[Samael]

Innitially for me it was the originality of it all. You don't see much like it coming from a culture that largly considers comics and animation to be for children, so to see animated series and comics with mature situations, developed characters, and well written stories is a refreshing departure from the day to day television and movies in the US.

Before getting into anime though, I had always been a fan of martial arts films and such, and when I was a child my favorite tv shows were things like Gatchaman (renamed G-Force at the time) and Voltron (first anime I ever saw), so I suppose I have a sort of predisposition to the astetics of anime and asian cinema despite being totally unaware at the time that it was "anime".