Help me out with anime club

[rocklobster]

My local library branch is starting a new club called Ani-Marvel-DC. As you can tell from the name, it's for anime and comic books. I've nominated myself in charge of suggesting manga and anime titles for the library to get in order to promote it. Here's the manga we already have on the rack:
Naruto (v. 1-27)
Beauty Pop (v. 1-5)
Cirque de Freak (v. 1-6)
Inuyasha ani-manga (v. 26-27)
Lucky Star (v. 1-5)
Emma (1st v only)
Mao-Chan (1st v only)
And here's what I suggested for manga. (All of these were titles I've been wanting to read anyway):
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
Rurouni Kenshin
Ghost in the Shell
Please Save My Earth
Yotsuba&!
As for anime, I've suggested Cowboy Bebop, anything with Gundam in the title, Ghost in the Shell, Trigun, and Azumanga Daioh. All of my titles have been considered, but nothing's definite yet.
This is where you come in. I'd like some suggestions for the club. This includes recommendations, ways it should be run, etc. Thanks!

[Atria35]

I have no information on ways it should be run- I've never really been involved with the administration of anything, I'm afraid.

But as for recommendations, do you think they're wanting to start with something non-offensive, or for those that have a wider appeal? The ones you mentioned are pretty popular with everybody.

So I'd actually second Cowboy Bebop and AzuDi, they're great starters. Maybe you should also suggest a few movies, like Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service? And also FMA (the original and Brotherhood- they're both really popular).

But for the manga, maybe you could mix a few shoujo in with the shounen (I know! I know! PSME is shoujo, but perhaps also Gakuen Alice or Skip Beat), or add a longer-running seinen series, like 20th Century Boys.

[TheSubtleDoctor]

Hmm...this is a tough one b/c you are also an American comic books club, so I'm not sure how things will work exactly. But, here are a few suggestions:

(1) Get to know your audience. Start by showing titles with broad appeal and then begin selecting them based on what they like (though still showing some mass appeal titles to hook visitors).

(2) I saw you suggested GitS. When you have an anime showing, make sure that a mature show like that isn't the only thing you show. I imagine that there will be some under-18s present, so maybe begin the evening with a couple of AzuDi eps, then gradually slide towards the mature stuff as it gets later and later.

(3) Meet regularly to watch anime together as a club.

(4) If you are allowed to show stuff for an older crowd, show Death Note, FMA, Baccano!, Samurai Champloo, Eureka 7, and Gungrave. These are quality titles that offer a lot of different things to hook viewers.

(5) WATCH MORE THAN ONE EPISODE OF A SHOW PER MEETING

(6) I second Atria's suggestion about movies.

(7) Variety in meetings is key. Don't show all of the same kind of show.

I'll post more if I can thinkg of anything.

[ADXC]

For anime, I agree with Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, FMA, Death Note, Baccano!(Careful with the violence here if your club is a little squeamish.), Samurai Champloo, and Eureka 7.

I would like to add Case Closed, DBZ, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Beck(If you guys can handle the language.), Yu Yu Hakasho, and Lupin the III.


About movies, if you want to break the ice with new anime fans or possible anime fans, just about anything Miyazaki is good like Spirited Away or Laputa.

[mechana2015]

(5) WATCH MORE THAN ONE EPISODE OF A SHOW PER MEETING

Actually, the weekly anime club at the university I attended showed about 6 different anime and one live action show, usually as single episodes, and it worked fine. It prevented show burnout, since many people are actually disinclined to marathoning something, especially if you run across a show they don't like. Waiting 30 minutes for a show they like isn't bad, but waiting an hour and a half through 3 episodes usually results in people just going home.

[ADXC]

@ Mech and TheSubtleDoctor- I think that depends on how many people you have a in group. If you have 5-20 people, then showing just one episode is advisable if you intend to show more than 3 anime.

But if you have like 3 people who love anime a lot and meet together to watch it, then you can show as much as you want of anything I guess. That is as long as they all like the anime they're watching. XD

[Lilac#18]

[color="Plum"]Although I haven't finished reading some these, they seem pretty good. Here's a few:

Tokyo Mew Mew
Baby and Me
Kaze Hikaru
Crimson Hero
[/color]

[ich1990]

Actually, the weekly anime club at the university I attended showed about 6 different anime and one live action show, usually as single episodes, and it worked fine. It prevented show burnout, since many people are actually disinclined to marathoning something, especially if you run across a show they don't like. Waiting 30 minutes for a show they like isn't bad, but waiting an hour and a half through 3 episodes usually results in people just going home.

