“The door to other animes had opened through watching Bleach
Think about it as I talk about some that were mine.
I am proud to be one of many individuals whose life has been positively affected by anime. The great stories and epic spectacles are why anime still impacts people every day. I have been lucky that Anime continues to remain relevant in my life regardless of what stage I am at. Each show provides new perspectives and ideas on something that I am going through at the time.
As a child, I wanted stories of good defeating evil.
Now as an adult I am more interested in learning about the world and what it means to be alive.
From childhood to now I have watched over 170 animes with over 300 anime on my watchlist. Suffice to say I am going to be busy for a while.
This is all thanks to an anime about a boy with orange hair whose name means strawberry
I am of course referring to Bleach.
Bleach was the first mainstream anime that I watched from beginning to end. Well the current end, because the last arc in the manga has not been animated.
Update the last arc of Bleach is Finally going to be animated, I am excited about this. Now to be clear Bleach was not the first anime that I watched or the first of its genre.
My Anime Background
Von riding Escaflowne.
© SUNRISE Licensed by SUNRISE to Funimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
When it came to network television only Fox Kids and KidsWB showed anime.
So, I only watched
- Yu-Gi-Oh!,
- Monster Rancher,
- Megaman NT Warrior,
- Sailor Moon,
- Digimon,
- Pokemon,
- Escaflowne.
While all the cool children with cable got to watch
- Cowboy Bebop,
- Neon Genesis Evangelion,
- Trigun, Rurouni Kenshin,
- Dragon Ball Z ,
- Blue Submarine No.6,
and other great stuff.
I am not suggesting that the anime on regular television are bad. Quite the opposite many of them were important in my life.
Yu-Gi-Oh! alone did so much for me and Digimon is on my top ten favorite anime list.
But with network television anime, there was awful dubbing and censoring. So I only got to experience part of these animes.
Cable viewers had the advantage because adult swim on cartoon network aired the animes. This means no censoring but the dubbing was not guaranteed to be perfect. I had no idea at the time that the anime on regular television was even censored or horribly dubbed.
The pharaoh with all three Egyptian God Cards in the background
YU-GI-OH! © 1996 by Kazuki Takahashi/SHUEISHA Inc.
I learned about this through Little Kuriboh’s Yu-Gi-Oh abridged series. Yu-Gi-Oh! is the most famous anime 4Kids Entertainment censored and dubbed.
So that was my situation from elementary school through high school. I only watched anime that aired on network television.
But when my family went on trips we would stay in motels with cable. This was the only time that I ever got a chance to watch Toonami. The only other time I can think of was my at grandparent’s house since they also had cable television.
My dad upgraded our internet to DSL when I was a sophomore in high school.
Even though I could have watched anime online I had no idea where to start and what to watch.
This would change after I got into Bleach.
One of my favorite scenes where Angemon digivolves to Magnangemon
© 1999-2000 TOEI ANIMATION CO., LTD.
My Anime Background
When it came to network television only Fox Kids and KidsWB showed anime.
So, I only watched
- Yu-Gi-Oh!,
- Monster Rancher,
- Megaman NT Warrior,
- Sailor Moon,
- Digimon,
- Pokemon,
- Escaflowne.
While all the cool children with cable got to watch
- Cowboy Bebop,
- Neon Genesis Evangelion,
- Trigun, Rurouni Kenshin,
- Dragon Ball Z ,
- Blue Submarine No.6,
and other great stuff.
I am not suggesting that the anime on regular television are bad.
Quite the opposite many of them were important in my life.
Yu-Gi-Oh! alone did so much for me and Digimon is on my top ten favorite anime list.
But with network television anime, there was awful dubbing and censoring.
So I only got to experience part of these animes.
Cable viewers had the advantage because adult swim on cartoon network aired the animes.
This means no censoring but the dubbing was not guaranteed to be perfect.
I had no idea at the time that the anime on regular television was even censored or horribly dubbed.
I learned about this through Little Kuriboh’s Yu-Gi-Oh abridged series.
Yu-Gi-Oh! is the most famous anime 4Kids Entertainment censored and dubbed.
So that was my situation from elementary school through high school.
I only watched anime that aired on network television.
But when my family went on trips we would stay in motels with cable.
This was the only time that I ever got a chance to watch Toonami.
The only other time I can think of was my at grandparent’s house since they also had cable television.
My dad upgraded our internet to DSL when I was a sophomore in high school.
Even though I could have watched anime online I had no idea where to start and what to watch.
This would change after I got into Bleach.
How I got into Bleach
In 2009 I was studying abroad.
The institution did not have wifi, the internet was only available through ethernet cables.
How the times have changed.
So everyone would pack in the computer lab which had all the ethernet cables.
I would stop by and walk around taking a peek at people’s screens.
One day I noticed my friend was watching something interesting on his laptop so I joined him.