A weekly look into American otaku culture

Token Asian wrote a good post about anime in this little town that I’m going to school in. Reading it and packing all my things this weekend have made me reflect on what I’ve done in this college since I’ve gotten here. It turns out that the best thing I’ve ever accomplished was starting and maintaining my very own anime fan club.

For a while I’ve been hearing about anime clubs around the country, and how anime companies were offering programs to give these clubs free stuff. Well, considering how much of a poor college kid I am, free stuff sounded pretty good to me. But I also felt that being in an anime club would allow me to see shows I’ve never seen before and give me a chance to voice my opinion on anime topics (since I didn’t have this blog back then). So at the start of my sophomore year at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA, I started my very own anime club. And I personally filled out all the paperwork, made the right connections within the college, obtained screening permissions and promotional items from anime companies, made and printed out flyers, and basically just promoted the hell out of the club.

With in one month, we had our first meeting:

The result was fantastic. Around 10 people who I never met before came to that screening of FLCL. They all came only because they loved anime. Since then, for 2 hours twice a week, we got together, watched a show, and then just had fun talking about anime. Some people left the club, new people join, but we generally maintained a dozen members the whole time. People would bring in manga to read or figures to show off. This dream I had was coming true and people were praising how much of a success I was.

Then something really big happened at the start of the 2nd semester. I had received an email from a local reporter saying that she was interested in doing an article on my club and anime. An article about my club?!? Holy shit! I knew that had to mean some form of success if somebody found my club newsworthy. So I had an interview with the reporter, who seemed like she did quite a bit of research on the subject. She pounced “anime” the proper Japanese way, and understood what words like “OVA” meant. We talked mainly about how Cartoon Network, the Matrix, and Kill Bill all brought in the recent rush of new anime fans, and how this is evident with the growing numbers of anime DVDs and manga on the shelves. I also mentioned the Linkin Park video, which was something that wasn’t aware of and found very interesting. So then one day she came to a club meeting when we were showing Cowboy Bebop, and she brought a photographer with her. I knew I had to say some very good things about the series, since the ending to the Ballad of Fallen Angels episode is what made me look at anime as a form of art.

On Valentine’s Day, she prints the article, and while she missed the point on a lot of things I talked to her about, I felt that the article made us look very good. I was also surprised to see that she mentioned the anime clubs of other colleges in the area, and how they seemed to have more members then us. But as I just found out from Token, those numbers were probably exaggerated . But despite that, our little club from a little community college was the central focus, and my school loved that!

But my time with the club has finally come to an end, as this will be my last semester at NCC. This Monday’s showing of Fullmetal Alchemist will be my last, and I’m starting to get a little sad over that. It looks to me that the club will still be going strong after I’m gone, but still, it was my club, my creation. I’ve already started preparing for my transfer to Rutgers State University this fall. You would think that a huge college like that would have a huge anime club… but I’m not so sure. I know that a number of my readers are from Rutgers, so please let me know who you are and what’s going on over there. Hopefully there will be something there for me to get involved in when it comes to anime in my new school. But still, I don’t think anything will be the same as my little club at NCC…