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How long have you been watching the anime?

It's very heartwarming to see how many cumulative years we've all put into the anime. As a follow-on question, do people feel the anime (or maybe the franchise as a whole) has made any significant difference to their lives/paths .etc and if so in what way?
 
I started watching it in 2000 (I was 5) when it was broadcasted in Spain in non network TV during weekends . If I remember correctly the first episode I watched was non other than "I Choose You" I also remember that I was traumatized by the ST Anne episode. I did not play the games untill 2003 when I had a Gameboy and Pokemon Yellow and Crystal. Also while Pokemon was broadcasted in another channel Digimon was aired at the same time. So it resulted in a war between the ones who watched Digimon and the ones that watched Pokémon also Pokemon was aired in two Time slots 9:00 and 13:30 and I remember how after Pokémon it was Simpsons time.

Pokemon dissapaered 2 years out of television and returned in 2005 with the Final Episodes of Master Quest including the Johto league and Ash vs Gary and then they broadcasted Advance Generation. During 2008 I started watching DP saga in Youtube (Remember when Youtube had a 10 minute limit?) and the series that I started watching at the same time as Japan was Best Wishes. However when TV broadcasted episodes in Japan at 19:00 at my country the time is 11:00 so I could not watch many episodes live unlike now.

And to be fair I never was a fan of Team Rocket untill DP but however they always made me laugh and I felt bad for them sometimes.

Those weekends during the begining of the 2000's were magical and it was high quality TV in Spain it's a shame what kids of today are not enjoying...
 
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I've been watching the anime since the original series. My first episode, or at least the first one that I can recall, was Pikachu's Goodbye. I think it was a rerun instead of when it first premiered since I'm pretty sure I saw promos for the Indigo League just a couple of months later, but it's hard to say for sure either way. Regardless, I cried when I watched that episode and I was pretty much hooked after that. That led to me getting into the video games and more of the franchise in general.

I never really took a break from the anime. I didn't really lose interest enough to where I didn't want to watch any Pokemon episodes. It always felt so reassuring for me to watch new Pokemon episodes on Saturday mornings too. As satisfying as it was to binge watch most of Journeys on Netflix, I still kind of miss that weekly premiere setup after all this time. While I have my fair share of problems with every series thus far, watching the Pokemon anime is usually just fun and relaxing for me.
 
I first started watching it a bit over a year ago, and I started in Sun and Moon. I watched that series while also starting back at the beginning, and when I finished Sun and Moon I began to watch forwards as normal.
 
It's very heartwarming to see how many cumulative years we've all put into the anime. As a follow-on question, do people feel the anime (or maybe the franchise as a whole) has made any significant difference to their lives/paths .etc and if so in what way?

Well, I named my daughter "Rica" ...
But other than that I guess there wasnt a significant difference in my life because of the anime.
 
I started in 1999 when I was 3 or 4 years. I stopped from 2002 to 2003 and on the second semester of 2005, but that was because my cable didn't have a channel where Pokemon had a decent schedule. I still managed to watch like 10 episodes by waking up at 6 am on Sundays or by going to my aunt's house.
 
It's very heartwarming to see how many cumulative years we've all put into the anime. As a follow-on question, do people feel the anime (or maybe the franchise as a whole) has made any significant difference to their lives/paths .etc and if so in what way?
Not a very obvious one but my grandpa gave me a GBA with Emerald because I liked the show. This got me into video games and my interests branched from there, including my current career. Pokémon is the only thing I call myself a "fan" of, but oddly enough I've never directly made any friends over it.

Edit: Oooh but come to think of it, Pokémon is the reason I even know English. The games were only available in English and I wanted to be invested in the story so I learned as I played, especially with Mystery Dungeon. Local schools all suck at teaching English so I owe nothing to them aside of basic kindergarten stuff.
 
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I'd say I started following it when DP started (my first video game outright was Pokemon Diamond). I watched the anime now and then when there wasn't much else on TV before that, but I didn't really get into it (or looked up subbed episodes online) until after the DP games were released.
 
Not a very obvious one but my grandpa gave me a GBA with Emerald because I liked the show. This got me into video games and my interests branched from there, including my current career. Pokémon is the only thing I call myself a "fan" of, but oddly enough I've never directly made any friends over it.

Edit: Oooh but come to think of it, Pokémon is the reason I even know English. The games were only available in English and I wanted to be invested in the story so I learned as I played, especially with Mystery Dungeon. Local schools all suck at teaching English so I owe nothing to them aside of basic kindergarten stuff.

That's really awesome! It makes me so happy seeing Pokémon influence people's lives so much. Honestly it was the same for me, I hadn't realized when making my previous post that it's why I learned English too. I moved to the US from a non-English speaking country at the time, and watching the anime + playing the games helped a lot in learning the language. The series has changed so many people in various ways, it's honestly incredible. :bulbaLove:
 
Edit: Oooh but come to think of it, Pokémon is the reason I even know English. The games were only available in English and I wanted to be invested in the story so I learned as I played, especially with Mystery Dungeon. Local schools all suck at teaching English so I owe nothing to them aside of basic kindergarten stuff.

