Who Was Your First Anime Crush?

If you follow J-List on social media, you’ll know we really like Twitter, which lets us chat and share ideas and opinions on anime with 175,000 followers at once, without the self-censorship imposed by Facebook and Instagram. I sometimes like to throw out questions to our followers on Twitter and see what responses I get. The other day I asked, “Who was your first anime crush?” and got a ton of replies from followers all over the world. Here are some of the best ones…

• The Sailor Moon era had a lot of fans crushing at the time, coming up with complex rationales about why their girl was the cutest. Was it the adorable underdog Sailor Mercury or the awkwardly tall Jupiter? Or Mars, who looked so hot in those red high-heeled shoes?
• Many respondents named Misty/Kasumi from Pokemon. She certainly was cute. Jesse/Musashi also got a lot of fans’ attention.
• There were lots of old-school fans (like me) reporting Lum from Urusei Yatsura, A-Ko from Project A-Ko. Also, one from before even my time.
• The hottest alien teacher in the history of anime, Kazami from Please Teacher.
• Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop. Who could resist crushing on her?
• For Dragonball fans, fans reported Bulma as their first anime crush. Do you agree?
• Several reported Kagome from Inuyasha as their first crush. Just look at those eyes.
• For girls, Sebastian from Black Butler was the hotness. Agree/disagree?
• Macross/Robotech was groundbreaking because it featured a complex story in which people and planets died wholesale, and it was also the first anime love triangle many of us were introduced to. While some misguided fans liked Lynn Minmei, the first 2D idol in history, persons of culture knew that Misa Hayase was the best grill.

Personally, the first anime girl I was drawn to was Shampoo, the Chinese character from Rumiko Takahashi’s genderbending classic Ranma 1/2. Something about her was fresh and exciting, and she did the tsundere thing before it was cool. She was also the character that taught me that Chinese-Japanese accents — the accents Chinese people have when speaking Japanese — exist, which of course is obvious in retrospect. The accents are adorable, with a unique intonation and a tendency to get words out of order.

Who was your first anime crush? Tell us on Twitter!

It’s a great day today because we’ve got the first 2019 anime and other Japanese calendars up for you! Every year since we started J-List, we’ve sold the huge poster-sized calendars that are made available every year. In addition to awesome anime 2019 calendars featuring great art from your favorite shows, we stock Japanese traditional photo and art, plus idol pin-up and JAV calendars for you to browse and preorder. A note of caution: because this is the final year of Heisei 30 (the 30th year of the current Emperor’s rule), printing details are still up in the air, and the time period to order the calendars will be shorter than usual. So you should get your orders in ASAP!