thebx com Thursday, January 14, 2010 D The Michigan Daily I michigandaily. THERE'S A LOT OF ANIME THAT DELVES INTO PHI LOSOPH ICAL SU BJECTS, LIKE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN. -KEN CHILDERS LSA SENIOR, ANIMANIA M weekend essentials Jan. 14 to Jan.17 AT THE MIC Artist Stephanie Row- den will be speaking tonight at 5 p.m. at the Michigan The- ater. Rowden's work includes several instal- lations and projects exploring the medium of radio. Recently, she has assembled an audio documentary describing friendship in old age. The lecture is part of the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Series and is free to the. public. Steven Heise is the president of Animania, the University anime student group with more than 800 members AN MANIACS By Emma Jeszke I Daily Arts Writer CONCERT Detroit alt-rockers The Hard Lessons return to one of their home bases, the Blind Pig, tomorrow. Expect the Lessons' snappy garage-rock to be particularly charged: Lines for their last show wrapped around the block.And as if they needed any more local cred, Ann Arbor indie-poppers Light- ning Love are opening - a perfect pairing of the playful and the punk. Tickets are $10, doors at 9:30 p.m. As the semester kicks off and your free time is taken up by whichever hobbies, student groups or jobs you've committed to, you may not be aware of a certain group of fervent individuals quietly residing in all areas of campus, trickling into the far-out corners of Ann Arbor. This avid bunch, often secluded though very aware of the larger community it belongs to, has one common love: anime. Everyone has come face to face with this Japanese-culture obsession at one point or another. Maybe you were the bandwagon "Pokemon" fan trying to make money off a Charizard card, or the die-hard Saturday morning "Sailor Moon" addict. You may even have a personal obsession with anime to this day, and if you do, you're not alone. Even if you simply have an anime- loving friend, you've been exposed to the medium. "I've pretty much grown up with anime," said Ariel Roberts, a School of Art & Design freshman. "My mom is Japanese, and we had Studio Ghibli films like 'My Neighbor Totoro.' My middle name is Mei, after the younger sister in the movie." So where do those struck with this passion find an outlet for their anime love? At the University, there's Animania, a student group that holds monthly screenings of anime for students and townies and holds Ann Arbor's anime convention. Animania: serving Ann Arbor anime addicts for nearly 25 years Animania is not only one of the largest student groups on campus, with over 800 members on its e-mail list, but it's also one of the most distinct. Embracing Japanese culture, the officers and staff of Animania get together and plan monthly screenings of Japan's most underground anime for the general public's viewing pleasure. The group's goal is to show people the multifaceted nature of anime as an art form, hoping to expose audiences to films they may not find among mainstream releases. The club, founded by a small group of of Ann Arbor townies in the late 1980s, has been affiliated with the University for about 20 years. Among Animania's founding fathers is former Ann Arborite Tim Eldred, a comic artist most notable for his graphic novel "Grease Monkey," which was selected by the American Library Association in 2007 as one of the best books for young adults. Eldred began his anime addiction as a tween in the 1970s with television shows like "Speed Racer" and "Star Blazers." "I didn't catch onto the fact that it was from another country," Eldred wrote in an e-mail interview. "I just loved the energy of it. I could watch it every day after school and the tone was more mature than the usual Saturday morning fare.' When Eldred stumbled upon the Ann Arbor anime scene, there was only a very small anime group present in the city, consisting of fewer than ten regular members. The group was struggling and on the verge of losing its organizing member. Eldred was corresponding with him at the time, and both were mutual pen pals with other anime fans across the country. "I agreed to take over," Eldred wrote. "This was the late 1980s, and I had built up a big video library of anime via tape trading on VHS, so I had plenty of stuff to show. I started up a newsletter, came up with the name Animania, and we had monthly screenings in the house of one of our members." After Eldred took over the group, membership soared. Eldred explained that within just a few months there were too many members to be accommodated in the house where they had been holding the screenings, so they moved to a community building in an apartment complex. "A few months later, we were outgrowing that, so we booked a meeting room at the Michigan Union," Eldred wrote. The group continued to flourish through the 1990s, regularly attracting 300 to 400 people to the monthly screenings and organizing a trip to the Anime Expo in Los Angeles. It was also asked by the staff of U-Con, Ann Arbor's gaming convention, to bring its following to the autumn event. But the University wouldn't allow for a proper convention with U-Con. University policy dictated that there couldn't be any private vendors in University buildings. So Animania birthed its own type of convention - or non-convention, rather. Con Ja Nai - literally translated from Japanese as "not a convention" - is an event now held annually by Animania. It's an all-day affair on the first floor of the Modern Languages Building, including four screening rooms for anime and other activities including games, trivia and discussion panels. The first Con Ja Nai in 1994 had an attendance of roughly 1,000 people. But times are tougher for Animania nowadays, and attendance at monthly screenings and Con Ja Nai are at an all-time low. Steven Heise, president of Animania, thinks this has to do with the group's lack See ANIMANIACS, Page 3B FILM The genius blaxploita- tons 'poof "Black Dyna- miiM/ hits Ann Arbor for one night only, a midnight showing. Saturday at the State Theater. The Sundance hit is a throwback to e genre's ultra-cool extravagance, featuring trademark elements of gr ous sex, kung-fu fightin and excessive levels of badassitude as ,Michael Jai White fights through hordes of her- in peddlers. Movies h ven't been this funk- ta tic since the '70s. sON STAGE Associate Profes- sor and Chair of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Ellen Rowe will be per- for'ng Friday, Jan. 15wih her quartet at the Kerrytown Cofcert House. The group will be playing original pieces from Rowe's new album Wishing Well. The performance starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $5 for students.