Anime Clubs

[digi-kun]

While a possible rarity at many schools, anime clubs are a way for fans to meet up, talk about, and watch anime. After hearing a bunch of "I wish our school had an anime club" statements, I got curious and wondered just how many people here know of an anime club in their area, and if they go to their meetings.

For the sake of variety and my personal interest, format it's run, male/female ratio, activities, etc. are all welcome

 

[Oryx]

Anime clubs are near and dear to my heart. :) I didn't have one in high school, but in college there was an unofficial one. I found it by joining the Japan club, the closest official club I could find related to anime, and then the president advertised it there. I went to one meeting, met my boyfriend of over a year now and my two closest friends on campus and the rest is history. Unfortunately after that first semester the president withdrew and no one kept the anime club going, but the friends I made are invaluable, especially with my awkward personality.

When we did do it though, we watched the first 2 episodes of two different shows every week, and the president always had his computer with all the episodes if we were interested and wanted to get them for ourselves. Then once we did that we all retired to the basement of the president's dorm and played PS2 or Wii and just hung out, sometimes spending all night there, lol.

As far as gender...well there was me and two other girls I can think of offhand, and 5-6 guys that come to mind immediately. There are definitely more guys but enough girls that I didn't feel overwhelmed or anything, lol.

 

[Weeaboo Name]

I was at a short-lived anime club in high school, it had a grand total of 5 members (although 1 of those was a friend I dragged along). All 5 of us were guys and well, I was the only one that strayed away from the big 3 and some of the nostalgic stuff.

After seeing this thread I looked into anime clubs in my local area, although the site's a bit out of date my local club don't seem too bad. They're watching Black Lagoon, Nodame Cantabile, Samurai Champloo, Rosario+Vampire and Darker than Black. I imagine watching R+V with a bunch of strangers that don't know the show could be amusing.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

College had one. It was more or less folks getting together in one of the auditorium style classrooms and watching various series (usually 8 per night) once a week. We did put on a one-day mini-convention on campus with a pretty good turnout.

In addition there was a city-wide anime meeting group. We'd meet once every two weeks at a restaurant and just talk about what we've been watching lately and make plans for carpooling/splitting hotel costs at some of the regional anime conventions. There would also be showings at the organizer's house and other meetings, but I usually couldn't get out there for those.

 

[Esper]

Didn't have anything like this in high school, but I personally didn't need one since I could find anything I wanted to watch myself. In college me and two other people would watch some shows every now and then and maybe half a year into school we found out there was an anime club so we decided to check it out, but it was pretty disappointing. For starters it was full of nerdy stereotypes: all guys, socially awkward, all wearing Hawaiian- or overly baggy T-shirts, and they only seemed to watch Naruto and shows like that. I'm not saying any of that is bad, I'm glad they had their group, but it was not for us so we never went back. Oh, and it didn't help that one of the guys there was someone who lived down the hall in our dorms and who had unbelievably bad hygiene problems and was also a real creep.

 

[Zet]

There wasn't any at the high school I went to, and I know that there are some anime clubs around brisbane(mostly at university's and one at a library(that I know of)). But I don't go to any of the meetings since it would cost quite a bit to travel there and back.

 

[Mr Cat Dog]

Considering that manga wasn't sold anywhere in a 30-mile radius of my school until a few years ago, it's understandable that there wasn't any form of anime/manga club in any of the schools in my area. However, even if it was a more popular niche, my school wasn't big on the whole 'clubs' thing. Unless you were a footballer, rugby player, netballer or orchestra member, St. Leonard's RC Comprehensive School did not meet your extra-curricular requirements.

There was an anime club at university, but it was an extremely insular environment. I considered signing up to join, but the atmosphere when I walked over to the booth was very hostile. I don't know whether it was because I wasn't of Asian descent (all of the people there were either Chinese or Japanese) or because I wasn't dressed accordingly (jeans = BAD! VERY BAD!); either way, I just nodded and politely moved on, never to see the Anime Society again.

 

[Ryoutarou]

Amusingly enough, the people in the club at my school scared off the one Asian girl who ever tried to go.

I was really interested in joining one and was pretty happy when I found my school actually had one that had just started up. Soon enough I found that it was not the best environment to be in for any sort of discussion or enjoyment of a hobby for me. The members were pretty serious about their anime, to a rather off putting degree that always made me feel awkward as heck. The president of the club was also . . . a bit of a prick, especially towards his girlfriend, he was pretty close minded when it came to a lot of things. Nice enough guy in general, but when the topic of anime came up, he was like a totally different person.

So I basically stopped going after like four or five meetings. I'm not sure I'd ever join another anime club, at least not with members like the ones in there. It was a pretty closed off environment and a lot of people ended up leaving because there was a bit of clique that composed most of the group, so new members felt like outsiders.

 

[alisaie]

My High School had an anime club, but I didn't join because I already had Band and I could be bothered to stay after school more than I had to. I think it might have overlapped Band as well, so that didn't help. There's also one in College (I think it's still around), but I haven't bothered joining that one either because I'm never here on Wednesday and when I am it's either after the club ends and I can't be bothered to come earlier, or (like last semester) it was during one of my classes.

