Society history

Proto-AnimeSoc (1997/1998)

This section details the goings on before we had our fabled Anime and Manga Society:

Back in the sorrowful time of 1997, The University of Warwick, had no Anime and Manga Society. However, we did have a particularly active Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (”U-suf-n-fus”), and ye, from here did the Anime and Manga Society schism. You see, it was upon this year of old that our Grand Founding President, (know here forth as “Stuart”) happened across the university, and he did harken upon the lack of Anime there. His great plan was to infiltrate the University society for one year, and upon learning the rites and customs therein, to spawn a society of his own.

Back then, UWSF&FS had 200+ members, did games meetings, socials, trips to Birmingham, pub crawls, and its members would devote entire weekends to the watching of videos and the playing of games. Having no other place to gather, the sparse collection of anime and manga fans collected here, and it was here that The Great Stuart came across Ben, a Burn Up fan.

From out of the woodwork, the group also came to include Steven Wassal, a barkeeper and later projectionist, and the final founder, Andrew Shore. This motley crew proceeded to corrupt the young and inexperienced minds of UWSF&FS, using the society’s video weekends to show many anime classics such as Dragon Half, Tenchi Muyo and El Hazard, and went on to invade Stuart’s kitchen and perform all-nighter showings of anime goodness.

It was this corruption, plus an anime evening at the end of the year which provided the marketing needed for spark off the society’s initial membership.

The Society Becomes Official (1998/1999)

Exec:

Having found the minimum 30 members, and some exec, the society was officially started within the Union with the impressive budget of £50, plus £1.50 per member.

Exec Notes:

Stuart: Stuart, foolishly thinking it’d look good on his CV, opted for this job. With 5-6 years of anime experience behind him, some experience on other society execs and “quite a videos,” he made probably a good choice, despite having “never really got into fandom much.” Stuart claims to sport an anime purchase of £6 per minute.

Steven: Steven saw no reason to object to being the secretary. He was a rather more avid fan than Stuart (and still apparently does stuff for the London Anime Club).

Andrew: Andrew sort of ended up coming along for the ride, but was very welcome (we never really got enough cash that he had to do much). He’s still into the anime scene and has even made appearances on convention committees with such esteemed positions as “committee mascot” no change there then.

Ben: Despite holding the least impressive title, Ben was the big gun! When he was in the society, he was the webpage designer of Otaku.com, a freelance writer for gaming magazines, and heavily involved in the anime scene. He wrote a number of articles for Manga Mania, and is more recently known for writing the software that runs most UK anime cons today, as well as having been in senior committee positions for a number of UK Cons (he’s currently Technical Officer at both Ayacon and Minamicon). See if you can find Ben’s final year project on the internet (it’s called “SASAMI” - I kid you not).

Christina: Really enthusiastic, but dropped out in her second year and went down south. As of early 2004, she’s apparently in the University of Middlesex and “watches anime on occasion.”(?)

Hiromi: Our only ever Japanese member (at the time of writing) - she was only around for a few terms, as she graduated - and is now in Singapore(?). Sometimes when we were setting up the room she would start doodling on the board. She was an AMAZING artist and as soon as anyone noticed, she quickly scrubbed it off before anyone could see it (much to our frustration - she could have filled a board with scenes from that week’s shows in ten to fifteen minutes, she was that fast and good - she was just shy about it). She also didn’t get along with the Japanese society (Stuart - “something I can sympathise with considering their attitude when I asked their exec about publicising our society to their members”).

Adam: Was only on the exec for one term, before he dropped out and tried his look at another university. Most notable for bringing his (real) sword to a weekly showing and drawing it when the lights are out. Don’t worry - we’ll try to stop this ever happening again!

Alan: Also dropped out after not-so-long. Alan got fame for eating an entire chocolate orange within the space of the first episode each week, before moving onto his other snacks. :) Alan still hangs around in Coventry.

Members:
The society scraped in with just over 30 members - a little disappointing, but not all that surprising, since the society was new. Steve had produced moderately impressive promotional video that got shown at the Fresher’s Fayre (but didn’t seem to help with membership).

What Happened?
Weekly Showings:

At first, we did these in S0.19 (and were allocated the Men’s Toilets in Social Studies for a brief while - it apparently seats over 30 people!), and showed everything on a TV. Not much is known of the showings back then, but we know Fushigi Yuugi featured. Ben did reviews for stuff, and hence we got hold of a few early review copies of things, as well as buying in some of the major fansubs (the internet wasn’t the haven for anime back then that it is now!). Later on, we were allowed into S0.21 and other rooms and used the data projectors.

Socials:

Attempts were made at doing a two hour showing, with a one hour social afterwards, but these didn’t really kick off (only about six people turned up, three obsessed with Final Fantasy). They got scrapped, and the society started doing three hour showings instead.

Anime Central Meetings:

The society did bi-monthly trips to Anime Central meetings in Birmingham - which involved leaving campus on foot at the ungodly hour of 7am to walk to the bus stop because there weren’t any to campus. Still, there were apparently people crazy enough to do this!

The Early Years (1999/2000)

Exec:

Having the considerable experience of One Year in the Business, the Anime and Manga Society went on to experience another.

Members:
Around 30 again, probably. (Artalyx wasn’t that specific on the actual numbers here).

What Happened?
Weekly Showings:

Continued to happen, firstly in S0.21 on a Data Projector, then onto a TV, then into a room in the Ramphal Building. Why? we’d asked Senate House if we could use the data projector to show our stuff, and they’d OK-ed us, but when Audio Visual Services found out, they went ape and decreed that we needed to pay them £30, plus yet more money for one of their aforesaid apes to come and push a few buttons for us. So we moved onto a TV, and when things had cooled down a little, found a room in the Ramphal Building that was free from the evil clutches of AV Services.

We showed Neon Genesis Evangelion (there was apparently a debate over whether to show the last two episodes!) and the original Slayers series, as well as Elf Princess Rane, Gravitation, Moldiver, possibly Serial Experiments Lain, and CLAMP Campus Detectives. During the third term, we also showed a bunch of Ghible films like Porco Rosso, Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbour Totoro, and some of Card Captor Sakura, Love Hina and Kare Kano during the third hour.

The CLAMP Campus Detectives Incident:

Marked the all-time low in turnout to a weekly showing, ever. Starting with over 20 people, we showed CLAMP Campus Detectives, and finished up with about 4. :)

Attempts to get anime shown at Student Cinema:

Largely failed, due to changes there making this sort of thing quite difficult.

The Constitution:

(As far as I am aware, this is still the current (2018) constitution somehow… - MrPorky)

The Union gained a new level of beurocracy, and produced a whole list of forms for us to fill in. The most infamous was the “constitution.” (Actually, this was more like a fill-in-the-blank form where we’d write the aims and objectives of the society). It was originally worded to say “we will not show hentai.” At the time, hentai was the image associated with anime (and at early 2004, it pretty much still is!, (Note the majority of this was written in 2009)) - so we thought it’d be a good idea to, y’know, not show it. The Union crossed out that bit (not removed; crossed out) - thus giving us no argument about avoiding showing porn!

We also had to say something in Equal Ops about showing yaoi (gay hentai) and presumably yuri (lesbian hentai) as well as straight hentai.

