WADE MANNS
Pensacola Junior College’s Anime and Gaming club meets on Thursdays from noon to three in the Chadbourne Library on the Pensacola campus. Club members promote the meetings as good social and entertainment opportunities for students to meet and share common interests.
Austin Clifford Axtell was the founder of the club, and still actively participates in it. “We’re a club that basically tries to kick back and relax, so between classes in school, we have a way to basically break the ice with our fellow students,” Axtell said.
Activities in the club range from playing some of the latest as well as some older video games, to watching anime (Japanese animation), both TV and movies, with the activities switching every week from anime to gaming and back.
During the fall semester, the gaming mostly consisted of fighting games, such as the Tekken series, but occasionally included first-person shooters such as Perfect Dark Zero, or even tennis, Sega Superstars Tennis.
Anime has consisted of the recently released Miyazaki movie, Ponyo, movies related to the series Death Note, as well as more esoteric offerings.
The club sponsor is Cynthia App of the Visual Arts department at PJC. Members of the club borrow an Xbox 360 Arcade from her every week. This particular type of Xbox 360 has no hard drive but a Memory Unit, and comes with a few Xbox LIVE Arcade games.
Originally, the club was held in the art building, but has since moved to the library, its current location.
Axtell said the anime club may be getting more mainstream, as it introduces computer games, and further styles of anime, as well as other genres of movies. The changes are being considered so that they can attract the most people into the club, Axtell said.