I've always been curious as to how people got into the "Anime" and "Manga" culture. I've noticed some people got into it from a friend, others by sheer coincidence. And some are a little more vindictive about it. I was a little sprite when I saw my first Anime. I was? Oh god? 7 I think?... Anyway it was Mobile Fighter Gundam! After that show I was hooked! (May have had something to do with the Giant Robots?)

lol i had a crazy ass asian dude in the chess club in high school. after i started bringing my laptop to school (originally to play online chess on during the lunch breaks and class) he showed me some AMVs on youtube...awesome. he pointed me to a few series i would like and ever since then ive been addicted.

ive tried most every addictive drug known to man by now and i think the only reason im not addicted to them is because of anime. seriously. that shit is my heroin, coke, meth, acid, you name it....so in a way its healthy....but then again its just as bad sometimes

I remember that i was looking for sonata arctica songs on youtube, and i came across this AMV,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQghSEl0hHQ , i always thought that the drawing style in manga/anime looked really great, and i therefore decided to download the "Vampire hunter D" movie and watch it. After that i got intrested in finding out what other animes were out there, so i started searching online and i downloaded a couple more movies...
Then one day i found a Elfen lied AMV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoCk31_nQFM&feature=related (I dont think it was this one, but i remember the song was "requiem for a dream")
And after watching Elfen lied i was totally hooked!!!
[EDIT]
The links dont seem to be working for me, if they dont work pls tell me and ill post them again...

Well.. As I remember, I was 13 years old when I got hooked into anime. I was looking for good shows on TV and I came across this anime, but I forgot the name of it. After that I was interested to anime and began watching a variety of shows, even childish anime (full of Kawaii). After those I started to collect anime and started buying figures and manga. I download the shows and put it into my hard drive (the one that blew up on me). Ever since that I've been watching anime at least 5 times a week.

It was looong time ago. At that time i was watched many animated serie, from it was few anime serie. I liked the details and story in anime, it was totally diferent from other animated serie.
From the anime serie in the time i liked most DragonBall.
Then i have saw Ghost in the Shell (movie) and from that moment i was a anime fan.

I stumbled upon a site with a couple of my childhood series (Saint Seiya and Captain Tsubasa) so I got those, since they also released a couple others, I decided to see what they were all about and liked them, so I started watching anime frequently... I don't really watch it anymore this days, but I still like watching some AMV's or cool looking wallpapers...

Maybe some day I'll finish watching those series that I left unfinished... Right now my PS3 takes up all my spare time!

On a late saturday night I saw Hellsing on a german tv channel. When I read about it, what it was etc, then I started to watch some more anime and the step to buy manga was not a big one from there. But before that, somewhere in the late 80's and early 90's I already watched anime without knowing that is was anime ( it was dubbed in german so I assumed it was a german cartoon )

When I was very young my mother rented My neighbor Totoro, fast forward maybe five to seven years pokemon hit the scene. Watched it for a while then fast forward several more years I was finally old enough to stay up late and I saw my first official shows on channels like Adult Swim and G4. Inuyashu and some episodes of Full Metal Alchemist for Adult Swim and Last Exile and Raxephon on G4. Started to watch shows on the internet and also started buying mu favorite ones. Seems even as a little kid I was destined to watch anime.

My mom bought/put on Totoro and Kiki for me to watch and I was forever hooked.

Well I hated it for a loge time and I would gave anybody who did like it a lot of shit because thay liked it. But some guy made me see a anime and it was Excel Saga and I hated it a lot. But over time I found my self watching more of it and I don't no why? It has been 3 years now and now I have a big coltish of it. ^^

Sorry tor being a dick buck then.