ZephyrStar wrote:Oldfag reporting in, born in 1980. I am jealous of you kids...anime is like, a regular expected thing for you guys. When I was in my teens I was the only person I knew who was into anime at all

Pretty much the same thing for me. I knew a few guys in high school who watched stuff on Cartoon Network, but I was the only one really into it. Heck, the Best Buy and b&n in my parent's area still mainly stocks the shows and manga that I had to special order in their anime/manga sections.
It is kind of interesting, and I wonder how my parents would react to the realization, that the grand majority of the cartoons I grew up on as a kid, especially religious ones, were actually anime. The Flying House.... Super Book.... I remember waking up super early on Sunday/Saturday mornings, rushing downstairs grabbing a rubber gabble and watching these in the family room before my parent's would wake up. Though despite that I still consider Sailor Moon my true gateway as it was the first show I actively seeked out and paid for fansubs for. Ah the days of mailing a money order and then waiting weeks before a box came with a bunch of VHS tapes....
Though by the time I got to college it was pretty easy to find anime and people into it. But I often attribute that to going to college in a major metropolitan area vs rural Kentucky. I never had issues finding new and obscure series when I was in college nor when I visited my grandparent's in Detroit. After all, it was my friends who lived here in Detroit that ultimately dunked me head first into anime fandom.