This is the year I turn 30. Do I still have time to "get into" any of the following things, all of which seem appropriate to be "into" when you're in your twenties but somehow less so in your thirties? (None of which I've ever really been into, in spite of many attempts by people I knew... some of whom tried so hard that it turned me off of some of this)

- Anime
- Hardcore music (but not if it means I have to learn what "Emo" means..)
- 80's thrash/speed metal other than Metallica
- "Techno" music
- Doctor Who

Do it like my friend Stephen, when he first decided that wanted to listen to rock and roll. He started with the Beatles, and then went from there. In other words, start with the big influential names in an unfamiliar genre, even if it means going back several decades before you get to follow current pop culture trends.

Anime.. all I know about anime is: teams of people in color-coded outfits (like Voltron), and giant robots (also like Voltron). So basically all I know about anime is Voltron. So I could just start with Go-Lion, the anime that Voltron was dubbed from. But my research on various web pages has revealed that Mazinger-Z or something like that was the big robot show that Go-Lion was imitating. Meanwhile, the Keith/Lance/Hunk/Pidge/Princess characters seem to have been borrowed from Gatchaman (aka "Battle of the Planets"). So apparently Mazinger-Z and Gatchaman are the Beatles and Stones of anime. Whatever the hell that means. I'll probably turn 30 long before I ever get up to Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z... hopefully.

Disclaimer: I'm not "into" anime by any stretch of the imagination. Like most genres (or even moreso), 99% of it is crap involving big-eyed kids, big-eyed girls, giant robots, or any of the ten thousand other stereotypes involved.

However, there is some sliver of anime which is fantastically good -- stylish, well-written, and sometimes very 'different' from more western stories.

In no particular order, these are my favorites, culled from actual people 'into' anime recommending them to me, then my own filter applied as a non-anime person:

Series:

Cowboy Bebop
Serial Experiments: Lain
Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex

Movies:

Perfect Blue
Princess Mononoke
Ghost in the Shell
Spirited Away

I'm sure there's a lot of other great anime, but I seldom have the time to slog through fanboys arguing about why subtitles suck, how big Sailor Venus' breasts are, yada yada yada.