This is interesting, because our club meets once a week and watches a entire season (13 episodes) in one big marathon. We also start off the meeting with a movie, so it ends up being more like six hours of anime. For reference, we usually started the meeting with around 40 people and ended with about 25.

The downside, of course, is that if the show is one you don't like, you might as well not even come. Thanks to the large number of schoolgirl picks, this meant I only attended a handful of meetings over the entire semester.

So I guess what I am saying is perhaps a blend would be best. Maybe start off with a couple of single episodes from various shows and then end with a movie or several sequential episodes, depending on your meeting length.

Also, if you are going to marathon, I recommend skipping the openings and endings after seeing them once or twice (of course, watch the new ones when they pop up). The exception is Cowboy Bebop, where you should always show the opening.

[MomentOfInertia]

How do I find a club like this?

[mechana2015]

@ Mech and TheSubtleDoctor- I think that depends on how many people you have a in group. If you have 5-20 people, then showing just one episode is advisable if you intend to show more than 3 anime.

But if you have like 3 people who love anime a lot and meet together to watch it, then you can show as much as you want of anything I guess. That is as long as they all like the anime they're watching. XD

Considering that the thread is about an all ages club based out of a library that also talks about american comics, I suspect that there will be more than 3 people, and that the whole group will not share the same interests, since this is community based. Some people in the group may not even care about anime until you show something worth them watching, so running 3-5 episodes of Haruhi Suzumia, or even an acclaimed show like Baccano, if the age range isn't right for the episode or people don't like it, could be a really effective way to wreck the club pretty quick.

[TheSubtleDoctor]

So I guess what I am saying is perhaps a blend would be best. Maybe start off with a couple of single episodes from various shows and then end with a movie or several sequential episodes, depending on your meeting length.

This is pretty much what we did. Two back-to-back episodes of 5-6 shows once a week. Since the younger crowd wasn't staying out as late anyway, we would show stuff like Excell Saga, Naruto, or Jubei Chan earliest, and we would gradually work toward ending the evening with something like Berserk.

(8) Maybe try to have some snacks available.

(9) Contests are always fun. Drawings, raffles, etc. FABULOUS PRIZES

(10) Once you get a solid group established, think about maybe traveling to a con.

[ADXC]

For the three person thing, I was mainly saying that for like three friends of the same age that like just about the same stuff.

And a club can be three people if you name it that. It would just be a very small club. XD

I know you have to show what is appropriate for the select age group you are showing it to. I was just focusing on size primarily and wasn't directly talking about the appropriateness.

Actually, Subtle Doctor, that plan does sound ingenious. If I ever start an anime club of my own, I'll be sure to do that.

[Falx]

What's the age range?

You might want to include Full Metal Alchemist and Battle Angel Alita if they're older.

Both are fantastic series, but can be a bit gory.

[rocklobster]

Well, the three other members (excluding myself and the librarian who founded it) are all in their teens or later.
As of now, we're meeting at 4 pm on Aug 28, one hour before the library closes. I might try to persuade the librarian to make the next meeting earlier so I can show stuff. I happen to have a pretty decent, albeit small, collection of anime. I think they have a tv and DVD player. And I happen to have Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, (including the movie) Azumanga Daioh, most Miyazaki movies (the only one I don't have is Ponyo), Rahxephon, Big O, Geneshaft, Haibane Renmei, Trigun, Tenchi Universe, and Silent Mobius. Plus, the library has Ponyo. So we got a solid list. Plus, maybe we can hook a compy up to the tv so we can show a streaming program.

[mechana2015]

What's the age range?

You might want to include Full Metal Alchemist and Battle Angel Alita if they're older.

Both are fantastic series, but can be a bit gory.

Are you talking about the manga or the anime for Battle Angel? The Anime is pretty terrible and gory, to the point where I'd never recommend it to any club, but the manga is good, though it is also super violent.