The Video Library:

The year before saw our first moderate budget being put to the Union. We got £500 to spend, which saw us buying Slayers and Escaflowne (and maybe some other stuff).

The Early Years (Part II) (2000/2001)

Exec:

Still in Ramphal, the society began its first year with none of the founding members around.

Members:
This year saw membership boost right up into the 70s.

What Happened?
Weekly Showings:

For most of the year, we were in the Ramphal Building, as before. As a part of their continuing campaign against letting us do anything, once again AV Services went bananas and kicked us out of Ramphal. We were relegated to using a little room at the top of Humanities - and numbers in attendance dropped to as low as a dozen.

Stuff Happens (2001/2002)

Exec:

Exec Notes:

Claire: Possibly best known for running Yaoi.co.uk and ruffling people’s hair, Claire stood unopposed in the elections for President.

Laura: Laura Stood as both librarian and social secretary. An anime fan of several years, she arranged some varied socials, and attempted to create a database for the library, but that never really got off the ground.

Adam: Standing for treasurer to get access to the zip drives in the Union North Resources Room, Adam got voted in as Treasurer.

Moz: Moz was a crazy guy. He had a belt of some sort in just about every martial art, and I have hazy memories of him demonstrating this during a trek back from the pub in Earlsdon.

What Happened?
Weekly Showings:

Thanks to the mammoth effort of a bid for some £2000 of kit (it was worth a try, we mused; much to our surprised, it turned out to be true!), this year we got a data projector of our own and were no longer at the mercy of AV Services, nor did we need to use a TV. We did showings in L4 every Tuesday night. After a small amount of argument and disorganisation at the first showing (eventually Photon, Dragon Half and something else), we showed Slayers NEXT and Nadesico, about half of Bebop and Miscellaneous Other Stuff (a lot of Oruchuban Ebichu, for instance). The final showing was our soon-to-be-traditional kareoke night.

The Bebop Incident:

Not long after becoming president, Claire (must to the annoyance of almost all of the society) decided Bebop sucked, and decreed it must go. It did.

Exec Infighting:

Claire, being lovely and all didn’t really do much. Not many people appreciated this, and at one point Claire refused to do a speech in front of the society and got thrown over Matt’s Shoulder and dumped outside as an end result, and did it himself. It all culminated in a grand (though secretive and never followed through) plan to attempt a vote of no confidence and get a new president. But that was something internal.

Socials:

We ran actual socials! Originally organised by the ever-prominent Matt, we held a few (at unknown locations) before Laura took over and sent us to at the very least The City Arms in Earlsdon and The Cask and Bottle in Leamington. From bucko: I have vivid memories of the walk back from Earlsdon, and slightly less vivid memories of doing the Cask and Bottle Challenge - I still have the T-Shirt! (Ewww, no-one ever throw up on the bus while sitting next to me again.)

Hentai:

In an attempt to test the power of the constitution, Laura decided we should show some porn. The infamous Eva Hentai was put forth by her, and despite objections, got shown.

Quoth Fiona: “But it’s really well drawn - look at the effort that’s gone into it” haunts me to this day, as do some of the more bizarrely translated lines.

Society Happenings (2002/2003)

Exec:

Exec Notes:

Michelle: Madly enthusiastic about doing a lot of stuff, which never really got done unfortunately, Michelle stood unopposed as president.

Rob/Jasper: Getting an equal number of votes, Rob and Jasper opted to both have the Librarian position. Rob is somewhat famous for having really big hair and Jasper, well. Jasper was Jasper.

Colin: The first “chibi” exec member to our knowledge, Colin stood unopposed as EquiOps, and since no-one wanted to hurt him, got in.

Bucko: With some nonsensical speech about his Perl skills, bucko got in as webmaster, and spent all summer writing a madly complicated engine to run the website on.

Mike: A big fan of mecha and anime that has some inner meaning, Mike stood unopposed.

Members
Once again, we got about 75.

What Happened?
Weekly Showings:

Happened as per usual in our now comfortable home of L4. We showed RahXephon and Lost Universe, then Hellsing and Lain. Random things also got in including some of Abenobashi Magical Shopping District, Mahoromatic and Ebichu. The third term, after Hellsing and Lain, became a Themed Anime term. Each week, the exec picked a theme and brought 6 titles along to represent that theme and showed one episode from each. To our memories, we had Mecha, Catgirls, Guns and Ninjas, Space, Love, Magical Girl and Cute.

We ended the term with our traditional Kareoke Night.

Socials:

Kinda didn’t happen at the start of the year - excepting a one hour period after one or two of the early showings. Mike brought in bi-weekly socials after his election, all of which in The Graduate. Turnout was on average about 8. The Real Ale festival in term 2 saw AnimeSoc turning up with about 11 members and producing the monstrous tower of (plastic) glasses you can see in the gallery (if I have updated the new site with the gallery - If a future webmaster wants this, try and get in contact with me, MrPorky for the files).

Video Weekends:

We ran three video weekends. One for each Slayers Series.

Mailing List:

The exec started up an exec mailing list which got some insane amount of traffic at times, and was utterly dead at others.

Mascot Competition:

We had a mascot competition to determine who would be the Publicity Officer. Only one entry actually was submitted, and, well, it won. Dooky was therefore cop-opted into the exec.

Activity! (2003/2004)

Exec:

A lot of stuff happened this year. Well, a lot of exec stuff anyway.

What Happened?
Weekly Showings:

Went on as normal. We showed Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 and Azumanga Daioh, then She - The Ultimate Weapon and Full Metal Panic Fumoffu. The less said about the non-Triad fansubs of Azumanga, the better. In a break with tradition, we didn’t use the first showing as a “baptism of fire,” but instead used it to demonstrate the “best in anime” - selected episodes from The Animatrix, Cowboy Bebop, etc. The third hour became a voted period - rather than the exec picking something, people were free to bring anything they liked (that was about an hour long) and the attendees voted on it.

Video Weekends:

We had one in the first term showing The Vision of Escaflowne, and for the first time in the history of the society, two in the second term: most of El Hazard and a “miscellaneous movies, OVAs etc” weekend, which was basically like an extended third hour. We’re interested in doing this again.

The Website:

For the first time in recent history, the society actually got an up to date Website (written in php, it’s as awful as you can imagine after 10 years of different webmasters; Note, not the current site). With a bunch of content submitted by David Buckley, and a lot of design-work and updating from Rob Meerman, the website was formed. We also got an online version of the library for the first time (possibly ever), and for the first time in the recorded history of the society a complete account of the weekly showings was kept - this details what was shown along with links to other prominent website (AniDB and AnimeNfo).

Later that year an Exec area was introduced, and the library and schedule systems were modified to be database driven and a fancy collections of web-forms on the site were introduced for keeping them up-to-date. The Exec area was eventually intergrated with the forum, so user authentication was handled by the forum.

The Forum:

The forum was spawned to suck up everyone’s time. Pulling in almost 500 posts per month for the first two months, the forum became a hive of activity, where announcements were made, discussion was held, etc. By October of 2004, the Forum had over 7000 posts from 50 users, and misc mods were introduced by Rob (spoiler text formatting, user-selectable genres which dictated rank images, etc).

Warwick Cinema:

We were trying to get a joint showing with these guys, of Spriggan from ADV Films. Unfortunately, due to the cost of shipping the film from the US, the showing fell through.

