Anime Cincinnati?

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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Anime Cincinnati?

Post by mbanu »

Founded in October of 1989, with a final meeting on April 12, 2002, after which they merged or possibly passed the torch to Anime-UC, the University of Cincinnati's anime club whom they had been having joint meetings with. (Anime-UC is still active today: https://www.facebook.com/groups/animeuc/about/)

Anyone have any info on this club? The date makes me thing that they just missed the end of the national C/FO, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out they had been one of the late joiners.
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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mbanu
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by mbanu »

The connection between "Anime-C" and "Anime-UC" seems to go back for several years; by July of 1993 at least, the President of Anime-UC, Dana Weaver, was also the Vice-President of Anime Cincinnati: https://groups.google.com/forum/message ... opJp-7JxAJ
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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mbanu
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by mbanu »

Image
(http://www.jazmer.com/Pics/Misc/anime-c_girl.html)

Apparently they had a mascot girl, as seen by this fanart. (^_^;) Sometimes I wonder how common this was; I know that C/FO had a club mascot, as did a lot of the other chapters, but don't really understand how these ended up getting created...
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
davemerrill
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by davemerrill »

Dana Weaver went on to be the con chair of SugoiCon, a Cincy area anime convention that lasted from 2000-2012. Dana lives in Taiwan now.

From my understanding, the people running the club were tired of running the club and wanted to pass the duties on to a new administration -so they posted in the club newsletter months in advance that they'd be stepping down, and then at their last meeting they got up and said hey, that's it, we're done, who wants to take over the club? And the rest of the members said, in effect, "what? You're stepping down? Who will show me cartoons every month?" Apparently nobody, unless you were able to get into the university anime club.

SugoiCon kind of went the same way; Dana moved out of the country and the other upper level staffers/admin moved on, and nobody really stepped up to take their places.
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by labsenpai »

I've lived in the Buckeye state since college, in locations closer to other clubs than A-Cincy. If you didn't live down by the river, there was really no reason to go further south than Dayton. I did attend SUGOICON 2004, in response to their unbelievably good line up of guests that year. Sadly, as Dave said, most of my 90's cohorts had minimal help keeping otaku organizations/businesses viable. By the mid 2000's being a consumer-type fan was way easier.

/RIP Ohio clubs :/
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by davemerrill »

2004 was the last Sugoicon I attended. That was their second year in the convention center on the Kentucky side of the river, and it felt to me like they'd overextended themselves. By that time most of my friends on staff had moved on to other things, and the people that WERE on staff didn't really know who I was or what I was doing there, which led to some interesting last minute problems in terms of event setup. Judging from how the convention limped onwards from that point, it seems that much of the show suffered from the same lack of planning.
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by mbanu »

davemerrill wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 5:45 am Dana Weaver went on to be the con chair of SugoiCon, a Cincy area anime convention that lasted from 2000-2012. Dana lives in Taiwan now.

From my understanding, the people running the club were tired of running the club and wanted to pass the duties on to a new administration -so they posted in the club newsletter months in advance that they'd be stepping down, and then at their last meeting they got up and said hey, that's it, we're done, who wants to take over the club? And the rest of the members said, in effect, "what? You're stepping down? Who will show me cartoons every month?" Apparently nobody, unless you were able to get into the university anime club.

SugoiCon kind of went the same way; Dana moved out of the country and the other upper level staffers/admin moved on, and nobody really stepped up to take their places.
Great info!

It seems like a common trend with anime clubs is that having a couple long-term fans around is a Good Thing for helping a club preserve its institutional memory, but a Bad Thing if they are in an active leadership role, due to succession problems. (^_^;)
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

mbanu wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 11:02 pm
davemerrill wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 5:45 am Dana Weaver went on to be the con chair of SugoiCon, a Cincy area anime convention that lasted from 2000-2012. Dana lives in Taiwan now.

From my understanding, the people running the club were tired of running the club and wanted to pass the duties on to a new administration -so they posted in the club newsletter months in advance that they'd be stepping down, and then at their last meeting they got up and said hey, that's it, we're done, who wants to take over the club? And the rest of the members said, in effect, "what? You're stepping down? Who will show me cartoons every month?" Apparently nobody, unless you were able to get into the university anime club.

SugoiCon kind of went the same way; Dana moved out of the country and the other upper level staffers/admin moved on, and nobody really stepped up to take their places.
Great info!

It seems like a common trend with anime clubs is that having a couple long-term fans around is a Good Thing for helping a club preserve its institutional memory, but a Bad Thing if they are in an active leadership role, due to succession problems. (^_^;)
I don't think it is just anime type clubs, per se, but really most nerd activities that require some organization (clubs/cons), often times it is like pulling teeth to get others to put in effort, even when you know there needs to be a succession plan. Sometimes the people that hang around in leadership for the long-term are there because no one else will step-up or step-in.
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by davemerrill »

"Institutional memory" is a terrific term for what the older fans provide in these organizations, even if it's just somebody who can be involved in the discussion and say "we tried that and here's what happened" or "I know a guy who has that thing we could use." There's a lot of re-inventing the wheel with fandom, particularly fandoms that have constant influxes of new members, and a few veterans around can forestall some of that wheel-spinning, sometimes.
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Re: Anime Cincinnati?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

davemerrill wrote: Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:13 am "Institutional memory" is a terrific term for what the older fans provide in these organizations, even if it's just somebody who can be involved in the discussion and say "we tried that and here's what happened" or "I know a guy who has that thing we could use." There's a lot of re-inventing the wheel with fandom, particularly fandoms that have constant influxes of new members, and a few veterans around can forestall some of that wheel-spinning, sometimes.
Institutional Memory - going to have to remember that term. I agree that it can be valuable for fan groups (like conventions, but not necessarily just conventions) to have some connection with which you can call back to institutional memory. But I think you'd agree there's a difference between "Jimmy's here for to lend a hand" versus "Jimmy runs the show and always has because no-one else will". That's even if there's a chance Jimmy wants someone else to run the show.

I think it is important to have institutional memory for many reasons but in order for that to happen, you have to have cycles of leadership (people, processes or whatnot - whether it's conventions, clubs or fanzines - otherwise people will eventually burn out. Then I guess the institution becomes a memory.
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