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When did your fascination with Japan begin? Has it occupied your every waking thought since you were a small child or did it grow mostly near high school?
Your obsession reminds me of trekkies. Mostly in the way that they take the show seriously. No offense.
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Well, when I was a little drooly tyke, my mum bought me the old Voltron TV show on VHS instead of Barbie and that basically set me on the robot path. Then I watched Transformers and stuff like that, even a bit of Robotech.
Anyway, once I first moved overseas with her to China, I got my hands on a bunch of subtitled tokutsatsu shows from Japan, which is basically everything from Godzilla to Power Rangers. That set me up even more.
When I was about 7 or 8, we lived in Japan for a good while itself, and I encountered shows like Hikarian, which while also having robots and shit, also had cute anime girls. This, plus pokemon and digimon, really first put my mind into it. I didn't know the language very well, but kid's don't need words to understand giant fucking robots beating each other up!
So anyway after I moved back to China again, I started getting my grandparents back in Australia to get me DVDs of Anime like Sakura Wars, Slayers, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, and Ghost in the Shell. These were all mature mindfuck shows and they changed my interest yet again.
Finally, I discovered the fun of the internet and started downloading real shows online with fansubs and shit, plus I started buying manga and stuff from stores and things. In my recent trips to Japan I buy tons of cheap cutesy toys and enjoy them too.
I've always lived in an Asian environment, really, even my mum and her sister actually grew up in Kuching, so yeah. Not to mention, my dad was Asian himself, which is why I look like that while my mum is as white as a whiteboard. Bastard didn't stick around after that one night stand, however =P
Another reason is that cute anime girls and Yuri (lesbian) manga that I stumbled across really helped with my sexual identity.
When I came back to Australia my rather strange interests have made me a bit of a geek, but my girlfriend is able to get past that so I'm okay.