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I got really into anime my freshman year of college in 2018. Before that my experience was that of the average person who grew up in the aughts/teens, which meant that I watched Pokemon as a kid and didn't really know the difference. Later in childhood I watched DBZ and also had no idea that it was any different from any of the other content that I was consuming. Around middle school I found out that both of them were this scary thing called anime, and not only that, but that liking anime was cringe. So I more or less shelved the idea that I liked them. I was still a passive DBZ fan though, watching abridged, and being excited when battle of gods came out. However I adamantly stayed away from anything else that could be considered close to anime. I didn't want to be cringe after all.

That all changed in my senior year of high school. I'm probably slightly more content addicted than your average content addicted twenty something, and at that point in my life I was growing disillusioned with what Netflix had left to offer and I had seen all the movies that I was intrigued by and and knew about. That was when I remembered the time in middle school when a buddy and I tried to watch Attack on Titan together only to realize, to our dismay, it was in Japanese. I found a version of it dubbed and pressed play.

You could say that decision changed the course of my life, but that's laying it on a bit thick. In all seriousness, as soon as that show graced my screen I was hooked. Mesmerized. I hadn't seen anything like it before, sure DBZ was cool, but this, this was different. The OP, the OST, the animation, the sheer amount of blood and gore, I couldn't get enough. I still remember walking into AP stats the next morning having just binged the entire first two seasons in one night without sleeping, I had a test to take as well, and saying "Guys I literally did not sleep last night." I could not have fallen more in love with a piece of fiction, and it still resides within my top five.

This all brings me back to where I started this introduction. I didn't immediately start watching anime, AOT was my gateway, but it only opened the door. No I waited awhile, I let that new found content well simmer. When I got to college, I decided to finally get around to Buu saga. I had watched Kai growing up, and that originally ended with cell. That was the real first domino, after I finished buu saga I watched Super, then I watched Naruto, then I made it to Skypeia in One Piece before dropping that for a few years. I hit my shounen bases, which is still the core of my experience as a fan of the medium to this day, but honestly I could have fizzled out there. I dropped One Piece (for a time), I dropped Bleach (for a time), and I caught up to Fairy tail but I could tell that it wasn't like the other stuff I had been watching. No what really cemented my fate as a total weeb was the next show I decided to watch, and the other genre that has become a pillar of my fandom.

Sword Art Online is a show. While now I would rank it outside of my top five isekai, possibly top ten, at the time I loved it. I hadn't seen anything like it before. I think that is what makes being a new anime fan so beautiful in the first place. Everything is so new, and you often don't have a frame of reference to compare anything to. SAO got me. While it doesn't hold up in its entirety, I will die on the hill that its first episode is goated. By the end I knew I didn't like it, the second half of s1 sucks, and s2 is actual garbage, but I knew I wanted more like it. I went on an isekai binge, which lead me to try more genres, which lead me to watch older stuff, which lead me to read manga, and the rest is history.

While I'm still an anime fan, it doesn't dominate my content consumption experience the way that it did for a long time. For the first three years of college I'm not sure how much TV I watched that wasn't anime. I can probably count the titles with my fingers. These days I probably watch one every month or so, but I don't think I'll ever stop coming back to this well. If you read this, thank you. I know it was rambly, but it was fun to recount the experience. I hope one day Berserk gets a decent adaptation.