Did you know it was anime?

When you saw your first anime, did you KNOW it was anime, or did you just think it was an ordinary cartoon at the time?

When I first saw my first anime, I knew nothing of anime & thought it was just an ordinary cartoon. Later I gradually learned what anime was (though I was still unclear for a while, I thought it was the more mature/higher quality toons aimed at older kids, instead of the kiddie stuff, it was some time later that I learned of it's japanese origins & the fact that much anime is actually everybit as kiddie as so many western toons).

My first "anime" i watched is dragon ball... when i was a kid i really thought it was only a normal cartoon

Nope, I had no clue that the reason I enjoyed Robotech,Battle of the Planets,Ulysess 31,Mysterious Cities of Gold,Voltron, because they were from Japan. I enjoyed many types of animation, but for whatever reason these particular titles resonated with me.
I did see differences in animation and shading in a few of them. Also, characters in ships or robots that blew up did not parachute to safety, which I found particularly unique.

I first learned what Japanese animation was buying Robotech Art 1.In the back of the book it talked of what Japanese animation was. http://www.amazon.com/Robotech-Art-I-Starblaze-Editions/dp/0898654122 this was probably 87' or so. Then I found a comic dealer in Arizona that had a copy of Macross Perfect Memory. It had sketches, designs, frames from the show (all in Japanese) and I had to get it. 50$ in 1980's money was a birthday gift and a lot of chores.

I then used to go to the Golden Age of comics in Seattle, whenever I visited my relatives. At this shop they had VHS tapes playing of imported/bootleg anime. At the time I went I saw a title called Gundam, and another time I saw Project AKO. The section said it was from Japan. I could not afford the titles so I only had memories of them till years later.

So, to get back to the OP. Nope, for at least 6 or so years I never knew what I was watching was from another country.

I had no idea that it was anime, I thought it was something like cartoons, but more serious compared to Simpsons, Woody Woodpecker and so :s

Slayers was just another cartoon I'd watch right after coming back from school at the time. I mean, I didn't even know the opening theme was Japanese at first. To me it was just awesome-sounding gibberish I'd poorly emulate again and again.

I couldn't really tell when I started wondering about what was Japanese animation and what wasn't.

Psshhh...

To keep my "extreme anime lover" phase valid, everything I've watched and currently watching is marked as anime. That includes Big Bang Theory, Cops, News and all that other stuff.

Just had the brilliant idea of an news channel that is given by anime characters. I nominate a animized versions John Stewart & Wolf Blitzer to be anchors!
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Seriously though. I really didn't know the word "Anime" back when I was like 10 years old. Everything I watched was just some cartoon on cartoon network. I didn't even realize that Toonami was a "predominantly anime" block on the channel until like 15 when I started watching bleach.

But looking back on everything I used to watch, I sometimes questioned if it was an anime or not. Shows like Teen Titans had me wonder if it was an anime. At one point I used to think "Code Lyoko" was an anime too until I did a Wiki search on it.

But to answer your question. No, I didn't back then.

no idea, i first saw Sailor Moon when i was 5 and thought it was garbage made fun of my little sister for watching it and the Anime i watched, i had no idea at all, Digimon, Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh oh let's not forget Dragon Ball, they did strike me as weird when i got older though, weird as in different enter Inuyasha, Gundam Seed, .Hack//Sign and Chobits still clueless but loved them as they entranced me with how different it was from cartoons and being a time before Youtube also being on the net since Windows 2000...Oh God i feel old now
I looked up on how many episodes there was for Inuyasha then saw 3 things, Japanese writing, Manga and Anime, looked up Manga and Anime and learned so much...then learned of Hentai shortly afterwords
I rightfully apologized to my little sister since i now watch Sailor Moon
24 years old now been watching (since i learned of anime) since 02/03, half my life well spent
*get's some snacks and mixes some Taiwan Redbull in coffee* time to start up Patlabor

Actually I did, only because of my big brothers friends introducing me to it when I was about 9, the first things I watched was Akira, the Fist of the North Star film and the first Patlabor film. I had no understanding of what was going on in them at that age, but I knew they were anime, I knew they were Japanese because I was told about it before I'd ever have found them myself. So when Pokemon was big at school, I was the smartass motherfucker going around saying "it's anime don'tcha know!", and the same with DBZ, Gundam Wing and so forth.

