Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Join The Club
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staab99
 Posts: 123 |
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Oh running a HS anime club is tough, especially if you want to have members who give a damn.
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14808 |
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Ha! I used to get KASHA and Lorraine Savage's Anime Hasshin newsletters to obtain fansubs. I was the "PR person" of our university's anime club, one of whose members is now a production supervisor at Media Blasters. So yeah, I'm used to dealing with the skeptic public, like many of youz guys here.
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here-and-faraway
 Posts: 1528 Location: Sunny California |
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I'm a middle school teacher who started an anime club ten years ago at my school. There are some terrific shows out there and it's fun to "pass the torch" to the next generation. Even though most of my kids can watch anime at home on the internet, the club is packed every year. There really is something better about watching shows together. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8468 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I was in an anime club for about a semester in college, and it was filled with the most wretched refuse imaginable. You had the guys who only talked about DBZ, the sweaty fujoshi, the obscenely obese guy who blocked the screen with his giant head who was obsessed with h-game/visual novel-based trash, and the hangers-on who were just there because there was free food and they were stoned. I'm no shining specimen myself, but it was like a leper colony in there.
We watched KimiNozo and I lost all faith in humanity for months. I mostly watch anime alone now. |
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BeanBandit
Posts: 303 Location: Canada |
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I went to a Summer Wars showing one of the University of Toronto anime clubs organized and man it was dire. Glad I got to see the movie but not so much all the fan commentary that went with it
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Redd the Sock
Posts: 55 |
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I still attend my local university anime club well after graduation. It's had its ups and downs (most recently downs due to difficutly finding students willing to run the show) but it plods along.
The social aspect aside (the only thing keeping some of these people from a live version of welcome to the NHK) I like the concept of being subjected to something I might otherwise have overlooked. Imagine falling in love with Utena because you saw it at a club knowing you passed it over due to the overly pink box art. That was me, and even today 10 years later it still happens. |
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_V_
 Posts: 619 |
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...in many ways....on a deep-seated level....I find it...logically unsound...that "some guy" watching Evangelion 13 years ago, in 1997, who could not possibly have seen End of Eva or the director's cuts....MUCH LESS read any of the creator statements in interviews we only got translated later, or any of the guidebooks......should be considered a "legitimate authority" on unraveling the plot elements of the series.
I would be openly surprised if people actually defended this as a mature attempt to sit down and work out the plot mechanics: no, stop. Seriously....was that really what is considered the one, big, definitive point in time when Eva could have been "explained"? That this one petty club president couldn't figure it out, that.......that the literally first guy to watch it couldn't explain it, therefore *rather than trying to get other people to explain it*, his was the only attempt that mattered? One all-or-nothing moment? did he once pause to think that maybe the alleged "mysteries of Evangelion" were due to the fact that it was a foreign TV show and some of the references might be going over his head? Because it was slightly more complicated than hentai with explosions in it? |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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V guy, Zac gave you 2-hours to talk about that stuff. Please don't drag it into another thread.
Never had an anime club when I was in highschool, and my ability to recognize things other than DBZ made me a real oddity. If I could turn back the clock, I actually may've put the effort of starting my own!...But it's easy for me to say those kinds of things now 
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scottfrye
Posts: 15 |
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I've never actually been to an anime club meeting. I got into anime during college and my school didn't have a club. (I didn't occur to me to bother starting one.) Most of my anime consumption was just stuff I saw on Toonami and Adult Swim.
I've pretty much been a lone anime viewer for my whole anime fandom. Yes, I know it's sad but the internet fills the void in socializing with other anime fans. I just have to ask. _V_ you realize there are other (and even better) anime other than Evangelion? I'm a big fan of Eva, as well, but I realize there are other anime to talk about. |
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doc-watson42
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1708 |
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Well, Encyclopedia forum stalwart, but I'm mostly active in other sites' forums.
Zac Bertschy argued in an Answerman! column that "the only value anime clubs have these days is social" (emphasis in the original), but I've long agreed with staab99 and Redd the Sock—the other major value of anime clubs is to expose their members to shows that they would never have watched on their own. Just because you can download just about anything doesn't mean you will. As for finding clubs, BellaOnline maintains lists of clubs in various regions of the United States. |
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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Anime club is an interesting thing indeed.
