I used to rotate through the same three episodes of Duel Masters from the video store when I was small. That was technically my first anime, although I wasn’t familiar with the concept of anime at the time.

The first anime I watched while being aware of the fact it was anime was Sword Art Online. I was introduced to that when I was in 5th grade, and I guess it made me feel like I was “in.” I could never get past the first episode of Gun Gale.

Nowadays, I really don’t watch anime. At the risk of sounding ignorant, I find that in most anime I’ve experienced, there is so much shallow exposition that I’m left with very few questions and without a sense curiosity by the end of it. Two exceptions: psychological horror and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Psychological horror pretty reliably avoids the whole excessive exposition thing, and JoJo is rife with it but gets a pass because it sparks my inner 12 year old.

However, I’m going to start watching more anime. I’m finally picking back up my Japanese studies, and I need a way to hear the language consistently.

I think I know what you mean with the shallow - or if you ask me, unnecessarily thorough - exposition… although, as you say yourself, there are some gems out there that don’t simply hand it all to you on a silver platter. Anime definitely had a huge impact on my Japanese studies at the time. While the easy version of NHK (forgot the exact name of the offshoot…) was what gave me most in terms of pronunciation, intonation and accent - by doing shadowing and transcription -, anime gave me recreation AND the language. :)