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Starting an Anime Club

I. Getting Started

If you live in a medium to large size city, especially with a college or university, there is likely a local anime club you can contact for help. There is a list of clubs at Anipike:
http://www.anipike.com/clubs.html

A good way to attract potential club members is with a showing of well-known anime titles, like Akira, Princess Mononoke, Sailor Moon, or Dragonball Z. It helps if your fliers or other publicity mentions something about an anime club forming. The well-known names will attract people who are already fans, a good foundation for committed members. You can select titles to attract a particular age group, or mix things up to garner a wider cross-section. Before the showing, let the attendees know that the library is trying to form a club to show anime on a regular basis. Make sure you have a sign up sheet to get names and e-mail addresses, and leave enough time at the end for a discussion and questions.

II. Organizing the Club

Try to have officers selected as soon as possible, either at the first or subsequent meeting. You'll need all the help you can get, and this this gives you a group of dedicated people at the outset. Some form of written document, either a brief mission statement or a formal constitution, helps to focus the objectives of the club. It is also useful as a permanent record, something that keeps the club on track as officers and members come and go.

It is generally best to have a regular meeting place and time for showings, such as the first Wednesday of each month, or every other Tuesday. This makes it easy for members to know when and where to show up. Eventually this will make for steady attendance, as members will make the meetings a part of their regular schedule.

Try to get a club web page up, designed by club members if possible. A web page is a tremendous creative outlet. In addition to basic information about the club, what's showing, special events, and so on, the site can include reviews, essays, and fan art by club members. This enables those with little interest or skill in HTML or web design to participate. Ideally the page should reside on a library server, to avoid the annoying pop-up banners and ads of commercial host sites. But in a pinch, there are many free web hosting opportunities available. "Free Web Site Hosting Providers" on Yahoo will a list of service providers:

Remember to cover all your intellectual property bases. Most anime studios are pretty liberal when it comes to free showings for clubs, but some require a simple contract or information on dates, estimated number of attendees, and other things. Some studios are quite generous in supplying anime goods and promotional items for clubs to use as giveaways and prizes for contests.

III. Club Activities

There are many activities that can supplement regular anime showings. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Origami Workshop.
Paper folding is one of the traditional arts of Japan, and like flower arranging or pottery can take a lifetime to master. But the basics are relatively simple to learn and teach, and supplies are inexpensive and readily obtainable. More information on an origami program cane be found here.

2. Anime Drawing Workshop
This requires someone with talent, but can be extremely popular event. Although anime encompasses a wide variety of realistic, abstract, and genre styles, the most easily recognized is the iconic use of big eyes, frequently accompanied by little mouths and distinctive hair. The prospect of learning to draw in this style attract a host of would-be artists and illustrators. Provided an artist can be secured, the cost of materials is negligible. There are several series of how-to books that have been published, as well as useful websites. Here is a listing of websites from The Open Directory Project:

http://dmoz.org/Arts/Animation/Anime/Fandom/Fan_Works/Fan_Art/How_to_Draw/

3. Guest Speakers
Possible speakers include officials from Japanese consulates and businesses, college professors teaching courses in Asian history and culture, people who have lived or traveled extensively in Japan, museum curators, employees at animation studios, and Japanese people living or studying in the United States. Securing a speaker is obviously easier in some parts of the country, like San Francisco or New York, than others. But in this shrinking world, you might be surprised how many locally available people can provide interesting insight into the unique country and culture that has given birth to anime.

4. Japanese Food
Japan has a distinctive cuisine that goes beyond the currently popular sushi. Arrangements might be made with local restaurateurs to the benefit of both library and business. A demonstration of cooking and culinary techniques would likely have appeal beyond the anime club.

5. Field Trips
Larger communities often have museums with Japanese collections. In South Florida, we are lucky to have the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens as a destination for many club trips. There are also many anime conventions held around the country. Anipike has a list of most of the larger ones:

http://www.anipike.com/cons.html

Make sure you check with administration before sponsoring trips outside of the library, as there are numerous liability issues.

6. Festivals
The Japanese love festivals and holidays, even going so far as to incorporate Western traditions like Valentine's Day and Christmas into their own calendar. The club could organize a Japanese style festival with authentic games, stories, and decorations. This would provide a host of benefits, such as honing research skills, learning about another culture, and having a good time.

7. Cosplay
Derived from "Costume Play", cosplay is word describing the Japanese custom of dressing up as anime characters. Japanese fans often exhorbitent amounts of time and money creating some amazing outfits. Costumes are usually worn at conventions like Comiket, where hundreds of thousands of fans gather to buy and sell doujinshi. In the United States, cosplay is catching on more slowly, showing up more frequently as a part of anime conventions. A good directory of cosplay sites is:

http://www.nyx.net/~wsantoso/cosplay.html

Cosplay can make for a fun variation of the usual Halloween ghosts and witches.

The gang from urusei Yatsura, Those Obnoxious Aliens