proper age to watch anime

[LillyTown]

I can't really say "first" as I vaguely remember watching Dragonball, Voltron, and Speed Racer but I didn't exactly follow them as a fan. Around 96/97 a bunch of anime came here and a lot of it was awesome. Gundam Wing, Vision of Escaflowne, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Digimon, and more. I would say Gundam Wing was my favourite at the time since it was all mature and stuff, but seeing all these was more than enough to fascinate me in the art style and unique narratives coming out of Japan.

I was about 8 or 9 at the time.

Then 4kids started taking over everything and the anime became pretty dull, it wasn't until my learning about fansubs from playing around with Kazaa did I get into Evangelion, Trigun, One Piece, and Naruto.

Oh, ****! Good call, Speed Racer puts me at about... maybe 4 years old? I dunno, really young. Same with Voltron... Voltron, Speed, Transformers, etc are some of the first things I can recall watching along with some Disney movies n the occasional more 'mature' movie with my older siblings.

[Mooglebuddy]

If your not counting stuff like the noozles or the fairy tail show hayo myazaki animated that used to be on nick  that grimms fairy tale show can't remember the name. It was on it the late 80's or 90's some where in there. Then I don't really know I remember Robotech and sailor moon on toonami back in 97 which is when i bought the first half of the slayers on vhs which was the first anime i bought. I was 12. As for the kids stuff noozles grimm unico etc i was like 3.

Now that I think about that that is kind of weird I've been really into anime for 16 years, I was 12 when I got an animerica subscription, I'm 28 next month so that's more than half my life.

[Shohei-kun]

Now that I think about that that is kind of weird I've been really into anime for 16 years, I was 12 when I got an animerica subscription, I'm 28 next month so that's more than half my life.

I've been watching for 1.5 years and I have already watched more than you have (according to your sig which I believe is dynamic). There is nothing weird about it.

[buchno]

Now that I think about that that is kind of weird I've been really into anime for 16 years, I was 12 when I got an animerica subscription, I'm 28 next month so that's more than half my life.

I've been watching for 1.5 years and I have already watched more than you have (according to your sig which I believe is dynamic). There is nothing weird about it.

...so you've watched at least four hours of anime every day for the past 18 months?
Huh.

...how do people find the time?

[Saras]

It's likelly to be one of the forbidden kinds of knowledge Lovecraft used to write about.

[SirSkyRider]

When I look at those shows nowadays I realize how bad they are

Sailor Moon still pretty much punches every anime in its genre straight in the face.

So... my first time with anime... it was definitely in the 90s, mostly Sailor Moon and some of the shows based on kids's books... like Jungle Book, Cities of Gold and Nils Holgersson... none of which I perceived as anime at the time. My first time watching "anime as anime" wasn't until... blimey... 2004-ish, when I started buying Anime DVDs like GitS: S.A.C and samurai champloo.

On the "proper age to watch anime", I think there is no real proper age... because anime has a large variety of shows for almost every age.

[LillyTown]

Now that I think about that that is kind of weird I've been really into anime for 16 years, I was 12 when I got an animerica subscription, I'm 28 next month so that's more than half my life.

I've been watching for 1.5 years and I have already watched more than you have (according to your sig which I believe is dynamic). There is nothing weird about it.

...so you've watched at least four hours of anime every day for the past 18 months?
Huh.

...how do people find the time?

        Actually, I watch a LOT more than 4 hours a day usually. Yesterday I put in a shabby 5 or so as I was cleaning n organizing my art studio, just recently started transforming my apartment into a studio and gettin' it sorta 'finished up'. Today I've watched almost 2 hours worth but again been working a bit cleaning neurotically and I watch a lot more late-night.
       I find the time by not working(I'm nigh-on disabled) and not sleeping much. I sometimes watch whole series in one go, as in 12/13 episodes back-to-back. I'm probably gonna kill the Gunbuster OVA series today. I killed Madoka Magica in one shot with no real break other than to use the restroom; started at like 1AM, finished at like 7AM. I killed the first 6 episodes of Panty and Stocking in a few hours. It's easy to justify in my mind as I'm an aspiring artist and so I think of it as 'studying' or 'research lol.
        I usually watch like 4-6 episodes of an anime in a row if not the entire series and I try to watch 2 or 3 different series a day as in 4 episodes each of 2-3 different shows. That means 4-6+ hours per day, sometimes just work through one series and a movie or watch multiple movies in one day but still end up over the 4 hour mark. I guess I rambled on lol but I'd like to point out I'm not fat or even getting there... 130lbs at 6'2" and athletic albeit wiry built. o.O Lovin' them genes lol

EDIT: my bad, made it sound like 6 hours is a 'lot more' than 4... When I've gotten a lot done in a week and feel like I can slack off, I put in like 9+ hours watching anime sometimes. Just wake up, get coffee, fire up an anime, shower after a while n put on more anime, eat, anime, check my torrents and clean something, anime, look at artbooks/shop online while watching anime on another screen, before I know it it's 9PM. Eat dinner and watch more anime till 3 or 4AM.

[Shohei-kun]

On weekdays I watch anime from 9:30-1:30. On weekends I pretty much watch all day. I've slowed down a lot lately as I have caught up with shows I was actually interested in watching. Now I am just watching shows that I have missed.

[megido-rev.M]

I can squeeze anime time almost as easily as breathing.

[Mooglebuddy]

Now that I think about that that is kind of weird I've been really into anime for 16 years, I was 12 when I got an animerica subscription, I'm 28 next month so that's more than half my life.

I've been watching for 1.5 years and I have already watched more than you have (according to your sig which I believe is dynamic). There is nothing weird about it.

If you have enough free time to watch more than 2 full months on anime in 1 and a half years i envy you. and yea dynamic is a good word. I have a fair majority i think but theres so much i don't remember or just don't count. for example i watched ten eps of captain tyler but i don't think i marked it and wouldn't cuz it was with a bunch of people and it was more background. i have a lot of hobbies anime being one of the main ones but i also watch alot of tv from around the glove america, korea, japan, denmark, britian etc, and books. then theres work school etc. 240 shows watched witch is what i have listed seems insane. Thats 15 a year including movies which i haven't watched enough anime movies IMO. To me it is weird though. It's all weird. I've been hard into  video games since i was 3 thats a quarter of a century that too is weird. Maybe it's just me though.

[LillyTown]

When I look at those shows nowadays I realize how bad they are

Sailor Moon still pretty much punches every anime in its genre straight in the face.

How do you figure? Objectively, it gets juked and left leakin' in the gutter I like Sailor Moon as I grew up with it, it did a lot for Magical Girl shows, is more or less THE archetypal Magical Girl show(if not CCS) and it's really a decent show. That does little to improve the quality of it's animation which is mediocre if not terrible compared to Nanoha, CCSakura, Madoka etc. I mention those 3 shows a lot but they're landmark series that are not only some of the most quality Magical Girl shows but also some of the best animated of any genre. As far as opinion goes, I'd say CCS, Nanoha, and Madoka all beat Sailor Moon in plot, character design and sheer quality really. I should point out that I only watched a couple episodes recently as it wasn't as good as I remember due to fight scenes being ridiculous, likely due to budget/technology. Also, I watched the DiC dub as a kid and loved it then but still when I started watching the other day, I knew more-or-less what to expect; as a kid you can fill in gaps in the animation, even though Sailor Moon simply tosses her Tiara and the monsters explode you can imagine a truly epic fight.
On a parting note, I have no clue about the movies/OVAs and later series'. They could be much nicer and may not suffer from the problems I laid out.