...there was the apartment. In the apartment lived Throkda Jones, who often attended the Anime Club at the University of Texas in Austin. And many library checkouts begat a very large personal anime collection.

And it was good.

And Throkda Jones belonged to other circles of friends, among them his gaming group and a bulletin board service which each also met once per week. And Throkda Jones belonged to a home-based anime club which only met once per month, and watched anime on a 12-inch screen from across the room.

This was not good.

On Halloween of 1996, Throkda Jones had not been invited to any Halloween parties (pause for the reader to say "Aww...".....okay, that's long enough), so as he usually did when faced with this situation, he decided to throw his own. He would show all the gory or scary titles out of his collection of anime! He would serve food! He would...um...he would dress up! (Okay, so he only drew a face on a piece of cardboard, attached a rubber band to hold it to his face, and wore a black cape, but at least that was something!)

The plan was falling into place. He invited many, many people from all his circles of friends. He gave them two weeks of time to make sure their plans included his party. Two dozen people said they'd make it! He made sure he had enough food for all of them! Things were looking great!

Two people showed up -- Chuck Keene, and Karsten Sethre.

*cough*

Well...at least Karsten was in costume. He came as Ryoga.

Regardless of the small number of guests, they had a great time, heckling the anime. They learned such important things as how a simple lack of perception may keep you from being the true Fist of the North Star, but it won't stop you from kicking the true heir's ass all over the town square. They learned the folly of accepting a strange woman's offer of unlimited sex! They learned that watching anime and being allowed to openly make fun of the silly bits was a lot of fun!

They resolved to do it again.

So they met the next week, and the next week, and the week after that.....

By this time, Throkda Jones decided that since they were meeting every Thursday night anyway, they might as well call themselves a club.

But a club needs a name.

At that point in time, clubs not based in a school were exceedingly rare. Anime in the stores or video rental outlets was virtually unknown -- you could rent "Akira," or "Warriors of the Wind," and that was about it. Basically, most of the anime you could get was either in raw Japanese, fan subtitled, or a Streamline dub. As a result, many anime fans detested dubs just on general principle. There were no good dubbing studios, and virtually no decent English voice actors. Of course, these fans also held anime in such reverence that it bordered on religion. When anime was playing, you were not to speak, no matter how ridiculous the scene was. Anime was not entertainment -- it was ART.

As Throkda Jones reasoned, if that attitude in anime fandom was considered to be orthodox, then he must be a heretic.

Thus, the Anime Heretics was born.

Throkda Jones enjoyed drawing. He was terrible at it, but at least he could design simple fonts passably well. He drew a logo. He showed it to Chuck & Karsten at the next meeting. They liked it. They liked the name. They agreed to meet every Thursday night at 7:00.

And just like that, a club was born.

Time passed. Throkda Jones, Chuck, and Karsten all continued to ask people from all their circles of friends to attend the meetings. Soon, they were up to a half-dozen regulars, and a handful of people who would drop by from time to time. As he liked to watch series from beginning to end, Throkda Jones came up with a schedule -- they typically showed one episode from 4 or 5 series, and then a movie.

More time passed. The company that Throkda Jones worked for was sold to another company in Chicago, and he was gone for two weeks, leaving the care of his apartment and the hosting of the meetings to Karsten. When he returned, now unemployed, and was faced with the decision of either accepting one of two job offers in Dallas, or to remain in Austin and job-hunt without knowing how long it would take. It was a difficult decision, but economic survival took precedence, and Throkda Jones moved up to Arlington, leaving Karsten nominally in charge of the Anime Heretics.

It hadn't been more than a few weeks before Throkda Jones got the bug to have company again. He dropped in on the UT-Arlington anime club a couple of times, but they only met every other week, and it just didn't feel the same to him as either the Anime Club at UT Austin, or the Anime Heretics he had left behind.

Well, he'd started a club once....how hard could it be to do it again?

As it turned out, it was more difficult than he'd guessed. This wasn't as much of a college town as Austin had been, and he didn't know as many people. He posted a flyer in a local comic shop he'd found, but the responses didn't come. He put out flyers at the UT Arlington anime club, but while they were all taken, nobody contacted him.

Fortunately, Throkda Jones made friends quickly. He joined a gaming group, and told them about his club, and soon he had a few members, who found him a few more, and in time, he met more friends, some of whom were interested in anime, and so on.

Eventually, he put up a simple website, and then he gained more members through the e-mail. He also met some people at a local anime convention, and once again, he only had a few regulars, but a large number of members who would drop in from time to time.

Through all the time shifts, the moves, the new and lost members due to moves or schedule changes, the central motivation of the Anime Heretics has always remained the same. We meet once a week to watch anime, to heckle the bad anime, to be enthralled by the good anime, and in general to share our love of this hobby. We are not into anime as our only pastime, to the exclusion of all else. Anime is not the be-all and end-all of life to us. Anime is simply one of the most enjoyable forms of entertainment we experience, and we want to have a good time with it. We will not charge dues, or restrict membership in any way. This club has always been a labor of love, and since we're still going strong after all these years, the effort and expense to keep it going has all been worth it.