Let’s start off this series of questions with a big one:
What got you into Mangas in the first place?
For me, it was Neon Genesis Evangelion. I loved the Anime and it, naturally, left my still developing young teenage brain very confused. So when I learned that there was a “Comic” about it, I was convinced that it was going to provide some additional info the show left out (like books usually do). I didn’t like the black/white aesthetic at all at first and stopped reading halfway through the first volume initially, but picked it up again a few weeks later and practically devoured the whole series over the course of the next few days.
It didn’t really give me any of the answers I initially hoped for, but it definitely hooked me onto this whole “black and white comics for adults”-vibe I got from it back then. And I just never stopped picking up new ones for close to 20 years now.
Now, let’s hear your own background stories!
I think it was Naruto for me. I always liked watching the show on TV right after school, but the channel dropped the show or moved it to a time where I couldn’t watch it. Fast forward a few years, and a friend of mine and I went into bookstore while on a school trip to look for some new Fantasy novels (I devoured the Eragon Saga back then and was hooked for more :D). While browsing around we stumbled upon the manga section, and together we bought like 4 volumes or so. I read the entire Naruto story as a manga and a few others like Blood Lad, but nowadays if I read, almost always exclusively on my phone