A 12 year anime fan speaks – His road to fandom Part 2

I’d open her gate if you know what I mean.

I got my first computer in 2001 around the time I had entered high school, but during this time I was still collecting some VHS like Nadesico was still being released on tape, but I was also following some series now as DVDs like Trigun, and Gatekeepers. Cardcaptor Sakura was also being released to DVD now and I was buying those. Buy? Ah, yes that is right. I was still buying my anime at this point. I was sort of aware of downloading but not fully aware of it. I didn’t download anime right away though.

A friend of mine had showed me a site to download music and this was my first introduction to the world of music, really. Up to this point I was never really into music at all so this was like a godsend of interesting tunes for my ears. Good or bad it was only anime/game music I downloaded, and a lot of it was classic tunes by today’s standards and maybe by that time too. Some of the stuff I listened to at that time was a lot of Megumi Hayashibara, Masami Okui, Ayumi Hamasaki, Do As Infinity, T.M Revolution, and some anime openings and closing themes.

I still wasn’t watching much at this point since I was still buying anime. I was really excited when I read that Love Hina was going to be localized in America. I remember reading about that in this one volume of Animerica. I think it is worth noting that when I started to buy DVDs was the first time I started to listen to subs only. Up to this point I was only watching dubs, and now I will never touch a dub again. It’s a good thing too because the dub for Love Hina is horrid.

Love Hina was the last series I bought DVDs for before I was like, “Damn it. I can’t take waiting for the next DVD anymore. I need to know what happens now!” So, that is how I got into that. Nothing like money being an issue or what not. I just gave into my impatience and used Winmx to see the rest of Love Hina. From there the rest is history, but I was still feeling bored in a sense. A window of opportunity was there but I wasn’t using it properly. You’d think I would have been watching a ton of other shows at this point, and sadly looking back I regret that but what can you do? Winmx was actually a pretty useful tool for me at the time. I got a lot of use out of it music wise.

Yes, if anything I was getting a lot of music online instead of anime. I might have questioned my reasons for downloading a lot of Tokimeki Memorial 1 and 2 tunes at the time, but later when I actually played the games I didn’t regret it one bit. That is the thing about me. I need to get into the main thing before getting into all the sub things of a particular franchise. I had actually played the Tokimeki Memorial 1 on an SNES emulator sometime and I actually liked it a little. Not a lot or anything, but I did end up liking shy glasses girls a little more for a while after playing it. That remained very moe for me for a few years.

My favorite girl from Onegai Teacher was Maho, actually.

Honestly, I have no idea how I watched the shows I did during this time. Love Hina, Chobits, Ai Yori Aoshi, Rahxephon, Onegai Teacher, and what not. I probably heard about them from Gamefaqs, but they are all of the same genre. I think it was because I limited myself to what I thought I could only find online. There was no thing where you could download entire series or find what was being brought out recently. If there was I didn’t know about it. I think I wanted to watch a lot of older shows but I gave up if I couldn’t find all the episodes to a given show. So, for a long time I was watching what is by today’s standards, a bishoujo show. This is probably another reason why I seem to go for these kinds of shows more in the present.

Many laughs were had and so many great memories watching Azumanga Daioh.

The summer of 03 is something I look back and smile to for some reason. I had met a guy via Winmx who really got me into eroge and introduced me more to bishoujo game music and what not. I downloaded a lot of stuff like Comic Party, Clannad, Air, and Kanon music from him. Also it was around this time I started moving to emule instead for my anime and music needs for whatever reason. I remember getting into I’ve Sound stuff as well. In particular, KOTOKO. Wow, I really liked listening to her music, and the other I’ve stuff because it was all techno/trance. I got into the Comic Party anime, and as bad as it was I liked it somewhat and bought the game for the Dreamcast. I really liked the game and still do. It has a fun system of making doujinshi and isn’t just all text. I fell in love with the character, Asahi Sakurai.

I for one liked the twist ending, and Winia is WIN.

I also started getting interested in drawing my own manga at this time. I was somewhat good (by other people’s standards) at drawing so I started drawing a comic using the help of these How to draw Manga books that were actually real in depth and fun to read since they talked about various female archetypes in anime and what not. I thought it was cool. I did this for a while at my local Borders everyday just drawing while listening to music. It was tremendous fun for how long it lasted and I thank Comic Party for that.

As much as I liked Ai Yori Aoshi it just makes me grind my teeth when I listen to the OP and ED since it was around this time I also briefly… had a girlfriend. This is probably another reason why I look back and smile, but it only lasted 3 months. I won’t get into the details but it didn’t work out for various reasons and from there it ended when I was just starting Kimi ga Nozomu Eien in September. Not a great combination if you’re familiar with that show. My drama plus watching bullshit drama. Jeez… From there it was just another boring year of nothing real good to watch. My junior year in high school strikes me as a particular unimportant year of watching nothing of real value or awesomeness.

Uguu~ No one remembers the original Kanon anime.

Yeah, Stellvia, Mahoromatic, Scrapped Princess, Saikano and Fruits Basket were all good shows but everything else was kinda meh. Scrapped Princess is a show I remember being real into like the first one in a long time for that time. I couldn’t wait for each new episode to be released. I cannot believe I sat through watching .Hack//Sign though. Ugh… I was still using emule to get my anime, and I was aware of torrents but was still stubborn in getting into this new technology because I thought what I was using worked fine. But miraculously enough I got into torrents and, my senior year was and still is something I consider my golden era.