In college there was one that lasted two quarters. We would mostly talk in a classroom and watch stuff people brought in. It wasn’t very organized. Then one day the TV and DVD player were gone. Apparently someone on campus was going around and stealing stuff off the TV carts (the stealing was so bad they actually bolted the clocks to the classroom walls at one point). We now needed to get a TV and DVD player from equipment storage which would have been fine except for the fact students couldn’t take out TVs and DVD players, it had to be a teacher. And our teacher sponsor never showed up to club meetings. The club continued on for a bit after that but the next quarter I went to go to a meeting and it was no longer. Kind of sad that is how I meet one of my really good friends whom I would have never met otherwise. I moved to a new area last February and while it is nice here, I didn’t know anyone. I ended up looking for an anime club just so I wasn’t spending so much time by myself. I was really worried that I’d look like some pedo because everyone was in their teens but I lucked out everyone is in their 20s at least. While there are a few really socially inept (but not in the jerky kind of way thankfully), everyone is pretty nice overall. I’d say most of the time is spend socializing. We watch a lot of AMVs, and play video games, but it’s a good time and that is what is important. Having access to a club has been great for me because if not there would have been months where I wouldn’t have spent any time with people outside of work and I would have gone crazy. |
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Cremlian
Posts: 1 |
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Man, I miss the RIT anime club so much. So much of the person I grew into through my college experience was developed by the leadership roles I filled at the RIT anime club between the years of 1998-2003. Literally the strength of the club was one of the reasons I decided to go to RIT and at that time membership was about 50-60 people generally. Who knew by 2002-2003 it would be over 200. It was because we built a community around the club. We focused on the social aspects of fandom even before anime was as easy to acquire. It’s interesting to look back at that time and see the issues the club dealt with and how they changed since. Back then the club struggled with whether to stay in its ivory tower of 2nd generation fansubs and elitism or move on and become more mainstream. In the end the reformers won and the clubs library swelled and the attendance increased dramatically. Without getting way into boring details and politics of the time (I have run a “How to Run an Anime Club” at a variety of conventions over the years) I just wanted to say that I too miss the group watching of anime. As you leave college and move into “real” life it becomes harder and harder to find the community that you developed in College. Community clubs struggle with location and attracting people to the club lacking the advantages of a closed community like a suburban college environment schools like RIT had. It was really placed in an ideal position to be the juggernaut of anime clubs it still is today.
Scott Johnson RIT Anime Club, President 2002-2003, Delaware Anime Society: PA chapter, President 2005-2009 |
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zrdb
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I've been active in a few anime viewing clubs-but for the most part the ones where I live have died out-and like you said-it's just much easier to watch what I want in the comfort of my humble abode. I do miss the social aspect of them, though
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fistofthemfk
 Posts: 17 Location: Orlando, Florida |
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I founded and still run an anime club in Winter Park, Florida. We have two viewing meetings a month and I try to make sure there is a social gathering each month. (We're going ice-skating with another anime club next month!) We also help out two of the local conventions in a considerable way.
The first year of the club was pretty rough in terms of building membership. I've learned from that experience that a social aspect was important and that just sticking to the newest, freshest anime was not going to draw people. It helps to get to know your members and vice-versa. After that, things got better and right now our club has around 30 regular members. I think any more than that wipes out the important social aspect of the club. This is good for colleges as it gives new students a chance to make friends on a common interest. I've made many good friends myself. 
Clubs are still important. Especially the anime viewing aspect. For over the past year and some change, I've noticed an influx of new members who's tastes in anime do not tread away from what is on television or series like what is shown on television. This is great because I can expose them to a whole lot of things. There are people whose first exposure to movies such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Fist of the North Star, Vampire Hunter D, Grave of the Fireflies, and Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise were from attending club meetings. Likewise, they've brought in cool stuff that I saw for the first time at club such as Black Lagoon, Summer Wars, and Cat Sh*t One. With that said, anime clubs can also serve as the place to expose newer fans to all sorts of anime that they probably wouldn't think to see. Not everything is happy roses. We've shown some dud anime. (Samurai 7) Not only that, members have left due to reasons like not fitting in anymore, or in one case, a relationship between two club members going very sour. These things happen but it's best to keep going and make sure the members that are still there feel welcome. The past 4 years of running Propeller Anime Club have been a very positive one. Last edited by fistofthemfk on Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gilles Poitras
Posts: 476 Location: Oakland California |
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I missed out on the first year of UC Berkeley's club, Cal Animage, due to it meeting in dorms and using word of mouth. However I did get in on the second year when they were posting fliers.
I get a call at work: Steven: "Hey there's an anime club at Cal and they are meeting tonight" Me: "WHERE DO YOU WANT TO MEET FOR DINNER!" Ah it was heaven, I could actually watch anime and talk to other about it. Sure it was raw untranslated and a blurry copy or a copy of a copy. But it was anime, displayed on TV monitors mounted along the walls of a large classroom. Before the showing they handed out a sheet of paper, usually two sided with characters descriptions on one side and a synopsis of the show on the other. You memorized as much as you could before the lights were turned out. Later commercial VHS releases with subtitles made viewing easier. Cal-Animage still meets, I don't make it much anymore but perhaps I'll drop in now and then. |
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