The Clubs' History
That's Right, We Have Lore
Founded in 2019, the SJSU Anime Club was created in order to bring together fellow San Jose State University students with a passion for anime. Over the past 4 years the club has slowly grown, incorporating many new series to watch and a variety of activities and events for club members to participate in. Unbeknownst to many members, however, the impact of anime on the community at SJSU actually started long before the club was founded. The first club to bring together anime lovers at the university was known as the Tsunami Anime Club. Created at the end of the 20th century, the club accumulated a 20+ year history of memories and activities for the hundreds of members who joined.
Following a brief absence after the club dissolved, the SJSU Anime Club rose to reignite the passion for anime in the community the Tsunami Anime Club once held. As a dedication to the 25+ years of history the clubs share, and to preserve the history of both clubs, a detailed timeline is featured below that discusses the details of both clubs, from the founding of the Tsunami Anime Club to present day.
Official logos of Tsunami Anime Club (left) and SJSU Anime Club (right).
Tsunami ANime Club
1997 - 1999
The Tsunami Club was founded in the winter of 1997. Long before anime became more mainstream in the U.S., this recess in the campus community became a place where students across all majors could gather to discuss and enjoy anime and manga with others. Below is a brief outline of the club's founding, originally outlined on the archive of the club's first website.
“Tsunami Anime was founded by Gary Console, Yoon Herring, Matt Stocksiek and Ian Sy in April of 1997. The club was founded as a place for anybody interested in anime (Japanese animation) or manga (Japanese comics).
In 1999, most of the original club officers graduated or moved on to bigger and better things. Leaving the club to Keith Hasegawa, Patrick Wong, Gary Tang, Mike Dufala and Steve Goldstein. After Mike and Patrick graduated and Steve disappeared off the face of the planet, Sam Yee and Paul Wong moved into club officer positions.
At the end of spring 2006, several of the club officers moved on, leaving the club with all new officers, but with the same goals. To provide a place for people to view and share their interest in Japanese Animation.
The club is open to anyone who is a fan of anime, or to anyone who is interested in learning more about anime. It costs nothing to join. There are no membership dues, and our anime showings are free. All scheduled shows are in Japanese with English Subtitles.”
The club was first referenced in an article in the Spartan Daily in 1998. From this point onwards, the contact information for the Tsunami Anime Club could be found in the Sparta Guides on many subsequently published Spartan Daily issues. An article highlighting the club’s activities was published in the Spartan Daily on September 29, 1999. Here, details about the shows members watched at the time are described, and as the background of anime and the club. Much like our club today, the meetings comprised of mostly roughly 20 attendees with a mostly male audience. The way of watching fan-favorite series has kept up over two decades later, yet the ways our club watches anime have expanded since then. With a now-established presence at the school and the turn of a new century, the club would look for new way to grow its presence at SJSU.
The Early 2000s
As the club marched onwards into a new century, it began to expand in new ways. A website for the club was created on October 6, 2000, providing a way for members to look online for the latest news about the club, with the earliest archive from May 5, 2001. The club had also grown immensely from its inception, reaching an average weekly attendance of 50 members (and their meetings were even later than ours currently are).
The original Tsunami club website (and when Initial D was popular too).
Things with the website didn't stay this way for long before big changes began taking place. Beginning August 6, 2002, the website moved to a new location. This website would be the one used by the club for several years to come, adopting a new logo (shown above) and simpler layout from the original site.
Many of the images on the club website have been lost to time, but some still remain available. For the club’s 10th anniversary in 2007, the website received a facelift, featuring a new centralized layout of the different club site pages. Lots of information can be found on the updated site featuring currently watched anime, flyers, and the history of the club and officers.
2010 - 2018
The Tsunami club began to expand its presence to social media in the early 2010s. Twitter and Facebook accounts were created in February 2010 and May 2011 to create new hubs for sharing news with fellow club members. A now inactive profile on MyAnimeList was also created (August 4, 2013). FanimeCon's website even still features info about the club. The website stopped being updated in December of 2018.
SJSU ANime Club
2019 - 2022
Wanting to reignite the spirit the Tsunami Anime Club once provided, Yasmin Lee, Matthew Jones, ____ ____ created a Discord server for a new anime club on April 23, 2019. The new SJSU anime club held its first active semester in the Fall of 2019. A simple website to lead new members to the Discord server and other social media websites was also set up. The club's first meetings included seasonal watchparties and a movie night of Your Name.
