Your Anime Gateway Drug.....

[Gold Demona]

What was the one anime series you watched that made you realize the existence of anime?

For me, I was maybe 12 or 13 when I actually discovered the anime genre.
I'd grown up watching many anime (including The Little Koala, The Nuzzles, The Little Bits, and Maya the Bee on Nick Jr., Grimm's Fairy Tales on Nickelodeon [back when Nickelodeon wasn't crap], and The Fantastic Adventures of Unico on the Disney Channel)

But it never ever occurred to me that these cartoons were any different from any of the other cartoons I was watching.

No, I didn't fully realize the existence of anime until I watched Sailor Moon on Cartoon Network.
That was when I started really knowing what it was and started actively looking for it.
It was then I started actually noticing that some of the other cartoons I'd been watching were also originally Japanese.

And then I started watching Dragonball Z, Ronin Warriors, Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star, and many many others afterwards.

Nowadays I don't have any of these channels (because I lack cable or satellite), so my current anime info is very limited.
I'm currently subscribed to a couple of podcasts that help keep me informed of the current anime, but I still don't have it available for me to watch. =(

But oh well. Yeah, it was Sailor Moon for me.
What was it for the rest of you?[/size]

[Da Boss]

Hmmm.... let's see... It's actually a rather tough question for me; i never really tended to watch anime. My older brother introduced me to it. I actually became familiar with it in video games like Mario and Zelda first, then i drew the connection to cartoon shows.

[Gold Demona]

So in other words, video games were your anime gateway drug. =)[/size]

[greebothecat]

well it all started when I started watching Transformers and Voltron then fox channel showed Escaflowne in the afternoons but then stop airing it then I watched Slayers on the sci fi channel
next thing I knew I was hooked.

[niondy]

One night when I was eleven, I was rebeliously staying up past twelve in the attic with our TV, I had the TV on cartoon network, since that was really the only channel I ever watched. I had never stayed up past twelve, while watching TV on this channel, So I watched Full metal Alchemist, an episode somewhere in the later part of the series. Having no idea what was going on, I searched it on google the next morning. Needless to say, I was amazed with the spectacular drawigs, and begain watching it regularly.

[Vincent Axel]

Sailor Moon all the way!

[Katara Uzumaki]

InuYasha.

It WOULD be Avatar: TLA, but that's not really an anime. It's American. But I noticed InuYasha was different, and then I became hooked on Naruto! ^^