What was it that started your interest in Japanese culture?
>>15452999
Shitty basically none social life, awakard relationship with my parents, no real life goal in mind and not being good at really anything.
So it all looked like a portal to a new world I could escape into.
Elfen Lied
I started watching anime and found a community that fetishized escapist entertainment at a time when I wanted to escape from everything.
Cheez TV.
Pokemon when I was a wee lad, and it stemmed from there over the years. 24 now.
>>15452999
What started it all? A dragon ball comic with everyone figthing some sort of robot with the mind of an old geezer. Afterwards detective conan, silor moon and pokemon. Those were the times...
Nowadays I´m reading up on their culture and lifestyle far more than I read manga...
My dick
>>15453050
The hosts were cool.
I'm not going to pretend I have an interesting in the "culture", but my favorite show as a little kid was the 'Littl' Bits' and then as an older kid it was Sailor Moon. Video game obsession is another obvious avenue- probably the Lunar games were what sealed the deal.
I feel old, /jp/.
>>15453124
Lillybit was my first waifu.
>>15453013
This.
>>15452999
Touhou and Gachimuchi
Basically the memes
Tenchi Muyo on Toonami. After that there was no pulling up from the weeb tailspin.
My main hobby back in middle school was watching Bleach and Naruto.
>>15452999
This song really drew me in when I was 10. It seemed so magical and mysterious. After hearing it I became obsessed with finding more things like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV5XU4vIu5E
4kids dubs on saturday mornings when I was 9
My mother brought home Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service when I was 6 or 7
>>15452999
http://kidsmeal.wikia.com/wiki/Cardcaptors_(Taco_Bell,_2002)
Also Hamtaro on Toonami.
>>15452999
Creature Double Feature.
They used to play all the Godzilla and Daimajin movies and shit like Matango.
Then shit like Star Blazers, Force 5, and Battle of the Planets hit the states. Then Robotech came along and shit blew up.
Then MIT and NASA started hosting anime on their servers.
i watched Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and various Toonami series (DBZ, Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyou) as a kid, but they were just TV shows to me. it wasn't until i happened to see Read or Die on adult swim that i got really interested in anime -- and Japanese culture after that.
>>15453009
Hey you sound like me
>>15455050
>>15458308
Same here, fucking Toonami.
Was Tenchi Muyou the first you experienced 2d girl tingles as a little boy?
Robotech 1986
>>15452999
I'm not that interested in Japanese culture, at least no more than in other countries' cultures, but SHUFFLE! anime (and the ending in particular -fuck that bitch, Rin rightfully belongs to Kaede) made me mad enough to actively search for its VN's (vaporware) English patch, which led me to /jp/ and I've been here since then.
Evangelion, Elfen Lied, Sailor Moon and Robotech all have already contributed their parts by then, but that still wasn't enough.
Asking my friends what anime Touhou was and getting bullied for it.
This
Remember watching it on Nickelodeon
Liked the art style and how they presented the characters.
>>15452999
I watched the Xplay episode where Adam and Morgan go to Japan.
>>15455025
>Touhou and Gachimuchi
me too
japanese memes, especially OtoMAD, are objectively superior to memes from any other country
>>15452999You.
A travel in Japan.
My uncle lived in japan for several years to study before I was born but he brought back a lot of stuff and would go on yearly trips for work. I thought the stuff was cool as a kid, and kind of forgot about it but in college got back into it for no real reason, probably escapism.
Watching anime on TV, Studio Ghibli movies and games are what got me into Japanese stuff, everything that came from there just seemed to be have a higher quality and more magic to it.
>>15452999
>What was it that started your interest in Japanese culture?
Trying to understand anime tropes.
>>15452999
The games Megatech Software released in the West, and by extension, the anime of the day.
I was a loser, and I figured it was the aspect of being a loser which attracted people to the escapist aspects of Japanese media.
I had already gone through to process of getting used to H-doujinshi, so I just started consuming non-H works.
Worked exactly as I planned it.
Moomins
>>15452999
when i was a kid, local tv aired GetBackers
that shit was my life back then. oh well.
Lucky Star
>>15460953
oh and shaman king
Damn, i almost forgot shaman king
>>15452999
A 3 second clip from a vhs with the girls from Rayearth, taped from a local channel, most likely recorded by my father. Apparently those were the original contents of the tape, with some other cartoons taped over.
This was my first time such anime, with girls that were cute and hot (for a 5 year old) at the same time.
>>15452999
Playing and loving the SNES Bomberman games when I was a kid. Given how they were pretty much my first contact with Japanese stuff, I guess I was destined to be a weeaboo from birth.
>>15452999
>>15452999
Yu-gi-oh, dinosaur king, beyblade and bakugan. Also I got molested a lot by my nihonjin mum. Played a lot of pokèmon because mum wouldn't let me outside. When I changed my gender as a teen she was there for me and would feel my developing breasts and when I had the operation she showed me how to masturbate properly. Anyway she's dead now but I love japs because of her <3
>>15452999
When I was in high school I had no friends, so I became friends with the only kid more retarded than I was, and he liked anime. It only got worse from there.
Watching naruto, dragon ball z, saint seiya and candy candy with my parents as a kid
>>15461283
And also pokemon
>>15452999
I fell in love with a depiction of a fictional character and from there I fell rapidly into this culture that I don't know how to operate without although now my love for her, well, it's a long story but it was her that originally got me into the eastern stuff and past my hatred for weebdom and actually is the very reason I'm still here on /jp/
Dealing with abuse and domestic violence for 15 long years of my life. I wanted to go to Gensoyko a few major oh so close times, then I decided to save up NEET coin and work in the outside world, and now I'm free. Touhou 11 definitely helped me out, getting immersed in that, which was my first game. Also 4ch became prominent in my life, as well as denpa song and headphones to block things out. Still no clear on 11 and many other 2hus to follow. But eh, be NEET and hikki on my own terms in my own place. It's better now. Feel like that event was a persistent spell card in my life that had a three year timeout time I needed to clear, and I cleared it. Ganbatte. So much better now, although dealing with major internal wounds. They'll heal...
>>15461283
mexico?
If nobody gives this thread a last-minute cheeky bump, I just wanted to say that I enjoyed reading this thread.
