A 12 year anime fan speaks – His road to fandom Part 1.5
For the record, I liked Megumi the most in Nadesico for a while until she turned into a real bitch and then my love shifted to Ruri who was so much more superior.
So, up to this point my anime watching was rather limited but I think I had a fairly diverse background with a bunch of different shows. Tenchi and El Hazard for harem comedy. Magic Knights Rayearth and a few bootleg Cardcaptor Sakura episodes for magical girl. Nadesico and Evangelion for mecha. And Fushigi Yuugi as shoujo. I was watching some other stuff that I never really did finish but I forget them to be honest. I still some how missed the Cowboy Bebop craze in what was it 1998? Also, never got into shounen either. But I did watch Gundam Wing and a lot of the new episodes of DBZ and Sailor Moon as well when they aired. Hell, I watched a lot of the stuff on Toonami, a kind of anime block of shows on the Cartoon network in the late 90s early 2000s, since I wasn’t getting anything new.
I seemed to have failed to mention I actually watched End of Evangelion via a bootleg video in I think 2000. God that was pure orgasmic win which messed with my head over 9000. I honestly could not sleep after watching that thing. I felt really sad and depressed over it all. My friends and I had a thing going for a few years where we’d watch it every New Years Eve. I usually have been keeping the tradition alive without them because I am oh so ronery.
The summer of 2001 before high school began was the time when I really got interested in date sims, and yes this is a side story. Honestly, middle school times was the slowest time for my anime hobby since there was no Internet, no real outlet for discussion, and no where to find out about worthwhile shows plus no money.
Although the most significant show anime/manga I found out around this time. If not for Gamefaqs, I probably wouldn’t have gotten interested in something that was beginning to get popular around the boards about a guy trying to get into a certain Japanese university in a manga/anime called Love Hina. A friend of mine actually bought me the first volume of Love Hina from Japan when he went during that summer. Mostly this was due to me talking about it and being like, “Aw man this sounds awesome, but it is only in Japan!”
Shinobu-chan!
Love Hina was being released bilingual in Japan at that time. That was my first leap into the moe genre. I was really taken aback, and I honestly remembering giggling like a faggot asking, “Whoa, is this porn? I can see her breasts.” Course I instantly fell in love with Shinobu-chan. I am actually uncertain of the time frame of the events here. I remember reading about Love Hina on a computer but I don’t remember owning a computer until after I entered high school so uh, what? There was also this place in New Jersey we’d go that had a Japanese bookstore. I bought volumes 2 and 3 of the bilingual Love Hina at that time, and I only craved more. You can only imagine my joy when I heard the manga was being localized and a anime was being released, but that wasn’t until later. I was really into Love Hina actually if you couldn’t guess this already.
I think it is worth mentioning Megatokyo even if it does suck now, but without it I probably wouldn’t have gotten interested in visual novels and in particular Air, Tokimemo, and other date sim games. Back in like insert time frame here and what not Megatokyo wasn’t all that bad I thought. It was also an interesting source for information about anime and games that I really wasn’t finding anywhere else also it was about Japan related stuff! I thought it was a pretty cool comic, and Piro and Largo were *puts on flame resist gear* interesting characters, but then the comic lost focus, Largo left and actually became more like a visual novel and less parody so I stopped reading around my junior year.
Sakura Taisen 3 cast
My friend also brought a bunch of cool stuff back from the Japan. The most cool thing being Sakura Taisen 3 for the Dreamcast. Great game is great. I was a fairly big Sakura Taisen fan before he got the game since I had seen the 2 part OVA released by ADV, and I researched it somewhat on the Internet, but not the real Internet here. During this time I didn’t have a computer and I was browsing the Internet via a WebTV. This thing you hook up to your TV to be able to browse the Internet. My family couldn’t afford a computer so this was how I browsed GameFaqs, and all these old sites that don’t exist anymore, and how I was introduced to hentai. FFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Anyway, I thought Sakura Taisen was interesting but I knew I could never understand it or ever get to play it. Playing Sakura Taisen 3 on the Dreamcast really got me into the whole visual novel/date sim scene. It also got me interested in import games and modding my console to play games that weren’t being released in America.
Sakura Taisen 2 cast
Did some research on importing places. I was recommended NCSX which I still recommend to anyone on the eastcoast. They have never let me down and they’re fast! Instantly got Sakura Taisen 2 since I had played 3 already a bit so I wanted something new. Although, I was fairly addicted to the gameplay introduced in Sakura Taisen 3. I had never played anything like it. A mix of RPG and having conversations with girls to improve their stats for battle and what not. I think a lot of ST fans are thankful for Kayama’s translations of all the games because I for one used them a lot. I think with Sakura Taisen 2 I started to pick up on Katakana and Hiragana also, but I still had no idea what was being said.
That basically sums up the events of the summer 2001. Things really began to change once I got a computer when I entered high school, but don’t assume I instantly jumped on the whole downloading scene right away. I stayed stubborn for a long time until waiting patiently got the best of me, but more on that next time.
trip down memory lane…