Heh, don't worry about it. My reply will no doubt be long too, probably longer. It's actually a very good question. What you wrote about your discovery of Outlaw Star sounds like so much fun. Makes me kinda jealous. There was an overwhelming opinion in my school of anime being "stupid" or "gay", to the extent that I never even heard anybody talking about anime as doing so was social suicide... for some reason. If I had known about the fun I'd have had, I'd have begged my parents to subscribe to Toonami. Alas, none of my school friends were into anime and I simply didn't know what I missed. On the other hand I'm sort of glad I discovered Outlaw Star when I did, but I'll get into that shortly.
Your reunion with Outlaw Star made me chuckle a little.
I think "adventure" is what drew a lot of us in. In my opinion, Outlaw Star was overlooked a lot, because its positive vibes of hope, desire and adventure (while not taking itself too seriously) are exactly what a young person needed in the early 2000s. That's what drew me in too. My first glimpse of Outlaw Star was in 2005. I was a full-time college student but also worked twenty hours a week and had a girlfriend to boot. (Er, that's quite a bad pun.) A friend still managed to drag me to an after-college anime club for half an hour. I didn't know the first thing about anime (aside from stuff like Pokémon which I regarded a cartoon) and wasn't really interested. I believe I saw the second half of the first episode and most of the second. I headed back home thinking "Wow, that was really cool", but that was that.
Three years later when I signed up to Facebook I noticed that one of my friends had "liked" something familiar. That thing was Outlaw Star. Once I found out its name I downloaded all the episodes that same day. (Even if I wanted to go down the legal route, Outlaw Star never got a UK video release until 2011.) The show blew me away. Probably weeks after I finished it (a total binge-watch) I searched for the old OSN domain (when it was known as OSUK—and I stupidly allowed cybersquatters to swipe it) and eventually acquired it. I know some of this may seem off-topic, but Outlaw Star helped me out a lot. While a lot of other anime from that time had a more negative tone, Outlaw Star's theme of chasing dreams helped get me through some tough years.
This reply is already long enough so I'm not going to go into deep detail (especially since I've already mentioned this part of my life) about the illness itself, but a few months later in winter 2008 I got epilepsy. At twenty years old I was still quite youthful, but that illness robbed me of what were supposed to be the best years of my life. I lost friends, I lost my girlfriend, I lost my job, I failed university, and my relationship with my family wasn't especially great either. But Outlaw Star already had a positive impact on my life. It all sounds pretty silly, but if it wasn't for Gene Starwind being such an inspiration I'm not sure what I'd have done. He's a realistic guy who I felt I had a lot in common with. He was brash, perverted and sometimes rather moronic like myself admittedly, but deep down he had a big heart. Most importantly he never backed down.
"If there is the slimmest chance, no matter how small, you have to go for it. Never give up hope. That's what it means to be an outlaw."
"Have faith in me guys, enjoy the ride—you're in good hands. I can handle this. I can do it!"
"There are some desires that are big enough to risk your life for. This is one of them. I have to put my life on the line for this!"
To list a few off the top of my head, and of course who could forget the narrator?
"A boy has the right to dream. There are endless possibilities stretched out before him. What awaits him down the path, he will then have to choose. The boy doesn't always know. At some point, the boy then becomes an adult and learns what he was able to become. Joy and sadness forever will accompany this. He is confronted with a choice - when this happens, does he bid his past farewell in his heart? Once a boy becomes an adult, he can no longer go back to being a boy. The boy is now a man. Only one thing can be said: A boy has the right to dream, for those endless possibilities are stretched out before him. We must remember, all men were once boys."
It was in late 2010 that I dedicated more time to OSUK's development and soon after that its forum had sparked a community that's always been a family of sorts to me. Forums aren't what they used to be, but I'll do what I can. It suffices to say that were it not for Outlaw Star my life would be a lot different right now. I was in an incredibly dark place, but the encouragement I found in Outlaw Star's general message and, subsequently, the friendships formed from building a community have made this difficult near-decade far more manageable. That's part of the reason why I still support Outlaw Star the best I can today. It's also a fucking great show.