Autobiography of How I Became an Anime Fan (2009 edition): chapter 6

Chapter 6 of my newly revised anime autobiography…

My first few semesters at community college were pretty laid back. I was loving my Japanese class and I made a few new friends in that class who also like anime, including pkjd, who owns the anime news blog moetron. Still lacking cable and a decent computer, I continued to rely on local TV channels and borrowing DVDs from friends to watch the majority of my anime. But in 2005, my anime watching experience greatly changed because, as I’ll discuss in this chapter, I finally got cable TV and a computer that could download fansubs with ease.

Autobiography of How I Became an Anime Fan

Chapter 6 – Fansubs and Other Firsts

Local Channel Anime As I’ve mentioned in previous chapters, I didn’t have cable TV for the majority of my schooling years, which caused me to miss out on many anime that other fans watched on Cartoon Network in the late 90s/early 2000s, like Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Gundam Wing. And I probably would have been a part of the Dragon Ball Z craze had I been able to watch it on cable. But to compensate, I watched just about every anime that aired on local channels at the same time, particularly on 4Kids’ Fox Box block. Unfortunately, only kiddy anime was on local channels, but not all of them were bad. Some, such as Digimon, Shaman King, Mon Colle Knights, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, I really liked, while others such as Medabots, Mew Mew Power, Sonic X, and Fighting Foodons, I could take or leave. Even though I knew the dubs on most of these shows were bad, local TV was the only inexpensive way I could watch anime at the time.

The 4Kids dub of the Kirby anime was actually kinda good

As I discussed previously, I was able to watch other kinds of anime by borrowing from friends or buying the DVDs myself. But finally, after years of waiting, my means of watching anime changed.

Cable TV Anime In early 2005, I finally got cable TV! I didn’t know where to start when it came to catching up on all the cable channel anime I had missed in previous years. From then on, I was able to watch the rest of Fullmetal Alchemist and Inuyasha on Adult Swim myself without having to borrow tapes from friends, as well as catch up on Cowboy Bebop episodes I missed. Other anime I watched on Toonami/Adult Swim include Zatch Bell, S-Cry-Ed, Eureka 7, and Blood+.

I think S-Cry-Ed was the only anime I watched entirely on Adult Swim

My First Anime Convention Although 2005 was one of my worst years for personal reasons, I had one fantastic day at Anime Expo 2005, my first anime convention. I started hearing about anime conventions in high school but I was never able to go because of transportation or money constraints. But in 2005, I was finally able to go for one day with a friend.

My first photo at AX ’05

It was definitely one of the best days I ever had – I finally learned about the wonders of cosplay, and I had never seen so much anime merchandise as they had in the dealers’ hall (you can read my full-coverage and see my photos of AX ’05 here). Since then, I’ve gone to a handful of other conventions, though I have yet to go to any outside of CA.

First Fansubs Even though I finally got high-speed Internet along with my new cable TV in early 2005, the old iMac computer I had at the time wasn’t able to download or play most fansubs. Thus TV, and occasionally DVDs, were my main sources for watching anime. I made a few friends in my Japanese college class who also liked anime, and they let me borrow DVDs of Wolf’s Rain, Gundam Seed, Noir, Azumanga Daioh, Angelic Layer, Excel Saga, and RahXephon, among others. The only fansubs I had watched previously were in high school – random ones in anime club and burned CDs of Naruto episodes I was borrowing from a friend. Finally, in the summer of 2005, I got a new and much improved Windows computer.

Since I was still a major Inuyasha fan at the time, the first anime I downloaded after installing bittorrent were fansubs of the last bunch of Inuyasha episodes that hadn’t yet aired on Adult Swim, as well as the last movie. I also got caught up on Naruto episodes, and I started the two other big shonen titles that I still watch today, One Piece and Bleach.

One Piece has since become my favorite of the big shonen trio

I started watching One Piece briefly on TV via 4Kids’ horrendous dub before downloading the fansubs. I started watching Bleach because I heard good things about it, though I didn’t think I’d still be keeping up with it today.

Other series I watched in my early fansub months were of anime I had only seen dubbed on Cartoon Network, such as Zatch Bell, Blood+, and Eureka 7. And after years of watching Pokemon and Digimon dubbed only, I finally watched full episodes of them in Japanese.

My First Japan Trip As I discussed at the end of chapter 5, I loved my Japanese college classes and wanted to pursue a career in that field rather than art. During my years at community college, I took all the available Japanese classes there (up to Intermediate) from fall 2004 to spring 2006. And, in the summer of 2006, I went on a month-long study program abroad in Japan.

Kyoto Sangyo Univeristy (KSU), where I studied Japanese for a month

Even though my mom had to take out a loan to pay for my trip, it was worth it. Two of my friends from community college went on the same program and we had a fantastic experience. We went to Japanese class everyday at Kyoto Sangyo University in Kyoto and took day trips to different areas in Kansai on the weekends (you can read full-coverage and see photos of my trip here). After I reluctantly returned home, I loved Japanese and Japan even more.

Chapter 7 coming up next time will be the final chapter, covering roughly the past three years of my life – using fansubs to branch out into all kinds of anime, creating this blog, and furthering my studies in Japanese at a university.

Click here to return to chapter 5.

Click here to go on to chapter 7.