the art style was Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, back when I was ten and the Fox Dub was still available. However, the series that would truly have gotten my interest into shonen anime was Naruto, back when it premiered on Toonami. From then, it was on to Full Metal Alchemist and Bleach. My first Humongous Mecha series I have ever seen was Gigantor, during its 6AM run on Adult Swim, which led me into Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Oh dear lord...I don't remember what the first was...There was Speed Racer, My Neighbor Totoro, Astro Boy Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot, Voltron, Leo The White Lion, and Kimba The White Lion...

Those are the earliest things I came into contact with and therefore the likeliest to be my first series or movie. Beyond this I watched A LOT MORE SHIT. A lot. That came later though.

edited 4th Jun '11 6:23:15 PM by Aondeug

Hm. First anime watched? Presumably DBZ. Anime that actually made me want to watch more anime? I want to say Trigun, Outlaw Star or Cowboy Bebop but I honestly doubt it. I think I just started watching more without any particular thing making me more interested.

Pokémon (how original), Sailor Moon (just as original), Digimon (still original), and Mon Colle Knights (wut).

edited 4th Jun '11 6:34:38 PM by JenKunoichi351

dragon ball z best anime ever

Over a decade ago, back when I was a teenager (yes, I'm on the older end of the fandom demographic spectrum), I was into Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyo! and Trigun-essentially whatever was either on Toonami or whatever my oldest brother had on DVD/VHS (once again, yes, I'm ancient at the age of 26-shut up, move along...). My brother moved out, I got too busy for anime, eventually stopped watching it...

Cue the past two years-after being introduced to Avatar The Last Airbender by my younger brother (and finding that my son was delighted by it-not so much the case now, his autism can lead to some strange fickle tastes at times-but I digress...), my wife and I decided to try finding some good anime to watch. We watched some Ghibli films-Spirited Away was very good, convinced us to watch some television anime series. Cowboy Bebop was the first of those-just hearing Tank! was enough to get us hooked. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was next (had no idea there were two animes at the time, watched the first one eventually, liked it though not quite as much as Brotherhood, IMO-9/10 for first, 9.5/10 for Brotherhood). Though Fullmetal remains our favorite, we still tend to feel that Cowboy Bebop was and is the best we've seen...certainly the best soundtrack, and that's saying something as much of the anime we've watched have quite good music, IMO.

Since then, we've added Summer Wars, Castle in the Sky, Death Note, Baccano!, Kekkaishi, Evangelion, FLCL, Gurren Lagann, Code Geass, Trigun (again-love it even more now, can't wait for the new movie), and plenty more that we've started and haven't finished (we're forever juggling several series at a time). Suffice it to say, we're well and truly hooked :)

edited 4th Jun '11 7:46:48 PM by LordFenric

The first anime I watch was Pokemon, but what really got me into the genre was Dragonball Z.

The 1980's Astro Boy was probably my first anime. However, the first time I recognized "those pretty cartoons" as anime was with Ranma One Half.

Some of that stuff is so old i'm convinced this is proof reincarnation exists.

edited 4th Jun '11 7:49:52 PM by Edmania

I know...You'd think I was like 20 to 40 years older than I am going by the things I watched as a kid...

edited 4th Jun '11 7:53:08 PM by Aondeug

Sailor Moon.

The first exposure to anime that I ever got was The Mysterious Cities Of Gold and Robotech when I was a kid, but I was too young to understand that they were actually anime and not just regular ol' cartoons. My true gateway was when Gundam Wing was on Toonami; I checked it out one night just for the hell of it and was instantly hooked. For manga, it was the first few volumes of Ranma One Half that my future father-in-law had; later on, my wife got me the first volumes of Chobits and Love Hina, and I haven't looked back.

edited 4th Jun '11 8:40:26 PM by Willbyr

Rurouni Kenshin, so much enjoyment.

Oh yes. I should specify which Astro Boy shouldn't I...Original series. So the 60's-70's one.

And I'm only 19!

edited 4th Jun '11 8:41:31 PM by Aondeug

Rurouni Kenshin for me, too. First episode I watched was at the start of Kenshin's rematch with Aoshi; was completely different from any cartoon series I'd seen before, and from then on I was hooked.

Robotech*

Hard to define.

My first anime at all was Pokemon.
My first atypical anime (considering my demographic) was Cardcaptors.
My first generic lesser-known anime was Zoids. The series where everything was about tournaments.
My first "Hey, so this is what anime is" was Full Metal Alchemist.
My first anime I sought out to watch by my own choice and resources was Haruhi (sub).

Manga on the other hand is a different matter entirely. I think the first I read at all was Naruto, but I can't remember the first I read which wasn't one of the big three. It was definitely still one of the many popular shounen titles though. Elfen Lied? Death Note? Mahou Sensei Negima? Something else? No idea. :/

Manga? Tenchi Muyo and Dragon Ball Z flimsies. Back when Viz still made those. I saw a few issues of Animerica too though I never owned one myself.

First anime thing I ever watched was My Neighbor Totoro, which was in fact the first movie I ever saw in my life (according to my dad, at least; I hardly remember). Later I got into Pokemon, but the anime that really got me into anime was Cowboy Bebop, followed shortly by Gurren Lagann which caused me to discover my love of giant robots, and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood which caused me to discover my love of Winry Rockbell was the first series I watched weekly.

Well, I watch a lot of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! when I was younger, and sort-of watched some of the stuff on Adult Swim like Cowboy Bebop. But the first anime where I decided to sit down and watch from beginning to end and pay attention to everything was Lucky Star.

edited 4th Jun '11 10:45:12 PM by AikoHeiwa

I briefly watched Pokemon as a kid, but anime/manga in general never really interested me until they started airing One Piece several years later (I believe I was around 20 or so at the time). Even though it was the 4kids dub, I pretty much immediately fell in love with the series, and once I found the manga section at the local bookstore I pretty much devoured everything I could find there.

Pokemon, Dragonball Z, and Sailor Moon. How original -_-.

Boring as hell, but Bleach and Haruhi Suzumiya, back when I was twelve-ish.

After a few months my interest in anime died down, although I continued to read manga.

It picked up again 2 or 3 years later, this time mainly with Baccano, Code Geass, and Haruhi Suzumiya season 2. It grew from there.

As a kid I watched Speed Racer, Robotech, Project A-ko, Akira, Ninja Scroll and things like that. I... probably shouldn't have watched some of those at that age, but I did. We would routinely go to the "Japanimation" section at the video rental store. My memories of these are vague at best.

Slightly older, I watched Dragonball Z and Tenchi and stuff on Cartoon Network.

I didn't really "get into" anime until my friend showed me that you could download it before it was even released in America. The first shows I watched like that were Love Hina and Flame of Recca. I still remember watching Flame of Recca in rmv format. And then from there it's just snowballed.

edited 5th Jun '11 3:04:22 AM by Clarste

Starblazers