What Are You Watching?

[LumRanmaYasha]

So, I just found out that a tv anime based on the Ghost in the Shell: Arise OVA series is coming in spring. No word yet if it's new content or a re-cut of the OVAs, though, but if it's the former...holy shit. That fucking spring season, man.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Great Teacher Onizuka is now legally streaming on Crunchyroll. All 43 episodes are available for premium users. 12 episodes will be released for free users every week until all are available. No word yet as to whether the english dub will be added, but it may happen at some point.

[gunswordfist]

i might check it out.

[Speedy]

Recently I watched Project A-ko (the Discotek re-release), the first time since it was shown on Sci-Fi's Saturday Morning Anime block.  So we're talking almost two decades here.  I distinctly recall not even finishing it back then, because C-ko annoyed me so much.

Well, now I've finally watched it all the way through.  I definitely still don't care for C-ko at all, especially when she bawls, but A-ko and B-ko are fine, so it sort of balances out.

I'm baffled why this movie is often called hilarious.  I laughed maybe three or four times in the whole film.  I think the problem is, it wants us to laugh at how over the top the battles and action sequences are, but they're not really jokes.  They're just crazy situations.

The animation's great, though, and I like how the movie doesn't really take itself seriously at all.  I mean, the villain is a drunk, for crying out loud.  But "hilarious"?  I completely disagree.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Kind of a random question, but do any of you guys happen to remember what your first exposure to anime was?

As for me, while I didn't know what anime was at the time, I distinctly remember watching dubbed, syndicated episodes of Speed Racer. It was somewhere around the mud-90's, I believe.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I don't remember the first anime I saw, but I remember the first one I saw after being specifically told it was anime. That would be Akira, original dub and all.

Truth is, I probably saw a lot of older anime as a kid not noticing any difference between it and US stuff, so it's hard to tell. I did watch the original Dragon Ball, Samurai Pizza Cats, and random kid shows when I was a kid.

[Foggle]

I loved Pokemon as a kid, but I could never get into anything else. Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Dragon Ball, Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon - you name it, I didn't care for it. Once I grew out of Pokemon when I turned 8 or 9, I never watched anime again until my friend forced me to watch one of the lesser Cowboy Bebop episodes... which I also didn't like. I believe I was either 13 or 14 when I accidentally stumbled upon Puni Puni Poemy, which at the time reminded me of Animaniacs if it was aimed at adults. I loved it, so I immediately watched Excel Saga and then gave Cowboy Bebop another shot. Both of these shows mean a great deal to me to this day, and I've been a huge fan ever since.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've always been rather perplexed by the fact that I never ran across Samurai Pizza Cats as a kid. It seems like a show that I would've dug at that age, but I never even heard about it until I joined TV.com about 8 or 9 years ago.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I loved Pokemon as a kid, but I could never get into anything else. Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Dragon Ball, Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon - you name it, I didn't care for it. Once I grew out of Pokemon when I turned 8 or 9, I never watched anime again until my friend forced me to watch one of the lesser Cowboy Bebop episodes... which I also didn't like. I believe I was either 13 or 14 when I accidentally stumbled upon Puni Puni Poemy, which at the time reminded me of Animaniacs if it was aimed at adults. I loved it, so I immediately watched Excel Saga and then gave Cowboy Bebop another shot. Both of these shows mean a great deal to me to this day, and I've been a huge fan ever since.

It's a shame that Digimon never did anything for you, as it was one of the few toy marketing kids shows that, IMO, acryally had way better writing than it should've. Ironically, though, I only truly came to appreciate that aspect of it as a grown adult.

That said, I'm still surprised that the show got away with half of the things that it did, even after the Saban edits.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I've always been rather perplexed by the fact that I never ran across Samurai Pizza Cats as a kid. It seems like a show that I would've dug at that age, but I never even heard about it until I joined TV.com about 8 or 9 years ago.

I think it was easier to watch here in Canada since, like Sailor Moon, it had a dedicated time-slot on YTV. YTV used to be a great station long ago for airing cartoons from about every country and time period. Not to mention you could watch Rocky & Bullwinkle and then the 60s Batman show at like 6 in the evening. Of course, now it's a garbage station that lost everything that made it good, but back then it had all kinds of shows and it made me a Dragon Ball fan years before I ever read the manga or saw the rest of the anime . . . or before Z blew up.

That reminds me, Sailor Moon would be another anime I saw at a young age.

[Foggle]

It's a shame that Digimon never did anything for you, as it was one of the few toy marketing kids shows that, IMO, acryally had way better writing than it should've. Ironically, though, I only truly came to appreciate that aspect of it as a grown adult.

I think the only reason I liked Pokemon is because I was already a fan of the games, honestly. I've seen some of Adventure and Tamers recently and I can safely say that they hold up way better than Pokemon does. I've also grown a minor appreciation for the more comedic Dragon Ball episodes over time.

Oh yeah, I suddenly remember watching - and liking - both Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin the few times I saw episodes of them as a kid. I think they aired right after Batman: The Animated Series on some nights, which of course was a favorite of mine. So I guess you could say that the first anime I truly enjoyed were YYH and RK.

I'd never heard of Samurai Pizza Cats until joining TV.com, either.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Dragon Ball Z is an interesting one, because I couldn't really get into it back on Kids WB, but my older brother became a fan. Then new FUNimation dubbed episodes aired during a one-hour time-slot from Monday-to-Friday, and since we had to share a single TV after school, I was pretty much forced into watching the show since my older brother was bigger and tougher than me and didn't take well to me arguing with him. It was in the middle of the Namek saga, but at least my brother was nice enough to explain what happened in the story up to that point to catch me up, and after a while, I sort of naturally became hooked.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Dragon Ball Z is an interesting one, because I couldn't really get into it back on Kids WB, but my older brother became a fan. Then new FUNimation dubbed episodes aired during a one-hour time-slot from Monday-to-Friday, and since we had to share a single TV after school, I was pretty much forced into watching the show since my older brother was bigger and tougher than me and didn't take well to me arguing with him. It was in the middle of the Namek saga, but at least my brother was nice enough to explain what happened in the story up to that point to catch me up, and after a while, I sort of naturally became hooked.

I didn't even know what Dragon Ball Z was. The first episode I saw involved Krillin, Gohan, and Piccolo fighting Nappa and then Piccolo died. I thought Gohan was Goku because I only knew of the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball and didn't understand who Goku was (when he showed up to stop Nappa) or even who Krillin was or why Master Roshi, Oolong, Puar, and Bulma were so far away from the action.

Eventually I learned it was the sequel series, but it took me longer to learn that there was more Dragon Ball that was never brought over here until later.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Fun Fact about Digimon Tamers: Steve Blum himself scripted a good chunk of the English dubbed episodes.

On another note, I got into both Cowboy Bebop and Yu Yu Hakusho on the same night, back when YYH was an AS show. I was disappointed when they stopped airing new episodes, until the announcement that it would be a Toonami show got me excited again. I then promptly went about pestering all of my friends to watch it.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yep, I first started watching Yu Yu Hakusho on Adult Swim and was promptly hooked by episode 1.

Cowboy Bebop and Trigun I had seen before they were added to AS, though. Didn't stop me from watching them anyway.