Welcome to the Kitsune Anime Society, the anime club at a big state university in Indiana. Every Thursday during the semester we take over the biggest lecture hall we can get, put a tape in the projector, and watch Japanese animation for three hours with sixty or so of our closest friends. Most of what we show is subtitled. Some of it you can't see anywhere else in the state. All of it is better on a twenty-foot screen.

The name: a kitsune is a fox in Japanese, and in the old stories foxes are clever shape-shifters and tricksters. A club that shows a different kind of story every week ought to be a bit of a shape-shifter. Also, it sounded cool in 1994.

About me. I'm Danny Hua. I grew up in Houston, in a Chinese-Vietnamese family where the TV was usually showing Hong Kong movies, and I found anime in high school through a friend's third-generation copy of a Japanese robot show I couldn't understand a word of. I came up here for grad school in chemical engineering in the fall of 1994, put up flyers that October, and nine people came to the first meeting in a seminar room with a 25-inch TV. I'm now a fifth-year Ph.D. student, I've been the club's tape librarian since the first tape, and I keep this page.

This fall

• Rurouni Kenshin continues in the first half of the night, in order, from the fansub tapes. We left off at episode 30 in April; we're going three episodes a week.
• Slayers in the second half on alternate weeks, from the tapes we bought. Lina Inverse is the best thing to happen to fantasy since dragons.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion from the beginning, on the ADV tapes, for the new people. The veterans are already arguing about the ending again.
• Miyazaki Night, October 14: My Neighbor Totoro and Disney's tape of Kiki's Delivery Service. Bring a little brother or sister. Bring your parents.
• Princess Mononoke: Miramax opens Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 film in a few American cities on October 29, dubbed in English. If it comes anywhere within driving distance this fall, we are going as a group, and we'll car pool. Watch this page.

Full dates are on the fall schedule.

Our fansub policy

A fansub is a tape of a Japanese show that fans have translated and subtitled themselves. For a lot of shows it's the only way to see them in this country, and a lot of us found anime that way. But the people who made these shows deserve to be paid, and the American companies that license them need to sell tapes or they stop licensing. So the club follows the rules the fansub community set for itself, and we follow them strictly:

1. Unlicensed shows only. We show and copy fansubs only of shows that no American company has licensed.
2. Once it's licensed, it's done. The day a show is licensed in the U.S., we stop showing the fansubs, we stop copying them, we pull them off the library shelf, and the club buys the official release when it comes out. Slayers is our example: we showed fansubs of it back in the day, and when it was licensed here we stopped and bought the tapes. They're on the shelf now.
3. Never for money. Nobody sells fansubs, ever. Members can have a fansub copied onto their own blank tape, and that's it.
4. Licensed tapes are never copied. Not for members, not for friends, not for anybody. Borrow it from the library like a civilized person.
5. Buy what you love. If a show you saw at the club comes out here, buy it. That's how we get more.

Chad Robinson, a grad student in linguistics who reads Japanese, checks new fansubs before we show them, and once a semester he gives a talk on what the translations get wrong.

Snack nights

The first Thursday of every month, the club's snack money goes to the Asian grocery out on the highway and we all eat things we can't pronounce. Regular favorites: Pocky (chocolate and strawberry), shrimp chips, rice crackers with seaweed, Hello Panda cookies, Ramune soda in the bottles with the marble in the neck (Thomas Lesniak is the only one who can open them without spraying himself), and Calpis, which tastes better than it sounds. Nobody is required to try the dried squid. Somebody always does.

Summer trip

Seven of us piled into two cars in July and drove out to a convention on the East Coast, which for four of them was their first. Three days of video rooms, panels, a dealers' room that ate everyone's money, and a costume contest. We came back with a box of soundtracks, two wall scrolls for the club, and Levi's sunburn from the walk to the hotel. Pictures are still at the drugstore (Jessica's camera, Jessica's problem).

Joining

Anybody can come to screenings, students or not, no questions asked. To be a member, which lets you borrow from the tape library and vote in elections, sign the list at any screening and pay $5 a semester. Dues go to snacks, blank tapes and the occasional new release. We have 74 paid members this fall, our most ever.

Officers, fall 1999

A note from the librarian

If my advisor is right (he is usually optimistic), I'll defend my dissertation next summer and leave. I've been with this club for five years, and I'll admit I worry about it. The tapes, the equipment and the room reservations are a lot of small jobs that I've been doing out of habit, and habits don't graduate with you. So this year I'm writing everything down, and I'm looking for one or two people, preferably freshmen or sophomores, to learn the library with me. You don't need to know anything about anime. You need to be organized and to like the club. Talk to me after any screening. The tapes belong to the club, not to me, and I want them in good hands.

Elsewhere

Anime Otaku Central is a community college fan's page with reviews of anime you can find in the U.S., a good take on subs versus dubs, and a clear "Fansubs 101." His club meets Thursday nights too. Great minds.