Wagamama Fairy Mirmo De Pon!, an obscure anime that is basically The Fairly Oddparents if it was a shoujo. When I was in elementary school, it was on regional TV right after classes ended, and I loved it. It was the first ever media I could get my hands on that had an intriguing plot that I wanted to follow. I missed the series finale, tho :(

Some time ago I went back and rewatched it, complete with the finale and all. It was nostalgic but also kinda hard to rewatch because it’s so clearly made exclusively for children. It was so obscure that the only full download I could come across online even had the logo of the regional TV channel where I originally watched it as a child.

Akira

Netflix dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Heidi and Maya the Bee when I was about 4

Cowboy Bebop

dbz and pokemon as well but only when id catch it between other activities. Didn’t actually sit through an entire anime until high school where my friend borrowed me Cromartie High.

First film was probably the first Pokémon film in theaters.

Sailor Moon. It was on early in the morning and I’d get ready for school really fast so I could sit and watch it before running to catch the bus.

It was the year of our lord 1990, I was 5 years old, and the time was somewhere after midnight. I had snuck out of my room and into my grandparents basement to sneak some late night tv.

The original Vampire Hunter D was playing and I had no idea what it was, but it was amazing. The guy had a hand that ATE things!!!

I didn’t realize what it was until around 8th grade when I started getting into the standards of DBZ and Sailor Moon… I expanded drastically from there once I realized I could, spent around $4000 on manga throughout highschool and found a little hole in the wall DVD rental shop on the local college campus with a wall of anime DVDs and VHS tapes.

Yu Yu Hakushou. I didn’t even realize the name is Yu Yu Hakushou until years later. I only remember thinking the delinquent guy with a laser sword and a guy shooting energy balls from the finger tip’s pretty cool.

Project A-Ko in 1996

I also watched Pokemon and DBZ when I was young, not even knowing about anime.

In highschool I thought “What is anime? Let’s give it a shot”. I opened up Hulu and somehow picked out Non Non Biyori. Looking back, it was a banger choice.

I’m surprised only a handful of people have mentioned Ghibli movies. For me it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, it’s probably one of the first movies I remember watching in general. Still my favorite Ghibli movie and I must have watched it dozens of times as a kid.
The source material for it is a manga by Miyazaki himself and it’s much longer and deeper (the movie only covers about 1.5 out of 7 volumes, and changes a lot of details). Highly recommended.

Kiki’s Delivery Service. I got it on VHS, probably for Christmas the year the Disney dub came out. I didn’t have cable for a decent chunk of my childhood, so I saw that even before Pokemon.

First show was probably Voltron. First film was probably Vampire Hunter D.

Toonami became a big part of my life, and there was a small theater downtown that did showings of Miyazaki and such. I remember seeing Metropolis there, too.

I owe a lot to those scrappy little enterprises, taking a gamble that there would be an audience for this stuff.

Not sure if everyone would consider it “anime” as it’s more a hybrid of US and Japanese, but “Flight of Dragons.” It felt very stylistic and deep to a young me, and showed me animation could be serious.

As to specifically watching anime as a known thing, Toonami shows pulled me in. I caught DBZ flipping through the channels and I started watching that and Outlaw Star.

Met a friend that was into it and he lent me Iria: The Zeiram, Armitage 3, Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, and eventually a few others.