It was in the early 2000s. Cable was brand new to my household, growing up on basic access TV, only aware of cable through our friends and relatives until then. I was in the 4th grade then, my brother, 8th grade, I do believe.
One day my brother comes to me and said that the other night he was watching Cartoon Network late Saturday night. Toonami was on, and at midnight a "strange show" came on that he thought I should see.
"It's weird, it makes no sense to me" I remember my brother saying. Interested, I followed him down the stairs to our living room Saturday at midnight.
There it was. The opening to .hack//sign played Obsession for the first time in my life. The opening captivated me, and made me ask questions. I remember it was the second episode I watched first. As the episode rolled on, I became more and more hooked. Seeing Tsukasa for the first time, I was in love. I asked my brother a barrage of questions, but he kept saying he didn't know, he only saw one episode (the first episode).
The very next Saturday, I brought down a blank VHS from my room (I used to make "movies" with a karaoke camera I got for Christmas, and it recorded on VHS tapes) and I recorded .hack//sign on episode 3. Every Saturday I'd bring down the VHS, and a new one if it was almost full. Whenever I got grounded or something, I'd beg my brother to record it for me, and I would watch it when I was off grounding. There were times where I completely missed an episode, like "Promise" and "Conflict" and i try my best to adapt to the story with missing info.
I was obsessed. I drew Tsukasa all the time. It was the same image over and over, but I got a little better over time. I started including him in RPs, I even dressed up like him for Halloween in 5th grade, using what little costume material I had, greatly improvised- going as far as dousing my hair in baby powder to make my red hair appear white (not so successfully) that year, only my best friend knew who the hell I was, because I shared my VHS tapes with her.
Eventually, my mom got fed-up with me sneaking down stairs every Saturday night to record .hack//sign, and a week before my birthday, she presented to me the DVD set of the series, saying "now please stop recording the episodes so late at night. You have them all here now!"
And from then on, my mom knew the best gifts to give me were .hack// related. Not necessarily //sign, but of all variants of the series. There's still holes in my collection, but I'm still giddy over all that I have for the series. The series that started it all for me.
So, naturally, I have been, and always will be "Tsukasa Fan" or "TF" for short.
TF is even the name of my Fursona *points to my Tumblr icon* because she has the same cheek markings Tsukasa does.
