Monday, November 11, 1996
In the wild world of Japanese animation, a group of on-campus
anime fans band together to watch, trade and uncover the rarest and
most entertaining films they can find.By Stephanie Sheh
Daily Bruin Contributor
Once a week, students file into a darkened lecture hall to sit
and wait to watch cartoons play out on a big screen. There are no
formalities and the meeting is never actually called to order.
Instead, the club officers arrive and the show just starts.
On screen, soceress Lina Inverse in her brightly colored costume
and sweeping black cape peers through her long jagged bangs at the
enemy. Just as she is about to attack, an unknown male flies
through the air at warp speed to her rescue. "I’ll help!" Lina
shouts as she is about to jump into the fray. "Wait, the heroine is
supposed to scream and be rescued," she says before starting to
play her part humorsly and over-dramatically.
The cartoons watched are Japanese animes and the viewers are
from the Japanese Animation Club.
Anime Club President Nati Sangrujiveth says, "One big
misconception (of anime) is that Japanese animation is about a
bunch of robots and sex, because in some anime they show women
dressed kind of scantily … well not really dressed at all
actually."
Attendance at one of the club’s meetings will dispel this
stereotype. The club shows many genres of anime that appeal to a
wide audience.
The meetings serve as a free anime theater that is open to
everyone. Membership involves a $15 fee per quarter. A couple of
times during the quarter there are members-only meetings where the
club shows special, harder-to-find videos. Members can also borrow
tapes from the club’s video library and participate in raffle
drawings.
"I actually heard about (the club) before I came to college,"
says Judy Chiang, a first-year biochemistry major. "I heard that
UCLA has a great animation club. They show good videos, things that
you can’t get around here."
Much of the club’s popularity stems from its ability to get
anime series that are difficult to attain. Third-year computer
science and engineering student Jason Yeh says, "It’s pretty hard
to just go to find video stores that carry Japanese animation. In
the stores and stuff, it’s OK. A lot of it is good, but some of the
better stuff that comes out in Japan will take several years to
come out here."
The limited collections of video stores make the Japanese
Animation Club a good source for a steady supply of anime. However,
the club itself has to work hard to attain the strongly-coveted
videos. It involves intricate negotiations with fans, other groups
and the Internet.
"A lot of times officers will shell out money to get tapes,"
Secretary Ardith Santiago admits. "And you can trade and get more
tapes, that way you don’t have to spend any money buying tapes. You
make friends over the Internet, make connections. It’s a long
process. You have this conversation back and forth with the person
if you want to trade tapes with them. You go back and forth through
e-mail until you decide what you want to do and how you’re going to
send it."
Sangrujiveth agrees that the process is difficult. "Vary rarely
do we get it commercially. Otherwise there’s a network of fan
subtitlers who just subtitle the Japanese animation just because
they’re really cool fans. A lot of these titles you can’t get in
the United States subtitled."
The fan subtitlers are just normal people on the Internet who
are willing to spend their own time subtitling it.
"They translate it and they time it and they put the subtitles
on the videos," Sangrujiveth says. "There’s a vast trading network
that we go though in order to get our tapes."
Most of the trading is very back door and unofficial. The reason
for this is that not many American companies release subtitled
Japanese animation videos. The clubs, then, use other methods to
get the tapes. As soon as a title is licensed by an American
company, the club is not allowed to rent out the tapes, because it
will cut into the companies’ profits. Some of the subtitled tapes
still contain original Japanese commercials in between the
segments.
First-year biochemistry student and club member Christina Havens
says, "I think subtitles keep the general meaning." Havens thinks
that much of the general meaning of anime and cartoons in general
involves political statements.
"I think that everyone definitely watches cartoons for their
social protest. In ‘Sailor Moon’ you’ve got the tomboy, you’ve got
the lesbian figure," she says.
Many of the series deal with contemporary issues like
lesbianism. Another series, "Marmalade Boy," has to do with two
married couples who switch spouses and then decide to all live
under the same roof.
Third-year linguistics and philosophy student, Shawn T. Rettig
agrees that many types of contemporary issues are covered.
"Anime deals with just about any subject that it wants to
whereas American cartoons can be very limited," Rettig says. "They
seem to generally go for the younger, sub-teen audience, whereas in
Japan everyone watches anime. Anime is prime-time television. So
they deal with all kinds of subjects."
There are many different genres of anime: action, comedy,
science fiction, thriller, romance. The different genres of anime
are a good source of exciting storylines. While some people prefer
certain genres of anime, a good story is what is most
important.
Secretary Santiago says, "I don’t care what kind of genre it is,
as long as the story’s good. The story’s the most important thing
to me. I want to get into it. I want the characters to be good. I
want to go ‘Oh God! What’s going to happen next!’ I want to care
about them."
A good story entices the audience and makes the watcher really
connect and feel for the large-eyed, colorful figures. Episodes
will often end with cliffhangers and viewers become hooked. "The
stories draw you into the anime. At first you’ll think ‘Oh, they
look weird,’ and then you’re like ‘Oh, this is really good,’ and
then you’re addicted," says Santiago.
"My roommate and I watched as many episodes as we had (of the
"Fushiji Yuugi" series) and we stayed up until 4 o’clock watching,
because it was like ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe it. We have to
watch the next one,’" admits Santiago. "I feel sorry for the people
in Japan, where they have to watch it every week and they have to
wait for next week. I’m like, ‘How can you wait? I can’t wait until
the next one.’ So I always borrow the next one. It’s like soap
operas. It’s better than soap operas because you become more
involved with the characters."
CLUB: The Japanese Animation Club meets on Tuesdays from 7 p.m.
to 9 p.m. in Kinsey 51. For more information browse the web at
http: //www.math.ucla.edu/~csprouse/JAC.