Reviews:

Also new on the website was the reviews section. We used it to get (free) review copies from a small collection of UK-based anime releasing companies, notably MVM who sent us 6 DVDs within a week of inquiring.

Proactivity (2003/2004)

Exec:

(Forenote, this may be the wrong year, and every subsequent year may be out by one. I really don’t know what year the archives are on - MrPorky)

Members
We got about 80 members.

What Happened?
OVA/Movie Weekend:

After discussing it on the website’s forum we held a video weekend, but instead of deciding before-hand what to show we brought a pool on anime OVAs and movies, and the assembled group chose what to watch. This worked well, but as usual didn’t have a very large turn-out.

ImproManga:

Anthony Loh (aka SohoLoh) proposed that the society create their own manga-styled web-comic, this idea was met with much enthusiasm and after a short delay and a few mishaps getting the first chapters done, took off quite nicely. At the time of writing (Sun, 27 Mar 2005) the ImproManga consists of 75 pages and has it’s own area in the website.

Push for change of audience:

AnimeSoc at the time was made up almost solely of science students, and we felt this was partly because the exec was entirely of the science variety, partly because anime is distributed through the ultimate geek-medium: the internet, and partly because we simply didn’t advertise in Humanities.

So we prepared some large, colourful publicity and put it up around the Humanities building, including a small blurb about the series and strategically placing the adverts by elevators where people would likely be waiting. The success of this was limited, as the humanities department don’t take kindly to posters which arn’t on noticeboards, no matter how pretty they might be.

Socials:

We held a bowling social which was quite successful. We also held a social to see Zatoichi at the Warwick Student Cinema which wasn’t particularly well attented, possibly because it was the first social we organised as a society in that academic year (Oct 2004).

Competitions:

AnimeSoc were blessed with a large budget (sadly lacking funding for “The Human Instrumentality Project”, as the SUnion denied our budget of £1,000,000,000) and had plenty of library material available. An end-of-term competition was organised as an art competiton, with the lucky winner taking their pick of the library as a prize!

We also held an anime quiz at the end of the summer term, which proved quite popular. It featured “Identify the obscure reference”, picking the odd-one-out, identifying animes by their explosions, stating the names of Seyuu and possibly others (my memory is hazy).

Attempt to reorganise nominations:

We were constantly running over-time as nominations were a popular section of our evening and much time was spent getting people into position to rant about how great their nominated material was. We tried to ensure people emailed us before hand so we could compile lists to send in the weekely emails, but this failed dismally.

Website:

The website under-went a number of changes (no thanks to the elected webmaster, I might add), with RobM integrating the site with the forum, enabling the Exec area to be managed in an easy manner, with up-to-date member-lists and dynamic news and impromanga pages, generated by reading particular forums which only certain members were able to start new threads in.

The website also became XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant and considerably more accessable - scaling well to those that use absolutely massive fonts (such as Colin Mayhill) and also became much more text-only compatible for those dial-up moments when pictures just seem too much hassle.

The site got hacked a couple of times through some minor exploits of the forum, which were patched afterwards and no data was lost. We also had some fun problems with guest-posting, receiving all kinds of rubbish and spam.

Society DivX player:

After much whining from RobM about using his laptop at showings and how it took away from his enjoyment, and AnimeSoc’s failure to build a society PC, we looked into getting a society DivX player as they are relativly cheap.

Warwick TV:

WTV was beginning to pick up pace at this time, and was charged with providing visuals at the Metropolis event, and approached us asking if we’d like to produce anything for the theme of Tokyo.

While the idea proved very popular, no one stepped up to produce anything. For reasons irrelevant to this history, WTV did not do the visuals in the end, and Union Ents did instead, AnimeSoc were contacted by Union Ents and we ended up supplying multiple DVDs for them to show on the screens, and even in a small screening area they setup.

It is not know how popular this was, as no-one on the exec attended the Metopolis events.

eXtreme All-Nighter:

Cat’s idea for an all-night event of horrible, offensive anime was finally realised, and while not attended by the RockSoc crowd we were partly exepecting, it proved very popular with those who spent the night with us in Lib1.

Unfortunately the event clashed with CompSoc’s LAN party, and this may have lost us some of our nocturnal event goers.

Another competition!

We held another art competition and had considerably more entrants than the previous year. The winning entry was of particualr note: a fully animated Tachikoma (from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) wandering about our usual meeting place (L4) and exploring the stuff we left behind, complete with a japanese sound track (taken from the series) and all-new subtitles. See 2004-5 Winter competition.

AnimeSoc NWO (2004/2005)

Exec:

The anime society underwent some serious restructuring, reducing the exec to just 5 core positions:

Members
We got 86 offical members, and 5 external ones.

What Happened?
Website becomes a wiki:

Partly due to being 1337, and partly out of the worry that no-one would continue his work, RobM converted the website into a Wiki, while somehow maintaining the look and feel and magically integrating the exisiting site and forum into the new DokuWiki system. The old page names were setup to forward to their new wiki’fied counterparts. The forum continued to recieve anonymous spam, which entertained us greatly, one of which was hijacked as the offical “Maria-sama ga Miteru” thread as both featured catholic school girls and lesbianism.

Among other changes, the website gained a new and improved library management system and ability to add arbitary induviduals to our mailing list and a portal to the university’s Light Directory (though LDAP) allowing us to verify university IDs which are not in our local database.

Ayacon!

Ayacon announced that they’d be holding their next convention here at Warwick! We were naturally very happy about this, and knew they’d been in contact with the university as they’d contacted AnimeSoc first asking to be pointed in the right direction.

Apparently one of the con’s panel was a founding member of our very own AnimeSoc!

AnimeSoc Syndicate (2005/2006)

Exec:

Exec:
The structure of the exec has changed yet again as we now have three divisions under the Tactical & Strategic Public Propoganda Core to make it run more effectively. At the start we enslaved Rob as our Webführer (done so successfully he didn’t even know!) once again with the vision of enlisting a replacement who is more central. This vision was soon realised in the form of Fred Emmott.

History was made that fateful day of elections swearing in an exec consisting of fresh (as in freshers!) women apart from Terry, the old salt, and John Haskell, the shanghaied bruiser. This reflected on the gender balance amongst our members with more women coming to anime than in previous years which is great to see.

Exec Shake Up
Mid Summer Term however John resigned over a disagreement over responsibility with Terry making history in the process. Mark Henderson volunteered to fill the gap. Nelli and Claire both resigned at the start of the new academic year because of conficting timetables and such. This left the exec as follows.

President - Terry Fitzgerald

Treasurer - Nicola Tomson

Secretary - Lauren Reynolds

Librarian - Mark Henderson

Publicity/Social Exec - Sarah Camp

Webführer - Fred Emmott

Members
At the start of our prosperous reign we had 63 internal and 8 external members. At the end we have 99 internal and 8 external members!

What’s Happening?
NewType:

We will be ‘suscribing’ to the american edition of NewType, a mainstream popular anime magazine. This will ensure a supply of sweet freebies aswell as keeping our members upto date of what’s happening on the anime scene in Tokyo, Japan. We’re constantly going to refresh them and give the old copies away to our members so we won’t be weighed down!

Bi-weekly socials:

From week 15 onwards we’re looking to do socials every fortnight on Saturday afternoons in the Graduate Pub. It’ll be an excellent opportunity to socialise in a laid back atmosphere that will help the society become closer.

