Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Join The Club
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Psycho_Despair
Posts: 376 Location: East of Eden |
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Damn, some of you guys are lucky to be in a anime club.
In my high school freshman year, there was an anime club, i dragged my friends in to later find out that its packed with anti-social people with no passion for anime, half of them had a character crush or were too loud. this made me sad -_- but the guy who created the anime club in my school was a great guy, we talked for hours and hours about anime. (funny thing is that none of that time was in the anime club) And now I am a senior, but there's no anime club in my school anymore, but I have been thinking of making a fine arts manga club. I really would like to join in a anime club to gain the experience I lost during my freshman year  Are there any in California?
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Oddly enough, that sounds more active than the activity around London.Such curiosity may be explained by the presence of the Expo and the AnimeLeague (etc), which would presumably draw attention away from collegiate activities. |
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Jen526
 Posts: 124 |
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Several years ago, a friend and I started a sort-of-club through Meetup.com as a way to connect with other adult fans in our area.
I consider it a big success, as our 8-10 regulars have all meshed into a permanent social circle that extends into "real life" outside of anime. We do still have once-a-month meetups for *only* anime, too. The chance to check out titles that I wouldn't think to watch otherwise is great, but I think we mainly just really *enjoy* the group-viewing experience. It's just *fun* to experience a show with others... especially now that we've been doing this long enough to have our own in-jokes and frame of references from shared viewing of so many titles. My one regret is that we can't accept new "members" anymore. Our current numbers pretty much fill the biggest living room among our group, and none of us has much interest in renting someplace more "official" to allow for potential new members. |
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Kidnicky
Posts: 79 |
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This is going to make me sound stuck up,but I've never attended an anime/comic/scifi con because almost every person I've ever met IRL who liked that stuff was either a creepy neckbeard type,or a dickish asperger,or a loud body-odor D&D guy,or so forth. I'm in no way saying I'm the coolest guy in the world,straight out of an Axe commercial,but I'm also not a pedo with my fat gut hanging out of a "My other car is the Enterprise" T-shirt.
I've been to a couple video game cons with a group of friends and we were like the only people in the room who were even close to understanding society outside of fandom. It just wasn't that fun. |
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1878 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Great article, Mike.
My anime club experience goes back 10 years. When I first attended the University of Winnipeg, my only knowledge of anime at that time was simply Sailor Moon, Samurai Pizza Cats, Dragon Ball, Monster Rancher and Escaflowne. Basically, hack dubs that I watched on YTV. I was aware of the existence of uncut and uncensored anime available on VHS but back then, VHS anime was ludicrously expensive (tapes sold for $39.99 CDN + taxes!) and I had no job and no money. So, when I attended campus for the first time, I took heed of the different clubs that were being promoted but one caught my eye in a very interesting way: the University of Winnipeg Anime Club (the UWA). The guy behind the promotional table, Chris, greeted me and gave me all sorts of great info about anime that I've never even comprehended. His table was adorned with posters of Ranma, Kimagure Orange Road, and Tenchi Muyo, a member sign-up sheet and a promotional flyer. I remember that I talked with him for about half an hour before heading to my first class. After class, I came back to his table and we chatted for the duration of the day. He was pretty enthusiastic about the whole club and even cracked some great jokes about all of Rumiko Takahashi's series (mostly Urusei Yatsura). Our inaugural club meeting was on Friday, October 13, 2000 and consisted of about seven official members including 3-5 drop-ins. We watched the first Ghost in the Shell movie, a parody of Ranma called "Ranma 1/3", Corn Pone Flicks' Bad American Dubbing, Marmalade Boy and the first episode of the 1960's Astro Boy (to which Chris, the prez made note of the infamous "rape scene"). Since I was only a teenager at the time, I couldn't stay for the whole meeting and my dad had to pick me up when the meeting was 3/4 of the way finished. Over the course of the club's history, we've changed rooms and locations (some reasons financial, some personal) but the club still exists today as the Winnipeg Anime Club. I don't go to meetings anymore due to personal issues in my life but I can definitely vouch for the fact that the social aspect is a key part in what's keeping anime clubs relevant. |
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unready
 Posts: 401 Location: Illinois, USA |
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I didn't search the site for other URLs, but the info in that one hasn't been maintained at least since 2007, based on the Last-Update info in the IIS-6 http header. (Geocities, anyone?) For the Chicago area, I found references to clubs that haven't existed since 2006. Hmm..... |
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sepherest
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Oh man I love KC Green's Anime Club. It's surprisingly accurate for just being a joke.
