I have just finished looking through "Welcome" and noticed something. Some of the users mentioned what sparked there interest in Anime and thus the Otaku World. I have created this post to learn more about how people became an Otaku because everyone has their own story.  Tell us your story on how you became Otaku!

Brought to you by... "TheAwsome"

Tag. You go first.

I always loved cartoons as a kid but was constantly annoyed at the repetitive plot lines and lack of any story progression from episode to episode. As with most TV series in the U.S. there is a stigma that viewers will avoid your series if it has a progressive plot because they'd have to be watching from the start. 

The first anime series that I progressively watched was DBZ and at the time I didn't know it was anime. It wasn't until I saw Evangelion that I became hooked and started watching subs. I ended up loading up Kazaa with anime and downloading stuff left and right just randomly picking series blindly and that also look up stuff on IRC. Soon after I ran across a bunch of fellow misfits in an IRC channel and it became our own little secret society. Now a days we pretty much went our own ways but keep in touch with one another and maintained a few close relationships. Nene being my closest.

I grew up in the 90's and got the pleasure of catching some DBZ and Sailor moon after I got home from a bully filled day of school. After falling in love with the shows, it became it routine. Escaping reality for a few spells was what got me so interested into japanese animation with it's story driven arcs. Now course I loved other shows at the time on CN and Nick, but there was something different about anime that kept drawing me back. Once I got older, I started to watch the Adult swim shows like Inuyasha and Case Closed. From then on, I got into whatever anime's that were airing. Shows like Zoids at 6 freaking AM, and .Hack//Sign at midnight. I remember how I used to be sick one day so I could rematch old Naruto episodes I recorded. Yeah I was young. 

I got out of them later on because problems at school and at home caused to much mental stress and depression to get me to care about anything. It wasn't until I finally continued to watch an anime I abandoned, did I get interested again. That anime was Neon Genesis Evangelion, and I will gladly debate with anyone on how why I consider it a classic and one of the best anime's of all time. Thanks to Eva I love anime again, but not in a obsessive way to escape reality, but to enjoy the shows for what that are. 

Bronze Trophy Unlocked: First post! 

Alright I was waiting for replies to stack up before I said anything. It was only about a year and a half while I was in 10th grade that I wondered into it. While in school at that time I was tremendously bored all the time because I didn't have anyone to talk to in school. So after I finish my homework I simply play Fallout3 or wonder around on youtube.  That is when that fateful encounter happened. Now before I continue I was extremely self kept but also immature as it was. The thing I clicked on was a scene from High School of the Dead and lets say I didn't click on it for the right reasons.

 Sent you another email btw. Besides that though, so you made this site pretty recently then? I mean HoTD is still a relectively new anime. So in a short amount of time, you watched over 100 anime's, made a site, and even got affiliated with Crunchyroll, one of the biggest anime streaming sites on the web? Impressive by a business standpoint.

Lol I didn't make this site I'm just an active user that's all. But hey thanks for the major compliment.

The site's been around for a while actually. I'm still working on getting affiliation status with Hulu, but they turned me down during our phone interview a while back. They said I didn't have enough users at this time. Probably should have lied about the user base in hindsight or contacted Funimation or Viz directly to get a referral.

Hulu did give me indirect permission to crawl their site for embed links and I've though about it, but decided against it since I wanted to focus more on the social media side of the site. Plus it's a pain to deal with the upkeep, even with automation scripts.

Another great question from TheAwsome!

Like WestNyorai I always loved cartoons so I didn't even realize that the very first anime I watched was actually anime. I'm not sure I even knew exactly what anime was at the time. I have an older brother and he was actually the one who introduced me to anime. By always wanting to watch whatever he watched I found myself going from Spiderman and X-men to Ronin Warriors and Speed Racer. So technically I suppose either of those was my first anime but I don't consider them my first. The first anime I watched on my own with knowledge that it was anime was Sailor Moon so I still consider that my first.

I was a 90s baby just like cl_theo so I would rush home after school to catch Toonami and the more I watched the more I fell in love. I ran home sometimes just so I'd make it in time for Outlaw Star haha. Outside of my brother though I didn't really know anyone who loved anime like I did until I found an IRC chatroom where I met a bunch of great friends (some who I still speak to to this day including WestNyorai <3).

