It All Started With a Little Magazine Most anime fans my age got started with anime through one of three shows; Pokemon, Sailor Moon, or Dragon Ball Z. Since Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z were only being shown on cable, that only leaves one of the three for little 'ol me! Yes, I was(and still am) a full-fledged poke-maniac! It all started in September 1998. It was my second year of middle school, 7th grade, and my Beanie Baby obsession was just starting to die down. I used to collect "Disney Adventures" magazines(they're small, cheap little magazines that you can find on super market checkout lines.) The back cover of the September 1998 issue had an ad for the Pokemon Game Boy game. It showed a bunch of pokemon with a big net over them and the words "got ya!" next to it. After seeing the picture, I had no idea what it was about...all I knew was that I fell in love with those little creatures! I just couldn't get over how cute and unique they were. A cartoon fan like me had never seen anything like them!
Luckily, I didn't remain in the dark about the new Pokemon craze for very long. My friend Jeffrey already had the game and was totally into it. He came over to my house one day and saw the magazine. He said he knew about Pokemon and then he told me about each one in the picture...how Bulbasaur has a seed growing out of its back, how Eevee can evolve into one of three different pokemon, etc,. And I was absolutely fascinated by all of it! The next time he came over, he brought his Game Boy and Pokemon Blue to show me. Once again, I was totally enraptured! So much in fact, that I even bought the Pokemon game guide book, even though I didn't even have the game yet(I just wanted to see pictures of all the different pokemon.) The next time I went over to Jeffrey's house, he actually let me play the game(start a new game, but not save it.) And boy, did I get hooked! After that, each time we got together, I would play the game for hours and he would show me what to do(each time I had to start over, since I couldn't save my game, as that would delete his game...but I didn't care!) Each time I went to a store, I would keep an eye out for Pokemon books, toys, magazines, and other stuff. I just couldn't stop thinking about it! Then finally, in April 1999, I dragged my mom over to Best Buy and she bought me a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Red. For the next month or so, I spent practically all of my spare time playing the game, and I even brought it to school with me and played it during the breaks. Eventually, I heard about the Pokemon TV show(back then, it was being shown on channel 13 and then moved to channel 5 on Kids'WB.) I decided to check it out one day, and of course I liked it. And again, I could tell that there was something similar in its animation to that of Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats. Unfortunately, as I was getting more into Pokemon, Jeffrey was phasing out of it. But that was okay because it wasn't long before I found someone else to share my new obsession with.
A Hapless Poke-Maniac During the beginning of my Pokemon craze, after I had just beaten the game and had started watching the anime, my old friend Jessica called me. I met her during my first year of middle school(6th grade) and we had both been into Beanie Babies together. She had left the school the following year and I hadn't heard from her in a while. We started talking a little, then she suddenly asked me something like "Do you know what Pikachu is?" Then I excitedly replied "Yeah, I love Pokemon!" That just hit it off. It was like a dream come true for me to find a friend my age that liked Pokemon as much as I did. You see, back then I went to a private and very snobby middle school. All of my classmates were jerks; the boys were obnoxious and immature and the girls were a bunch of narrow-minded snobs who thought about nothing but boys, sex, and make-up. So of course, if you were over the age of 10 and liked something like Pokemon, you were pretty much excluded and thought to be a nerd. Even the people that I hung out with who were supposedly my "friends" never missed an opportunity to mock my Pokemon obsession. In those days, I felt pretty lonley and oppressed, but once Jessica and I rekindled our friendship and began to share our new love for Pokemon, things started to look up!
For the next three years or so, I was one of the biggest Pokemon fanatics you could find! I bought every single Pokemon game that came out, I never missed an episode of the anime and had them all on tape, I saw all the movies during their theatrical releases(the first movie 4 times and the second movie 6 times!), and I had practically every single Pokemon trading card. Not only that, but Jessica and I went to a Pokemon League at our local mall every weekend(I have 12 league badges to prove it!) and we attended lots of Pokemon tournaments held at various shopping centers. Going to the leagues and tournaments confirmed what I had always believed...that Pokemon is not just for kids. I met a woman who must've been at least 50 years old playing the Pokemon trading card game, a 3 year old boy who played the Pokemon Game Boy games with his mom...and all the ages in between!
In addition to going to the Pokemon Leagues every weekend, Jessica and I got together a lot and did practically nothing but play, watch, and talk about Pokemon. She called me every night and for about an hour we would crack Pokemon jokes, do some Pokemon RPGing, and other related stuff. One really unique thing that we used to do was "watch" our Pokemon tapes together over the phone. By this, I mean we would both pick an episode that we wanted to watch, find it on each of our tapes, and play it at the same time as we talked on the phone! I know that sounds kind of silly but we sure had fun doing it! Also, I soon discovered that most older fans of the Pokemon anime are either AAML(for Ash & Misty) or Rocketshippers(for Jessie & James.) Jessica and I were big time Rocketshippers. In addition to playing the Pokemon video and trading card games, we also spent a lot of time visiting Rocketshippy web sites, reading Rocketshippy fanfics, and looking at Rocketshippy fan art. As you can probably guess by all this, Jessie & James were my first OTP(One True Pairing.)
The Fad Finally Fades(But Doesn't Die!) It was through Pokemon that I discovered what anime is. I finally found out that Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats were also these unique animated shows from Japan, and that there were tons of other animes just like them waiting out there for me to find! But whether you love it or hate it, Pokemon touched my heart like nothing else ever has. Being a major Pokemon fan helped me discover just how much I loved the other animes I used to watch, and how much I was growing to love the whole general feel and style of anime. It also made me realize how much I was growing as a person. Even though I was made to feel like a weirdo for liking Pokemon in middle school, I didn't let the oppression and seclusion I felt cloud my feelings for the things that really made me happy. I continued to let my passion for Pokemon and anime grow, despite the fact that my peers tried to make me feel otherwise.
I think it was sometime during my first year in high school that my Pokemon obsession finally began to decrease. Jessica was already pretty much out of it by that time(I think she moved on to Dragon Ball Z for a while) so we didn't keep in contact as much. I continued to go to a few other Pokemon Leagues without her, but not for very long. However, I'm still very much a Pokemon fan and probably always will be. I still buy all the new games that come out and I've never missed an episode of the anime. But I stopped collecting the cards a while ago(they were soon replaced by Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.) Like I said, Pokemon is what really opened the door to anime fandom for me, and my passion could only move forward from there!