Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Backstory...




Samurai 7 - Wall Scroll, originally uploaded by millermz.

I know I've been posting a significant amount lately, and while I can't promise that I'll keep up this pace when my vacation ends, I do hope to provide good content on a somewhat regulated pace on down the road. Still, while I have this extra motivation I thought I'd give you the history of my interest in anime, so you can know who you're dealing with.

I'll be honest; I have not been the longest, most die-hard fan, well at least the latter wasn't true till a couple years ago. Prior to about late 2002, I had watched Dragon Ball Z and Digimon, and in all reality that was about it, although I did watch plenty of both.

Sometime around March 2003, however, I was introduced to Princess Mononoke, and reviewed the movie saying, "At first, I had some misgivings about the whole "anime" thing. I figured they all had bad animation and bad plots." Direct quote (probably indicating that perhaps I had watched more Speed Racer then I remembered).

So as you could see, thinking that way only almost 4 years ago, this has been a significant turn around for me, and as my main anime-loving friend puts it, anime is my new obsession. Probably true... but to continue, when I went to college I still was a little amiss about anime, even after seeing "Spirited Away" and thoroughly enjoying the whole picture. Early on though one of my friends introduced me to the Vampire Hunter D film of '85, and the first Kenshin OVA's, thus leading me to gaining, some may say for better or worse, the deep affinity for the series and OVA's that I still maintain today. After Kenshin though, and after this friend sadly departed, my R.A. introduced me to Armitage III and Jin-Roh, which both fascinated me and frightened me at the same time. (In a good way I assure you)

Thanks to those two friends (both reluctantly gone), I had begun turning around from meh..., to having a very favorable opinion of anime. Yet, I still thought anime only as a medium fit for movies, which is why my first purchase, as a gift for someone, was The Grave of the Fireflies. Some time in the fall of 2004 though, I was beginning to be glued even more to anime as another college friend introduced me to shows such as: Evangeleon (about time, right?) and Trigun.

While I still don't remember my blood racing Otaku Sweat through my veins, it was only a matter of time, and much more anime, until I realized sometime in the spring of '06, believe it or not, that I was hooked. My friend had several DVD sets, and in the time it took for us to get through those, he also eventually gained a DVR, and with the help of Cartoon Network and IFC I managed to digest several more shows, such as Samurai Champloo, Paranoia Agent, and Texhnolyze just to name a few.

While I could go on and on about the recent events in my 'Anime Life', such as my newfound love of manga, AMV's, cons, and all things Otaku, I'm going to try to limit that for later posts.

At this point, I think I'll just list the shows that I've seen, either in full, or at least 5 episodes of, so as just to give you a taste of my history. (By the way, if you're lucky these'll be in alphabetical order, because by no means can I remember the chronology. Also, if I own it, that means I've seen it...)


- Oh My Goddess! (Own OVA's)
- Air Gear (All of 1st season... that can't be all, right?)
- Akira (Own)
- Armitage III (Own film and OVA's)
- Bleach (All till current)
- Blood + (All TV Series and film)
- Castle in the Sky (All of film)
- Cowboy Bebop (On episode 6)
- Death Note (All till current, and more with manga)
- Desert Punk (All)
- D-Gray Man (All till current)
- Digimon (All of 1st and 2nd Seasons)
- Dragon Ball Z (All, but whether I can remember it...)
- Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure (All TV Series)
- Ergo Proxy (All)
- Eureka 7 (40 out of 50)
- Evangeleon (All, including the films)
- Full Metal Panic! (All)
- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu (All)
- Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid (All)
- Genshiken (All)
- GetBackers (Half)
- Ghost in the Shell (All of '95 film)
- Grave of the Fireflies (Own)
- Great Teacher Onizuka (All, including live-action show and movie)
- Gungrave (All)
- Hellsing (All Original TV Series)
- Jin-Roh (All)
- Lupin the III (Cstl. Cagliostro & TV special From Russia With Love)
- Macross Plus (All OVA's)
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (All)
- Naruto (Till Episode 74, so still pre-filler)
- Paranoia Agent (All)
- Princess Mononoke (Own)
- Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (All of film)
- Rurouni Kenshin (Majority, including all OVA's)
- Samurai 7 (All of show, and yes film too...)
- Samurai Champloo (All)
- Samurai Deeper Kyo (Still early on...)
- S-CRY-ed (All)
- Serial Experments Lain (On Episode 5)
- Speed Grapher (20 out of 24)
- Spirited Away (Own)
- Ninja Scroll (All of '93 film)
- Tenchi Muyo! GXP (All)
- Texhnolyze (All)
- Tokyo Godfathers (All)
- Trigun (All)
- Vampire Hunter D (All of '85 film)
- Vandread (All)

To some this may be a lot, while to some this may not be that many, I really do not know. But regardless this is my list of what I've seen thus far... and trust me there is plenty of anime still out there waiting.

2 comments:

admin said...

Im not that really into anime though i love some of them like Naruto, Lupin the III, Boys Be, Samurai X and a lot more...

Great blog you have there...so simple but great...continue doing contents...

Anonymous said...

Cool... Thanks for the comment, and as I'll probably mention later, since I didn't really say my opinions, Samurai X and Naruto are definitely a couple of my favorites.

Also, thanks for commenting in general, because I haven't really tried to spread the blog around so I wasn't sure whether I'd have a significant amount of readers. I just let who wanders hear wander hear, so it's nice of you to stop by, and say hey...