[Atria35]

xxxHolic might also be a good choice, to go along with Tsubasa, since they are technically crossovers XD

[steenajack]

*cough*Hikaru no GO*cough*

Seriously, this anime/manga is not only really good, but clean as well. That way, the people who are "new" to anime and on the more "conservative side" in reguards to "content" can also enjoy a show with the club. It's also a pretty good "gateway drug" for anime/manga. Here's a link to it on ANN if you'd like more info on it.:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=912

[Rusty Claymore]

Anime/manga, DC, and Marvel? I would have thought everyone would just start fighting... XD
Kino's Journey is a good Anime (I haven't read the Manga) and the Episodes usually make ok stand alones if you don't want to commit to the entire series. Even though it's only around 24 eps.

[Falx]

Are you talking about the manga or the anime for Battle Angel? The Anime is pretty terrible and gory, to the point where I'd never recommend it to any club, but the manga is good, though it is also super violent.

Anime? What anime? There is no Battle Angel anime. It was all just a bad dream.

[rocklobster]

I actually watched Hikaru no Go for a while when CN had it on their site. I've been meaning to get back into it, but I want to wait for Hulu to get all the episodes first.

[ashfire]

I use to belong to a anime club but things happened to cause the group to break up. One was that we were using a community college that would allow us to be there if their students were part of the club. It started out that way until they grauated. We had a disagreement amoung the membership so some of them created their own group and left and then our group got smaller plus the college would close during certain times of the year and we couldn't use the facilities. We sort of got locked out and folded afterwards.
I tried to see ways to keep the group going by offering our fire stations hall for showing and meetings but we had people that wouldn't agree to it because they were stead fast on how they wanted it to be. Some of us just made connections on Facebook so in someway we are a group again but haven't gotten together for old times. Some still attend anime cons.
Now as for what to show for anime. We use to meet everyother Sunday in the afternoons at the college because the rooms were open that had the overhead video projectors and had the video equipment for tapes at that time but now with DVDs you can put them in DVD players or the computer systems to show them with.
We use to have a showing of a couple of episodes of a major anime TV or movie video. Then break and then have a comedy hour of anime like FLCL or some crazy anime. Break and then a few hours of different anime episodes. We even had a game hour of like Dance Dance Revolution or someother video game. There was a rule that we could not show videos which had sex or too many nude scenes but sometimes we got away with some videos if it was a short scene or someone didn't object to what was shown. Most of the group was teen or older. We did have some younger members but we had problems of parents leaving them and then the kids would leave the room and run around the campus. The parents found out about what they were doing and never brought them back.

[Atria35]

My- I feel like I'm gravedigging here! XD

In any case, I think it's great that you've allowed both teens and adults (I'm assuming that this might turn into a bit of an all-ages if the parents drop their kids off, like they did to Ashfire's group) into the club- the one at my local library is teens-only, which is VERY depressing since I want to see some of the shows they're playing!

I think starting off with the ones for everybody earlier in the evening would be a good choice, going to more mature shows later in the evening, since the people who are older will probably be staying later.

Maybe instead of marathoning, like some have suggested, or only doing one episode of a show since sometimes the first episode isn't gripping (it took me 3 to get into Cowboy Bebop!), maybe 2 shows would be a good medium. That way people who don't care for it don't have to sit through or miss entire club meetings where they're bored, and those who like it can see more than the first ep.

Adding a few movies, since those tend to go over well-
5 Cm Per Second, since it's been re-liscenced.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Paprika
Wings of Honneamise

and perhaps a few shorter series would do well, like
Kino's Journey
Paranoia Agent
Spice and Wolf

And at the end of the night, you could have a vote as to which series you'd like to continue at the next meeting (again, only showing 2 eps a night, so that you can add variety)

[ADXC]

I would save Paranoia Agent for like way later in the night. XD Because even to me it was a little weird and it may be harder for some of the younger people to understand the ideas.

[Atria35]

I would save Paranoia Agent for like way later in the night. XD Because even to me it was a little weird and it may be harder for some of the younger people to understand the ideas.

Agreed. I should have clarified- I meant that those shorter series might be good since they'd last over a shorter amount of meetings than the long ones. Content is definitely a factor in when a series would be watched at what time.