My friend, who had bad influence on me in general, showed me Naruto and guided me to Piracy(?) stall with burned DVDs, then I was gifted with Baki and Spirited Away 720p Pirate rips from my uncle. After i got internet, i started watching up-to date Naruto Shippuden. I entered into real-anime-world with 5 cm per second and experienced romance meltdown for the next 6 months. My top 1 anime is - Angel's Beats.
my friend on skype kept sending me scenes from kore wa zombie desu ka? and i had to figure out what circumstances led to a man getting stabbed repeatedly in the ass by bamboo spears
godannar was he first anime that I watched when I was 7 bacck then I did not even know the word anime I just though it was cool cartoon after that came one piece and I never looked back.
For me it was when i was searching "japan funny" keywords in youtube and found a amv of Lovely complex. Made me interested in animes. For novels, i had 2 moments, one is Baka to test that made me interested in LNs with baka-tsuki but not interested for long. I became interested again by the manga with the MC that wins 40 billions in lottery or something and can go in isekai by a old house. As i couldn't wait for next chapter that is surely monthly, i checked to see if there was a translation of LN or something. Hmmm manga is maybe naruto ? Not a fan of it though. *Hugs*
I was already influenced by Anime(though it was local dub) ever since my childhood days(Voltes V, YuYu Hakusho(for some reason it was called "Ghost fighters" here), DBZ, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Daimos, and many more), found manga(I was an aggregate pleb tho, dunno scanlators' site was a thing until 2 years or so). Then for some reason, IDK how but I somehow found Baka-tsuki in its starting years whilst surfing... After that, I got full weeb mode after reading Hidan no Aria(Fuck YenPress).
I forgot... But the series I watched when I was young was Pokemon. What made me visit anime sites though was One Piece,I think or was it hentai... I dunno, lol.
When i watched my friend shouting some weird spells openly and doing some weird hand move : Kamehameha. Needed to learn it because it seemed to be a common sense...
When I was a kid I got into Yu Yu hakusho and Gundam Wing. Kept watching anime as I grew up and then got into Chinese novels after reading “Blue Phoenix” when it came out.
Adult Swim, between Inuyasha and FLCL it was everything a growing young boy needed to fall off the norm path.
Started with me for GBA games called astro boy, shaman king, and yu-yu hakusho. Later somehow saw a bleach episode air on adult swim and wondered why it was named after cleaning detergents and watched the whole thing (I think 150 episodes at that time???)
Almost a decade(9 years) since the time I watched my 1st anime.....I don't really remember which it was. I transitioned from Anime to Manga to Novel, and I also don't remember what was the 1st for me for all 3 of them. At 1st, it was curiosity. Anime Art was Awesome, Beautiful, and Gorgeous! I frequently saw them as Ads for some Anime-related Online Game sites(I didn't know back then). And then Hatsune Miku's song was the driving point that lead me to Anime for real. I was searching for her to see from which Anime she came from, and along the way, I got to know many Anime, and that led me to like them for real. When Anime wasn't enough, I turned to Manga, and the same thing happened with Novel. One of the main factor was also because I was really bored with my life I guess....when you lived for quite a long time and all....I really don't want to imagine what my life would be right now if I never discover Anime....Like many people have been, Anime did change my life in many ways, not entirely though. One of the sad point for me is that I'm still a Loner since then to even now.....I really want to find some Otaku friends....
Gundam SEED for me. They're airing every 6 at weekend when I was kid and that's my waking up time every day.
DBZ was my gateway drug, it would come on at 6 A.M. on Saturdays and I'd set my alarm just to get up and watch it. After that it was whatever came on Toonami, until I eventually discovered subs/manga through Naruto.