When I say Anime Club, you say...?

[Mizure]

People watching anime? People talking about anime and manga? Activities relating to anime and anime culture?

Or a huge waste of time?
~
There's an anime club at my school. The "Otaku Qlan", as we are so lovingly dubbed. I joined it freshman year, as soon as I found out about it. I was so excited. I thought about meeting people who love anime and manga, making friends, talking about anime, learning about new anime/manga, telling people about series that I've found. Watching anime, reading manga, discussing characters and relationships, talk about conventions and cosplay, maybe pick up a little Japanese here and there from the more knowledgable members of the group? It all seemed so fun at the time.

I soon found that it wasn't really anything like that. People packed into the classroom every Friday, and we would watch anime sometimes and sometimes we would play trivia games about anime and get prizes. We also made an online forum for the club. Not all the discussion and such that I imagined, but it was fun, and I made lots of great friends.

I'm in my junior year now, and vice-president of the Qlan, and I've realized now that everything has gone crap since then. Now our meetings consist of maybe 20 people (as opposed to the original 50-60 that used to show up), and we either watch whatever anime we have at the time, "game days" where everyone brings video games, or "meeting adjourned because we have nothing planned".

Seriously. This was last Fridays meeting. "Okay, welcome to the meeting...only two people entered designs for the T-shirt contest, so we'll vote between those two...sometime later cause the secretary's not here and he has them...and yeah...that's it, meeting adjourned."

Did I mention that most of the people who come are the group of sophomore girls that don't listen to us anyway? They sit and talk.

What happened to my Otaku Qlan?
~
I was on the bus going home and talking to one of my friends that Friday. She likes anime, but she isn't in the anime club. She asked how the meeting was and I told her that nothing really happened. She agreed and said that she went to one meeting and we didn't do anything in there. Then she said, "I thought it would be more like a forum. You know, actually talking and stuff."

Everything clicked then. I realized why I was so unhappy with the club: because it didn't match any of my expectations. Going into this club I had all these thoughts about what we would do, and they were quickly forgotten amid the fun chaos of the Otaku Qlan. But sitting in a classroom every Friday and everyone talking to friends does not make us a club! It makes us a bunch of people...sitting in a classroom on Friday...and talking to our friends! I dreamed of an anime club that was organized...fun but serious...debates about characters and relationships...finding out about new animes or manga...watch an episode and then discuss it...talking about conventions...anime culture!

We started out this year with a new president, Bunny, and we had a lot of great ideas. Drawing lessons, organized movie days, fundraisers for the club to go to Ani-Jam at the end of the year, human chess or cosplay costume making for Halloween! And none of it happened. None. Because Bunny was lazy and the old VP was flaky and no one was committed. We once again dissolved into a group of people sitting in a classsroom who all happened to like anime.

It's pathetic.

So I ask you. Is this an anime club? Is an anime club a group of people, who like anime and manga, sitting around and doing nothing?

What is an anime club?
 

[Nadian]

Maybe that's part of the reason I didn't join any anime clubs when I went to college? The disappointment?

I've always said that the reason I've never been to an anime convention is ironic... I never go because I'm always busy at home watching anime. I guess the same applies to anime clubs.

This is, I suppose, a real disappointment for you, I imagine.  

[crazydude444292]

Nadian

Maybe that's part of the reason I didn't join any anime clubs when I went to college? The disappointment?

I've always said that the reason I've never been to an anime convention is ironic... I never go because I'm always busy at home watching anime. I guess the same applies to anime clubs.

This is, I suppose, a real disappointment for you, I imagine.

if you did go to anime conventions, and told them about you, i think you'd be treated like royalty!  

[Kaialystra]

Our school administration wouldn't let us start an anime club, because we needed to get at least 45 signatures to start one, and our school is really small, in the middle of nowhere, so not many people were interested. We tried to hold it at a friend's house for a while, but it kind of died out. Plus only select people were invited, so that kind of alienated others.  

[KyuuKaze]

Luckily my school passed one this year, so meaning next year there will be one for my school  

[Magical Fangirl Girl]

My Anime Club... Across Plus is actually quite active, most of our members are involved in various conventions around the state. Hell, our founder is chairman of Anizona (Arizona's anime convention) and most of our members are Committee. Me... I'm staff, becuase I can't be there all three days... it's Easter weekend.  

[locke317]

My school won't approve an anime club because "It has no purpose", yet our school has a club where people just do DDR.  

[duo of the wildfire]

I'm gonna be really serious but this may sound funny to some. At my school we have an amine club and this is my freshmen year there. But it's already like i've been there for years becuase i know just about everything about how the club works. And we have a tradition of NEVER getting anything done no matter how hard we try and i'll tell you why. Becuase of the idea of an anime club you were talking about. At one point we had organized projects becuase our sponser wanted us to produce something. At first we were getting it done but as time went by work declined and everything fell apart. Mostly becuase of one thing i've noticed about anime lovers. We are extremely random and it is extremely noticeable. So you can't help the urge to dissolve into groups to talk about an anime becuase you know that no matter how popular it is there will always be members who either don't like it or never seen it. But if you want a group discussion this is what you do. Since your president is lazy take charge and tell everyone "Let's have a gruop discussion." And tell them to raise their hand and ask a qeustion that will serve as a topic for people to raise there hand and give an opinion on it.

Example our anime club had a discussion on naruto someone put a qeustion out there and we discussed until someone put another qeustion out there. I would share the story but somehow we got to a topic that we discussed that would make us look like a bunch of prev's  

[duo of the wildfire]

locke317

My school won't approve an anime club because "It has no purpose", yet our school has a club where people just do DDR.

eek I'm hating you out of envy so much right now. gonk  

[L-E-Madness]

That is almost EXACTLY happening to the anime club at my school!

At first, we were cram packed too. At the beggining of the school year, we had about 30 people who wanted to join! It sounded cool and EVERYTHING!!!

Unfortunatly, our sponsor had to help her father out, because something happened to him. Ya.

Then... we had no sponsor... and met in front of the gym. After this, we got down to 15 people.

Then we got another sponsor, but something weird happened, and we had a new sponsor for only two meetings.

We got our second sponsor back, but now, we are down to about 9 non-officers.

We had hopes of a feild trip to megacon (Yay for Orlando), an art board, and so much more, but now, we just watch anime... and that's hard to get our hands on.

Based on what I've heard from an upperclassman, when she was in the club. most of the members were noobs, and only cared about Naruto and stuff (Which explains the rule of no anime that airs on Cartoon Network...) However, the current freshmen ( my class ) are actually pretty good otaku.

Now here's the darndest thing: we have to volunteer, and we decided to participate in this school sponsored event called " Green-Up Orlando "
We were down to about 9 members and about 5 officers, so I didn't figure that there would be that many volunteers... even if I got people hyped up about it.

We only had 5 voluteers... and 1 was an officer! So... three friends, and officer, and myself. My other friends didn't come! I was shocked! And none of the other members came! The one officer was late too... though for good reason: he had to send an exchange student back to Japan at three in the morning.

There may be hope though: The most commited officer is a junior, so he will stay for the next year, and seeing that there are no sophmores, my friends and I could very well be canidates for officer positions.

I think that you just need someone with alot of charisma to be in an officer posistion. Maybe you can get some freshmen to get really motivated and help out with getting the other members hyped up or something...

But yeah: even freshmen members feel the drop too... if the plumit is fast enough.