A post went up at Karmaburn that addresses the evergreen topic: how did you get into anime? The point he is making, in my biased view, is that there was no gateway drug. I don't know who came up with this idea, but really. It just does not work that way. I don't wish to piggy-back on Evirus with my own life story, but I was known to write sometimes that my first anme was a 1966 feature "Flying Ghost Ship". But while true, I was not watching anime for anime for 30 years after that, even if I watched a few. Anime was a part of the environment -- just like for everyone else. Evirus' Princess Mononoke made him conscious that something qualitatively different existed out there, but it wasn't "gateway drug".