Cinema:

We’re eager to go as a society to watch anime on the big screen! Soon there will be GitS: Innocence and after that Howl’s Moving Castle. GitS was, of course, good but Howl’s proved to be a dissapointment for those that went as it was dubbed when they said prior that it would be otherwise.

Art Competitions:

Another effort to make the society more active! This first of many is a T-shirt design competition. The winner gets their design on a T-shirt and anybody who enters gets a poster from our store.

Video Weekend:

On the 25th and 26th of Feb the soc is doing a Video Weekend of Classics which is targeted at people who are not familiar with anime but are aware of the big names such as Akira etc and want to see them.

We had another Classics Video weekend on the 21st and 22nd of October which was a success.

Quiz:

Happening at the end of the spring and summer term with a healthy mix of silliness and controversy.

Yaoi & Yuri Fest and a SUSHI social:

Happened on the 9th of June in association with Pride Soc. Initial idea was to all go out to a chinese idea but instead we opted to do our own sushi social! The food was exceptional and the anime controversial - just the way we like it.

Impromange Mark 2:

We have initiated a new impromanga which the new people can get more involved in. Nikki started it and overseeing it, contact her to get to know more.

Freshers Stall:

We had the best freshers stall without a doubt! Who can beat a bunch of ninjas!

The AnimeSoc Régime (2006/2007)

Exec:

The elections came along for the new year and the exec was once again changed quite considerably. The structure remained the same, with the exception of an extra librarian to help with the extra load. However, almost every member was new (or returning) to the exec:

hat changed?
While many of the exec changed, little was different about the society. The weekly showings remained in the same format, socials continued to go ahead, a quiz was held at the end of each term (each with delicious cake for the winners) and general fun was had. There were, of course, a couple of things different:

Halls Raids:

Having been a member of the society since Time Immemorial, and enthusiastic about the direction it was now to take, our new president developed a similarly new progaganda initiative: on the first Saturday and Sunday of term one (i.e. Fresher arrival days), certain exec memebers were to tailgate into on-campus halls of residence and distribute a large number of leaflets and posters to each kitchen. This proved to be far more engaging and less annoying to the denizens than it sounds; it gave us the opportunity to chat with them about our fair society and its actions, and as it turned out, a surprising number of freshers were casual watchers of the more well-known anime. Our efforts culminated with the first official showing of term, where a reassuringly huge number of new members showed up.

Exec/Society Meetings:

In an attempt to get people more involved in the society and to generally increase the efficiency of the exec, weekly meetings were introduced after showings. They were very successful; many events and proposals about the society were discussed and since all the exec and many members were present, a decision was often reached very quickly.

The Weekend of Win:

This new weekend event was introduced with the intention of showing some of those seminal series in anime. Showing two fantastic series in their entirety (Haibane Renmei and FLCL) along with gaming (including Guitar Hero and various Wii games) and a barbeque at Our Benevolent Dictator’s house. It was considered a complete success, and there are rumours of the WoW 2: The Burning Crusade, only time will tell…

Term 3 Democracy:

During term 3 it was decided not to show a full series at weekly showings unlike the previous terms. This was mostly because the exec believed many people would be too busy with revision or exams, or just too lazy, to turn up to every showing. It was thought that the society should give some façade of democracy to it’s members. Every week, up to 3 series would be submitted for a vote to the members, and the winner would be shown in the last hour of the showing. This worked well for term 3, but the society will return to it’s regular schedule with the new term.

The AnimeSoc Régime: Redux (2007/2008)

Exec:

The elections in early 2008 saw the executive committee go from strength to strength.

Firstly, the guiding hands of a few seasoned members would be present for another year: the by-now notorious immortal bucko stepped up to the plate as president once more, and Paris and Twinklefeet also reprised their roles as secretary and treasurer respectively.

However, there were also many new recruits keen to help the society by taking on the charge of execsmanship: Valentina expressed enthusiasm at the responsibility of organising rallies and distributing propaganda, and thus became Minister of Truth; Joel and Tristan succeeded Mark and Amostyx as the librarian / library minion duo. In addition, having spent a long spell without an elected webführer, Zed0 and Dom agreed to oversee the internet side of things; henceforth becoming the society webanimals.

What happened?
Halls Raid 2: The Cirno Campaign:

Many of us took again to the highways and byways of campus for the first weekend of term attempting to garner interest for the society. Continuing the tradition of using Touhou characters instead of those from any sort of anime on promotional materials, our leaflets this time featured chibi Marissa and Advent Cirno.

The AnimeSoc Régime Kai (2008/2009)

Exec:

Unfortunatley Bucko, Paris and Joel decided to graduate this year, taking with them a wealth of knowledge and experience that we will struggle to build up again.

What happened?
This lasted a short while, until Tom decided that he would step down from the position of president to square off more effectively with academia, and a reelection was called, in which Tristan was elected as President. Alex’s position was created in order to furnish him with an exec position, and he took on various responsibilities like managing the all-nighters and bringing a laptop to showings. Tom’s heroic laptop had to step down eventually, to enjoy a smooth retirement being lovingly dissasembled by Chinese copper reprocessors. For Alex’s efforts, he was renamed Squirtle the Cabin Boy.

Much of the running of the society stayed the same, There were quizzes and all-nighters and cake and exec meetings. There was also Higurashi. The Society watched the first series of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni in term 1, the second series in term 2, and the OVA through various parts of term 3. Newtype unfortunatley stopped distributing in the UK due to the Global Economic Crisis, leaving us with a drought of free stuff.

Yaoi & Yuri All Nighter:

This time, organised as a standard all nighter without the help of Warwick Pride, this took the place of the 5th of the 6 all nighters we hold during the year. it was a resounding success, allowing Valentina to shine in her role as yaoi enthusiast and allowing us to increment the showings of many of our favourite not-for-the-light-of-day series.

MVM:

The MVM DVD relationship went from strength to strength, with over half the DVDs in the society’s library now made up of MVM Review Discs and more arriving through the post every month. The Website was changed to reflect the importance of Reviews for the society in maintaining this relationship.

BBQ:

There was a Barbeque held at the New New President’s house, to join in with the whole summery feel, and provide the various members of the Compsoc derivative community with yet another event at term’s end.

Splat!

The Society attended SPLAT, the Warwick Student Arts Festival this year at the behest of our vigorous new publicity officer Sophie. The Society produced a suprisingly large amount of artwork and an abridged history of anime and manga to all those who wandered into the SPLAT tent.

Quiz:

The Regular end-of-year quiz was unfortunatley deficient in cake this year, but entertaining nonetheless. There were six rounds; Joel’s AMV round, featuring over 300 anime in only 2 minutes 20 seconds, Paris’ Doujin or Pro round, featuring both manga and music, Zedo’s OP quiz, Rob’s Anagrams, Sophie’s Androgynous Cosplayers and Bucko’s QI-style anime quiz.

Projector:

We lent the projector to CompSoc, only to have them lose it! Luckily, they offered to pay us back. And then we mysteriously found the projector again, and no money was exchanged.

Ayacon:

The Ayacon anime convention continues to be held at the Warwick Arts Centre, and strongly attended by the members of the society. It’s incredibly convenient to have a convention right next to all our rents, and we wish them the best of luck in future.

