Mid-90's and Earlier anime club roll call?

The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
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mbanu
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Mid-90's and Earlier anime club roll call?

Post by mbanu »

So which anime clubs that got their start way back when are still active as anime clubs?

Which ones are still active, but primarily as convention organizing bodies?

I guess this would mostly split between the old C/FO & EDC chapters and the first wave of college clubs like Cal-Animage... Are there still any clubs active that are descended from the old Star Blazers Fan Club?
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zimmerit
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Re: Mid-90's and Earlier anime club roll call?

Post by zimmerit »

Without digging too deep, I'd imagine that a lot of the college clubs of the early '90s are still kicking in some form or another. A constant stream of potential new members seems to keep a lot of these kicking, even though anime is easier to get than ever before.

That said, I was surprised Cal Animage Alpha was still around and that it throws its own annual mini-con: https://calanimedestiny.com/
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davemerrill
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Re: Mid-90's and Earlier anime club roll call?

Post by davemerrill »

if there is an anime club still meeting that started out as an EDC chapter, I'd be very surprised.

Also important to keep in mind is that the EDC "chapters" didn't always mean an anime club that met once a month to watch cartoons. When Derek Wakefield was running the club, he assigned 'chapter' status to anyone who could find some other EDC members in his or her local region who said "yes" when asked if they wanted to be part of an EDC chapter. I ran an EDC 'chapter' that was me, two guys in Birmingham, someone in Virginia that never answered letters, and two other Atlanta people who joined the EDC, and if we ever had an official EDC meeting to discuss official EDC business, I must have blinked and missed it.

I know Roy Bruce in VA kept his local EDC affiliated anime club going for a while - I think Steve Bennett was a member of that club - and I think a Florida club had actual anime-club meetings as an EDC chapter. I do also know that several listings of EDC chapters in the early and mid 1990s were just one guy.

As far longest-lived still-having-meetings anime clubs go, the LA C/FO has got to be the winner in that category.
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