[Kamen Rider Lucha]

Being half Japanese, I was exposed to things like Godzilla dubs at a very young age. So when I first watched Power Rangers at age 8, I immediately knew from the dubbing of Rita/Bandora that something weird was going on with that show.

I ran to my mom to ask her what the hell this show was, and she immediately recognized it. "I remember watching these kinds of shows when I visited family in Hawaii as a kid, they're all over TV in Japan," she told me. And she was able to determine that the producers shot new, American footage and spliced it into those shows she used to watch. Not knowing any more specifics than that, I continued to blissfully watch Power Rangers, feeling more connected to it based on my ancestral ties to Japan.

As I got older and the low quality levels of Power Rangers became more and more apparent, I fantasized about the Japanese version of the show and how it was probably way better than what Power Rangers had to offer.

When my family finally got an internet connection, one of the first things I searched for was "Japanese Power Rangers." Through various Geocities and Angelfire fan pages, I learned all about Super Sentai. I read about the stories. Characters betrayed each other and had dark secrets. There was a lot more action. Heroes even died sometimes! I was desperate to learn anything I could. In fact, I think that learning about Super Sentai kept me watching Power Rangers. Even though I'd aged out of that show, I'd still watch and obsessively try to reconstruct what was really going on in the original Japanese versions.

Eventually, when I was about 15 or 16, I went to a pop-up Japanese flea market in the parking lot of some church in Ohio and stumbled upon a VHS tape full of GoGo V episodes recorded from a Japanese TV broadcast. I lost my mind when I watched it. This was my first real taste of Sentai, and I was hooked. From there, I scoured Limewire for anything that was available. I found a few ultra low-res episodes of Megaranger and Gingaman. I had no idea what anyone was saying, but my teenage mind was like, "oh my god, this is badass! The stakes are so much higher! The characters bleed! They fight battles at night! All this overwrought, melodramatic acting is hysterical!"

Not too long after that, I was able to score some pirated VCDs of Jetman on eBay. Unfortunately, I had no way to play those at the time, and the discs gathered dust for years and years.

Time passed, and while I still checked out Power Rangers from time to time, other interests (and school) kept me from seeking out more Super Sentai. Then, about 4 or 5 years ago, I found TV-Nihon's Shinkenger subs and watched that whole show. That was my first complete Super Sentai viewing. It rekindled my childhood obsession, and I haven't turned my back since.

TLDR: the first actual sentai episodes I watched were from GoGo V, and the first full series I watched was Shinkenger.