Animéania
by James Basolo
Ventura College Press
v74 i11, Monday, February 14, 2000
page 4
New club brings blitz of Japanese cartoons to campus
You may have stood in line anxiously to see the thrilling medieval epic Princess Mononoke. Maybe you watch the hit cartoon show "Pokemon" regularly on Kids' WB. There is no denying that Japanese anime (pronounced "an-uh-MAY") is taking America by storm. What is more, the Ventura Anime Club is right in the midst of it.
"Our main purpose is to bring Japanese anime to the American majority," Janice Gelacio, club president said.
The club started as an extracurricular student group at Channel Islands High School in 1991. It moved to Oxnard College in 1996 and finally cam e to VC in 1999. "We're very happy because this is the first semester that we have an advisor and an official place in VC society," Gelacio said.
The club holds meetings every two weeks in Room UV-2, spending their afternoons watching genuine anime videos. Membership in the club is free, however, it is necessary to purchase membership cards in order to buy tapes.
"Anime is basically just Japanese animation," Gelacio said. "It's not really a particular style, but a variety of styles."
"With anime, the sky's the limit," Jerry San Jose, club manager said. "Japanese animators can bring anything to life, and for a fraction of the cost it takes to make an American cartoon."
Anime does include a wide range of cartoon genres - drama, comedy, adventure, romance. Many human characters in anime typically have stylized features - saucer-shaped eyes, lipless mouths, pointy noses, and wild haircuts. Sometimes a character's physical traits are used to symbolize his or her personality.
Anime cartoons are purely and uniquely Japanese. They speak eloquently of the Japanese experience and are just as much fun for adults as they are for children.
"Japanese animators are not afraid to address such topics as tragic heroes, homosexuality, nudity, profanity, or extreme violence," Reuben Asahan, club member said. In American cartoons, such issues are taboo and are avoided.
In anime, the story formats are quite unlike anything Americans watch. American cartoons mostly focus on short-lived gags or simplistic, everyday events. That is not the case in anime.
"Anime story lines are like serials or soap operas," Aaron Berk, vice president said.
"A single anime plot can extend over 50 or more episodes, and you don't want to miss a single one."
Most American are probably familiar by now with the exploits of Ash and cuddly yellow Pikachu on "Pokemon," or with the leggy heroines of the "Sailor Moon."
"'Pokemon' isn't for us," San Jose said. "That's kids' stuff." Instead, the standard fare at the Anima Club's weekly screenings are OAVs (original anime videos produced in Japan and made exclusively for the video market).
The exciting videos shown at the screenings feature everything but pocket monsters. The members of the Anime Club prefer such videos as "Fushigi Yuugi," which chronicles the adventures of a girl who enters an ancient Chinese book.
"A lot of stuff we watch is one hundred percent Japanese," Asahan said. "It's stuff that hasn't been released in US markets yet."
The popularity of the videos stems mostly from their complex subject matter, as club member Joe Boeing pointed out.
"Anime is proof that cartoons need not insult the intelligence of adolescents and adults," he said.
Will the anime tsunami drown the United States? Perhaps. It has already created a splash in the American entertainment industry. More mature audiences rushed to the movie theaters recently to see Princess Mononoke, a breathtaking fantasy epic about a brave princess's fight to save humanity from evil forest demons.
Is anime just another Japanese fad, like Godzilla movies or Tamagotchi pets? Janice Gelacio does not think so.
"I see anime assimilating into worldwide animation market," she said. "It won't be around forever, but it will merge with American animation and heavily influence it."
The Ventura Anime Club has been featured in the press. An article about anime and the club appeared in the Ventura College
Press for Valentine's week, February 14, 2000. Here's the article in verbatim written by James Basolo. It contains some responses by the officers of the club.