It was more or less the same to me, but I wouldn't say Pokemon was a deciding factor. I guess what taught me English the most was Harry Potter after all (my country's books translation are so awful I forced myself to read them in English after being a little older). Although it's funny to remember getting stuck countless times during the GBC and GBA years for not understanding what the heck the NPCs were saying... It took me a few months to figure out how to pass through the Garagara ghost for eg, or to go through the waterfall and reach the league in Gold\Silver.


It's very heartwarming to see how many cumulative years we've all put into the anime. As a follow-on question, do people feel the anime (or maybe the franchise as a whole) has made any significant difference to their lives/paths .etc and if so in what way?

Because it was a big hit during my childhood I had a lot of fun with it during those times. From playing Pokemon-related games with friends to wait whole days to watch a new episode. But unfortunetaly that was it, I guess. Pokemon had almost nothing to do with me becoming an artist or a writer. Guess the plate goes to Dragon Ball, Inuyasha, Rurouni Kenshin, and other shounen anime I watched as a kid.
 
I first found out about the anime through VHS tapes of first season episodes at Toys ‘R Us, plus The First Movie in movie theaters. I never found out what channel the show aired on when I was younger, and relied on VHS and DVDs of episodes until the Pokémon dub buyout happened. After the buyout, I found out that Pokémon was being broadcasted on Cartoon Network, but I never watched it much. I think I also found out about Serebii.net around this time, as they were giving information on the first Diamond and Pearl episodes while the United States was still on Battle Frontier.

The first time I watched a series all the way through was the subbed version of XY. I stopped watching again when Sun & Moon started, but I am currently also watching all Pokémon Journies episodes subbed. Other than watching XY and Journies, I watched all of the dubbed first season episodes over the course of my life, but have only got glimpses of most other generations. You could say that I’ve been watching the Pokémon anime my whole life, but I only have been seriously watching it for Kanto, Kalos, and Journeys. If I had to watch another series completely, it would be Diamond and Pearl subbed without a doubt.
 
The first episode I watched wasn't the first one but the one with Caterpie and Misty. I remember liking the relationship/tsundere stuff between Misty and Ash. The first episode is very dramatic and I liked it too when I was a kid but I think this episode is the first one that really focused on the relationship between the protagonists and the actual Pokémon (Pikachu and Caterpie moon scene). I wonder what the series would have been like if it was only about Misty and Ash and more focused on relationships? Maybe it would be like Twilight Wings?

Funny thing I remember disliking the idea of Misty and Ash as a couple because I thought it was such an overused cliche to have the protagonists fall in love just because they are of the opposite sex. :p I had many male friends as a kid so I liked the idea of boys and girls just being friends platonically. But nowadays I love all kinds of shipping.

I also became interested in the Japanese dub during OS since I had a magazine that would summarise the plots of the new episodes from Japan that hadn't aired in my country (Sweden) yet. Maybe that is why I prefer the original Japanese names. I didn't start watching the Japanese dub until DP though. I was obsessed with the Japanese opening and the ending with Hikari/Dawn and watched it over and over again to learn the Japanese lyrics lol.
 
Let the old folks talk, I'm watching it since around 1998/1999 and now 20 years later, when Pokemon Journey 2019 started, I mostly stopped watching it. So far I haven't felt the need to watch any of it, even though I do have access to the latest episodes.
 
I started watching Pokemon at 11 in 2000, when it first came to Poland. My first ep ever was EP004 and I instantly fell in love with Team Rocket <3 In 2009 I completely quit watching dub for the sake of watching the original version. I've watched every ep until the end of DP except for the most of AG, because it didn't air in Poland (and I saw I wasn't missing much). Ever since BW began, I've started watching only episodes with the TRio :) And here I am today!
 
I started watching it when it first came out here in Aus (1997 IIRC) and watched it up until the end of Hoenn I think. I stopped until half way through Unova then went back and watched it from the start.

I kinda stopped watching again during Kalos due to my frustration with it and I’m hoping to start watching again soon.
 
On and off since 1998 when I watched Abra and the Psychic Showdown and enjoyed it enough to carry on watching. I had seen a clip of Brock lamenting bikini season being over presumably two days earlier, but hadn't stayed to watch the rest of that episode for whatever reason. From then I watched everything up to part-way through Decalore Adventures when I just couldn't care enough about so many episodes of pure filler. I hopped back on the ride part-way through XY and have mostly been watching it live bar a few exceptions since. Haven't completely caught up on the gap between BWDA and mid-XY, but I have seen parts of early XY. I didn't finish catching up because Korrina's arc dragged on and I wasn't a fan of Serena's crush being most of her focus for that first year, but watching through XY from the beginning is on my to do list.

The current focus on Go as both a character and a game (moreso as a game, the character has been slowly improving but Go's game mechanics just do not work in the established anime universe) have led to me somewhat to picking and choosing what I want to watch, skipping a couple of episodes here and there but if I remember it's on and the stream is working unless an episode sounds particularly awful I'll generally watch it. It not being on my country's Netflix means I haven't seen much of the Journeys dub.
 
I started watching it as a kid and continue to watch it until they stopped dubbing it in my country. I watched it irregularly from the net during 2000s, and started to watch it regularly in 2007, mostly thanks to Hikari/Dawn and DP's writing.
 
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