All quotes are translated from Mandarin to English.
When all its officers graduated in 2014, Monta Vista Anime Club disappeared with them, leaving nothing but a record behind in the office. And that record was what encouraged junior Siyan Ji and gave her hope to seek peers with similar interests.
Starting from her sophomore year, Ji considered the idea of establishing a club that would allow students to watch and discuss classic anime works together. She collaborated with junior Michelle Chang, the future vice president of Anime Club, and they aimed to start a club together. And when they discovered that there had been an Anime Club before, they were able to push their plans forward smoothly and officially re-established the MV Anime Club in December 2015.
The club is going to have meetings during lunch in room A112 every other Tuesday, starting from Tuesday Feb. 2. In the first club meeting, Ji showed a classic piece of anime, welcome new members and then introduced the club to the students. Since Ji is fascinated by the detailed process of making those seemingly simple anime, she also hopes to bring about future club activities such as watching videos of the anime-making process, producing garage kit figures, case studying anime production and having students draw a character from different perspectives.
Although she revived an existing club instead of making a new one, Ji planned to change the name Anime Club to MV A.C.G, which stands for Anime, Comics and Games.
“We know there are a limited amount of students interested in anime [at MVHS], but those three categories [anime, comics and games] are closely connected in terms of plots and production,” said Ji. “We hope to make the club more inclusive to the student body, so that the club can develop and incorporate different points of view.”
Ji is currently an ELD student and is not fluent in English, which means that vice president Michelle Chang, who also enjoys illustrating and watching anime, will be the speaker in most of the events.
“There are two of us, another student and I, to do the talking part, since we are more comfortable about speaking in English,” Chang said. “But the content of our speech will be planned ahead by all of us.”
In fact, during the club application process, Chang was the translator of Ji when talking to the teachers and student officers. When Ji had difficulties explaining an idea to someone, she would whisper it to Chang in Mandarin, and then Chang would present it to the other speaker in English. In this communication process, they were also able to understand each other’s view on the club better and thus combine their views to build a comprehensive goal for the club.
Similar to Chang, junior Raymond Yan also acts as a translator in the club, but is in charge of communicating with Japanese ELD students instead.
Yan has been watching anime for many years, hence his ability to speak and read Japanese. He also knows a lot of people with interests in anime because he used to play games with other students, which helped him recruit new members.
“The club will help students with similar hobbies in anime to connect with each other,” Yan said. “And exploring the world of anime, which contains both interesting plots and enjoyable visuals, will give us a relatively relaxing period during the busy school life.”
Since Ji has watched many good videos that are in Chinese or in Japanese, she also plans to add English subtitles with Chang and Yan, and share them with other club members.
In preparation for their first meeting, the club officers and members received a great surprise from the former club.
“There was a fund of $179 left by the club before, which we will [be] able to use,” Ji said. “If we are able to have many members and more funds, we hopefully will be able to host school activities such as Summer Festivals to showcase our works and attract more members.”
