A recent post by Sat­ur­nity and some fol­low up enlight­en­ment by Shance of Rain­bow­sphere made me real­ize just how neg­a­tive much of the anibl­o­gos­phere is to the con­cept of anime/manga clubs and other sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tions revolv­ing around Japan­ese Mod­ern Visual Cul­ture, to the point of estab­lish­ing that “the first rule of anime club is don’t go to anime club”.

I once thought the same way. For my first two years at col­lege I walked into my anime club only once each year. Then changes took place. Maybe it’s because my think­ing is dif­fer­ent, or my goals have changed. But before I knew it I devel­oped a cer­tain pride to my anime club: CAINE at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia (the Comics and ANi­ma­tion INtel­lec­tual Explo­ration club). Why? Because we’re not the anime club, we’re not the manga club, we’re Genshiken.

You think those peo­ple are weird? So are you.

Dis­claimer: the fol­low­ing are obvi­ously my per­sonal tastes and I do not intend to insult any animu/mango club out there that runs suc­cess­fully in a dif­fer­ent way: it all depend on the audience.

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