Well, I have a fairly small collection of anime. The stuff is expensive you know. I always personally shop online. Local prices are almost always a ripoff. The places that sell anime here in Knoxville, Tn are Best Buy, Sam and Goody's, and Gamestop. Sam and Goody's seems to be the most expensive usually. Online I can find all the titles made and avoid a pesky 9.25% sales tax as well. Their are disadvantages to online shopping, such as waiting on the delivery, riskiness, and shipping charges, but overall it is by far the best choice.

My favorite place to buy anime is from Robert's Anime Corner Store. They almost always have the lowest prices around. When you make a purchase over $100 dollars, they ship your purchase UPS for free. And they ship promptly. Usually if I place an order on a Tuesday afternoon the package will arrive on that Friday. I have ordered almost all of my anime DVDs from them, and all have arrived in great shape and exactly what I ordered.

Animenation is a pretty good place to go. I shop there when the Anime Corner Store doesn't have what I am looking for. This hasn't happened with a DVD before, but occasionally they don't have a figure that I want. Animenation always has more expensive prices, but their inventory is fairly huge in all fields. They also have a free shipping over $100 dollars policy, but their increased prices pretty well ruin that.

My favorite anime series have changed several times over the years, which is certainly understandable. The first anime I ever watched (at least the first anime which I recognized as anime) was Robotech, back when Cartoon Network first started Toonami. I grew up watching several anime-like shows, such as Thundercats, the original Transformers, Voltron, etc. Robotech was like no other animated show I had ever seen, the characters had a style that was distinctively different from the usual shows that I watched. This show held me captivated through its long run, and left me hungering for more. Luckily for me, this was about the time that Anime exploded onto American TV. Toonami soon picked up shows like Sailormoon, Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyo, and the list just kept going. Anime went from a cult sensation to a major part of several networks' cartoon lineups.

While Robotech was at first my favorite show, its run ended and I soon began watching Sailormoon and Dragonball Z daily. For a long time after that Dragonball Z remained my favorite show, but that changed when they first brought Tenchi Muyo to Toonami. Though edited quite a bit, the show caught my interest from the first time a commercial showed. For anyone that remembers, Cartoon Network had a habit of showing periodic commercial teasers of shows that wouldn't air till the next season. I watched the show faithfully and it became the show that I loved most. The great artwork of the OVA's, the interesting characters, the heavily comedic storyline gave this show a permanent spot in my heart. At some point Digimon began airing on Fox, and while it was never my favorite series, it was always fun to watch and was the inspiration of my kids aimed site, Wizardmon's Castle.

At this time Pokemon was all the rage among younger kids and it was interesting to watch the Poke/Digimon wars that occurred online. I never went around flaming Pokemon sites or insulting the show on my site, and in return people rarely bothered flaming me. To get back to my article's topic, Many people probably think that Digimon is among my favorite anime's, but it is not. It is a show that, like Pokemon and Yugi-oh, is aimed at younger fans and is something that is fun to watch but not anything to write home about.

When the various Gundam series came on the air, I watched them as much as I could, but they never really became my favorites, though for a time I heavily collected Gundam models. Newer animes like Outlaw Star, Trigun, and Big O caught my attention and remain some of my favorites.

Eventually I got a good enough job that I was able to start actually buying anime instead of just having to watch what came on TV. My collection is still very small, and a lot of it is series that have aired in America, but I finally am able to look a little out of the box. At this point in time my favorite series would have to be Tenchi Muyo, Love Hina, Excel Saga,and Nadesico. These shows are mostly girl heavy series that are full of comedy without being child-aimed. The plots of each are also easy to understand. Complexity of plot is not necessarily a bad thing, but series like Evangelion, Lain, and Betterman just delve into plain wierdness at a level I don't feel like going to.

So to sum up, I have found that I like the so called harem genre of anime, where multiple girls chase after a single, often clueless, guy. These shows usually contain plots aimed mostly at comedy and entertainment, and that puts them above other shows in my opinion. Anything comedic, however, usually is great in my book.

Love Hina is manga that was made into a two season(25 total episodes) show that later spawned two movies and a three OVA special finale. I have not met many people who have watched this series and did not enjoy it. Love Hina stands out because every element of the show is well planned and executed. The characterizations are excellant. We meet most of the characters in episode 1, but by the end of the episode each person's name, face, and personality has been distinctively etched into our minds. Character Profiles

The show delves deep into each character, but mostly focuses on Keitaro Urashima and Naru Narusegawa. Keitaro spends most of his time trying to get Naru to like him, trying to pass the Tokyo U. entrance exams, and keeping the Hinata apartments clean and well managed. Naru spends her time studying for the exams as well, and this brings the two together often.

I think that few things have accelerated the growth of the US anime community as the internet has. Toonami was undoubtably the one responsible for introducing Anime aimed at older audiences than Pokemon and gaining anime a definite place in mainstream culture, but the internet is what really brings the fans together. Long before Toonami began airing there was already a large base of anime fans who were addicted to subbed imported anime and the relatively fewer dubbed series. These fans already knew Sailor Moon, Rick Hunter, and Goku's adventures by heart before they ever saw the light of day on Cartoon Network's programming. They knew hundreds of titles, many still obscure, before most of us knew one. These are the people who set the foundation of the huge anime community online with character shrines, image galleries, and forums in an attempt to share with others what was once a largely unknown genre.

