I JOINED AN ANIME CLUB: A SCARRING EXPERIENCE

By thespookyredhead in Anime on
39 comments

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t THAT bad

Pretty much anyone who follows me can gather (or has already read somewhere) that I’m a teenage girl in her first year of uni. And so, with the perils I already face on a daily basis like not missing my bus and having to walk 10 minutes between classes because someone decided having a campus as big as a suburb was a good idea… Signing up to university clubs is a thing that I’ve decided to do.

In semester 1 I signed up to a Writer’s Club, went for four weeks and decided that it really wasn’t for me since it was mainly focused on how to get published and was on a Monday night, when I could be doing important things like sleeping.

And so when semester 2 came around, with newfound determination, I decided that it was the time to venture out again and try a new club… The anime club…

I went on the ‘welcome night’ and haven’t returned.

It started off alright, with me running into someone I’d met before last semester and having a quick chat. I also put myself out there a bit and talked to a person I didn’t know, but then I couldn’t keep the conversation going and awkwardly shuffled away from them when they looked at me like I was behaving oddly.

Once the night started I was kind of scared to be honest by the amount of cat ears people wore unironically too. Like I understand why… but I also don’t understand why… There was also onesies, the leader of the tables was a member of the club and knows as the ‘sensei’ with an orange, kind of like a Naruto headband they had to wear, and all the tables for some reason had Japanese characters as their symbols with some random things like stars and other shapes thrown in.

And there were way too many uh… very passionate and loud fans… I’m not saying they’re bad people at anything though, I’m just saying that white people throwing Japanese words randomly into English sentences and using honorifics while wearing lots of merchandise does throw me off a bit. While for some reason all but two of the Asians I talked too seemed to be really against and harbour a deep hatred for American cartoons…

And the table I was sitting at… Why do I have the worst luck when it comes to where I’m placed to sit? Everyone was nice, and there was actually two very nice guys at my table (unfortunately the male to female ratio of this welcome night was about 20:1), but for some reason the majority of what everyone at my table wanted to talk about were traps and hentai. Two things not for me.

Now I should also here give one of the boys at the table credit. He had noticed that I was not loving the tentacle conversations straight away and asked me a few questions obviously not about anything fan service related as he tried to mediate the table a bit so that we were all engaging in conversation with each other. He failed in the end, but he was nice enough to talk to me individual instead of letting me sit there awkwardly for two hours.

Luckily, a cute Asian girl came in late and ended up on our table! And honestly it was quite entertaining to watch all the boys talking vigorously about their love of traps and joking about tentacles before their speech starting fading away and they looked up like little schoolboys to her because she had pretty cool green hair and a very nice denim jacket and skirt. And with her arrival the boys calmed down a bit.

So I thought I was fairly safe.

Until it was time to do those ‘write one word then pass it the piece of paper onto the next person! Write a story together! Isn’t this fun!’ And with the two of us girls faced against the other 5 males at the table – the story did not end up pretty.

It actually turned out to be kind of like the idea of Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs to be honest – with yokai, some hentai, tentacles, traps and a male protagonist that was way too horny written by way too invested in this all males. I spent about two minutes with the piece of paper each time I got it, trying to make it even more mildly PG rated and save it from the weird boob-feeling of statues turning into women that was going on.

So overall, I did not have a great time. I’d like to stress the point that the people at my table were actually very nice, but just liked to to talk too much about fan service for my liking. The girl was really nice too, and we found out that we both think Makoto from Free! is an absolute sweetheart.

The club is actually screening Land of the Lustrous for the next few weeks, and I can just watch that at home. That’s my justification anyway.

So what do you guys think? Should I try to venture back there again?

Tags: ,

Published by thespookyredhead

Come for the pop culture. Stay for the bad grammar.

39 comments on “I JOINED AN ANIME CLUB: A SCARRING EXPERIENCE”

  1. I don’t know what to say other than “lol” and “sorry for your bad experience”, it made for an entertaining read but if there’s going to be people that make you uncomfortable there there’s probably no point in returning. Maybe find out if that “nice” boy and the Asian girl are going back or not and if so try and stick with them? I don’t know tbh, I have zero experience with clubs or even really talking to people about anime in real life (aside from the missus obviously) so I guess you have to weigh up wanting to be able to talk to other about anime vs being caught in awkward conversations with horny boys.

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  2. Wow, that sounds like an interesting experience… I know that people like that are out there, but I’ve never encountered any myself so this story just reaffirms that. Just crazy.

    And here I am thinking that fan service is debatable / unnecessary most of the time. I guess it’s popular for a reason though!

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    1. Hahah yeah… It’s a very popular topic it seems…
      Some people were a bit extra with their obsession of the Japanese culture and anime, but I guess since I hadn’t experienced anything like it before it was a bit more uncomfortable. They were still nice though 🙂

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  3. Oh dang. That sounds horrible. I couldn’t imagine going into a club like that, because it would throw me off too. Anyway can you make your own anime club with people around you somehow?

