"Kanpai, Anime!" means watching anime at a sake bar!

Hey gang! Some of you may know about my various anime gigs in Orlando. One is "Kanpai, Anime!", an anime night at the local sake and tea lounge known as Tatame Lounge. It's about 15 minutes away from Full Sail University and near Rollins College! Perhaps their anime club will come out and show courage to do battle against us in dodgeball! (They have been challenged...)

Anyways, "Kanpai, Anime!" is the first Thursday of each month and the event is FREE. December 2nd will feature Origin: Spirits of the Past and Read Or Die, which we actually showed earlier this year! The event starts at 8pm and you can RSVP here.

Thanks for the love, FUNimation!

Remember that super cool dude Rojas we met at MegaCon? With the pretty hair? Yeah he's a pretty cool guy who sells anime and doesn't afraid of anything. We also stay in touch and he just put up a nice post on FUNimation's blog about the Kanpai, Anime! event happening next Tuesday!

You can read about it here. As for the event itself, a Facebook page has been created for it. RSVP for it and show up! It will be awesome! We're showing the BluRay of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone. The event is free and at Tatame Lounge at 223 W. Fairbanks Ave. Winter Park, FL.

He was also nice enough to link to this blog, which I am very appreciative of! For those who found us through there, we meet twice a month at Full Sail University. You do not have to be a Full Sail student to come to meetings but you do have to be over the age of 18. We also ask that you don't be some crazy fanatic about anything(i.e. a Narutard or any other series equivalent).

If those two things don't apply to you, then you are welcome to our meetings! We show lots of cool stuff and finish each meeting off with a feature showing(like a movie or short OVA). We also do events at conventions like MegaCon and the upcoming Anime Festival Orlando.

Our next meeting will be on Sunday, July 11th! We'll be doing a super robot anime potluck to show off some of the coolest anime Japan has ever made. More details will come soon!

Recap of yesterday's meeting! 6/6/10 edition!

News

• A new anime night hosted by yours truly will be showing up at Tatame Lounge in Winter Park! It's called Kanpai, Anime! and it will take place on the last Tuesday of every month. The goal is to show an noteworthy anime film to an adult crowd while sake and tea is consumed. The first one will be on June 29th and the showing will be Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone!
• Our friend David M. had to leave Florida to return to his home state. The circumstances are unfortunate and we wish him the best! Stay in touch, dude!
• A new member came into club who is not a film student! Nothing against film students, but diversity in the club is a good thing!
• Nothing new on the future hangout with Anime Spot. They did have a meeting after ours so hopefully, they figured out what the want to do with us. I did mention that I suggest Boardwalk Bowl as an idea to them.
• Once Gungrave ends, members of the club want Black Lagoon to take it's place.

Mystery Feature

As you can tell from the top image, our mystery feature was indeed Studio Ghibli and Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies, a World War II movie that shows the tragic and desperate struggle of two orphaned children as Japan fell to America. While sometimes light hearted, it is an overall depressing film that shows the harsh tragedies of war from the perspective of the losing side.

For that reason, Grave of the Fireflies is considered a taboo movie to show at anime clubs across the nation. Obviously I had to show it. The chances that some club members have never seen the movie and otherwise may not have been exposed to it made me feel obligated to do so. I also find this to be one of the most mature things that we could possibly show and I strongly feel that it would have been a good experience for some of the younger club members to watch this. 

I wanted this showing to be a mystery because I didn't want to scare anyone off from attending the meeting. Nobody in club would intentionally go to feel sadness so it had to be a secret. This is a strong film and I am proud of everyone who watched it yesterday. For club regulars who were not there: imagine two hours where everyone was silent, not playing games, and focused intently on watching the film. It's a feat that sounds impossible, but that is the power this movie possesses.

This club doesn't have to be like other clubs that have plagued themselves with yaoi and moe fandom, or have regulated their showings to cheap thrill anime that offer instant gratification but are ultimately shallow. While we have shown those kind of works in the past(well, not the yaoi), it is definitely a positive that this club is sometimes able to watch anime that can be serious, thoughtful, and artistic.

With that being said, how did you all feel about watching this movie yesterday? Have you seen it before or was this your first time? I would like to know those things.