I had neighbors who were nerds into Anime Robotech/ Macross, Dragon Ball, Akira, Fist of the North Star etc so that is how I knew of it.

I didn't hang with anyone in school who was into anime that much and if they were they weren't passing tapes around.

With the internet you can pretty much stumble across anime and get into it on your own plus since cartoons have been killed for kids(Saturday mornings and things are leaning towards more adult centered and anime like animation (Toonami) I think it is made more palatable for people.

Vampire Hunter D (some of the first anime movies I saw edit).