When I was in grade 5 - I was 10, I went to a school that was mainly Filipino and Korean kids (you can imagine how much I got picked on being that I was one of the few Australian kids there).

I made friends with a group of Korean girls, who at first liked to pick on me (lol). At lunch, I'd sit with them and they'd make me taste their strange food, food I had never even seen before and slowly, as time went by, I began to really like it. One girl, who's name was Christina, introduced me to manga and because it was in Korean, she'd read it to me when we had downtime in class. I got so fascinated. I also got addicted to Hello Pandas along with other Asian snacks and made my mom give me a something everyday for school. Ever since then I was hooked.

I find it funny, though, that after being bullied by these Korean girls, and being forced to eat their curry food so they could laugh at me - which after a few months of the torture I started getting used to it and I liked it more than hated it. I used to say how much I hate Asian people and now here I am... saying that I myself am Asian and can speak fluent Japanese. Oh, the irony <3

Sorry if this topic exists already, I never saw it yet.

Hmmm, I started when I was about 16, but I'd been watching anime before that, without even realising it was anime. Like, when I was 10, before school on TV would be Pokemon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon and Digimon...I used to love them shows, and when I'd come home from school and go to my Nan and Grandad's house (who had SKY) I'd watch Dragonball Z.

I'd always liked Pokemon, but then when I turned 16 I really liked this boy, and one day during a lesson his class was with my class, so I sat by him and talked to him and on his computer he was editing a picture, and it looked cool and asked what the picture was of, and he started talking about "Naruto" and "anime" and we were talking for the whole lesson and I was chatting about "Sailor Moon" and stuff, and he recommended I watch "Naruto".
During that time I had study period (before my GCSE's) and for the rest of the summer I watched "Naruto" and read the manga, I also started downloading the opening and ending themes because I loved them. Then it branched off from there, to "Inuyasha" "Fruits Basket" etc.etc.

Now I'm 20 and literally I am an Asian Otaku

I can't actually pick a starting point...I mean, I listened to chinese music all the time when I was little (my absolute favourite song was in cantonese and I could sing it better then than I can now. ) and the first shows I remember really really liking are Sailor Moon and Astro Boy. Then of course, you have all the dubbed anime that was on in the mornings before school. My first subbed anime was stuff that my brother had got from a friend to watch. Love Hina. Got completely hooked on it and rewatched that SO MANY TIMES. First manga was Ranma 1/2 because my friend showed me it at the library. I was like..10? Ish. Then I'd watch dramas with Mum sometimes and pick up the weirdest phrases. And falling asleep on the couch. XD And there were songs in them that I really liked so I looked them up...And there was always anime trading going on through my friends..

And somehow, eventually, this culminated in me counting any time I spent watching chinese (well, taiwanese) dramas as 'listening/reading practice' while I took Chinese (Mandarin, really) as a subject in high school... So that got me into Hana Kimi and It Started With a Kiss, and from there I got to Fahrenheit and anything they're in (especially Wu Chun) and...yeah. The rest is history.

I'm one of those people who didn't study at all for [end of high school exams] but spent the whole time watching anime and dramas. Mostly because there really wasn't much I could really study..

Ah, now that you said Sailor Moon you reminded me of something! When I was 8 or younger, I used to watch it everyday because back then on TV we didn't have Hannah Montana and all that stuff, we had good TV. So you're right, Isidarnipples, I can't actually pin-point my exact starting either.

Really, though, what I said above was what REALLY got me into anime, manga and all that.

oh gosh I can't even remember a lot of the specifics. XD
I loved Pokemon, Digimon, Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, and all those other dubbed-for-children anime as a kid. >w<
Somehow I got into J-Pop, I still can't remember how. I liked Utada Hikaru (and still do), and was looking up videos on YouTube to listen to her songs. Someone had made a bunch of Midori no Hibi AMVs to them. So, I decided to start watching Midori no Hibi, with subs. I was 10 and in hindsight that anime was probably a bit too mature for me. XD
After that, I liked the Midori no Hibi ending theme, so looked up a video on YouTube to listen to the full thing. What did I find? An Ouran High School Host Club AMV! So I watched that next, and I just started watching whatever anime interested me.

As for yaoi...well...I found some slashfics about my favourite J-rock band when I was 13. Got my start early, there. XD

OH I also remember how I got into reading manga. Can't remember how old I was, probably still around 10, but at a summer Girl Guide camp I went to, a girl in my tent had the first two volumes of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (like the original ones, when it was good and not just about the cards). I was like, "this is fkljajskl awesome" and went to buy them, as well as picking up some shojo manga that interested me.

How did I find Ouran... *thinks*

Oh! I was on a website that hosts all these animes and I went into "top picks" or whatever and it was one of the top 5... I think it was number one. I'm not gonna lie, I am quite picky sometimes when it comes to Anime, and when I saw the front cover and that it involved twincest - yup. Only watched it cos of that, I got seriously interested. I was hooked right away!

I think Sailor Moon is the first anime I've ever watched. It was back when she uses nothing but her forehead protector thingy to beat all those enemies. Can you believe that? She uses her forehead protector thingy, throw it like a boomerang, and defeats the enemy just like that. Lol.

Oh, wait, was it Yakiba that I first watched? I can't remember well.

Anyway, my fascination with Sailor Moon, and her talking cat, Luna, got me quite hooked with anime. More series came after it like Slam Dunk, Magic Knight Rayearth, Jester the Adventurer (Gokudo-kun Manyuki), and Yu Yu Hakusho, and they got me more and more addicted. I actually ended up practicing drawing 'cause I find it so cool to see simple drawings turned into those animations I watch.

Ah! The memories!

Ehem. Once upon a long ago. (Not too long, I'm not that old.)

