Nice write up, for me anime was an interest of mine from a young age, it all started around 1990 or so. I remember watching old anime shows on tv like Speed Racer and City of Gold, not really knowing that they were anime. What probably caught my attention the most for anime was the Robotech/Macross movie “Do you remember love?”, which my sister borrowed from her friend, that movie made me fall in love with Macross. Then some interesting things started happening, the Scifi channel started featuring some anime movies like Robot Carnival and Venus War, the Asian Art Museum here in San Franciso started screening anime movies like My Neighbor Totoro and Lensman. This was when I became an anime fan.
Not too long after, anime started popping up at Blockbuster Video, a now defunct video rental store. There, my older brother would rent anime, and here I was introduced to some more racey titles such as Fist of the Northstar, Vampire Hunter D and Crying Freeman. True, my young self enjoyed all the sex and violence, but much like Macross, these were stories that made me care about the characters and their struggles, causing me to be invested in these stories as a whole.
As time went on I would enjoy series such as Ranma 1/2, and Tenchi Muyo as well as some others. My brother even ended up buying bootleg Dragonball Z movies from a store in Japantown, unsubbed, and years before DBZ started airing in America. We didn’t know what anyone was talking about, but it was still badass.
I still enjoy anime nowadays, always looking for a new series to thrill me, though it often seems to center around shonen type of shows, like My Hero Acadamia and One Piece.