Today in AnimeSoc 5-2 (2009/2010)

Exec:

(By today, this is in relation to Artalyx, not the current time :P)

Early in the new academic year, Rob decided to step down, and Alex was promoted to replace him. Several new events were introduced, including Art workshops, cosplay workshops and regular restaurant socials. After realising that our newly enlarged society (130 and counting) could not possibly fit into the phantom coach along with compsoc, we officially scrapped the pub social (although almost everyone who went before continued to go.)

Members
131 as of 16th Feb 2010

What happened?
Publicity:

Our public profile was especially high this year; We started off with the time-tested halls raids, and managed to tag every undergrad hall on campus both inside kitchens and on public noticeboards, and repeatedly postered the busiest parts of campus through the first two weeks, frustrating every attempt by Warwick Estates to exhaust our publicity budget. We built on this by issuing a 6-society flyer (ourselves, Go, Compsoc, Sci-Fi, LARPS, Game Design) to every 1st year and a significant number of 2nd year pidgeonholes on campus about halfway through term 1, and then flyering again during term 2 with a more detailed animesoc-only effort. But we didn’t only kill the planet via paper; Bucko continued his society clothing project with the addition of Cufflinks, Pinbadges, phone charms and other accessories featuring our now widley known logo.

DVD Acquisition:

During the early part of term 1 Tristan aided in the return of a large number (about £5,500 retail value) of DVDs to Lace (due to some Ayacon confusion), however in the course of this, some DVDs accidentally ended up in our library. Lace were kind enough to let us keep these, and our ever expanding library grew another box, pushing our own assets to almost £7000 total.

Website Revamp:

The website was renovated extensively to take advantage of PHPBB3. This was completed quickly and efficiently during the first term, so that hardly anyone noticed the massive page of lolis that passed for an “under construction” sign. Later on, we added a flexible signup system to make event planning that much easier.

Art Workshops, Cosplay Workshops, Expos:

These new events started off well, and settled down into a more standard routine after the first term. The Art workshops ran from 2pm-5pm on even numbered wednesdays, and the cosplay workshops twice a term on saturdays. Both workshops offered extensive resources and advice on the subject matter, Cake, pre-workshop Cake and in some cases post-workshop Cake.

We Attended both the London MCM expo in 2009 and the Midlands MCM expo in 2010 as a society, exercising both our planning ability and our budget. Both all-nighters and the shopping trip continued to run as before, featuring Anime, Mahjong, Munchkin and other games beginning with ‘M’.

Socials, SU Bureaucracy:

We booked an entire curry house in Leamington for the first week of term to welcome our freshers, had a “regular” social in the middle of the term and finished with a wonderful christmas meal at the newly opened Cosmo Resturant in Coventry. Our dress code for the christmas social (‘there may or may not be a dress code’) produced some beautiful efforts from the society, all of which can be found on facebook. We also updated our constitution to fit new union rules, re-inventoried everything and worked on our budget profile with the SU in an effort to get more blood money from the stone Students’ Union in the next financial cycle.

Quiz!:

I have a lecture now, but shortly I will update with details of the ever-awesome end of term quizzes.

(spoiler, this was never done… - MrPorky)

Academic year 2010/2011

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2011/2012

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2012/2013

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2013/2014

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2014/2015

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2016/2017

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2017/2018

Exec:

Some anime happened?

Academic year 2018/2019

Exec:

The returning officer for the election in February 2018 was the previous president, John Green (Cyberia). Much to everyone’s surprise the elected president was Sam Bolton, the previous year’s Secretary and the only candidate to run for president. The Secretary was Ryan Murry, and the Treasurer was Robin La. The head librarian was Eric Yuang, with the other librarians being made up of Kieran, Dylan Kennett, and UNKNOWN. The AV was Bryan Cheeah and the webmaster was Alfie Powers.

The first showing was between Ping Pong, Nozaki-kun, Flip Flappers, and UNKNOWN. The winning show was Nozaki-kun. Karaoke and meal socials were ran as usual with the Karaoke room being in Westwood in the (now split in half) WA1.15. This room was excellent for Karaoke as it was surprisingly large and consisted of two screens on either side of the room, whilst being away from central campus allowing for us to evade the inevitable interference of campus security.

Meal socials continued to be held at Shin Ramen however in November of that year a meal social was held at a different restaurant due to hostilities between certain exec and Shin management.

Term 3 went mostly uneventfully however vague ideas began circling around for a counterpart to Compsoc’s BFL (Big “Friendly” LAN) in the form of BFK (Big “Friendly” Karaoke). These plans never materialised but remained a running joke between exec.

Term 1 was the first time at Warwick a fresher’s week was added. Beforehand, lecturers started lectures started on the Monday following the opening of accommodation and thus any plans for us to run events went unnoticed and the first event for the new academic term began during Week 1. This showing (taking place in MS.05) highlighted the need for fresher week showings to take place in a larger capacity room, something that had not been a problem up till then. Chairs were acquired from other rooms and brought in to fill in the showing with most of the exec sitting on the floor due to lack of space.

The winning showing was Haikyuu and continued with the various exec choices throughout the term. With regards to meal socials, the first, at Shin Ramen had some issues as the new management seemed to be unable to handle 30 people and food was especially late for a few tables which prompted the exec to go to a new restaurant, Noodle Bar. Unfortunately noodle bar did not have the same atmosphere and food selection as shin and was quickly dropped.

The Term 2 showing in 2019 was won by Baccano which provided the closing show of this year.

Academic year 2019/2020

Exec:

The returning officer for the election in February 2019 was again, the previous president, Sam Bolton. The elected president was Alfie Powers. The secretary was Kieran and the treasurer was Lloyd Conlin. The head librarian was the future president and SU societies officer, Chih-Hsiang Lo. The librarians consisted of Rauhl, Carl, and UNKNOWN. The AV was Callum, and the webmaster was Sleepless.

Term 2 started off with Princess Principle being shown, a surprisingly good show with an opening that still gets sung at Karaoke events. Much like previous years, Shin Ramen was the meal social destination. Term 3 carried on much like the previous years with exec showings and events happening at the end of term.

Term 1 of the 2019 Academic year was the first year that the society had events during Welcome Week. For these we opted to have three movies shown and then the traditional events held in Week 1. Due to anticipating a large audience at the events, and partially as a result of the poor audio / video quality in MS.05, these events took place in MS.02, downstairs and significantly larger. The first of these movies was A Silent Voice which was well received, given the recent KyoAni tragedy a few months before. On the Saturday we showed The Cat Returns and Millennium Actress. Both films were equally well received and helped to convince the exec on the need to use MS.02 for main showings.

The choice for the main series was Planetes and the exec continued to show exec choices. They yearly trip to MCM went as usual with only a slight incident involving the British Transport Police and a cosplay sword. The two meals were both at Shin Ramen as usual which would continue into the next exec.

The return to Term 2 brought with it a new main series and talk of a new virus and the general attitude to both the anime society and society in general was this would be a non-issue. Events were held as normal with the main series being Megalobox.

