I remember as a child, waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons with my little brother. We took turns picking which to watch, but there were some that we always agreed on. I’m talking about the original robot-based animated show Robotech as well as some others. I figured my days of being able to kick back on a Saturday and enjoy some robotic fantasy had passed me by. I longed for the day, as I got older, when I could “discover” animated gems like Fist of the North Star and all of the versions of the Gundam universe all over again. I had tried to watch animated series from domestic sources in the US, but they always were missing the edge that made the anime of my youth so incredible. I still consider Tom & Jerry, Loony Tunes, and Disney to be pretty high quality cartoons, but they are just that….cartoons. There was nothing to them but mindless slapstick and feel-good moralizing. It was then that I realized that it wasn’t the quality of the drawing, it was the content that I missed. The anime of my youth had conflict, struggle, failure, and generally victory for the hero. But the hero was not always cast on the white horse, and I missed the depth of the characters.
It was at this time that I decided to find a way to bring back that fantasy world of my youth. One day I finally decided to see what I could find on youtube, and I was astonished to see that they had quite a selection of shows; but alas, none were complete series, and everything was broken up into parts. My heart sank at this discovery. Then, all of a sudden, I clicked on what appeared to be another bad link, with a mislabeled title and incoarrect tags, when I saw an advertisement for an anime forum called Otakucenter and my journey back into a childhood memory bagan.
I was skeptical at first, but figured I would give it a shot, since I had just discovered what Naruto was, and it had rekindled my youthful passion for anime. Once I logged on, however, I was nothing less than amazed. Not only did the website have every episode of Naruto from the beginning to the current episode which had just been pulled from youtube, but also anime series I had never even heard of; such as Bleach and Death Note, as well as some of my old favorites like Dragon Ball, Basilisk, and YuYu Hakusho. I became hooked again, and haven’t ever looked back. I find new series all the time, and have made numerous new friends through the forums for this anime community. I thank my stars that I found this place, because I don’t know if cartoon network could ever satiate my thirst for anime.