[Kamen Rider Lucha]

The day MMPR debuted, my young mind exploded. I was the perfect age -- 3rd grade -- and I had the perfect combination of interests.

After a special prime time airing of the show, my mom -- who is half Japanese -- mentioned that she used to watch this show all the time as a kid when she'd visit family in Hawaii (as an adult fan, I think the Sentai show she remembered had to have been JAKQ). So early on, I knew the show was of Japanese origin, but for years I had no way to know what it was.

Then, along comes the internet and the age of Geocities and Angelfire and Excite. And suddenly, I'm able to find search for Japanese Power Rangers and discover all these basic fan pages. And I learn the basics of the show and read a lot of the brief summaries (which allows me to scratch the OCD itch for complete information). At this point, I'm getting a bit too old for Power Rangers, and all I dreamed of was watching a Power Rangers show that was, you know, good. Sentai seemed to be that mythical show I always dreamed of. It earned a venerable position in my nerd psyche.

Over the years, I found raw episodes on VHS at Japanese markets and fairs - an episode of Carranger here, an episode of Kakuranger there. Then Limewire came around and, hearing the reputation of Megaranger, I was able to seek out very low res captures of Megaranger and Gingaman. Around this time, I was trying to find MP3s of every opening theme song. It was great.

Around high school, I became too ashamed of my fanhood and gravitated more toward anime. And that's how I left it until about 2 years ago when I discovered the robust toku fansub community. The first show I watched was Jetman -- I'd always been desperate to find that show, it was like the holy grail because of the rave reviews on all those old Geocities fan pages -- and I loved it. Shinkenger, Goseiger, Gekiranger, Gokaiger, Go-Busters, and Kyoryuger followed. Something tells me here's no going back.