January 16, 2012

  • Anime Night Report

    This will be my review of the conduct and activity of this week's Anime Night gathering. Some context: for some time now a group of my friends and I have been getting together once a week to watch anime as a group and just generally enjoy ourselves. The gathering has changed over time and my feelings about it are mixed. Part of the problem is that I am quite serious about anime -- I mean hyper-focus serious to the point of being oblivious to people calling my name -- and many of the people who have been attending recently are not as into it as I am. Now I don't fault people for having their own level of interest because everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion but what I don't like is when people start disrupting the experience with comments and side conversations. Maybe I am too strict but when I'm watching an anime I want to get the full experience, especially when it's a serious show and not a comedy. And that is my position on the subject.

    Our meeting was quite lively this time. We even had a newcomer who seemed to be quite the catch for one of our less active members. It is fairly normal for us to get off track every once in a while but this time we actually managed to get all the way through the watchlist without being sidetracked all that much. Even one of our more hyper members was calm and attentive, which was quite satisfying to me. After the list was completed for the night I proceeded to show a short, two episode arc from Gintama, which perhaps wasn't to everyone's taste, but was well accepted by the end. Some of the group had gone to a separate room to talk and they returned at the end of these episodes, bringing with them the topic of strange stuff on the internet (isn't most of the internet strange stuff anyway) and sending us down a path of insanity. It would seem that some of the group feels that it is our lot in life to corrupt the minds of some of our more innocent group members ... I don't particularly agree with the practice but I also do not think that it was harmful in this situation so I did not stop them. After a while I threw on some mindless YouTube videos, the humor of which was apparently known only to myself, and we then went on to watch some of the anime School Days -- a title which really belies a subject of extreme emotional strain centering around young relationships. I think I have actually hooked many of the members on this series. Whether or not that makes me a sadist will be determined as we continue with the anime.

    Looking forward I want to change a few things about our Anime Night gathering. First of all, it is taking a long time to complete a single series, let alone those that have multiple seasons. As a result of this I think people are gradually losing interest and getting distracted. This is why I want to reduce the number of shows to three and double up the episodes of each that we watch during each gathering. Second is a bit more secretive and involves creating another group of more serious anime fans. I am not trying to say that the people in the current meeting do not enjoy anime, I and several others are just tired of the constant distractions that come with the current group. We are not replacing the existing group but supplementing it with a private and less spazzy second group.

    That's all for now. Now if only I can get over this cold in the next few days ... my mind is clouded by the symptoms of the infection and I am unable to enjoy my usual array of anime.

    'Till next time,
    PEACE~!