I remember seeing a few episodes of Hamtaro and I think one of Sailor Moon in the earlier times, but I never understood it to be anime. To the little me, it was just a show to giggle and awe at.

I think I was between 9-11 years old. My godsisters was spending the night at my house and she decided to steal the remote.
Understanding Anime/Manga: Inuyasha.

I remember what she said: "You see that guy in the red? ... Yeah the one with the dog ears. That's her boyfriend." Lol This was also before InuKag became canon o.o; Go fig.

The first time I realized what I was watching, I was gaping at the animation of Inuyasha. Yes, it looked so much cooler than any american show I've seen. lol

Understanding Anime/Manga: Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne
I found this manga in my school library in the 7th grade. Pivot point here, ladies and gents. From this manga, I became OBSESSED with learning how to draw. T.T Arina Tanemura, I <3 you. It also began my desire to create a story of my own.

BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL MEMORIES. T.T

Reading all of your guy's posts, I'm the only one that got bullied into liking this stuff haha.

Keshia wrote:Reading all of your guy's posts, I'm the only one that got bullied into liking this stuff haha.

At least you turned the bullying into a positive? (Or like, Aren't you glaaad you got bullied because now you like all this stuff!! )

Haha yes, it was a very good thing that I got bullied into it. I mean, the bullying wasn't over the top, but it did at first make me despise Asians, but in the end we grew into friends and boom. I became an obsessed freak.

Hmm...I remember. I watched lots of Pokemon, Dragonball Z and other shows like that since I was very young. But I only thought of them as cartoons and in the same category as Rugrats or whatever. Even when I got older and watched Inuyasha, Prince of Tennis or whatever was on Toonami or adult swim that I still regarded them as cartoons.

But it wasn't till I read my first manga that I finally got into the anime/manga world.

I was in the 6th grade and my older cousin forced me to read the first 3 volumes of Fruits Basket (btw, it's my #1 fave manga/anime of all time. Sorry Ouran, you come in second ). I remember being reluctant cause I thought it was stupid reading books backwards. And I thought pictures in books were pathetic (I was a snot-nosed novel lover). But I ended up eating my own words and soon got addicted to it! I would then pay my cousin's friend (the owner of the books) in order to borrow her manga. I became an otaku until 8th grade. My cousin who introduced them said that manga /anime is so lame and told me that I should stop or else I would be considered a nerd. And of course, puberty got to me and I stopped.

I got back into it about a year ago thanks to my friend. She loves watching anime and lended me her DVDS. Later, I found out about mangafox and other sites to read manga. Since I'm now a college student and don't care what others think, I got back into the manga/anime world. Everyone knows, their perfectly fine with it and I'm now very happy. It's a happy ending for me.

OH! And I loved asian dramas ever since I moved to the Philippines to study (almost 5 years ago). Apparently, it's very popular with us Filipinos.

I started liking it just two years ago, in seventh grade. I was in orchestra class and I sat next to this girl, Elaine. She had volume one of Ouran with her, and I saw it, and asked what it was. She explained it to me, and even though I thought it was weird, she was like, "It's pretty funny. They have a TV show, so you should go look it up." I did, and I loved it. Afte that we became best friends, and she introduced me to Hetalia. (Though before that, I had already watched Fruits Basket and Shugo Chara).


Though to be honest, I don't really like talking about it a lot at school, cause I'm afraid people will think I'm a weeaboo, or something. XP I know I'm not, but still. I wouldn't want someone calling me that.

I'm pretty sure that I got a glimspe of what I'd be continously watching in year four. My sister made me watch the first few episodes of sailor moon, and I really liked it, but I was too fussy to continue. Then, later in year 5, my Japanese friend and my Filipino friend got me into liking to draw manga. Yet, I hadn't read any.
Then, at the end of year six, my Japanese friend made me watch all the Jdramas, and I fell in love with them. Since then, [I'm now in year seven, I know, I'm young.] I have started to get into manga, Kpop, anime, J&Kdrama and everything.
I'm now what the Asians at my school refer to as, 'artifical asian' [in a nice way, unlike my sister says I am.] and I usually spend most of my time talking to them about Asian stuff. :L
I'm glad that I got into it. My life was pretty boring until that day when Alicia kept spamming me on facebook to watch Hana Kimi. [She used the long title, I know it off by heart now.]

I was in 4th grade, so about 9 or 10 years old. There was nothing on TV one day and I was waiting for this 'Sailor Moon' show to finish since it aired before some other show I wanted to watch. I thought it would be about pirates (y'know, sailors?) or something so I never watched it. I had it on in the background and when it came back from commercial I saw it was a bunch of girls in cute outfits, talking cats, and lots of sparkles. I watched the rest of the episode and from then on I was hooked.

This was back when we still had Toonami, so shortly after Sailor Moon aired other anime was added so I watched Tenchi Muyo, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakushou, and a little of DBZ. A girl had moved in near my apartment who was a big anime fan, so I began to read the Sailor Moon manga and we'd watch our anime together.

I heard about Inuyasha and then learned it was on TV during Cartoon Network's new 'adult swim.' It wasn't until I watched Inuyasha that I really started getting into J-pop and the Japanese language and culture. Back in the day Adult Swim aired tons of anime series, such as Outlaw Star, Gundam Wing, Pilot Candidate, Cowboy Beebop, Rurouni Kenshin, Big O... and I know it aired the Escaflowne movie and Gundam movie (Endless Waltz I think?) at some point. I remember all the awesome series that aired on Adult Swim as it rotated its series... Wolf's Rain, Samurai Champloo, Fullmetal Alchemist...

Anyway, yeah. I've been interested in anime/manga for over ten years now. My mom is still waiting for me to 'grow out if it,' but whatever. I'll always love it. >w<