My earliest memories of cartoons actually start with an anime: Voltron. At the time I didn't differentiate between "anime" and your everyday cartoon. All I knew was that a buncha cool looking fighters piloted big ol' machine that combined into an even cooler robot.
As time went on, I slowly began to understand the different origins of some of what I saw on television. My parents had always remarked about how cheesy Japanimation was, silly little cartoons that constantly reused the same couple frames of animation, coupled with horribly dubbed audio. Their experience growing up was with Kimba the White Lion and Speed Racer.
I was a little confused, because the bits and pieces of anime I saw were just the opposite. American cartoons featured bland, bright images in an episodic format that neatly wrapped up stories in twenty minutes. Anime tended to sport more elaborate set pieces and arching storylines, often moving into a more serious realm by comparison to it's Saturday-morning brethren.
My brother at the time may have had more of an interest than I did. He taped what he could, usually off late-night TV. I recall him mentioning the Project A-ko films a few times (which later produced the Agent Aika series), and at one point he had recorded something called "Record of Lodoss War" off Sci-Fi. I borrowed it, and was blown away.
The show turned all those fantasy novels I read and role-playing games I played into a moving picture. The visuals, bright and fantastic, the characters, clearly defined and heroic... it was epic, and I wanted more.
It oddly ended on a terrible downturn, with Parn escaping from a burning city while his apparent mentor was killed by the enemy. It was a jarring and sudden conclusion, and it wasn't until years later that I learned that Sci-Fi had packaged the first three episodes of a twelve-part OVA as a stand-alone movie.
But the seeds were sown. Any idealistic notions I had of anime were cemented with Lodoss War.
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