I figured my first post on anime should be part of a series of posts going over my Top 10 preferred animes. Why I like them, the good and the bad about them, what other animes I almost put into that slot but did not make it. I have been an into japanese animation for about 10 years. Its not something I just recently picked up when DBZ aired on TV. I have followed it online since I first got into the internet, and watched it any chance I could while I grew up. I loved the japanimation week that the Sci-fi channel would have when I was much younger, but other than renting things that was about the only way I was able to access it when I was younger.

In 1999 I found a releasing group on AOL and thats when I got into it much more. Yes I know many of you cry foul when I mention AOL, but it was an amazingly easy way to get anime. You would go into a chat room called Animatrix and send a request to join a mailing list. Anytime anthing new was uploaded by one of the members in the group it would go straight to your email box and you could download it at your own leisure. In addition you could queue up downloads from aol and you always got full speed, reminescant of newsgroups. It was perfect for the time, as there was not the plethora of choices there are today such as BitTorrent, Newgroups, Direct Downloads, and more.

I was so impressed that I applied to join the group and got accepted before their first Upload Fest. A time of year where they would go all out an upload as much as possible over a week period. This event triggered me to look a lot more into different anime types, and ways to get them. Because of this I found a lot of contacts on mIrc and started getting brand new animes as they were being released in japan. Which is what our releases focused on anyways, not liscensed anime, but fansubbed. We were bringing anime to AOL members who generally would not have known how to get it otherwise. Unlike today there was a very limited selection of anime to be found on television so the exposure was quite low. There was no Toonami or Anime Network. Anytime someone heard anime, all that they would think of is Sailor Moon and Pokemon, which while they are animes in their own right they do not even begin to touch the range of the medium. Other than just being aimed at kids many anime shows are created mainly for college ages and older. The genres cover everything conventional tv and films do from sci-fi/fantasy, drama, comedy, to horror thrillers.

In a period of two years I went from someone who knew almost nothing about anime other than the names of a few movies I have seen, to someone who got IM’s daily from multiple people asking about the latest anime news, what are good shows to watch, and where to find out more info. I would keep up with the latest anime news and would check out shows hours after they made their debut in japan. During the times of year when new animes premiered I had a almost prothetic idea of what animes would succeed and what animes would be awful based just off the first episodes. Keep in mind, I like a LOT of anime series, and have little bad to say about it, but at the same time I recommend very few animes as must watch. So people would want to know what I considered as must be watched shows.

The people and group alone as well as a stream of good shows made me want to stay up to date. During 1999 to 2003 I watched probably over 1000 episodes of anime. Some of it being brilliant, some artistic, and some utter garbage. The first anime that I watched that was actually story based and made me want to download more was a romance/comedy called Love Hina. That grabbed my attention and kept it all the way through 26 episodes, and countless specials. Sooo there you have it, that is my background on how I got into anime. There is a whole lot more to it really than that but thats a good quick rundown. I will be posting the reviews as I can. Preferrable one per day. Mabey quicker mabey slower. Just click the number to go to that anime. If the number not clickable the review is not yet done.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 10th, 2006 at 11:24 am and is filed under Anime, Cory, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.