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    1. Hahah maybe! I have two friends who like anime as well, so sometimes we’ll get together to do screenings at one of our houses of Ghibli movies or a series we all like – I guess that’s sort of like our own club! ^_^

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  4. This sounds a lot like my experience at my uni’s anime club! Non-stop hentai and trap talk + heaps of slurs – it wasn’t very enjoyable, and the girl to guy ratio was pretty low too. I was part of the Facebook group for a while but had to even leave that when it was just non-stop porno pictures being posted. At least it sounds like that girl with the green hair was super cool, maybe try to get her contact details so you guys can become friends :)?

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      1. Yeah if I see her again I’m definitely going to talk to her! 🙂
        And that sounds awful about the club 😭 And awful that you couldn’t even stay in the FB group because of the content…
        Hahah that would’ve been great! 😂 I live in QLD though, and now I don’t know whether to be slightly concerned about how many university anime clubs are like this!

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  5. Hmmm, well it’s nice to join a club for a anime, but when the only talk is going to be about hentai and other stuff like that, it doesn’t really sound like an anime club…more like a hentai club. If that really is the only thing that they will talk about it, I don’t think there is much point in returning. Scott makes a good point though: you should totally start your own club! I’m sure there are lot’s of people who want to talk about “ normal” anime. Sorry you had such a bad experience though 😢😢

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  7. Kudos for putting yourself out there like that. Sounds like a pretty awkward experience. Can’t blame you for not wanting to go back but at least you can laugh at it. I’ve had similar experience with dealing with people at conventions. There’s always disconnect between myself and average otaku. So I understand. Also I think you should venture out again if thats something that you want.

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    1. Thanks! 🙂 Hahah true, and there’s definitely a lot of varied interactions people have had with other fans! I think I’ll try it again later, maybe if my and a friend join forces together!!

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  8. It must be uncomfortable to talk those kind of stuff but joining a club must be nice and on the other I think it will be a club for you where you can be yourself and talk about what ever you like. But talking only about hentai is not so great.

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  9. Sorry to hear that it didn’t give you a really nice first impression, but in a way hope it was also enlightening all the same, regarding the different kinds of people you get to come across in university clubs.
    The high gender ratio does sound a little intimidating to be honest, and the conversation topics don’t help too.

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    1. Thank-you! It think it was definitely a different experience to the ones I’ve had so far with people, as in tutorials I’ve been lucky to have very polite and nice people when we’re answering questions and things like that 🙂
      Yeah… I wish there were some more girls, just because I love having girl friends and chatting with other girls! Though I don’t mean to sound like I also don’t appreciate my guy friends 😅

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  10. Your story pretty much sums up why I’ve completely avoided the anime society at my uni.

    Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have a problem with ultra-nerdy fans. My major is Japanese and everyone on my course (including me) falls somewhere on the weeb-scale. But there are the people out there who take their passion a liiiittle too far and it’s cringey. Very cringey.

    I can’t really say I’ve encountered anyone quite as, uh, ‘obsessive’ as you’ve described, but people peppering English conversations with random Japanese is something I encounter a LOT.

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    1. Hahah yeah falling on the weeb scale is fine I think! It’s more just for me when a person assumes that because I watch anime it must be subbed and I must know a bit of vocab that I get confused because I don’t know what they’re trying to say sometimes…

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  12. Lol! That’s kind of how my anime club experience went, I never returned but I think you should give it another go. I mean, you can hang out with the girl and guy you thought were neat. If it’s not working out after that, well, you have us XD

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  13. Pingback: This Week in Anime: Death Note, Vinland Saga, and More… – The Aniwriter

  14. I think it’s awesome that you tried the club out! It sucks that you didn’t find it very fun or comfortable. Anime is so much more than traps and hentai and such! It makes me sad that that’s basically all people were talking about! Reading some of the stuff they did made me cringe a little bit 😅 I love passionate fans as I am one myself but screaming random Japanese just never makes any sense to me whatsoever. I love having long discussions and just nerding out that way! I think maybe give it another shot? Maybe it was just a bad first impression and if it doesn’t work out then it wasn’t meant to be! 😊

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    1. After a few weeks hopefully people might’ve toned down their passion a bit… There should also be less people there at screenings and things so it might be a lot better! I think I’ll give it another shot in a few weeks times and then see how it goes! ^_^

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  15. Maybe because it was welcome night, some people went overboard or thought they were being cool and hip for new members? Some of those people may not have returned after the first day either, so I would probably give it another shot. If it’s like that on a normal night, then you know not to go back.

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  16. Ha ha ha!! Oh dear. That sounds like a typical day at my store. 😂😂😂 I feel your pain, girl. I especially love the “passionate and loud” guys… ARE THEY EVER!! You know it’s a good day when you get to have a long conversation about tentacle hentai. 😂😂😂

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  17. Well, I feel sorry for you. Seems like it was a middle-grade club instead university. I’d say you can try to go to one of the screenings (as Krystallina mentioned) and if it still not good, just create your own club.
    I remember when I was in school and started an anime club with some friends. It’s one of my best memories and we had so much fun gathering at our homes and watching anime together.

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