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.

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

Gonna feel old here but:

“Voltron: Defender of the Universe”

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

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.

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

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I did not expect to be alone on this, but I scrolled through and didn’t see it:

Record of Lodoss War from 1990. I had an older cousin who had fansubs of the series on VHS in '92 or '93. We watched through the whole thing probably a dozen times.

I am not 100% sure but it most likely was “The Promised Neverland”.

Of course if I wanted to count the ones I watched as a kid, then one of the Ghibli studio ones would be it, I guess “Howl’s Moving Castle” or “Totoro”?

Beyond the usual Dragon Ball and Pokemon things, along with catching random episodes of Sailor Moon, Hamtaro, Cardcaptor Sakura etc on morning TV before school, It was Evangelion, Bebop and couple of years later FLCL on late night TV. I also remember seeing a few random episodes of Escaflowne as well in the 90’s.

I later completely watched and got very into Eva and Cowboy Bepop, but i still didn’t really think of it as Anime for some reason.

so beyond those the first “modern” anime that I watched and actually got into the media properly with was Haruhi, then the first thing I watched in Japanese instead of English was Hibike! Euphonium.

so that’s where I stopped watching dubs for shows other than the classic dub series where most people also listen dubbed.

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

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.