What was your first anime show or film?
For me? The first anime related thing I saw as a kid was Spirited Away on VHS, I was awestruck from the animation and quality of the film.
For shows it would’ve been the usual Pokemon and DBZ. As I grew older I suppose my first proper anime show was watching streams of Neon Genesis Evangelion due to people talking about it at school.
So what about you? What did you see first?
I first saw Saint Seiya in Mexico in the early 90s. Being a young kid I didn’t know it was anime at the time but remembered it being special compared to cartoons of the day.
I’m surprised only a handful of people have mentioned Ghibli movies. For me it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, it’s probably one of the first movies I remember watching in general. Still my favorite Ghibli movie and I must have watched it dozens of times as a kid.
The source material for it is a manga by Miyazaki himself and it’s much longer and deeper (the movie only covers about 1.5 out of 7 volumes, and changes a lot of details). Highly recommended.
Probably “Alfred J Kwak”. A Dutch cartoon produced in Japan. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLITzooyl5h5GKwvnwe3zSVXjnrDOiO_5P
Or “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Adventures_of_Nils_(TV_series)
Back in the 70’s and 80’s it was common to outsource the production of animation to Japan. So many European cartoons were basically anime. It had the typical Japanese animation style of that time. For example the same company that produced “Alfred J Kwak” made the 1990 version of the Moomin TV-series.
Wagamama Fairy Mirmo De Pon!, an obscure anime that is basically The Fairly Oddparents if it was a shoujo. When I was in elementary school, it was on regional TV right after classes ended, and I loved it. It was the first ever media I could get my hands on that had an intriguing plot that I wanted to follow. I missed the series finale, tho :(
Some time ago I went back and rewatched it, complete with the finale and all. It was nostalgic but also kinda hard to rewatch because it’s so clearly made exclusively for children. It was so obscure that the only full download I could come across online even had the logo of the regional TV channel where I originally watched it as a child.
Yu Yu Hakushou. I didn’t even realize the name is Yu Yu Hakushou until years later. I only remember thinking the delinquent guy with a laser sword and a guy shooting energy balls from the finger tip’s pretty cool.
