@ kadian1364: Nice. Very nice. I’ll have to keep that metaphor in mind!

@ ghostlightning: Interesting. I think the first part of your comment applies to all of us: no one distinguishes between “anime” and “other cartoons” when they first start watching. It sounds like the shows that you watched as a child are pretty much the same as the ones that made you a fan, which makes things a little different, but it’s the same basic idea. I wouldn’t consider Pokemon to be a gateway anime for me, but the shounen anime from the mid Naughties? Definitely.

Anyway, only you would know how much your first few mecha shows influenced you, but they must have set something in place to guide your later fandom. Nothing is set in stone, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some sort of influence.

I loved robot shows not because they were the first shows I saw. I was watching Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, & Bugs Bunny at the same time. While I got into them too, there was something about Voltes V, Daimos, and Mazinger Z that really captured my imagination — and since they were actually banned at some point in my distant childhood, I felt what seemed to be the first abuses of power in my life.

I would go without robot shows for a few years, until Macross came, and then all was awesome in my television world again. After Ferdinand Marcos the dictator was deposed in 1986, the new government brought back Voltes V, Daimos, and new robot shows. But I’ve sort of moved on in the late 80s and wouldn’t get into anime again until DBZ, Robotech, then Macross Plus, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Ninja Scroll. All the big things back in the early 90s US fandom.

It’s funny how we started getting into US licensed anime at that time despite our tradition of directly importing from Japan. It may have to do with the language. We didn’t care much for Tagalog dubs, and preferred the english ones.

I wouldn’t really discover robots again until my late 20s (despite watching shows like Van Dread) when I finally watched Evangelion in full, and then Escaflowne, then Gunbuster, then TTGL. Now I can’t get enough of them.

While I don’t require newer shows to be more like the shows I love, I do wish they make more of the shows I do love.

The much belabored point is that experience is only cumulative; more than simply nostalgia, we can never truly forget or disregard our first times, the early days, regardless of whether we consciously acknowledge them and hold them precious or not. What changes is the layers through which we see such things. Or all things, really.

Anyway, I don’t want to harp on an obvious idea, just that I’ve been thinking about this topic myself since ANNCast last week. Gateway anime is really important, IMO. lols

I’ll leave this…

People can’t play the latest eroge from Japan or pick up a random title from a local gaming store, so it’s more likely that their “first” will be a popular story-heavy game that everyone knows through word of mouth.

People are just lazy. Also, I think Key would be considered a big gateway for VN’s.

But since this post is on anime, I won’t ramble on about that.

I think it’s very much possible for a person to break away from the genre of anime the started with (after all, I certainly don’t watch excessive amounts of shounen anime or shoujo comedy anymore). I’m not sure if I’d agree that it continues to affect them exactly, but I do think that people will always remember their first anime while they’re thinking about their recent anime, and the two will be compared again and again.