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How do you do, fellow weebs?


My name is Alex, but you can call me Drake. No, not like the rapper - like the World of Warcraft quest NPC, Dorian Drakestalker. I am Romanian. Before you ask, I will neither confirm, nor deny the rumors that I am a vampire.


My first encounter with anime was as a young lad. An older friend introduced me to Digimon on a German TV channel. I thought them monsters were the coolest shit ever. I'm Team Digimon to this day. That said, at the time, I had no idea that what I was watching was anime.


Some years later, still very young, I mistakenly stumbled upon a late night animation channel called Animax. It was very similar to Cartoon Network's Toonami. There I happened to witness the final episode of Blue Gender. In case you're unfamiliar, it was one of the most bloody and gory anime at the time of its airing. I was so innocent, it never even occurred to me that a cartoon would ever portray blood. Seeing those giant bugs crush, impale, and shred them Gundam-like mechs in the most brutal ways imaginable left me traumatized in an awesome way. Safe to say my young ass brains were blown to shit.


That same evening, I also saw an episode of Captain Tsubasa - not nearly as shocking an experience. Alas, at the time, I still did not know that what I was watching was anime. It did, however, become apparent to me that this was a different kind of cartoon and I was very much keen on it. I knew I wanted more.


When I was in my teens, I passively watched the entirety of Shaman King and Duel Masters on TV, but Naruto was the turning point for me. Unfortunately, Romanian TV only dubbed it up to episode 78, so as soon as Naruto, together with Gamabunta, transformed into the Nine Tails in his fight with Gaara, the broadcast would start all over again. I must've watched the Romanian dub of the first 78 episodes some 3 or 4 times over.


That was when the brilliant kid idea dawned on me. Why don't I look up the following episodes on YouTube? Modern problems require modern solutions! Remember back when 480p was considered high quality? Remember how, way back in the day, YouTube had a "Videos currently being watched" tab? Remember how you could watch pirated anime on YouTube, but because YT did not allow videos longer than 10 min at the time, all of the episodes would be broken up into parts? Remember how one uploader would have part 1 & 2 of your episode, but not part 3, so you would have to look for a different uploader's part 3, but the new guy cut the episode in a different spot, so now you've got a chunk missing, and you have to go back and find this guy's part 2 to get up to speed? Yeah, I did that up to about episode 140 of Naruto, at which point the YT supply dried up.


I then discovered streaming and the rest is history. I have about 700 shows and movies under my belt at this point. Perhaps some day in the distant future, I will bother adding them all to MAL.


I enjoy watching anime, watching pre-Epstein & Weinstein scandal Hollywood movies, playing video games, reading, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and writing down my chaotic thoughts for posterity.


If you would like to have a conversation, debate, or just shoot the shit, by all means, send me a friend request!