Was Luther an anti-Pope in the first place?

I often encounter portrayals of Luther as a person who started from the beginning as a person who had an axe to grind against the Pope of his day. Was Luther going to be happy only if he saw the western Church divided? Was he a schismatic to start with? Did he genuinely want reform or did he want division in the first place.?The more these accusations I hear, the more I like to go to the sources, but the more I get convinced as I read them, that the answer to the question was "no", he did not start as an anti-Pope for the sake of being one. I wish the focus on Luther should stop because what was this man after all? May be they think Luther is the Protestant's Pope and by casting him as a demon, Protestantism will simply crumble. It seems to me that he was an ordinary sinner who looked to Christ's Gospel as his hope, as someone once said - one beggar telling another beggar where he can find bread.

At any rate here are Luther's own words and I highlight some points to consider in which I think he denied the allegation that he was an anti-Pope to begin with. This is found in the Note to the Christian Reader.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER TO THE CHRISTIAN READER
                        
       
      EDITION OF 1545
                        
                  
      Above all things I beseech the Christian reader and beg him  for
      the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, to read my earliest books  very
      circumspectly and with much pity, knowing that before now I  too
       was a monk, and one of the right frantic and raving papists.  When
      I took up this matter against Indulgences, I was so full and 
       drunken, yea, so besotted in papal doctrine that, out of my great 
       zeal, I would have been ready to do murder -- at least, I would 
       have been glad to see and help that murder should be done -- on 
       all who would not be obedient and subject to the pope, even to 
       his smallest word.
       
      Such a Saul was I at that time; and I meant it right earnestly;
      and there are still many such to-day. In a word, I was not such a
      frozen and ice-cold champion of the papacy as Eck and others of
      his kind have been and still are. They defend the Roman See more
      for the sake of the shameful belly, which is their god, than
      because they are really attached to its cause. Indeed I am wholly
      of the opinion that like latter-day Epicureans, they only laugh at
      the pope. But I verily espoused this cause in deepest earnest and
       in all fidelity; the more so because I shrank from the Last Day
       with great anxiety and fear and terror, and yet from the depths of
       my heart desired to be saved. 
       
      Therefore, Christian reader, thou wilt find in my earliest books
       and writings how many points of faith I then, with all humility,
       yielded and conceded to the pope, which since then I have held and
      condemned for the most horrible blasphemy and abomination, and
      which I would have to be so held and so condemned forever. Amen.
                                                       
      Thou wilt therefore ascribe this my error, or as my opponents
      venomously call it, this inconsistency of mine, to the time, and
      to my ignorance and inexperience. At the beginning I was quite
      alone and without any helpers, and moreover, to tell the truth,
      unskilled in all these things, and far too unlearned to discuss
      such high and weighty matters. For it was without any intention,
      purpose, or will of mine that I fell, quite unexpectedly, into
      this wrangling and contention.  This I take God, the Searcher of
      hearts, to witness.
                                                      
      I tell these things to the end that, if thou shalt read my books,
       thou mayest know and remember that I am one of those who, as St.
       Augustine says of himself, have grown by writing and by teaching
       others, and not one of those who, starting with nothing, have in a
       trice become the most exalted and most learned doctors. We find,
      alas! many of these self-grown doctors; who in truth are nothing,
      do nothing and accomplish nothing, are moreover untried and
      inexperienced, and yet, after a single look at the Scriptures,
      think themselves able wholly to exhaust its spirit.
                                                      
      Farewell, dear reader, in the Lord. Pray that the Word may be
      further spread abroad, and may be strong against the miserable
      devil. For he is mighty and wicked, and just now is raving
      everywhere and raging cruelly, like one who well knows and feels
      that his time is short, and that the kingdom of his Vicar, the
      Antichrist in Rome, is sore beset. But may the God of all grace
       and mercy strengthen and complete in us the work He has begun, to
       His honor and to the comfort of His little flock. Amen.