Anime!
This is where I'll talk about all things anime, and why I love it so much. I had grown up with probably the most famous anime splice job: Voltron. I only got to see a handfull of the episodes that were ever made, but that was my first taste, as it were.
My next encounters with anime wouldn't be until I was in high school. I was up early one morning, and stumbled on the DiC dub of Sailor Moon, somewhere in the second season. From that moment on, I was hooked; I just had to find out what was going on and what was going to happen next. The internet was still in its early days, and it didn't take me long to find out what anime was. It was like a whole new world that was opened up before me. And I wanted more.
But more was hard to come by in those days. Anime was rare, and expensive when you could find it. But a friend of mine had HBO, and HBO was playing anime in some of the early morning time slots. So he agreed to tape some for me. And the very first thing that he brought me was an anime legend: Akira. That was my game-changer. It had never occured to me that anything animated could be so mature.
All throughout high school, and into college, I devoured all the anime I could get my hands on. When Cartoon Network started airing the Toonami block, my anime horizons broadened tremendously. Dragonball Z, Tenchi Muyo, Ruroni Kenshin. I also found a place in a larger city that I could buy anime (on VHS). That's where I found what would become my all time favorite: Neon Genesis: Evangelion. It took a long time and almost $300 but that was the first series that I actually collected the entirety of.
I've collected a lot of anime since then, and watched even more. Right now, I'm going back to my roots, and trying to collect some of the best series that were available no later than the 90s. Here's my list, and I'll try to keep it updated as I go along.
I'm currently working through my new favorite franchise: Mobile Suit Gundam, and more specifically, the Universal Century timeline. I absolutely love the story, and I've gone all the way down the gunpla rabbit hole. Here's a list of what I've watched, and what I still need to track down. I started with Mobile Suit Gundam instead of Origin, because without the foundation of the original series, I found that I didn't know who all of these characters were, and why they were important. So, I deviated from the chronological order just a little.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin
- Mobile Suit Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
- Mobile Suit Gundam: War in the Pocket
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn
- Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative
- Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway
- Mobile Suit Gundam F91
- Mobile Suit Victory Gundam