The Covid Year (2020/2021)

Exec:

In this year’s AGM, the returning officer was once again the previous president Alfie Powers aka Mr Porky. The elected President was Chih-Hsiang Lo who ran unopposed (at the time of writing this, the current SU Societies Officer, and the incoming SU VP for Education). The Secretary was Alex Hall, and the Treasurer was Lloyd Conlin. The Webmaster was Tomas and the AV Technician was Trevor Whitehouse. The Head Librarian was Caius Liu and the Librarians were Tom Leigh, Ben Onime, and Karl Bailey.

Term 2 started off with a “bang” with us showing the legendary Utena clone Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight as our first main series of the new exec team… Whilst this wasn’t well liked across the membership, we did start the tradition of giving free pancakes during Shrove Tuesday (even if the pancakes were the cheapest ones from Aldi and the chocolate sauce did not taste like chocolate). I am glad to see that this tradition has continued.

The rest of term 2 ended as normal with an array of exec choices and extra events. Something which was introduced was extra-long karaoke which proved to be popular amongst the membership. This was in response to some frustrations at the lack of run time and thus, lack of choice available throughout the event. We also had the birth of the “Old-School Anime Night” event, where we showed anime which were released before the year 2000. We started out with the original Jojo OVA. We also ran a Society survey to gauge member feedback on events.

However, as term 2 ended, so did normal life as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, grinding society activities to a halt.

Quickly, we had to switch to an online solution to society events and anime showings. Initially, we considered a couple of options. One option was to use Discord directly, however this was laggy and also disadvantaged people who didn’t use Discord. Thus, we tried to use a program called Kast. However, this proved terrible and thus, for term 3, we streamed showings over Discord. Little to say, viewership did not fair too well. Here, rather having the normal formula of exec choice -> members choice, we just had the exec choice.

As term 1 and Welcome Week drew closer, and the country still at the mercy of COVID, we had to come up with another solution fast. Here, the exec team came up with a solution which involved buying a server using society funds and essentially hacking a streaming platform directly onto the Anime Society Website – which could stream Netflix level quality videos.

Just to add here, we also were able to set up, for a few months, a Anime Society Minecraft server. This proved to be popular but was too much of a financial burden on the society to host in the long run. Also, for a time, Tomas added a special feature on the website where if you clicked on the logo, it would move around the screen. This was eventually removed however… Tomas also revamped the website, added a karaoke section, improved the library section, and made some sections and features better – one being the scrolling widget on the main page detailing the different events we did as a society. I thank Tomas for his hard work!

Further to this, we also made some improvements to the Discord. Firstly, small emojis were added to channel section names and the much beloved mudae bot (which replaced the defunct Waifu bot) was added which initially caused a lot of drama and tension on the server!

Beyond this, due to COVID, new events and activities were added and existing schedules were changed and edited.

This can be seen during Welcome Week. Due to SU incompetence, the online societies fair was a disaster with only about 10-15 people actually interacting with the virtual society stall. However, our society film nights during welcome week were decently attended with the 1st movie night (Wolf Children) getting about 50 people watching the stream, and the 2nd movie night (Ghost in the Shell and The Garden of Words) getting about 30. Here, there was a pre-recorded video from myself which replaced the “introduction talk” which often occurred during welcome week (this may or may not be in the archives). We also then trialled having games nights after showings which ran throughout the year with Lloyd being the main organiser. These games included Skribble and Code names, with Skribble having a special anime society list to it.

We also ran some Art competitions, having competitions during welcome week and Halloween, both which had some incredible entries (which can hopefully be seen in the archives on the Anime Society website). We also had one at Christmas, but we had no submissions…

Likewise, we also had the first attempt at “Warwick draws”, which was led by Tom. We tried to draw frames from the first Sword Art Online opening. However, due to the lack of frames, this was discontinued.

With COVID, we couldn’t do some events that we normally do, mainly anything in-person oriented (karaoke or the yearly MCM trip), or in-person showings. So, with this we decided to change up the weekly timetable by breaking it up throughout the week. On Tuesday, we had the main series as usual where 3 episodes of a main series was shown on the stream. Then, rather than being on Tuesday, we had the Exec choice moved to the Thursday as its own event. Here, an exec had a choice of 3 shows and the top 2 (voted on by a online poll) would be shown. 2 episodes were shown of each. Then on Saturdays, we occasionally had movie nights. After all the showings, we had an online games session.

This was also the start of the “exec choice posters” – some of them which can be seen in the archives on the anime society website.

Further to this, for each showing, we had individual slides made which acted as a “reel” before, between, and after each showing. These slides advertised the weeks and upcoming showings. Also, the exec whose week it was could choose the songs which would be played. Whilst this was fully automated and slick to look at, it was a massive time sink to do… (definitely not worth the effort).

Despite our best efforts, like with most societies during this time, engagement from students plummeted. Main series stream had by the end of term 1 about 15 viewers, with exec choices typically having half. These were depressing times in the society.

Regardless, there were still some highs. Firstly, we had a collaboration film night with Mandarin society, setting a precedent for future society collaborations from this point. Here, we showed the Taiwanese anime film “Xingfu Lushang (On Happiness Road)” which depicts life growing up in post martial law Taiwan – a film I insisted on showing. Also, we had our term 1 end of term quiz which was pretty well attended (around 30?). This was a lot of fun to do albeit a lot of work. We also got into trouble with the SU about a particular question on the quiz. I shall leave the details off the record…

We also had the start of the “members choice”, where members could submit show ideas and then, through a vote, we would watch some of the shows.

Likewise, we also had our first inter-University AMQ tournament which ran in August 2020 between Warwick, Birmingham, and the rest of the UK. Needless to say, Warwick won.

As term 2 loomed, Flip Flappers, a show which had always been doomed to fail main series choice and was last put up as an option in term 2, part 2 of the 2018-2019 academic year, became our last main series of the exec team’s term.

The final hurrah of the 2020-2021 exec team was the creation of Ani-chan through a long-promised art competition by myself (as stipulated in my election manifesto). After weeks of submission time, we had 3 entries (all can be seen in the archives). The winning submission was voted unanimously – thus began the rise of Ani-chan.

The term 2 elections took place online via the SU website as apposed to the normal in-person format and through our Discord, where hustings and questions were hosted. Needless to say, the academic year 2020-2021 won’t go down as being a year of fun. Indeed, the year was pretty underwhelming due to COVID and the lack of good events. That being said, a lot of traditions and events were started during this time, many of which still continue to this day.

I would like to thank the exec team who helped run the society throughout the year and for their effort in trying to make the society as exciting and fun through those challenging times.

The Post-Covid Year (2021/2022)

Exec:

Hello to those from the past and future! My name is Caius, or RazorLazor, and I was the President of Warwick AniSoc from Feb 2021 – Feb 2022. I was never known to be someone that talked in a short and concise manner so excuse me as I navigate this rich year of AniSoc history in an extended fashion.

My term as President started with an exec team of only 5 people total, even though we advertised for 9. This ended up with Tom (Great Job) and Tomas taking on two roles each; Luke (Ikari) and Stefan (Gigi) were new to the exec business, the former a second year and the latter the only first year that applied. We decided to continue the same online events schedule, which were consistently accompanied by fervent Discord activity and weekly-ish AMQ sessions. On Pancake Day, many of us were in a Discord call where we tried to remotely make pancakes. For April Fools’ Day, we turned the Discord server into a roleplay server, changing people’s names to a character of their choice as they were given the opportunity to mimic their favourite characters. Then, prior to the end of Term 3, lockdown restrictions finally eased and we were able to organise a movie social to watch the new Demon Slayer movie at Birmingham NEC, a meal social at Shin Ramen and a picnic with Bubble Tea society outside the Oculus.

