Forum - View topicA question for those in or have been in an anime club.
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varmintx
 Posts: 1234 Location: Covington, KY |
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For the first time in my 28 years on this Earth, I went to an anime club tonight. I'm just curious, is it typical to find at these gatherings people playing Chinese checkers while others randomly talk about hard drives and World of Warcraft while some generic 80's mech show is played but noone watches? Was I diluded in my belief that people would actually be watching and discussing anime? I would love to know.
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blind_assassin
 Posts: 755 |
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Hahahahahaha! For some reason that painted a rather hilarious picture in my mind. On the subject of anime clubs, I have no clue. I just watch anime alone or with a friend or two when there isn't anything else to do. |
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Richard J.
 Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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I've never been in an anime club before, but I've noticed that clubs in general tend to be just gatherings of people who really don't do anything. If its a school club, it's possible that the people in it just wanted to hang out together and an "anime" club was the only club idea that was approved.
There are clubs which are active and strictly for anime, but generally speaking, most clubs tend toward pointlessness. If you want it done right, you may want to try starting your own anime club. |
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Mylene
 Posts: 2792 Location: Indiana |
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My experience with an anime club was back in 1999-2000 at Purdue University. Before the 'meeting' started, whoever got there first would play Mario Kart or Smash Bros. Once the anime started, everyone (not me) would laugh and talk over the show, although they were usually laughing/talking about the show.
Given I'm a fairly short woman and was in the club with a lot of average-to-tall men, I found myself unable to actually see the subtitles most of the time, a little creeped out by the other members, and so I quickly gave up going. It didn't help that they crammed us into the attic of one of the men's residence halls that had no A/C or windows to be opened in the middle of a hot September. I've considered checking out the Indiana Anime Club at some point, but thus far I haven't been willing to give up a Sunday afternoon to go watch even more anime, especially since it's likely stuff I've seen or don't want to see (although I could be wrong about this). You might have been having a few too many high hopes, but it's possible there are other, better anime clubs--just maybe not in your area. It's also possible that this may have been an atypical meeting. Perhaps there was little interest in the show playing, and that situation might be rectified the next time they meet up if they show something different, thus leading too a better experience for you. |
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5511 |
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Our club is made of awesomeness!
http://animehost.rit.edu/ We even have annual mini-con called Tora-con every year! Though the point is that our club got this amount of activites is because we actually have competent staff members who really love anime. So it pretty much depends on the willingness and effort the staff put into in order to make it enjoyable. |
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Wolverine Princess
 Posts: 1100 |
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My school's club is somewhat like that. We just sit around and watch DVDs (mostly just Adult Swim stuff like InuYasha) and play video games at lunch break, and it's honestly not even all that fun. Some of the kids in the club aren't even anime fans and just joined it so they could put something down under extra-curricular activities on their college resumes. A group of kids dash to the club room at lunch so they can snag the TV to play video games before anyone can put in a video, and there's always a chorus of groans whenever someone tells them they're hogging the boob tube and that everyone else just wants to watch anime. There's a manga library in the back, but 99% of the books are from my own collection since most of the kids are still in the Adult-Swim-anime-only phase. (I tried getting them to watch Strawberry Marshmallow, but that suggestion was met with a round of “I hate shoujo crap!” from the Narutards. Because, you know, any anime with a female-only cast is obviously shoujo.
 ) I kind of wish I could quit, but I don't have anything else to do at lunch and I have an obligation to attend meetings since the club is pretty small.
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bahumut75
 Posts: 65 Location: Rochester, NY |
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Well, I've never actually been to the anime club at my school, but I am aware of it's relative bigness and such, so I was going to mention it - however, it seems as though darkchibi beat me to it lol. (go rit?)
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selenta
 Subscriber Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Haha, doesn't sound quite as successful as you were hoping for!  Aww well, poop happens.
