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 7 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. An article about the club was published in September, along with what anime club members watched. The meetings comprised roughly 20 attendees. With its presence established, the club would look for new way to grow 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, and a few others 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 were 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. Online 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 the first seasons of 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(Meeting 0) 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 ran 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 was now the place for a rich history of both clubs, as well as news, info, and pictures about our club. This site would continue to expand and evolve with great hopes to remain the main web domain of the club for many years to come.
Our Discord server had 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 had grown to over 700+ members, with a regular meeting attendance of 15-20 students. Fall 2023 marked the 5th anniversary of the club and would soon 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.
The Golden Present, 2024 - Current(2026)
The Fall of 2024 was truly a memorable semester and the start of our club's Golden Age. After an unexpected success in club rush, our membership reached new heights. The club became more organized and eventful, with brand-new activities, better parties with better food, more public meetups/events, and new additions to the officer team. Our Discord server saw membership and activity of never-seen-before lengths.
The Spring 2025 semester carried on the momentum of Fall 2024, adding a few more officers to the team, improving our activities and point systems, and increasing the size of our Discord server.
The academic year of Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 was a testament to us. From greater membership and activity(both online and irl) than the previous academic year to several incidents within the club taken care of to a bloom in new club activities to the greatest size increase of the officer team, we had a busy and tiring but eventful and rewarding year. This year can truly be labeled as the climax of our Golden Age. Our Instagram page also became as active as our Discord, with regular posts on our weekly meetings and special events, along with several comedic reels. We extended our tradition of attending our annual local Fanime to Los Angeles' Anime Expo, starting in the summer of 2025. We recently returned from our second Anime Expo at the start of July 2026. Exploring the largest anime convention of the Western World with the club was a truly breathtaking experience, and we hope to share it with more of you in the future, along with our local Fanime.
Throughout this period of blooming radiance, our Discord server reached a shocking size of over 1200+ members, with our current size being 1214 members at the start of Fall 2026. With club activity and points infrastructure rework to better accommodate all members, old and new, and with a truly stacked lineup of officers, we hope this semester has the best in-store for all of you.
AX 2025 vs AX 2026
Our Peak Carries On!
After 4 years, the club has grown larger than ever before, with our size each year reaching higher peaks than the last. And yet, despite how large our membership has grown and how many new aspects of the club have been introduced, the club still marches on a path to even greater heights. This Fall 2026 club rush, we aim to reach new summits. Stay tuned as we're set to become an even larger force of awesomeness at this university. Eventually, we'll hopefully have even more firsts, like our first convention. 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.
