Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Probably the core institution behind the explosion of anime in the West is the humble anime club. Growing as grass-roots communities with purely internal interests, these societies of fellows grew across the West wherever young people gathered throughout the decade of the 2000s, primarily in universities and colleges. In the early days such anime clubs had the utility of allowing individuals to share their collections with each other in an era when anime was hard to come by: sharing VHSs, DVDs, manga, games, doujinshi. These early clubs seemed to have been pioneering, industrial and committed, because from these clubs came those who went on to set the foundations of the current Western industry: fantranslators and piraters became localisers and marketers much as Crunchyroll transitioned from a criminal to legitimate company. Of course most members didn't turn their hobby into a career, using their club merely as a place to watch and discuss anime, but from these clubs grew that pervasive archetype of the obnoxious anime fan boogeyman: trenchcoat, katana, body pillow, tentacle porn; you know the type. Although its popularity unfortunately seems to have faded, for me the webcomic "The Anime Club" by KC Green is the epitome of this era of anime fan and club, with each character mirroring a definite archetype of classic '00s anime fan, albeit in an American setting. If you haven't read it you should, its fun.
But of course the "anime club" is not something unique to the West. Japan has a much longer tradition of such societies and a much broader range of media portraying them. For me Genshiken is the greatest of these works, portraying a university anime society populated again by near perfect representations of the different people you do find in such places. Its always pleasing to me that such otaku archetypes seem universal across cultures. The Genshiken cast especially demonstrates their broadness: otaku by nature have specific interests, and no two otaku will have ones even nearly congruent. In fact it is very possible that, with the exceptions of a few cornerstone works, a group of otaku may have absolutely nothing they commonly like or have even all watched, which is a paradigm very different from other artistic interests where an appreciation of the core canon is necessary to be accepted. I divide such disciplines into either "developed" or "undeveloped" mediums. Architecture or classical music for example are "developed" mediums: they have codified sets of works that one must study and appreciate to participate in the subculture. Anime, particularly in the West, is an undeveloped medium: one where no central canon has truly been established (although many will have their own personal ones). This gives the world of anime a "Wild West" feel, one where any anime no one you know has ever watched could be dug up and turn out to be a masterpiece: for many of us at the time (it at least felt like it) many rarer anime or manga you watched or read had never been seen by Western eyes before, and it was your duty to deem it a treasure or junk for the wider community. While Genshiken does show this emphasis on personal appraisal, something like "Otaku no Video" portrays this Wild West attitude to a greater extent. Maybe its because it is older: from an era where "otaku" was a newer and more virile phenomena in Japan.
Another aspect of the "anime club" is its relative industriousness. As a small and dedicated group, anime fans seem to feel a greater compulsion for artistic output than those of more established mediums. My university anime society for example produces an annual Zine (which you can read here), which would fall under the designation of "doujinshi" in Japan (the Western adoption of the term seems to only include self-published manga, our "yousei-nihongo" to their "wasei-eigo"?). The production of such works form a core part of anime societies, and at the end of the day separate the lone otaku from the society otaku. There are many depictions of what in Japan is called a circle (doujinshi producing organisation), but probably the best is the anime "Comic Party" hailing from very much the same era as Genshiken; or perhaps "Aoi Honoo" a manga turned drama depicting the real lives of the creators of Otaku no Video, and as such from the generation before.
But lets take a step back. While considering what the defining characteristics of "the anime club" are is interesting (to me), I think we may be missing the forest for the trees. Rather than "why anime?"; "why club?". Why is the anime club such a cornerstone to this subculture when it isn't to other similar groups such as video games or Western comics? Of course clubs for these interests do exist and have for longer than anime, but they have never held that paramount position that the anime club does of the principal organising unit of the subculture (or at least used to hold). I chalk this up to the influence of Japanese culture in general, and the portrayal of the "部" in anime in particular. The "school club" forms the basis for many an anime, acting as a vital component of school-life in a way unparalleled in Western schools (pre-University at least). One's introduction and subsequent fascination in the concept is personal, but for me (and for many of my generation) it was born of Haruhi Suzumiya's SOS Brigade. Here we saw the school club in its purest form: a place to express the essence of youth without social, academic or really any external pressure. A mini-Eden where you could just hang out with friends in a way that is often unnervingly absent from the lives of modern schoolchildren, especially those who don't fit in with the main crowd. That's why for many of us the creation of our own SOS Brigade became a dream that would die hard, or for the lucky few become a reality. For me such a dream remained squarely in its pipe during high school. There was no way I could build a club for such a niche interest like anime in a school so small: the only other students I knew who had watched any anime were those I'd recommended it to in the first place. And besides, it was still very much taboo in a way that seems silly today: liking Japanese cartoons was cause for attention in a way video games or other equally nerdy hobbies were not. Nevertheless by my graduation from Upper Sixth Year I was firmly "the anime guy" and maybe if I had been just a few years younger the foundation of the high school anime club of my dreams could have been a reality. But while my ambitions for an SOS Brigade faded unrequited, my hopes for a Genshiken of my own in University grew and I did indeed (through a little death & rebirthing of the existing sci-fi society) help found the anime society that still exists in my University today, an organisation that remained a core part of my life for several years and did in fact live up to those dreams of my early teenage years. And I know for a fact that many of those who joined my society did so as a fulfillment of very similar childhood dreams: a dream that seems catholic amongst sentimental otaku of my generation. But will such yearnings last?
As the Western market opened up to anime into the new decade of the 2010s, anime clubs lost their original purpose of distribution as anyone could access anime easily by themselves online. First it had to be done illegitimately which kept the barrier to entry higher, but now it is as easy and cheap to watch anime legitimately as anything else. The aim of anime clubs thus shifted from utilitarian to social. But they are still inherently places for nerds (for lack of a better term), even if this too may be changing with the times. In the last few years we've seen anime grow to popular heights rivalling those of television and Hollywood among the younger crowds, and a hobby that was once niche is now mainstream which has surely heralded in yet a new era for the anime club and the calibre of person joining them. I have fortunately avoided any apocalypse in that domain, for my time in anime clubs has ended; but even in my own society I have been hearing rumblings that for many new members "anime" is more of a decoration than an aim. Maybe the era of two distinct anime clubs is upon us, just as depicted in Genshiken, or maybe the Golden Age of the Western otaku is dead.
