About

The term “miteiru みている” is the Japanese subjective verb for “looking,” as a directed and concentrated gaze.  It is through this gaze that we make sense of the world around us, and thus understand this animated form. -miteiru! Vol 1 Issue 1

That explains what the term means, but what on earth is “miteiru!”?

Welcome to the official blog of the MIT Anime Club.  We’re a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with eighteen proud years of history, founded at a time when Japanese animation had barely budded as an entertainment niche in the United States.  From the early days of sharing VHS fansubs to the North American anime boom of recent years, our club has grown along with the art form– one that originates from Japan but still spawns great interest halfway across the globe in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

miteiru! thus exists for for us– and you!– to share a conversation about this medium and subculture, from both a scholastic and a fandom-ish point of view.  From 2002 to 2004, miteiru! existed as a campus print newsletter for the club, but as virtual connections begin to eclipse physical ones and our planet becomes a little smaller, we felt it was appropriate to bring the conversation online– and make it more two-way.  We’d like to share with you what we’re up to, what we’re watching and what we think of it, and what we observe from and about the world of anime.  In return, we hope to hear your thoughts and insights, whether you’re from here or elsewhere around the world, to discuss a phenomenon that has become truly transnational.

(And if you just happen to be a little more local– as an MIT student, affiliate, or a member of our club– consider this blog a space for your own voice, too. We gladly welcome article submissions from the aforementioned groups; just send a draft for your blog entry to anime-miteiru@mit.edu, and we’ll review it for potential publishing for all the world to see.)

Therefore, in welcoming you to our blog, we will say not “yokoso ようこそ” (welcome), but “yoroshiku onegaishimasu よろしくお願いします”!  Nice to meet you, thank you in advance, and please look after us!

Introducing miteiru!’s current authors:
Mimi: Social Chair. Freshman looking into courses 7 (bio, non-pre-med) and 21M (universal language of music). Loves Vocaloid and wants to compose Vocaloid songs one day; wishes she could draw.
Jennifu: Vice-President, Librarian, Webmaster. Junior in course 15 (Management Science) and CMS (Comparative Media Studies); self-proclaimed mangaka-wannabe-in-training; totally-not-a-cosplayer-nope-nuh-uh-no-way.  I love manga and mangoes, but the latter are so hard to find cheap in the Northeast!
J: Webmaster, Membership Officer. Would watch more anime, if only he had more time (this happens a lot at MIT). Has his own webcomic (www.nonsense-wars.com).

wah: Acquisitions Officer. Random person who some how found himself at the MIT anime club despite not being an MIT student. Also runs a webcomic but it’s filthy and MIT probably doesn’t want to be linked to it.

The views expressed in this blog are not representative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT Anime Club as a whole, unless specified otherwise.

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