When I was in high school I was the anime club's president for three years after I was nominated at the end of my freshman year. The first two went pretty well because there was a decent amount of interest in sharing manga and anime as well as playing videogames, but senior year was pretty bad. The majority of members had graduated and the newer group weren't interested in anything outside of Death Note or Naruto, which really clashed with the remainders (including myself). Trying to get them into other series was a total hassle, especially when they weren't willing to sit down to watch and episode of Princess Tutu, Baccano or Gankutsuou, just because they didn't like the intro or thought the character designs looked bad. They also weren't willing to spend our club funds on manga for the school library, which I didn't get at all since it'd get more people interested, not to mention we had picked out some pretty good titles for purchasing 
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belvadeer
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I only ever attended one anime club meeting at my university and they were all a great bunch of people; we watched the subbed Advent Children. Surprisingly, I became a little popular because I knew about the Inuyasha RPG whose wall scroll was hung up in the auditorium and they didn't know who the new male and female character were.
Problem was I couldn't attend any further following that because I had to take the train to get home at the time and the club ran from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM every Friday. The trains stopped running after 5:30 PM and that one time I did go I had a ride home. Those comics you linked were absolutely hilarious though 
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writerpatrick
 Posts: 672 Location: Canada |
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I've never been to an anime club nor even had the opportunity. They didn't exist when I went to school, at least not in our area. Of course it wasn't even called anime back then.
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Reaper gI
Posts: 299 Location: UK |
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There's a few affiliated to the colleges, was an officer for one last year. Not sure how active they all are. Again doing similar to what was described in the article, pleanty of social stuff, and regularly watching stuff. The big advantage of anime clubs is introducing people to genres they don't watch. Don't think I'd touch shoujo or moe things without having been shown what they're actualy like. |
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tuxedocat
 Posts: 2183 |
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I don't know where in CA you are but the anime club at UC Berkeley still meets and shows anime every monday night. They are still active. Tonight (11/22) they were watching Otome Yokai Zakuro. Might show up there myself one of these days. http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~animage/about.php Mike, Your mention of Fred Patton was a strange coincidence for me since I marathoned Babel II just yesterday. He was on the staff of that show, I think... |
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HockeyKamen
 Posts: 44 Location: St. Lawrence, PA, USA |
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Years ago, I used to go down to the Philadelphia area for my anime club activities because there were no anime clubs in the Reading, PA area that I knew about outside of college anime clubs that hold their meeting during the school day when I'm unable to attend. Today, there's a anime club called NORO (Network of Reading Otakus) that I get to go to on pretty much a regular basis and get to meet other people in the area that share my anime interests.
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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I was in college for well over the normal length of time and somehow never joined the local anime club in all those years.
I am currently an "unofficial" member of an anime club in my city, but in general I think I've been mostly a loner in this hobby. I don't mind it, although most of the meetings do end up being like in high school again with a bunch of nerd friends. Female anime fans are also still in short supply in my area. At least those that will come out for anime meetups. |
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fistofthemfk
 Posts: 17 Location: Orlando, Florida |
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That has me curious. Is there a place that offers a listing of clubs by city/state that is updated? A lot of us who are involved in anime clubs know that they still have value and interest and there are probably people looking for them. |
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doc-watson42
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1709 |
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Actually, the maintainer, Ms. Aeschliman, does respond to E-mail—I've contacted her a few times with updates on the clubs in my area. If either of you (or anyone else) has information for the lists, I encourage you to tell her. Other sites I turned up with a Google search: • Anime Clubs Unite (also dated 2007) • Open Directory - Arts: Animation: Anime: Clubs and Organizations / Google Directory - Arts > Animation > Anime > Clubs and Organizations • Clubs and Organizations < Anime in the Yahoo! Directory • Anime Clubs/Groups/Cliques/Rings at the Anime Turnpike (now that's old) • Mu Epsilon Kappa (Wikipedia article) BellaOnline and Anime Clubs Unite seem to be the best bets, though Anime Boston does maintain "Hometown Anime Fans" and "Clubs, Colleges, and Other Schools" subforums of their Find a Friend forum. For clubs in a particular area, searches on Google and checking the Web sites of regional colleges and universities have (IME) proved to be the best bets. |
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