Well, I was born at the tail-end of 1984, and have been interested in anime since the age of 14, when I first glimpsed Akira, Battle Angel Alita and Roujin Z. [Hey, there wasn't that much choice in the UK at the time... actually, come to think of it, there still isn't now! God bless the import market is all I can say ^_^]. Despite the best attempts of certain series to put me off anime for life (notable mentions go to Dragonball Z, Legend of the Overfiend and Fist of the North Star), I stayed interested until a little after I turned 17, when I stumbled upon the VHS tape of Evangelion 0:1 in my local music store. 12 tapes later and I was hooked [and imported my first ever title - End of Evangelion]. From then on, my estimation of the medium went up and up, as I came across such seminal titles as Patlabor; Gunbuster; Cowboy Bebop; Dragon Half; Jin-Roh; Serial Experiments Lain and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, but to mention a few.
It was in 2003 that I realized that I was chronically, hopelessly in love with the medium, and started to get interested in analyzing the subject more through analysis, reading and writing: unfortunately, as I was engaged spending five months doing voluntary work in Australia at the time, I had a little difficulty acting on this impulse, and as such I first started writing at the beginning of 2004, with a review (which I'm sure that in hindsight will prove to be heavily flawed) of what is possibly my favourite anime at the time of writing; Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
I hope my reviews prove useful and at least vaguely entertaining ^_^
*ahem*
Er, sorry about the impromptu autobiography there - if you actually want to know more about the kinds of anime I tend to enjoy (which would make sense, seeing as it might help you decide whether you're likely to agree with any of my opinions or not!) read on.
I tend to be interested by a variety of genres, from screwball comedy to deep soul-searching tales, but there are a few types of anime I tend not to enjoy, so if you do happen to enjoy all of the following you'd probably do well to ignore all my comments on anime ^_^
I dislike anime which include action for action's sake, rather than for the sake of furthering the plot. Examples of this would be Fist of the North Star or Dragonball Z. Neither do I enjoy anime which include sex-scenes or nudity frequently, simply because they can. I hated, for example, La Blue Girl and Legend of the Overfiend. I have yet to find an anime based around sport that I have enjoyed, though I've not exactly looked hard. I also tend to dislike series that I feel are stretching too little plot around too many episodes (Gundam Wing, Hack//Sign), or appear to repeat the same plot over and over with little or no regard for plot development (Tenchi Muyo!)
However, despite all this I have no problems with a title including any elements of the above if I see it as furthering the plot: for example, the Rurouni Kenshin OVA features many gratuitous scenes of violence, yet I feel that they greatly contributed to the story and as such firmly enjoyed it. Perfect Blue featured a fair amount of nudity, yet I felt that this greatly heightened the impact of the film, and again enjoyed it. I greatly enjoyed both Ranma 1/2 and the Urusei Yatsura films even though they both have little in the way of plot progression and (particularly in the case of Ranma) often repeat the same, or similar plots. In these cases it was simply because I found the humour (and the controlled-anarchy present in both titles) to be extremely entertaining. As for anime with elements of sports in... eeeh, I'll keep you posted ^_^
Some of the elements I most like to see in anime are a well-developed, deep plot, strong elements of pathos, off-the-wall humour, clever satire, thought-provoking dialogue and/or situations, and fully fleshed-out characters.
Of course, I don't expect any anime to contain all of the above: I'm pretty sure that Serial Experiments Lain wouldn't have been improved much by off-the-wall humour, and nor do I believe that Dragon Half was any the worse for not having a great deal of pathos injected into it ^_^