In March 2020, as the Covid pandemic began to ramp up, all in-person activities at the school were forced to shut down, causing the club to have to move all of its activities online. Watchparties and group activities like Jackbox were streamed on the Discord server. Movie nights were continued into the summer to keep up the spirit of the club during these tough times. Seasonal watchparties returned in the fall semester, although attendance during meetings hovered around only 5 - 6 people at a time. Some notable aspects about the club were born during this time, including some of the first emojis on the server, the names of Sachiko's bandmates, and the server's suggestions channel. The server still steadily grew over time, eventually getting boosted to Lv. 1 on September 19, 2020, where the server's animated icon was added and has stuck around this day! The officers also conducted their first themed meeting. The Spring semester continued at a similar pace, and which also marked the beginning of the use of reactions by server members on posts that were made.
The Comeback Arc, 2022 - 2024
After 2 years of an online format, SJSU began more expansively opening up in-person learning again in the fall of 2022, allowing the club to return to in-person meetings once again. The club, however, was in a state of disarray as all the previous officers had graduated, suddenly making it critical to find new people to take up the role. Spearheading this effort was 3rd year student Shrey Kayak, taking on the role of President and 1st year Aaron Koc as Treasurer, and undertook the tasking of finding new Officers to take up various roles.
The club got a late start in September, with a fun introduction meeting to introduce the officers, an icebreaker game, and trailers for the upcoming fall seasonals. Although off to a rough start, all aspects of the club began to be reorganized. New art was designed by Khang to be used for the club, and new activities were created for meetings that attendees would take part in after watching episodes. A point system was established for prizes where attendees could earn points by attendance and doing well in activities in order to win prizes at the end of the semester. Off-campus events were also established to inform club members about conventions and other related events happening locally.
The Discord server began to grow rapidly over the course of both the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 semesters, doubling the number of members, while meeting attendance continued steady at around 20 members on average. It was boosted to Lv. 2 on October 26, 2022, opening a pathway for many new features for the server, from themed banners to many new emojis and stickers. For the fall the club watched Chainsaw Man and Spy x Family.
Spring 2023 saw the continued refinement of many aspects of the club and a massive overhaul of the server. Our first and unofficial meeting at the beginning of the semester saw our greatest attendance ever of 38 students. The Springtime saw us watching the latest seasonals of Blue Lock and Buddy Daddies based on results polled by server members. New activities were created, with old favorites like Taboo games also making a return, with even more prizes and treats were given out for participants. Anime Music Quiz was also set up by fellow club member Bryce, an activity he runs on our server where every week members would guess the correct theme songs in a competitive format.
In June of 2023, this Wix site became the official site for the club, receiving its greatest-ever overhaul in the history of both clubs. With a rich modern look and brand new layout and information, this website is now the place for a rich history of both clubs, as well as news, info, and pictures about our club. This site will continue to expand and evolve and hopes to remain the main web domain of the club for many years to come.
Our Discord server has also slowly been completely overhauled throughout the course of 2023, adding many new channels, emojis, stickers, sounds, and other features for club members. The server reached level 3 on August 5, again greatly expanding the number of features the club has access to. The Discord server has grown to over 700+ members, with a regular meeting attendance of 15-20 students. Fall 2023 marks the 5th anniversary of the club and will mark a time of rapid change and expansion for the club. The club also hosted its very first fundraiser at The Nest in downtown San Jose.
Spring 2024 saw a lot more growth in the club. From more customization on the Discord, to our first 7th St. fundraiser, and new games, there were many new things for club members to look forward to. The semester concluded with our largest club party ever and with many members attending Fanime afterward.
This is Our Peak!
After 2 years, the club has grown to what is perhaps its largest size in history. And yet despite how large our memebership has grown and how many new aspects of the club have been introduced, the club still marches on a path to even greater heights. If our first day of club rush this Fall 2024 is any indicator, we're set to become an even larger force of awesomness at this university. Eventually we'll hopefully have even more firsts like our first convention too. But no matter how large we become, we'll always have room for everyone, including you!
Editors Notes
This project of mapping the timeline of both the Tsunami and SJSU anime clubs began in May of 2023 by Vice President Noah Fourby, in an effort to uncover and preserve the history of the clubs. Through countless hours of research and discoveries, a detailed history of both clubs was discovered, preserving what is perhaps a more detailed club history than any college anime club in the nation. Serving the anime community at SJSU for 25+ years, countless rich memories have been created by the hundreds of participating club members since the Tsunami Anime Club's founding. New information will be added over time as it is created or discovered. If you have more information, email us at the address provided below or reach out to one of the current officers on our Discord server.
