Just curious but, how did you guys get into anime?
A bit unconventionally, through playing JRPGs (and other Japanese games). A genre I only really got into after playing Persona thanks to the Giant Bomb endurance run.
So after playing a bunch of JRPGs, I figured I might as well check out some anime, since it should pretty much be the same thing minus the gameplay. This was also during the time when I started more actively browsing online gaming communities like reddit and the old forum site, and ran into a ton of anime and anime-adjencent discussion. So I figured I might as well check it out if everyone keeps talking about it.
This also happened somewhere around the time I was playing Tales of Xilia, and thinking that its UFOtable produced anime cutscenes looked pretty cool. Which helped.
After that, it was mostly just checking out things that were popular on Crunchyroll, plus whatever recommendations I could find on the old site. The AoTY polls that are still a thing were really helpful for that. One of the reasons I bother voting in them is because of how much they helped me back then.
Started off with Attack on Titan (this was during season 1 hype) and Build Fighters (because the old site was really hyping it up back then, plus it looked pretty).
But I wasn't really 100% sold on it until I watched Gintama and Gankutsuou, which both showed me the medium can actually offer things other kinds of television can't, although in completely different ways. Gintama for making me laugh more than anything else I've watched, and Gankutsuou for showing me anime can actually have some slightly more thoughtful stories, emotional impact, combined with super creative visuals.
(Also I guess I watched Pokemon back in the day, like every other kid. But for me, that was just another cartoon, and I had no idea anime was a thing)
