Anime Club of East Tennessee

Hey there, everyone!

It’s been a bit of a wild ride these past few months. As many of you probably know, Hurricane Helene decided to make her presence felt, causing some significant delays for may of us here. Power outages, flooding, broken supply lines, family and friends in peril and general chaos made it hard to keep up with everything, but I’m happy to say that we’re finally back up and running!

While the storm caused a lot of disruptions, by the end of it the holidays were right around the corner so we took a breather. During that time we took a moment to reflect on some projects we've had in the works. One we'd really like to get going is the anime viewing club! We're all about Anime here and we’ve been wanting to get this going for a while. Whether you’re a long-time fan or just curious about the world of anime, it would be amazing to have a space where we can gather, watch, and discuss our favorite shows and movies, and get that socializing place so many of us haven't gotten back after the pandemic. We're already members of a program which does allow us to publicly air anime - but only in a public library. Whats the holdup? Well the libraries local to the members that would be able to run it closes at 4pm. We're an all ages club and the high schools aren't even out long enough to travel to the library, let alone people not being off work at that time. When we went looking into libraries with longer hours, without a founding member being a local it costs money to host clubs there.

So—we need a library, public or school, to host the club. That’s where you all come in! We're currently on the lookout for someone whose local library would be willing to open its doors to an anime club. The rules of our screening license say it must be in a Public Library or School Library. Libraries are perfect for this kind of thing because they’re safe, welcoming, and, full of resources. Many carry manga! How awesome it would be to host events, screenings, and maybe even some themed cosplay days in a cozy library space?

If you know of any local libraries that might be open to the idea (or if you work at one yourself!), please get in touch. We'd don't have funding for this so if they charge people outside of their area you'd need to be willing to found it yourself - but we're happy to share our screening license! We'd love to partner up and bring the anime community together in a fun, safe space for everyone, can’t wait to start watching and chatting with all of you.

Thanks for your patience during this stormy time, and We've got more surprises
up ahead!