Walking Down Memory Lane

Well, honestly, I got sick of doing nothing but Shugo Chara, but I found myself thinking to hard on what to write, when it suddenly came back. I had a tweet awhile ago about how I wanted to re-marathon Shugo Chara (funny how I just mentioned it…) during my spring break, and I accidentally misread something that gave me an idea on what to write! Re-thinking my history with anime, whatever sparked my interest in anime. Btw, this is a really sloppy post, just warning you, since it’s my first real rambling.

Early Years…Before I Realized I Actually Watched Anime

I think the first anime I’ve ever watched was Pokemon, when I was just a little kid. Honestly, I think almost every little kid has watched Pokemon once in their lives. I watched it a lot, with my whole family, and I totally loved the show. I watched all of the movies, and watched with my friends. There really isn’t much to say about this time, since I barely remembered it, but oh well. Around this time, I also began watching Sailor Moon, which I thought was so totally cool as well, and I got tons of items, showing it off, etc. I began watching Yu-Gi-Oh! and a bunch of other stuff on TV that I didn’t know was an anime adaptation (Rurouni Kenshin), and I also watched Cardcaptor Sakura…English Dubbed. =_=

Anime Came to America…Manga

Now it’s a time jump and the one anime that really sparked it for me was, Naruto. I hate to admit it, but Naruto was one of the reasons I got into anime. When I first saw the commercial I was like, “Lolwut?” but my brother said it was a pretty cool looking show. Me, being the gullible, always following my brother kind of person, I decided to watch it. I watched the show, and I totally fell in love with it. I thought it was the best thing in the world, and became one of those obsessed fans who have to be home at exactly 4 to watch a show. I jumped to the couch, and would ignore everything except for the show, and yell at it when it was done (creepy me). I even got a couple Naruto gifts for my birthday, which I went crazy for. And I found out about mangas as well. I guess I had opened my eyes to something new and was lavishing it. It was new, I was crazy over it. My uncle downloaded it everyday for us to watch, and around now I knew it was an anime. xD And from Naruto, I got introduced to YouTube so I could watch it whenever I wanted. I soon learned that Japanese dubs pwned English dubs. :D Also, unfortunately I got introduced to Wikipedia. Erm, I was wiki-happy (4+ hours reading Wikipedia =.=)? Naruto also had an influence on my username…>.> Haha, but I have an extreme short attention span~

I forgot how, but I began watching Cardcaptor Sakura. I sort of started losing interest in Naruto, and shifted it all to CCS. I watched some episodes here and there on YouTube, but I couldn’t find all of the episodes, and I guess I realized that Naruto wasn’t all that great, compared to the wonderful CCS. I got DVDs, stayed up late watching non-stop CCS, and found out my favorite types of anime. Romance~! I started learning Japanese here and there too! :D I found out how much I loved the show, and I could re-watch it without getting tired of it. And for the heck of it, I watched the English dub. That time, I learned that most English dubs are terrible. Too bad I started out with a classic though, so it’s hard to top it. This all happened over the summer, so when school came back around, I had to stop…

Shugo Chara…Otaku Summer

Up until around this time I had always only focused on one of those really long animes, and I didn’t know that an average anime was 26 episodes long. I could safely say that I wasn’t that interested in anime anymore and I focused more on web designing and forums. So it was a big time gap when I got interested in anime again, but this time, I fell hard for anime. I could vividly remember it, haha. I was just at a restaurant when suddenly, my friend calls me up and gives me some great news. Excited, I ask what it is, and she tells me to go watch an anime. And I’m just asking for the name, and she tells me it’s called Shugo Chara. I go “Wth is with the title?” and I keep getting an image of Skip Beat in my head (but this is when I was an ignorant fool who didn’t want to read it) and think of it as some weird too-girly show. They convinced me to watch it and I was like, “Holy snap this is nothing like what I thought! It’s awesome!” and soon I was further than them. Ikuto was my favorite character (but before I watched the show I wiki-ed the show and thought that Ikuto was some other dude who was an old silly man, because of the way they described him), and I immediately felt the chemistry between him and Amu. I loved the show, and had to watch more and more of it. Reruns were fine, and episode 33 was the episode in which I got introduced to anime blogging, starting with Simplicity.

It was over the summer, and I had to fill the time on my hands with something that I hoped would be as good as Shugo Chara. That’s when I began watching other animes and opening up my horizons, and I also realized that Naruto can’t compare to most of these animes (no offense to any Naruto fans). I went crazy over all of these new animes, and found sites like MAL and CR for my anime needs. So then I started marathoning animes and the time for me to usually finish an anime was an average of two days for an average length anime. I fell in love with Full Moon, Fruits Basket, OHSHC, and Special A the most. By then I realized that I just loved anime in general, and it wasn’t all about Shugo Chara anymore. I watched these anime for fun, if I could finish them so quickly. Not just to fill up my time waiting for another episode to come out. But since this was only last year, I still have a small list of completed anime, compared to most people. I called this my otaku summer, and I had to watch anime every day. It was a force of habit. But unfortunately that period ended too, since school started and I started singing a lot (my voice sucks for anyone who wants to know).

Skip Beat!…Blogging

I had started watching some ToraDora, Shugo Chara, and Skip Beat! but I started losing hope for many good anime. I felt as if I watched all of the good ones already, so I stopped looking for new anime. It seemed like a hopeless cause. I had gotten into blogging, but when I finally had the chance to catch up to Skip Beat!, my love for anime was revived. Obviously my first impression of Skip Beat was wrong as well, although I still can’t convince anyone else that Skip Beat is great. I had to watch the next episode, and it felt like the summer again. ToraDora also became better and better. I found more and more anime blogs, and since I was so stuck on what I wanted to blog, I decided to have an anime blog (actually, a blog on any form of entertainment, so if I got bored of anime, I could blog something else, but I doubt that’ll happen). And it has been a blog I’ve enjoyed the most. So here it is! Also, Maria+Holic somewhat revived this love as well. I can’t marathon though, since I have school, but I still enjoy it, even now.

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Bleach was also an anime I went crazy for, but I forgot which period it was in, so I decided not to put it in there. I had to yell at the TV every midnight, but oh well, yay for YouTube.

I can seriously say that my love for anime went up and down, but I never permanently got rid of it. It’s stuck on, unlike some other things. Despite my short attention span, anime just seems to never get old with me. I also began to enjoy mangas along the way. So anyways, here we are. I have a feeling that I won’t be getting tired of anime anytime soon. :D