When it came to the start of the new academic year, relaxed governmental restrictions meant we were finally allowed to host in-person events. Though we were recommended some guidelines, such as limiting event sizes to allow for social distancing, this was something we found hard to manage considering that it was not only the freshers but also the second-year students who were all eager to get involved with societies after being deprived of in-person events in their first year.

This resulted in some record-breaking attendance numbers for our events. During welcome week, many people attended our society’s fair stall, with short queues being a common sight despite there being at least 2-3 execs available to talk to people at all times. We hosted two taster movie showings, first showing Millennium Actress followed by Promare. For both, there were upwards of 180 people – a humbling view considering that I gave my first in-person introduction to the society then (a waffly PowerPoint presentation of around 10-ish minutes). We also hosted a Manga Social on the Saturday which attracted a dizzying number of attendees. OC1.06, a room for 60, was filled with over 100 people, with only 5 execs on hand to help manage flow and make conversation. Whilst we were certainly spread thin, the event also started many connections and friendships that persisted throughout the year and beyond.

Following this, we were also able to run some cool and fun term events. The Term 1 Main Series position was contested between Berserk (1997), Dennou Coil, Gurren Lagann and Kaiji and had a strong attendance. Despite being the favourite to win, Gurren Lagann shockingly lost out to Kaiji, which had garnered a lot of comparisons to the newly released K-drama Squid Game. Our first All-Nighter garnered an audience of almost double the room capacity, delaying the start of the event by nearly 45 minutes; tables were moved out into the corridor and chairs from other rooms were borrowed as an improvised plan. This and the Welcome Week Manga Social was by far the most hectic event I had to lead since there was a lot of talking and welcoming people, running around to fetch chairs, making speeches at the front and other event management-related things needing to be made. Karaoke was permanently moved from SO.11 to the Avon Building and as expected was also very popular. Room ventilation though was difficult to maintain, which alongside peoples’ constant shouting and panting, the event became a high risk for catching diseases. A memorable moment of mine was when I was asked to wear a maid outfit – some other people also subsequently decided to dress up for events, most notably suits for Gigi Tuesdays, but this phenomenon peaked at the 2022 May MCM Comic Con when at least half the group went there in cosplay.

Anyhow, whilst on the topic of cons, the October MCM Comic Con trip was also fun. Unlike the year after, we took public transport to Excel London. With the bus leaving just after 7am, I graciously told everyone to meet at the interchange by 6:45am. Nearly everybody was there! With only one person sprinting across campus from Westwood to catch the bus with us, I consider the strategy of setting earlier-than-need meeting-up times a member management necessity. Unfortunately, this did not prevent someone from oversleeping and missing the meet-up time (looking at you Sam), though they eventually managed to catch up to our peasant West Midlands Train using the faster Avanti service. Once in London, we took the Northern Line to Bank, and then the DLR to Excel (switching lines at Blackwall), eventually arriving at around 10:30. The return journey was similar.

Despite the effects of COVID, most of the regular stores were at the con. A lot of the members engaged in varying levels of consumerism – some plunged, some held back, but everyone got or did something cool (I hope!). There was also a lot of space to manoeuvre since there weren’t as many people as in the past/future. This I presume is because of COVID attendance restrictions. Unfortunately, this also meant that the tickets for MCM were sold out about 3 weeks before the event (around 2 weeks from welcome week) and hence a lot of members who had just known about that we were going to the Con or were on the fence of purchasing the tickets were caught out; though, around 25 people managed to go with us in the end which was nice. We also took our first group photo since the COVID lockdown, symbolising how life was returning to normal.

Other events we ran included a Ghibli Movie Night collab with Japan Society, a special ‘Halloween Spooktacular’ event where we showed a mixture of scary and ironic horror shows, Old-School Anime Night and a Members’ Choice night – a new event aimed at allowing members to put up shows without having to compete with execs. We also organised 2 movie trips to separately see My Hero Academia the Movie 3 and the Sword Art Online: Progressive movie. We, of course, had the End-Of-Term Quiz, with 5 or 6 teams competing. The other execs found great fun in making their respective quizzes and for myself, the Anime Music Quiz (AMQ) quiz section remains one of my favourite activities for the society – it is also a great way for the resident AMQ experts to accumulate easy points (☺).

In Term 2, our new Main Series choices were Boogiepop Phantom, Kids on the Slope, Made in Abyss, and Ping Pong the Animation, with Ping Pong ultimately winning. In terms of special events, besides Karaoke and the All-Nighter, we also collaborated with the Esports Centre to host a games event where we were able to use their computers, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch for free. At the same time, they kindly offered to house our library for the long term, which had previously been temporarily stored at different execs’ houses after losing its permanent storage at Westwood at the start of the 19/20 academic year.

This year’s election saw around 100 people show up to vote, and around 20 different people nominate themselves for roles. The election started on Week 5 Tuesday following the end of the Main Series, but, due to the sheer number of candidates (and also bad time-keeping by myself), the election ended up running past 12am. Only Tomas, the Webmaster, was re-running so everyone else in the election had no prior exec experience, yet despite this all of them gave a good account of themselves and every role had strong competition.

Following the election, in week 7, we decided to try a different restaurant to Shin, going to Greek restaurant Zorbas, which was highly recommended by a few of the execs. Because it was located north of Coventry city centre, we had to change buses after taking the 12X. 42 people ended up going to the meal social, which meant we (nearly) booked out the entire restaurant. There were only 3-4 waiters serving and it took us a while to ascertain that everyone had paid so it was a fairly hectic night.

This ended up being the last event my exec team were in charge of delivering, though as aforementioned we also went back to London in May for MCM, this time with many more cosplays. Most memorably, we joined the British Anime Society at a Chinese restaurant for karaoke and dinner near Excel after the con. Everything was good besides the fact that we had to rush back on the bus and tube, making it back to Euston with just under 10 minutes left.

Finally, some other relevant information just to round off. We (finally…) made an Instagram account for the society during the middle of Term 1. By the time we conducted our Annual General Meeting in Term 2 Week 5, we managed to accumulate just over 200 members. Moreover, during SU’s spring elections of that academic year, Anisoc managed to get the highest voting turnout out of all societies at Warwick, with 100-110 people, or over half the society, voting. Anisoc’s commitment to democracy, practised at our weekly events is commendable and definitely has nothing to do with the fact that two former presidents were running in the elections.

Academic year 2022/2023

Exec:

Following an election that ran until almost 2am, the new exec were: Tomas as President, Ana as Secretary, Koh as Treasurer, Conran as Events Coordinator (A new role added to help remove some burden from the President, Secretary and Treasurer), Damian as Webmaster, Alex D as AV, Seb as Head Librarian and Mabey as Librarian.

The 2nd Term 2 Main Series, much to the delight of the AV, was Kino’s Journey (2003), a strong follow up to the previous Main Series, Ping Pong. The meal socials for the Term were finally held at different restaurants, but whilst the change in location was enjoyed by the members, collecting and managing the deposits required was not enjoyed by the exec, and so the restaurant of choice would once again return to Shin for future meal socials. This term also saw the first 12-hour karaoke, starting at 1pm and finishing at 2am (with a small break involving turning off all the lights and lying still on the floor in the darkness to avoid detection by campus security so we could keep going until late).

