The Central Park release of the first boxset was my introduction other than brief mentions in Animerica or such mags. I was  so sold within the first few minutes.

The fansub was already out there, though, and there were .rec or whatever groups, so I imagine we had some anglophone fans, at least, before CPM released the first tapes.

I feel like Utena had been around for a while before I jumped in, but that's not really true as far as I was able to get it--I am from the CPM era. I remember seeing the box set of the first arc and being legit scared of how god awful neon it was. But in retrospect I had bought the box within maybe two or three months of first seeing it, so 1999 is when I jumped in, I think.

After that it was a mess because it was so hard for me to get the rest of the show--I saw it out of order, and I know I spent a long time saying Akio with a hard A, because I'd never heard it spoken and was still new enough to anime to not know the rules of the language yet. I also thought Touga raped Utena because someone had suggested it on a newgroup or something. When I finished the series there was a couple weeks where I thought maybe I missed some episodes on my fansubs because I didn't see this event.

And for a while after that I only had serious shit for fansubs, they had to be like 5th gen copies, they were so blurred that when I finally downloaded the LiveEvil digisubs, my mind was blown because I didn't know Akio had his eyes open when he kissed Utena and it was such a dick move. I'm pretty sure that's around when I built the shrine, so I guess I've always been literally garbage as a human being.