Well, I'm not of the same generation as most of you... It isn't just the current generation that likes anime. In the states anyway, my generation blazed the trail with stuff like Voltron, Robotech, Speed Racer, and Gigantor. At the time, it was an underground movement... you'd find maybe one place that had a few anime titles in a fairly large city. We'd take up a small room at the big sci-fi conventions. We watched anime in Japanese without subtitles, using a script that someone had translated to so we could follow along, since nobody was licensing the stuff, we were importing it. We did fan dubs (yes, fan dubs... I've been in a few of them) back when there was no world wide web, and the thought of watching a movie on your PC was science fiction.
Of course, in time, American companies noticed there was money to be made. They started watering down anime series for the little kiddies, so all you saw was editted just like Drag-on Ball and Sailor Moon. Considering those are how most people of the current generation were introduced to anime, I'm surprised that there are as many anime fans as there are. Thank goodness they've come to realize we want our anime uncensored and uneditted (well, mostly...*sigh*)
It is a lot better than it used to be. I had the AMG OVA on VHS, and my friends considered me the master for even finding it. These days, you can buy anime at a lot of places, but it wasn't always that way. Respect us old folks who had to spend as much as $75 bucks to get our local comic book store to special order a single anime VHS for us.
Larry
27-Mar-2005