by Ryan Mathews

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September 1997

This month: Club Pages!

Talk about a bad choice for a last-minute topic. I can't believe how many club pages there are. There are so many anime club pages out there, that I've decided not to do an in-depth review of any of them. Instead, I want to point out the best parts of as many pages as possible.

One thing that impressed me as I browsed: there are very few poorly-designed club pages on the web. There are a great many boring ones, but very few with actual poor design, and some even look professional. It seems every anime club counts at least one aspiring HTML author among its ranks.

Another thing that impressed me was just how many pages all over the world have links to the Turnpike. I'd be browsing a site in Russia or Mexico or some other foreign land, and there would be Trixie, smiling and waving her thumb.

Click on any club page and you're likely to find the same thing: a statement of club identity ("Who are we?"), meeting times, directions, schedules, and lists of officers. Most clubs are affiliated with colleges, though there are exceptions. There are independent clubs, like my own Tri-A, and even a couple affiliated with high schools. One of these is the Saratoga Anime Society, which holds meetings "Mondays or Fridays at lunch in room 006". Nothing makes high school cafeteria food go down better than anime. (Considering how hard it is to get down in the first place.)

Some clubs don't hold meetings at all. One of these is Anime Babes, a club for female anime fans that operates through the mail. It isn't clear if they accept members from the eastern side of the Atlantic.

As I stated, most club pages consist of the same thing. However, some clubs try to make the "same thing" interesting. For example, take New Jersey's Anime Revenge's "statement of identity". They describe themselves as "a secret organization who's [sic] purpose is to cause college students to fail most of their classes".

Rather than simply describe the officers and/or members, some clubs put actual photographs of themselves on the net. Cal-Animage Gamma is one such club, with an extensive gallery of photographs. The camaraderie expressed in these pictures would be enough to convince me that anime is more fun in a club, if I didn't already believe that. The Japanese Cultural Association of Rutgers also has photographs, including photos of individual members. SPOON, a Texas club, also has individual pictures, but they're done in the style of mug shots, black&white, blank stares, the whole deal. Under each photograph is a description of the officer's duties, described as crimes they've committed. And in an ever odder take on the photographic concept, The R.I.T. Anime Club site doesn't have pictures of members' faces at all. Instead, it has pictures of their tattoos!

Other clubs prefer to provide caricatures of the members rather than photos. Oahu's No Brand Anime Club is one such page, featuring a cute sketch of club members on the beach. Australia's Wollongong Anime & Manga Society offers individual caricatures of some of the officers.

It's no use holding an anime showing unless people know how to get there. And yet, most sites have only the address of where the showing is being held. Text directions can help, but kudos go to sites like California's VideoBurn, which include an actual map to the showing site. Michigan's Kodocha Anime has a more detailed, hand-drawn map that's perfect for printing. Several other sites scan in maps of their respective universities.

Of course, no club page is complete without a kick-ass logo. More on that later.