My first anime (i.e. “cartoon”) in childhood times is probably Pokemon or Digimon.

Excluding those, it should be The Familiar of Zero or Infinite Stratos. I simply watched whatever my friends were watching / recommended back in my school days.

But the first anime in recent times - the one that kickstarted my 700+ anime journey? It’s Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

Evangelion. One might imagine that it was a bit of a wake up call that anime ain’t kids cartoons, and I then became a self-respecting anime watcher until the Age of No Time arrived and I just rewatch Toradora! Or Clannad so I can sweat manly tears.

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YuYu Hakusho, Dragonball Z, and Gundam Wing were airing around the same time when I watched them.

First “anime” was Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Second one I think was Death Note, then Attack on Titan. Haven’t watched much outside of those, ngl. Not a big anime guy.

I watched a lot growing up, probably my first one ever was Sailor Moon or My Neighbour Totoro when I was around 5, then as I aged my anime choices slowly evolved (and I was also limited to what was on the TV until around 2003/2004 and started watching streams on whatever site I could find. My first ones that I guess I thought of differently than as an after school cartoon would’ve been Escaflowne in 2002 and Inuyasha in 2003.

Born in the 70’s so technically battle for the planets or astroboy. But first conscious choice was Eva on SBS

• Spirited Away and various other studio Ghibli Movies - first anime movies i watched and first type of anime content I ever saw, as a young child.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion. First anime series i watched, and first I chose to watch independently. ~ 16 years old.

Gonna feel old here but:

“Voltron: Defender of the Universe”

Dragon ball, because they streamed it on the open channels on the tv. After that it was Naruto, Pokemon, Hunter vs Hunter and One piece

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Pokemon and Dragon Ball were just cartoons to me at entry, but after those I realized I like anime.

First ones after that I got into were Cowboy Bebop and Trigun.

It’s one of those 3:

• Heidi, Girl of the Alps
• Maya the Bee
• Captain Future

I don’t remember which one of those was actually the first (most likely Heidi or Maya, just going by the kid-friendliness), but all three are in my earliest core childhood memories.

Stayed up late to watch blue gender as a kid. I think it’s the reason I love mecha anime the most.

Probably Neon Genesis Evangelion… I watched several others before this because they looked good…I watched NGE because it’s an institution, apparently. Not my favorite, but I could understand the memes after watching it.