Bleach, probably? My friends in school dragged me into an anime club they were running back when the first season was airing.

I definitely saw other shows before that – Pokemon, of course, and bits and pieces of Ranma, Speed Racer, and other shows that occasionally made it to broadcast TV – but I didn’t distinguish them from other cartoons.

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

Sailor Moon.

It’s one of those 3:

• Heidi, Girl of the Alps
• Maya the Bee
• Captain Future

I don’t remember which one of those was actually the first (most likely Heidi or Maya, just going by the kid-friendliness), but all three are in my earliest core childhood memories.

…space battleship yamato, circa 1979, on broadcast television no less: i tried to take pictures of the screen because we didn’t get our first VCR until a few months later…

The first anime that I watched that I thought of as an anime was Cromartie High School. My college roommate called me over to his desk and in the end we watched the whole show on his monitor with me looking over his shoulder. I really enjoyed it, but I didn’t think too much about it and didn’t watch another anime until I saw Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood about 4 years later. It was all downhill from there.

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.

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.

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

Can’t remember if it was Urusei Yatsura or Ranma 1/2 but loved both series as a kid (had a friend who had a mail order catalog where he could get the VHS).

As for the first I personally choose (rather than getting second hand from a friend), it was either 3x3 eyes or flame of recca (no longer remember which came first).

• Spirited Away and various other studio Ghibli Movies - first anime movies i watched and first type of anime content I ever saw, as a young child.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion. First anime series i watched, and first I chose to watch independently. ~ 16 years old.

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.

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

The first anime I ever saw was Samurai Pizza Cats since my mum LOVED that show and had a DVD of one of the seasons. I can’t figure out the first anime I conciously watched though, it was either Initial D or Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid.

Initial D Stage 1-3 is awesome but I do kinda regret watching Dragon Maid in full due to the Kanna scenes

Urotsukidoji, after seeing it on laserdisk at the first ever Hellraiser rave party (Netherlands). I was mesmerized more by that giant screen than the actual rave, so I looked for it, which back then was very very difficult. People didn’t know what anime was and I didn’t even know that word anime. I was lucky enough to have the Videoland (video rental place) help me out because after me telling him what I had seen, he was interested. First I actually managed to get Akira, and watched that, then eventually I found Urotsukidoji, which back then was imported via a label called “Manga entertainment” and dubbed, from great britain. Later on I would also find (very expensive) Manga dubbed tapes in the brand new Virgin megastore in Amsterdam. And thats how I got started with anime, this was in 1992. Been in to anime ever since, first thinking it was actually called manga, but then learning about it. even joined a mailing list fanclub (there was no internet yet, just BBS’s which were dial-in) where I learned a lot about it over the phone from the guy running that mailing list. they would send out a news letter it was a lot of fun reading those.