The first time you watched/read/listened to something produced by a culture whose material you had not previously fanned on, were there details you had to adjust to (e.g. narrative styles, character depictions, pacing, cultural references, etc.) ?
All of the above! It's weird - because I watched anime when I was so young, I had all this fiction produced in a foreign culture around but I didn't even know it! I mean, I thought it was French. Maybe. I guess I didn't think too hard about it - I just knew that it was something I could watch during the summers when I was in Switzerland, and I hated going back to Sweden where all kids' shows were lame and nothing exciting ever happened in shows aimed at my age. I was totally high on the danger and tension in shows like Saint Seiya (Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque) and City Hunter (Nicky Larson), where things like death actually happened.
(For example: one of my favorite characters saved his friends by sacrificing his vision through putting out his eyes. It wasn't graphic at all, but... wow. Then his friends took care of him and went on a perilous journey to try and find a healer who could help him and to me this showed that whoever made these shows took me seriously, because it wasn't all just bumbling bad guys and slapstick-like last-minute escapes from danger and I ate it up with a spoon.)
I can clearly remembering having these thoughts when I was maybe ten or eleven, and so being into Japanese texts now isn't exactly new - but it's still different. The storytelling is totally different from Western things in a lot of ways - the arcs, for example, the 600-chapter epics that just keep getting better (well - the one 600-chapter epic, at least I will never shut up about One Piece, no), the way a lot of people - including me, now - get their stories in weekly installments... And there's other things, too. But you have another question about that, so I'll answer there!
So, yeah. I see most Western TV as episodic, and... ah, I guess a lot of Western stuff is simply more collaboratory. Even in things like US comics, which have huge complicated plots that go on forever in installments there seems to be so many creators involved - new writers introduce new plotlines, and then the writers replacing them retcon everything and... I'm not really familiar with Marvel and DC, but it seems that even something that superficially looks like it might be really similar to Japanese texts (comic books vs manga) they're created in really different ways.
A lot of Japanese texts are created by one individual - the mangaka - who does both plot and art. That's one thing that strikes me as exceedingly rare in Western fandom. (The exception of course being novels - Harry Potter and Twilight are one-creator texts, and just look at how huge they've become! They're probably closer to the way a lot of popular Japanese texts are being produced than anything else - one creator comes up with the original plot, and then it's turned into anime or movies or what have you... Plus, huge fandom and huge merchandising department.)
Part 3! Only one more part to go...
All of the above! It's weird - because I watched anime when I was so young, I had all this fiction produced in a foreign culture around but I didn't even know it! I mean, I thought it was French. Maybe. I guess I didn't think too hard about it - I just knew that it was something I could watch during the summers when I was in Switzerland, and I hated going back to Sweden where all kids' shows were lame and nothing exciting ever happened in shows aimed at my age. I was totally high on the danger and tension in shows like Saint Seiya (Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque) and City Hunter (Nicky Larson), where things like death actually happened.
(For example: one of my favorite characters saved his friends by sacrificing his vision through putting out his eyes. It wasn't graphic at all, but... wow. Then his friends took care of him and went on a perilous journey to try and find a healer who could help him and to me this showed that whoever made these shows took me seriously, because it wasn't all just bumbling bad guys and slapstick-like last-minute escapes from danger and I ate it up with a spoon.)
I can clearly remembering having these thoughts when I was maybe ten or eleven, and so being into Japanese texts now isn't exactly new - but it's still different. The storytelling is totally different from Western things in a lot of ways - the arcs, for example, the 600-chapter epics that just keep getting better (well - the one 600-chapter epic, at least I will never shut up about One Piece, no), the way a lot of people - including me, now - get their stories in weekly installments... And there's other things, too. But you have another question about that, so I'll answer there!
So, yeah. I see most Western TV as episodic, and... ah, I guess a lot of Western stuff is simply more collaboratory. Even in things like US comics, which have huge complicated plots that go on forever in installments there seems to be so many creators involved - new writers introduce new plotlines, and then the writers replacing them retcon everything and... I'm not really familiar with Marvel and DC, but it seems that even something that superficially looks like it might be really similar to Japanese texts (comic books vs manga) they're created in really different ways.
A lot of Japanese texts are created by one individual - the mangaka - who does both plot and art. That's one thing that strikes me as exceedingly rare in Western fandom. (The exception of course being novels - Harry Potter and Twilight are one-creator texts, and just look at how huge they've become! They're probably closer to the way a lot of popular Japanese texts are being produced than anything else - one creator comes up with the original plot, and then it's turned into anime or movies or what have you... Plus, huge fandom and huge merchandising department.)