Furu Anime Panikku

I often wonder how people got into anime. Accidental exposure? Peer pressure? Just plain luck(or bad luck)?

This is going to be quite a lengthy post about how I started,so you can skip this if you find that it’s going to be boring.Well,for me,I guess I can say it was an accidental exposure due to pure boredom. It was just like slightly more than a year ago when I started as a casual viewer,and slightly less than a year when I started watching anime as a fan.

It all started when I fell sick last year the week just before Chinese New Year. I had like 1 week’s worth of sick leave all thanks to the doctor.At that time I was crazy over World Of Warcraft,playing up to 16-18 hours a day despite the illness.PvPing for that number of hours a day continuously is no joke,and I soon got bored of it.

I was then browsing the net to keep myself off WoW for a while when I chanced upon an online anime haven.Don’t ask me how I found it,I just did.It was like heaven to me,seeing so much anime for the first time in my life,not that I really knew what anime was anyway.

Anyway,I managed browsed around,and recalled some anime which I had watched when I was younger. Before I knew it,I had already watch more than 100 episodes and the 9 movies of Detective Conan

I bet some of you might be thinking,”WTF is this guy stupid? Why the hell did he even watch Detective Conan?” That’s the kind of reply I get from some people. But it does not matter to me at all. Who cares what anime you started off with? In fact,I am glad that I started anime with Detective Conan,and I am not afraid to say so.Without it,this blog might not even have started,I would not have started on figurines,and I would probably still be addicted to WoW.

Anyway,I then moved on to other Shonen Series such as One Piece,Shaman King and Full Metal Alchemist. I enjoyed watching these,despite them being Shonen anime. And no,I have never watched Naruto,and only watched the first episode of Bleach.

In on of the One Piece movies(was it the third movie),I was addicted to the movie’s ending song. A quick search on it turned out to lead me to Bump Of Chicken,which is now one of my favourite japanese bands. I somehow managed to obtain Bump Of Chicken’s discography,and their albums were looping on my MP3 player. Later I found out that one of their songs,Arue,was dedicated to an anime character,which turned out to the the Ayanami Rei.

Again,I did another search and found Evangelion. Before my trip to Japan in December 2006,I watched some episodes of Evangelion,and soon became a low-level Rei fanboy.When I was in Akihabara,I went around searching for Ayanami Rei merchandise,which I sadly couldn’t find due to me being a newbie to the scene.

Watching anime was only one of the aspects which encouraged the growth of Otakuism within me. Reading anime blogs was actually what got me to start. I got most of the new anime information from blogs such as dannychoo.com.Local anime blogs such as Anime Desho Desho, RIUVA, The Ramblings of DarkMirage, and a few others increased the rate of growth.

When my ‘O’ levels were over,there was a sale at Latendo the day straight after. Tsubaki from ADD stated on his blog that he was going to lend out his member card for the sale to his readers if he met them there.

On the day of the sale,I met him,as well as tj_han and Umehiko. That was my first anime-related merchandise purchase,apart from manga.I still remember Tsubaki telling me that when collecting figurines,one needs to have self-control,or he will have financial woes. LOL. Looks like I failed in self-control.

After that,the rest just came togther. I begun watching anime actively and purchasing anime merchandise,and soon dropped WoW.

So,I’ve told the tale of my ‘journey’.

Anyone else would like to share how they got to be anime-fans?