Some Of The First Anime That I Ever Watched

I feel like when you ask someone of my generation “what’s the first anime series you ended up watching?”, you’re basically asking two different questions, “What was the first anime that you watched” and “What was the first anime that you saw when you knew it was anime”. Taking those two questions into account, I thought it might be quite interesting to answer them to the best of my ability.

First, I will answer “What was the first anime that you watched” and, if I had to guess since my memory at the time was quite nebulous, I would guess that it was Pokémon. Just like so many my age, I was part of the Pokémania that swept the world in the late 90s/early 00s and, while I’m not 100% certain since I was quite young at the time, I’m fairly sure that I first saw the anime and later picked up a Game Boy with Pokémon Red.

Besides that, other anime that I watched at the time were Digimon, Medabots, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cardcaptors and Duel Masters. From what I remember, what drew me to these shows was the surprising amount of action present compared to many other cartoons that I watched and the art style. I watched these shows without knowing that they were from Japan although the presence of katakana in Digimon would’ve been a hint had I not assumed it was some kind of Digimon language. Additionally, I also remember my mother renting a copy of Spirited Away to show me after it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

It wasn’t until secondary school that I learned that many of the shows that I’d watched as a child were anime series and that there were an even wider variety of them than I had realised. This came in the form of both meeting someone who explained to me what anime was and coming across some Studio Ghibli films and Akira in Empire’s 500 greatest movies of all time.

While watching some films like Studio Ghibli, Akira, Ghost in the Shell etc., I also began looking into anime series to watch. The first two anime series that I can remember buying and watching at the time were Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings and Devil May Cry: The Animated Series. I chose these series specifically because I had played Devil Kings, the English name for Sengoku Basara, and Devil May Cry 4. I remembered being particularly impressed with the level of detail in the animation and how it wasn’t afraid to show more blood than I saw in Western animation.

However, the first anime series that I remember really gripping me at the time was Naruto. I had heard quite a bit about Naruto and decided to pick up the first season from Manga Entertainment. After a few episodes I became engrossed in the characters, the humour and the world of the ninjas and it ended up becoming a driving force in my enthusiasm for anime.

While certainly not a particularly unique story, I hope that you enjoyed reading about some of the first anime that I ever watched. Let me know your thoughts, which were the first anime that you watched, what you think about dividing these between anime that you unknowingly watched and anime that you knew were anime and any additional information you might have on the topic.

Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!