Honestly, I was only in one serious club, and I quit it because everyone was too serious... it was the Go club in high school. All my other friends gave me tons of crap for going to the club, and when I got to the club it was all the geeky asian kids who never ever talked during the games; it was bizarre. I stuck with it for a month or two, but it always kind of bothered me. EDIT: your response should have been "... ok... how about My-Hime?  That one has an all female cast... BOOBIES!! Maybe that's not such a bad thing " 
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frentymon
Forums Superstar
 Posts: 2362 Location: San Francisco |
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Reminds me, I was at our school anime club yesterday, and one particular announcement I heard showed how ignorant some of those people were:
"My friend is making her own manga, and needs someone to draw it for her for free. It's a shounen action fighting manga and I think she will make a lot of money from it. So please, help her out. Thanks." 1) Unless this person gets it published it's not manga. It's doujinshi. Well, it's not even doujinshi because it's not even remotely of Japanese origin. 2) Draw? For free? Either give the artist half the credit or pay them a good sum of money. It can't be "your own" manga if someone else draws it for you. 3) Shounen action fighting manga? As if we need another one of those...what next? Ichiryu the angsty teenager wants to travel the world and collect the 5 crystal shards so he can become the strongest ninja in the world? Or maybe he'll run off and participate in some intergalactic tournament, and go through seven transformation sequences. 4) Make a lot of money? Well, if $5 is a lot of money... |
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Wolverine Princess
Posts: 1100 |
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Oh, are you talking about that other club at my old elementary/intermediate school I was starting up awhile ago? The club I was talking about was my high school's club. Sadly, the club I wanted to start up was shot down before it even got up off the ground by the principal. She was afraid that since the DVDs are rated by the anime companies themselves and not by the MPAA that their ratings would be "untrustworthy." What a load of bull. Well, that's just what happens in religious schools, I suppose. |
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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My college anime club started out really, REALLY fun and then turned... like... awful when power exchanged hands. My freshman year I loved it so much; we would meet every Saturday at 7 pm and although anime was scheduled until midnight, but we often watched until 2 or 3 in the morning. We *did* watch what was on screen (video projector in a darkened theater) but there was lots of enthusiastic and good-natured chatter, and during breaks we would usually start talking about some dumb subject or another and have a big group discussion that sometimes lasted 30-40 minutes. At the end of every semester we would hold a "study break," which entailed screening an entire 13-episode series over the course of a Saturday (starting at noon) with the house lights on so everyone could draw (I went to an art college) and free food at dinnertime. After that it was "bring your own anime" time. The titles we watched were varied in genre. A normal night would consist of 3-4 different titles, the first 3 or 4 episodes if it was a series and the whole thing (obviously) if it was a movie. At the end of the night would be 3 episodes of an on-going (26-39 episode) series the club would follow through the course of the semester. My first semester it was Utena, my first exposure to that title ever. Each week there was usually a theme--pirate anime, talking animal anime, Valentine's Day anime, etc--which was kind of fun. Most of all, I think, that particular group just "clicked." I made a lot of terrific friends, some who I still keep in touch with today, in that initial anime club group.
Alas, the person who ran the club graduated a year and a half after I joined and all the fun seeped away. The new person in charge wasn't nearly as friendly and didn't encourage open discussion as much, and the titles screened (which used to vary wildly from all eras) became just brand-new "this is what's on in Japan right now" kind of stuff. The club president when I joined was way open to suggestions and encouraged people to contribute titles from their own anime collection for screenings, but the new guy wouldn't change the schedule for anything. Additionally, each year the new club members kinda freaked me out more and more (I guess I'm not really used to being around hard-core otaku) and they became unbearably snobby. So I quit. And that is one of the reasons I generally hate fandom today. |
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darkchibi07
Posts: 5511 |
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You betcha!
Man, so many sad club experiences I'm reading here. It's almost like most of the anime fans are freakin' snobs or a bunch of wannabes.
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Richard J.
Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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Stupid reason to keep you from doing it too. Like the MPAA is even doing a good job of rating things. Their ratings are all over the map! I mean, mentioning God can get you a PG-13 while a G-rated movie can have people dying and ghosts? That just don't compute. As for your high school club, at least there are some people in there who actually do like anime. Every club I was a part of in high school was full of people who just wanted to stand around and talk about sports, movies or what happened on that week's Survivor and American Idol. |
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Rªdì¢âl_£Ð
 Posts: 112 |
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You know, RIT was one of my top choices for college but I opted for NJIT because it was closer to my family. Unfortunately, the anime club at NJIT is practically dead. I suppose I could revive it but I need to recruit people and get my hands on more "legitimate" anime. However, most of the people at NJIT are either from India or black who are not the usual people who become otakus. I can see why the club is dead now so it'll be a difficult finding people to join. Otherwise, my only real experience with anime clubs is the one at my high school. We usually have an anime running in the background sometimes with video games running in the background. However, most of the people there except for my friends were either new fans that just watches stuff on TV and Youtube or overzealous fans that despises dubs and are very into either Naruto or Inuyasha. I fall into neither of these categories so I'm usually just hang out with my friend who sees anime similar to how I do. Also, I'm apparently the only technologically capable member of the group as before I joined everyone relied on a PS2. I, on the other hand, brought my laptop along with my collection of DVDs and fansubs. |
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Viga_of_stars
 Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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it probably a catch all geek hangout. some otaku are fan of other thing in geekdom and found some one to share it with. sorry for your less than pleasant first exp. with a club but i assure you not all of them are like that. If u live in or near DC dc anime club is a regional club that has events like cosplay parties and art shows and people actually watch anime and convo people are usually in the next room except for video game day when theres...videogames. downside is the leaders are sorta dicks so that explains my abscence to that club. i was once a member. at my college starlight anime club has animinicon in the fall and japanese culture day in the spring. were usually like genshiken all hanging in the club room but we do watch anime and anime related things between you tubing and mortal kombat and ff12-ing. plus yeah we all are in to other geek things like yugi CCG and magic and W.O.W but we dont let it overshadow our anime. edit: dc anime may have dicks but competent dicks |
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