Today, of course, anime is well known by most people, even if they only think of it as Pokemon. It has become rare to see a network animation block that does not have some Japanese show in it. Beyblades, Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, and Medabots seem to turn up on Saturday mornings as often as Looney Toons does. More adult anime is a bit harder to find on tv, largely unedited and uncut anime is even rarer. Shows that never see the airwaves in America and are in fact are never even advertised would not seem likely to do well here, but due to the internet everyone has access to information about anything that has been made in Japan. Series like Slayers, Love Hina, and Evangelion have never been aired on a major popular network(Toonami did once air episode 1 of Evangelion, but never more than that) but there are huge fan bases for each of these shows and have been ever since they came out. Many hardcore fans have learned Japanese to some extent to see these shows before they are translated and once an anime is well subbed or dubbed its popularity usually explodes.

The internet literally has millions of anime related sights(the word anime on Google brought up over 28 million results). Even obscure titles have dozens of sites to them, and it is rare that a character does not have a shrine to them, or at the very least a good profile. Going to a links site such as the Anime Web Turnpike will show exactly how dedicated fans are to the various series. Sites that give out free websites like geocities and angelfire give everyone, as long as they have internet access, an opportunity to share their interest and thoughts on anime with the world. Many many people also pay to host their own domains and have kept such sites updated and mantained for years. Untold numbers of people never get involved in creating a site and simply roam from site to site or hang out on forums to discuss things with other fans.

The online stores and auction sites are also a huge reason the US anime market has exploded. The physical stores, for those not living in a huge city, that carry anime are usually rare, limited in variety, and often have jacked up rates. Online stores have lower prices more likely than not, and if its been domestically released then you can find it online. Models and Figurines, toys, and assorted other merchandise are also almost online exclusives for many areas. Almost nothing is impossible to find if you look hard enough. I personally buy most of my anime materials online, the large order waivers of shipping fees of many retailers usually more than offsets retail prices and sales taxes. Here in Knoxville, Tn, the only places to buy anime are Sam and Goodys, Best Buy, and a few other places that carry such small inventories that they don't really rate mentioning.

The internet is an often crap filled, tedious to search through, and advertisement choked place, but it does support a huge community of fans and makes it easy to communicate and share everything possibly related to anime, even long winded articles about same. And say what you want about Geocities, it does have annoying bandwidth restrictions, ads, and a lack of largescale storage space, but it is a totally free service that Yahoo provides, and therefore people shouldn't complain too much. Thousands of anime sites are on Geocities because they are built by people who can't afford hosting or don't want to spend their money on it. The internet is, overall, an anime fan's wonderland.

Fall 1999 Keitaro arrives at Hinata Apartments

Spring 2000 Keitaro and Mutsumi fail their third entrance exam, Naru fails her first Kyoto trip

Summer 2000 Hinata Seaside Tea House opens

Winter 2000 Christmas special

Spring 2001 Keitaro, Mutsumi, and Naru pass their entrance exams island adventure(spring movie)

May Keitaro leaves with Seta

Hand Maid May OVAs (13 episodes in 4 dvd boxed set).

Evangelion Perfect Collection (26 episodes on 8 dvd boxed set).

Evangelion Death and Rebirth (movie).

The End of Evangelion (movie).

Grave of the Fireflies (movie).

Tenchi Muyo! OVAs (13 episodes in 3 dvd boxed set).

Tenchi Muyo! Mihoshi Special/Magical Girl Pretty Sammy (dvd)

Tenchi Universe (26 episodes in 8 dvd boxed set).

Tenchi the Movie - Tenchi Muyo in Love (movie).

Tenchi the Movie 2 - The Daughter of Darkness (movie).

Tenchi Forever - Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 (movie).

Love Hina (24 episodes in 6 dvd boxed set).

Love Hina Christmas Movie (movie in boxed set).

Love Hina Spring Movie (movie in boxed set).

Love Hina Again OVA's (3 episodes on 1 dvd in boxed set).

Gundam Wing Endless Waltz (movie on VHS).

Dragonball Ep 1-13 (boxed set from Walmart, unfamiliar dub)

Kiki's Delivery Service (movie)

Laputa: Castle in the Sky (movie)

Princess Mononoke (movie on VHS).

Oh! My Goddess (5 episodes on 2 dvds)

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

The Adventures of Mini-Goddess (48 mini-episodes on 4 dvd boxed set)

Martian Successor Nadesico (26 episodes on 5 dvd boxed set)

Martian Successor Nadesico: The Movie

Dragon Half (2 episodes on 1 dvd)

Elf Princess Rane (2 episodes on 1 dvd)

All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku (6 episodes on 1 dvd)

Amazing Nurse Nanako (6 episodes on 3 dvds)

Escaflowne (movie)

Excel Saga (26 episodes on 6 dvds)

Puni Puni Poemi OVA(3 episodes)

Irresponsible Captain Tylor TV (boxed set)

Irresponsible Captain Tylor OVA(boxed set)

The Slayers(boxed set)

Slayers Next(boxed set)

Slayers Try(boxed set)

Slayers Premium (movie)

Trigun(boxed set)

Robotech(boxed set)

My Neighbor Totoro(Fox version of movie)

Please Teacher(4 dvds)

Risky Safety(12 episodes on 3 dvds)