Oh and I really have no clue how many anime I have seen since I didn't start keeping track until very recently haha. So the number on my profile isn't exactly accurate since I'm sure there are a bunch I have yet to add XD

Toonami now that's something I have not heard in a while. Pokemon would be considered my first Anime but like Nene I didn't know it was Anime. As far as keeping track of Anime I did it for peace at mind since it annoyed me if I couldn't remember that one Anime so thus I recorded all the Anime I have seen since my start.

You 90s babies making me feel old. >_>; Everything was best in the 80s. Back when everything was about The Snorks and Punky Brewster. lol

My siblings & I were always watching cartoons and shows like power ranger together when we got home from school, or on weekend mornings. Every night DBZ was on and we would get together and record the episodes, and on the weekend YTV had a special segment for anime so over the years we watched a lot.One of my brothers is an artist and he was (still is) a fan of anime, which he drew inspiration from. Because I was into drawing myself, I wanted to be just as good, so I started drawing inspiration from anime too. When I got introduced to the internet, I would spend tons of time there looking for anime pictures. Eventually I came across some official anime websites. They all had e-mail services, forums, and chatrooms. I participated in all that I could find, even if I didn't follow the anime: DBZ, sailormoon, slam dunk, Ranma 1/2, tenchi muyo, hello kitty.

When I was 11 I started losing interest because all my classmates started watching Inuyasha like one year after it started airing, and they were suddenly bragging to me about Inuyasha like I didn't know a damn thing. Being the little girl I was it pissed me off. I struggled to keep my hobby going though as I tried keeping up with witch hunter robin, Naruto & hack//sign. I stopped drawing too.

During my senior year in high school, I started drawing again, and longed to complete the shows I didn't finish as a child that inspired me the most. Senior year was two years ago, but I didn't start re-watching old shows until last year. Since then I have started watching anime again, and a lot of it. I'm still a big fan of cartoons.

 So you're the site creator then? Funimation and Viz can either be overly strict, or real chill. I guess it depends on who you get. I hate to bring up work, but wouldn't your "position" help influence their decision? Not in a negative manner of course, but give them confidence on how you run thing? 

Wont' mean a thing. lol I don't know how much luck either will have. Viz is owned by Warner Brothers so it's a bit unlikely they will help much. Funimation is owned by Navarre Corporation which is a logistics company. So Funimation may be a bit easier to deal with considering the size of their operation.

If anything I'd do a lot better with Media Blasters since they're very open to the community and a lot more low scale. Heck they've even hinted in a Industry vs Fansubs panel in 2008 that they used fansubs in the past when writing translations.

Hulu sucks anyway. Anyone outside the  U.S. can't view their vids.

 That was actually one of the main reasons I haven't really tried to get Hulu. The original video page was actually Hulu videos. The same way Boxee was doing it before Hulu pulled the plug on it by removing embed codes from their RSS feeds. Granted, even after that I managed to get around it by crawling their pages.

complex: I know how you feel! The super-crazed-fandom of sudden know-it-alls who watched all of 2 series MAJORLY turned me off to a couple of series lol. Naruto, Inuyasha, Death Note and One Piece being the most affected. Pair the crappy English dubbed versions with the fact that damn near every adolescent at the time was raving about how they LOVED anime (yet they had only seen English dubs and the select few series named above -.-) and I was ready to slap everyone and burn those series 

 Oh yes, Naruto was a major one. We didn't have Death Note air on tv but we had Bleach, which I also dropped because of them, and when One Piece came along, I didn't even bother lol.

But you're right that it has all died down and that they did go on watching a bunch of dubs. Exactly. Their apparent love for anime calmed down too, or disappeared. Teehee.

Lol oh yea I forgot about the Bleach craze too. Honestly I enjoyed Bleach it just got way too freakin long lol
I was watching and lost my place and then the number of eps jus tripled and I was like "noooooo" lol

I like to give all anime a chance regardless of the fan craze so I did try Naruto (subbed) and One Piece (dubbed)...Naruto was way too long so I dismissed it and One Piece dubbed just completely ruined it for me so the length of that one also made me chuck it.

I still don't get the super craze over Death Note though >> I can't seem to bring myself to watch past the 1st or 2nd ep XD 

People always tell me I HAVE to watch Death Note. They say it's a great anime. I don't doubt it, so I'm planning on watching it sometime.

I think all these shonen jump anime are long as hell because they're fat full of fillers. I skipped most of the fillers in Shippuden. That's the only reason I was able to catch up. Wanna know a secret? I finally caught up two weeks ago, hahahaha!