Term 3 saw the fulfilment of two long talked about activities, with the society holding its first (and last?) circle, and finally bringing to fruition the long joked about Big Friendly Karaoke event to end off the year. Sadly, the intervention of campus security meant that BFK was shorter than the planned 12-13 hours, but it nonetheless worked as a nice send-off event for the graduating members.

During the holidays, Damian left to live out every Anisoc member’s dream, a year abroad in Japan. A byelection was held over the summer to elect our new webmaster, Musubi.

For Term 1, the welcome week structure from the previous year was maintained, but with the addition of a drawing competition at the Saturday social, whose popularity proved to the exec that the demand for art-based events was higher than ever before. At the first showing of the Term, the spirit of the execs of yore filled the room and The Big O was voted as our main series. The yearly October MCM trip took place as usual, however the society opted to book a coach to take us to and from the event, rather than relying on public transport, this proved to be a great decision, especially once we were able to connect our own music to the sound system.

Unfortunately, not all was good as Term 1 saw campus security increase their checks in the Westwood buildings, bringing to an end the 12-hour karaoke’s of the previous year. With karaoke needing to end at 10pm, it was decided to pull back the start time by 2 hours, so that we could still have around 10 hours to enjoy the event.

Following on from The Big O, the final main series was another show that had been discussed and pitched as a main series for several years, Spice and Wolf. Term 2 also saw the relaunching of the Anisoc Draws project, with the idea being to completely redraw the first opening for Code Geass. The launch event saw huge attendance, allowing us to complete the first third of the project much faster than the exec had anticipated. As of the election, the project is halfway complete, with plans to finish it during Term 3.

Unlike before, the election was held as a standalone event on the Wednesday of week 5, rather than following the Main Series. This was done to prevent another election stretching past midnight, and to avoid the potential for Campus Security interrupting the election.

Academic year 2023/2024

Exec:

After a relatively straightforward election that saw a melodic librarian speech, some wild suggestions for improving the reach and finances of the society being put forward and the AV being heckled, the new exec team became: Conran as President, Ana as Secretary, Kirai/Ethan as Treasurer, Arman as Events Coordinator, Alex D as AV, Musubi as Webmaster, Jack as Head Librarian and Andrew as Librarian.

One of our first events was to see the new Kaguya-sama: Love is War film at the Showcase Cinema in Coventry, which we somehow managed to arrive in time for the start of despite being more than twenty minutes late, which was down to several bus cancellations. We returned by private hire bus but were surprised to learn that there was only one active in the entire city, so it took several trips to get everyone back.

In yet another win for the AV, our Main Series for the second half of Term 2 ended up being Gunslinger Girl, which provided the exec team with a convenient excuse to take the society to an Italian establishment, Bella Italia. While it was nice as a one-off, the extortionate service charge footed by the Events Coordinator and the President as well as the unfortunate discovery that there was a spy from Coventry University’s AniSoc amongst the staff there meant that we would end up returning to Shin Ramen for the rest of the year’s meal socials.

With the help of one other member, the President made pancakes for the entire society on Pancake Day, but then he forgot to charge the society for the cost of the ingredients. Work on the AniSoc Draws project continued at a fair pace, although the President, much to the chagrin of the Webmaster, dragged his heels when it came to completing his own frame. Laser Tag ran for the second year in a row, with the main difference being that the smoke effects were dialled up to eleven. This would also end up being the year where virtual YouTuber fans took control of the exec team, resulting in the HoloFes event, during which a handful of members attended to see their oshis on the big screen. During this term’s Karaoke, Kirai/Ethan was nowhere to be seen, but the ex-Treasurer Great Job could be seen princess carrying Kurumi from Date A Live.

We tearfully bid Kirai/Ethan adieu at the end of Term 2, when he set off for greener pastures, but then came back for every Karaoke to help the exec team order pizza. A by-election would later be held at the end of Term 3, during which Lewis was duly elected to become the new Treasurer.

Circling once again took place in the latter half of Term 3, which, in addition to being good fun for the members who went, also proved to be a good PR exercise for the society. The tail-end of Term 3 also saw the launch of the Library All-Nighter, a variation on the existing All-Nighter but geared towards promoting use of the library, the AV and Webmaster grilling up a storm during the society’s first-ever barbecue on Claycroft Fields, and the much-anticipated AniSoc beach episode at The Wave, a water park in Coventry. There was also the incredible School Days event, during which drinks were had, groans were made, and Community Safety was thankfully avoided.

BFK this year would see the introduction of a form that let graduates pick the end songs, which was a very popular reform among senior members of the society. With three of our former Presidents on their way out, they were also given one last exec choice each in the Three Presidents’ Last Stand, an event filled with nostalgia and endless rambling about the society’s history.

In Term 1, the general structure of our Welcome Week events was once again maintained, with considerable turnout both for our showing of Akira and our drop-in social, where we distributed stickers of our society mascot, Ani-chan, as participation prizes in our art competition. When the dust settled, we elected to watch Mirai Shounen Conan, the oldest Main Series in the society’s history. It was during this term that we trialled the Games Night format, which had generally good turnout but some uneven participation in the different activities we ran. Twice in the year, we collaborated with Content Creation Society to share cosplay tips and organise travel. Once again, the society made its way by coach to London MCM to avoid the perils of public transport, albeit this time with less amateur DJ-ing and more crashed cars on hard shoulders. Due to a slight mishap, Lewis had to make a noble sacrifice to give up his seat on the coach and get to the venue by other means, but he thankfully made it there in one piece.

For the first time, we also organised a semi-randomised seating order for our first meal social of the new year at Shin Ramen – an experiment that was generally successful in its aims but difficult to replicate. We also had our spooky Halloween Special showing fall on a Tuesday this year, during which the society was treated to the terrifyingly terrible Ao Oni: The Animation and Yami no Teio: Kyuuketsuki Dracula. In what we can only hope will be the last such case, we also had a BL Night, where squees were heard and the worst genre of anime was probed thoroughly. We closed out the year with a meal social at Jinseon, a KBBQ restaurant in Coventry, and a Karaoke filled with Christmas cheer. Our Events Coordinator also rolled out an End of Term Survey to help inform the exec’s future plans.

Circling, our affectionately-termed Boomer Nights (of which there were two this year!) and Karaoke were all mainstays of our termly schedule. Our final main series was Sonny Boy, the virtues of which had been extolled by our dear Webmaster, and one which proved to be a perfect pick for the upcoming crossroads. Perhaps for the last time we were treated to a Tokusatsu Night, with Shin Ultraman being the most well received. Our Secretary also pulled off the first Women and Non-Binary Social, which went without any major hitches. The President and Librarian spearheaded a back-to-back Miyazaki movie showing to ease members into WSC’s showing of The Boy and the Heron, which was greatly enjoyed by those in attendance. The AniSoc Draws project proceeded at a fair pace and neared completion towards the end of this exec team’s term, though whether it will ever be finished remains a mystery.

As with the year prior, a decision was made to hold the election on a separate day to the weekly Tuesday showing.

Academic year 2024/2025

Exec:

Some more anime happened?