.. So basically it was either because I was already busy, or in this case now I'm too lazy to come to the campus to participate.

 

[PlatinumDude]

My school has an anime club that I go to every Thursday. I don't have an important position there, but I suggested that the club do their own dub of the first episode of Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged (crediting LittleKuriboh of course).

 

[One-eyed Pierrot]

I had an anime club in high school. I was appointed President but it didn't go so well. Then again, people only came in because the first meeting had food and no one really did anything though I tried my hardest to keep it together.

College was another thing. There's an anime club there and I joined it there when I first started, but I noticed it seemed really dull after awhile. Simply because each meeting was rinse and repeat; watch an anime and talk about it. Sure, there were events, like a Halloween party, etc., but even then it made the club all right.

In the time I stayed in the club, there was so many changes and I hear now they have different themes now for each meeting; "Media Day", "Games Day.", etc. and that people actually needed to be quiet when watching an anime is showing, it was a problem before, just to give a few examples of change.

 

[MadaraUchiha.]

My school has one. I never went because while they call it an anime club, it really is a manga club. They mostly draw manga and since I can't draw at ALL, I never even decided to check it out. They have contests for drawings, they have like anime movie night or something. Its more towards drawing though.

 

[Cherrim]

My university has one of the larger anime clubs in... well, in the country, I think. I went to a few meetings and some showings back in first year and haven't really gone back since. I meant to this year but got tied up in school work. :P

I guess part of it is that I'm not into anime like I was in the past and also some of the people in the club kind of turned me off. I go to one of the nerdiest schools so generally there are a lot of weeaboos or awkward turtles and it just wasn't as fun as I'd hoped. But I also didn't really get a chance to make any friends since I always attended the meetings with a friend already and we kept to ourselves so... I should probably give it another chance. (It's been so long all the awkward people have probably graduated by now anyway...)

 

[digi-kun]

Completely forgot to respond to this myself ^^;;

Eh, my university's anime club (The Purdue Anime Club) is honestly probably one of the better anime clubs I've been in. We do a 8-shows per semester with 1 episode per week of the more recent and popular shows. 26 episode shows carry through semesters, with rotating 13-episode slots. We also have 4 shoot-offs of the anime club, being 27+ for the longer shows (Monster, Cross Game, CCS, and the rest of the non-forever series), PAC Classic, for shows that are 7 years or older (as an example, Utena is pretty much shown every other year), Cosplay Brigade, as the title suggests, and art classes for those that actually want to learn to draw. There's also a technical role-play group that meets after art classes XD

Freshman year I generally kept to myself to the most part until second semester, when I realized that the regulars actually went out into the hall since they'd already watched all the shows on the schedule, and basically talked about random stuff in the hall. I ended up joining them for the similar reasons and now I'm the treasurer XD

We lose a decent amount of members from just people that just figure out what we're watching and download the series themselves, though that's changed a bit since we opened up access to our archives (4TB of anime). There are also those that would rather talk, but we have an extra room during club meetings cuz we got yelled at enough by building staff that we were being a fire hazard, so that's not really a problem anymore, either.

We do have a website, but it has a forums link on it, so just search Purdue Anime Club if you feel like stalking me are interested at all.

 

[Cherrim]

^ My anime club doesn't have an archive like that. At most iirc, they have a DVD library of stuff but they always have to get the express permission of the English license-holders in order to show something so as not to do anything illegal which can get their club permission revoked. :(

 

[Kikyochanx]

My university has one of the larger anime clubs in... well, in the country, I think. I went to a few meetings and some showings back in first year and haven't really gone back since. I meant to this year but got tied up in school work. :P

I guess part of it is that I'm not into anime like I was in the past and also some of the people in the club kind of turned me off. I go to one of the nerdiest schools so generally there are a lot of weeaboos or awkward turtles and it just wasn't as fun as I'd hoped. But I also didn't really get a chance to make any friends since I always attended the meetings with a friend already and we kept to ourselves so... I should probably give it another chance. (It's been so long all the awkward people have probably graduated by now anyway...)

The weeaboo thing is generally why I did avoidanime clubs, honestly. Most, if not all the clubs I saw around my location watch shonen anime like Naruto, Bleach, etc, etc.
I don't mind stuff like DBZ, Tenchi, Gundan, and old Toonami stuff from the 90's era, but I do like watching new stuff. I'm not an avid watcher of anime these days, though.

The club I ended up joining, and am a part of in college is generally really relaxed, and not too weeabooish at all. We watch all kinds of new anime series, and even discuss random stuff not at all related to anime. I've made a few friends, and brought a couple with. After that, myself and my friends (the friends I invited and made there) just kept to ourselves after a while. We didn't get many members at the start, but now have about 20+ if not more I think. Out of all the ones that show up, we usually get about 10-13 of 'em.