My older brother introduced me to my first anime when I was 4 years old, and I instantly fell in love with the genre. The two of us were staying up much later than we should have, watching Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s late-night television programming.
It was a show called “Inuyasha”, about a half dog-demon and a girl that traveled the world looking for pieces of jewel. I played “Pokemon” throughout my whole childhood, and collected Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Gradually, I would get more into other anime, like Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, and as I got even older, into my high school and college years, I would start getting into highly rated anime like “Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood”, “Tokyo Ghoul”, and “Hunter x Hunter”. I know so many friends who have a cult-like devotion to Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”, friends who don’t look like me and don’t think like me.
I have taken a long hiatus from watching anime since my freshman year of college, but I’ve started thinking about the reasons why international audiences love anime, given that many of my middle school students in an inner-city school are big anime fans of the same shows I watched when I grew up.