I made some mistakes though, I also thought Samurai Jack was anime when it first came out.

Nope. Fisrt saw stuff like Speed Racer, Voltron, Battle of the Planets, Robotech, and others.

Wasn't untill I was in Blockbuster one night that I discovered anime. Lots of choices, unsure which to choose, made my choice alphabetically. It was Akira, I was 12, mind blown.

No, but I knew it was Japanese.

Because when Pokemania started, all the TV ever talked about was how "Japanese" it was.

Jamie said:

Nope. Fisrt saw stuff like Speed Racer, Voltron, Battle of the Planets, Robotech, and others.

Wasn't untill I was in Blockbuster one night that I discovered anime. Lots of choices, unsure which to choose, made my choice alphabetically. It was Akira, I was 12, mind blown.

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Ah yes, Blockbuster... Good and bad memories of having anime, yet having volume 1 and 2 at one store, and having to drive a few miles down the road for Volumes 3 and 4.

One of the better stores I went to had a tone of anime and was a local mom and pop video store.

Sadly they got popped for buying bootleg titles.

No, I use to watch anime on toonami as a kid. Gradually I wanted to watch cartoons that were more like those which basically brought my attention to what anime really was.

My very first one was A Little Princess Sara which I fell in love with so much I kept re-watching it again and again as a kid. It was Polish dubbed so there was no way I could have known. The thing is even pretty far into my anime career I didn't realize it was an anime. Surprise when I found it on some anime database...

I sorta knew (blurry memory right there) Sailor Moon and Candy Candy were Japanese but I really got into the whole knowledge of what anime is only because Candy Candy was gorgeous looking and wished I was a pretty girl like that.

SM also started my weird fondness for wigs I used to make out of mom's tights while watching it.

I first saw Digimon at about age 6.
And now, about 10 years later, I have nothing left resembling an normal human life.


I forgot why I was posting this.

as a small kid back in the late 70s early 80s
anime was kinda rare in the uk i guess
the first anime i think i was would be battle of the planets and no i didnt know it was anime
but battle of planets is very differnt from the japanese original work
the first anime i think i watch and i knew it was something differnt tho i didnt know what would be
Laputa: Castle in the Sky , i would have been 10 or 11 wen i first saw it
about a year later
citys of gold was put on afterschool kids tv and it was a major hit among my age group
everyone knew that is was somehow differnt from the normal uk.us cartoons we normaly got
tho again noone of us rly understood what it actully was
i guess i finnaly realised what anime was a couple years later wen we got satalite tv and the scifi channel used to put animes on at night i think it was bubblegum crisis
but in truth my true understanding of anime wasnt compleat untill i got an internet pc many years later (about 1 to 2 years b4 i joined this site)
infact id say that it was this site that put the cherry on the top of my understanding of anime

i could and prob will add some more to this post or thread later but for now its time to drift off in to memorys of my early internet usage

omg i forgot several shows from my early childhood
like
heidi , belle and sebastian and ulysses 31
i also remember one of the tv channels making a rly big fuss about showing Akira around 93

the film that rly got me seeking anime to watch would be "Spirited Away" witch i illegaly downloaded off a torrent site back wen it was easy to do and with zero possibilitys of concequence witch was only about 7/8/9 years ago

I just saw everything as animation until a girl in fifth grade introduced me to Naruto. Although since i didn't have access to the internet at that point, I didn't know that Avatar Last Airbender wasn't anime.

I didn't know Moomin was an actual anime until just a few weeks ago.
I probably watched that show for the first time when I was like four years old or something.

No, I did not. Nor did my brothers. We found an episode of DBZ on some random channel (I'm pretty sure it was before Toonami existed) and we just thought it was some weird cartoon. I remember it was the episode where Vegeta killed Zarbon.

randomredneck said:

No, I did not. Nor did my brothers. We found an episode of DBZ on some random channel (I'm pretty sure it was before Toonami existed) and we just thought it was some weird cartoon. I remember it was the episode where Vegeta killed Zarbon.

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Weird cartoon? What's wrong with you... It's the best anime cartoon of my childhood