Kaylee Bialazor

Tuesday nights for the Namakemono Anime Club mean catching up on the latest industry news, spending time with their fellow club members, and of course, watching anime.

According the Eric Greenwood, senior history major and current president, the club had modest beginnings in the early 2000’s.

“It was just a small group of people who liked anime starting the club just as a means to show off what was popular,” Greenwood said.

Greenwood said he started attending around 2005 off and on and then took over as president in Fall 2014. Since then, one of the largest changes he’s made is adding an introductions section into every club meeting.

“We try to bribe random members to come down and introduce themselves because, in the past, people just showed up to club and watched anime and nobody got to know anybody,” Greenwood said. “My cabinet and I have decided to do introductions to try and break the ice and get people involved.”

Typically, news and introductions last until anywhere from 6:15 p.m. to 7 p.m., and then the lights dim for the first of several episodes of whatever anime the club is watching that week. Meetings end around 10 p.m.

Greenwood, who has given talks about the educational uses of anime, said that trying to explain anime to people who don’t watch it can be difficult.

“Multi-genre animation that is typically made in Japan, if you want to get technical,” Greenwood said.

People often try to explain it as ‘Japanese cartoons,’ Greenwood said, but he doesn’t think that really offers a complete or accurate description.

“There’s no real easy way to define anime, no real easy answer,” Greenwood said.

In deciding what they show, the anime club uses a democratic process wherein everyone gets to vote on which anime will be shown that quarter. They tend to stay away from mainstream favorites, like “Naruto” or “One Piece,” and they actually have a rule against showing anything that airs on Adult Swim’s Toonami block.

“We don’t want to compete, since it’s on T.V. and pretty accessible, especially in college dorms,” Greenwood said.

Instead, they watch shows like “Samurai Champloo,” “Ouran High School Host Club,” and “Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun.” Additionally, they stick to shows with 13-24 episodes in order to finish them in one quarter.

The club also has rules about how they obtain the anime they show. DVDs or Blu-rays are always the best, but streaming services like Netflix and Crunchyrole (a service similar to Netflix but specific to anime) are also used.

“Sometimes we have to resort to torrents because the show is just so obscure it’ll never get picked up,” Greenwood said. “But if it gets licensed in America they stop showing it in order to keep from breaking copyright laws.”

For club members who cannot afford to pay to watch anime themselves, the club is an ideal way to get their fix with the added bonus of a social setting where they can discuss it with people who have similar interests.

Caitlyn Anderson, junior history major, said she enjoys the opportunity to get out of the dorms and talk to others about anime.

“Normally I’m not very social,” Anderson said.

Jason Dixon, a sophomore history major and regular attendee of the anime club, said the people he meets are his favorite part of being a member. Dixon also said he enjoys playing video games from Japan and listening to Japanese music, as well as other parts of Japanese culture.

“I’ve always enjoyed animation, I grew up watching cartoons,” Dixon said. “It wasn’t until I joined the military and was deployed in Japan that I actually got introduced to anime.”