For reference, I write down or doodle loose memories I suddenly remember from my childhood. This is because I have issues with memory from mental trauma/illness so it's a form of personal recovery. I don't share these to ask for external insight, I share these because I need space to yap about it.
I was at the home of a friend's family friend for the adults to catch up and us kids to eat leftover snacks. I wasn't paying any attention to what conversations were happening, I only remember staring at their CRT tv that was playing an episode of Naruto. The episode was about Naruto and Sasuke fighting and the only thing that I remember about said episode was Sasuke's weird hand-shaped wings. I don't even remember if it was Sasuke or some other character. I thought the hand-wings were sick as fuck, even with no context.
I guess it is Sasuke? but he looks like he's in an anime tranformation. I tried asking a friend who was a Naruto nerd what the hell that was about and he didn't have any idea either?
As a kid, I was forced to attend a university-hosted summer camp my entire vacation, and each week had a theme that the daily activities were based around. One week's theme was "Japanese Culture" that was being led by students who were working in that department at the time, and it was a combination of "baby language learning" (I learned to spell my first name in hiragana, technically the incorrect way to do that) and generic "asian-esce" activities. One afternoon, the camp kids were given a coloring page with Dragonball Z characters. As a kid, I had no idea who the hell was on the picture, so I ended up coloring adult Goku with bright blue hair. When I was a young tween with limited internet access, I discovered the source of these characters through edited clip videos of fights and sad emo moments. I got really into it, and fell into a rabbit hole where I ended up watching yaoi Goku X Vegeta art slideshows to pop music. I am haunted by the memory of nude Goku being artistically censored by feathers in what I can only describe as "soft-core porn" while dreading being caught.
Imagine shit like this with very detailed bulges to the tune of "every time we touch".
At some point, my mom had bought a bunch of cartoon compilation DVDs for me and my little brother. Among these DVDs was a Thumbelina movie that none of us knew was technically an anime. This was one of those movies that felt more like a fever-dream because I was too young to really comprehend a cartoon without typical American tropes. I specifically remember the sugar-fairy character who could shapeshift and "died" at some point by being dissolved in water - of course that little dude was my favorite character. That and the strange sub-plot where a frog family kidnapped (and attempted to drug) the main character to be in an arranged marriage with their frog son and she DIDN'T beat their asses for it. Y'know, so the kids get the "good morals" lesson: "good children forgive strangers for violating them".
After some research, I learn that this movie is actually a heavily edited compilation film of a 26-episode series, and was the only version of itself that was released in the US. That explains why it had such weird pacing when I rewatched the movie as an adult, so I'm adding that to my list of obscure/niche medias to watch. No idea if it will be worth it, but, hey, I'm not watching anything new right now.
I keep forgetting the full title (Thumbelina: A Magical Story) because the more popular Don Bluth version keeps taking up most of the search results. Fun fact, this film was directed by the same guy (Hiromitsu Morita) who directed the Astro Boy movie.
Speaking of anime clip edit videos, that genre of content was my introduction to BLEACH, which I originally read as "BLECH" or "BLEGH" in my head. Which I thought was strange, but it didn't stop me from watching it. I then watched about 90 episodes on hulu when it still had shows for free before I quit because I was neck-deep in a filler arc (absolute ass vampire story). Then in high school, I fully read the manga up until early in the last arc, and quit again because I realized I don't like Tite Kubo's writing (now I watch BLEACH out of pretentious spite). Some day I'll make a very long and detailed essay about my complicated feelings for the series because despite my nostalgic affection for the show, I'd fist-fight Kubo for a happy meal.
My deepest apologies to Inoue Orihime, the og anime did you dirty and I had no right to dislike you as a teenager. You looked incredible in your main scene in the last arc.
I'll end this list here because after BLEACH, I watched Elfen Lied and became a true weeb. Was it wrong to have that be the first anime I watched all the way through? At the time, yeah probably (look, I had forgotten entirely about Mayu's backstory up until I was showing the show to a friend of mine. Sorry, dawg, that was fucked up of me).
(∩ `-´)⊃━☆.*･｡꩜___φ(．．)