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My first anime (i.e. "cartoon") in childhood times is probably Pokemon or Digimon.
Excluding those, it should be The Familiar of Zero or Infinite Stratos. I simply watched whatever my friends were watching / recommended back in my school days.
But the first anime in recent times - the one that kickstarted my 700+ anime journey? It's Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.
Born in the 70's so technically battle for the planets or astroboy. But first conscious choice was Eva on SBS
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.
Dragon ball, because they streamed it on the open channels on the tv. After that it was Naruto, Pokemon, Hunter vs Hunter and One piece
YuYu Hakusho, Dragonball Z, and Gundam Wing were airing around the same time when I watched them.
First "anime" was Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Second one I think was Death Note, then Attack on Titan. Haven't watched much outside of those, ngl. Not a big anime guy.
Gonna feel old here but:
"Voltron: Defender of the Universe"
Evangelion. One might imagine that it was a bit of a wake up call that anime ain't kids cartoons, and I then became a self-respecting anime watcher until the Age of No Time arrived and I just rewatch Toradora! Or Clannad so I can sweat manly tears.
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.
Probably Neon Genesis Evangelion... I watched several others before this because they looked good...I watched NGE because it's an institution, apparently. Not my favorite, but I could understand the memes after watching it.
First anime that I downloaded and watched on computer was Mirai Nikki circa 2014.
I YOLO watched the full series from 21h to 7h next morning.
Totally wasted at the end, like being drunk without alcohol.
Somehow I found doing this funny and redid it (less harcore) a few times with other animes.
I'm semi convinced that I saw some part on TV before, not really sure.
I am not 100% sure but it most likely was "The Promised Neverland".
Of course if I wanted to count the ones I watched as a kid, then one of the Ghibli studio ones would be it, I guess "Howl's Moving Castle" or "Totoro"?
Furthest back that I can remember are Doraemon both films and series from around 80s 90s and some other tokusatsu. All on VHS. Can not remember which one exactly is "the first". I start early ;)
Then some series that I never watched from start to finish on cable network. Like Ranma, Sailor Moon, Oh! My Goddess, You're Under Arrest!, Houshin Engi, El Hazard, CC Sakura, Galaxy Angel. I always try to be in time for Sakura and Galaxy Angel airing, because cute girls. Never did, because school.
edit to include Utena... it became a source of running joke between me and a girl next door.
Some certainty with title that marks the moment I start actively seeking out and watching more anime. Probably Sister Princess, fan-subbed, burned on CD-R. Good times.
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
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.
It's one of those 3:
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.
Stayed up late to watch blue gender as a kid. I think it's the reason I love mecha anime the most.
I did not expect to be alone on this, but I scrolled through and didn't see it:
Record of Lodoss War from 1990. I had an older cousin who had fansubs of the series on VHS in '92 or '93. We watched through the whole thing probably a dozen times.
That's a great one to start on though; it had such an aesthetic!
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.
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.
This is a tough one... the first anime I saw was Space Battleship Yamato, imported into the US as Star Blazers, but outside of thinking that it was completely different from other cartoons I didn't know anything else about it.
Eventually I caught some episodes of Harlock and saw that there was more than one show with this style, but didn't realize they both came from an entirely different industry.
Through the next 5~6 years I came to recognize the "anime look" in various other media - many American cartoons farmed their intros out to TMS or Toei and it was obvious that there was something different going on - and Japan was constantly in the news as their economy (actually The Bubble) took off and big American businesses reacted to that "threat".
Around this time I saw the Galaxy Express 999 movie on VHS, partly because it looked cool but mostly because I knew by then that Lieji Matsumoto was the artist behind Yamato and Harlock and wanted more of that.
So that might be the first anime I watched because I knew what it was. But "anime" wasn't really in the vernacular then; it was still "Japanese cartoons", or maybe "Japanimation".
The first anime that I watched because I knew it was "anime" was probably Bubblegum Crisis: a friend's brother got fansub tapes at the big local university and brought them back to share around over summer break.
He also brought Urotsukidoji, but that's a story for another time...
I started with SAO, but I didn’t really get into it until the original run of Full Metal Alchemist, then the rest is history
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).
speed racer and battle of the planets were broadcast when I was a kid. does that count?
Excluding cartoons like Maya the bee and Moomins then probably flip flappers in 2016. There were probably other anime series or ghibli films. But Flip Flappers were the first one that I remember waiting for next episode every week.
Sailor Moon.
Digimon. Got disc from my cousin and since it was English dub, I thought it was just cartoon. Also I didn't know what anime is back then.
Inititially Code Geass in like 2013, but I stopped after the 1st episode. I think the style put me off. Haven't given it a try since (but I should). Then to give anime another shot: SAO. It's a cliché 1st anime but after that I was hooked.
The wild thing is, I believe my 2nd anime (I guess technically 3rd) was High School DxD. Or at least I dove into ecchi anime pretty soon after beginning to watch anime.
Probably Speed Racer as a kid. The first I really got into was Robotech TV series and the Macross movie. I really loved the world crafting and I was beside myself when Palladium dropped the Robotech RPG.
Until around 2021 I ignored anime because of the typical cliches. But one friend always tried to push me into it. One day he talked me into watching Evangelion. Probably one of the worst “first” anime you can watch xD It took me multiple months after that to try some more. But I need to admit Evangelion still turned into one of my favorite anime’s.
I remember watching Captain Tsubasa, Dragon Ball and Pokemon on the TV when I was a child, but the first I watched because it was anime was A Place Further Than the Universe. I was looking how to get into anime and found a guide on reddit with this in the genre Cute Girls Doing Cute Things. I got curious about what CGDCT could be so decided to check it.
Probably Voltron, though I didn't know what anime was at that time. Probably saw some Sailor Moon. Nickelodeon used to show some random stuff.
As a teen my first deliberate move towards finding more anime to watch was after seeing Ninja Scroll and Neo-Tokyo on VHS. Both of those blew my mind and I knew then there were much better shows out there than what was being produced in the States.
If Pokémon doesn’t count, then grave of the fireflies
Elfen lied. Not exactly the deep end, but i did kinda skip the casual part.
