On April 4, the Japanese Cultural Collective hosted an “Anime 101” night in The Forum. The goal of the event was to give those who didn’t necessarily have experience with anime some basic knowledge about the medium. They also hoped to cultivate a love for anime by helping beginners get a good grasp on concepts that might have otherwise seemed alienating or overwhelming. Anime is a vastly complex medium. Sometimes just jumping into it is a bit much. A range of people attended the event, from anime experts to complete beginners. JCC officer Chantelle Mitchell opened with a brief presentation to give attendees a little background on the subject. When putting the presentation together, Mitchell thought back to her own first experiences with the medium. “When I first started anime, I was like, ‘Whoa. This is weird.,’ ” she says. With that in mind, the presentation focussed on the strange nuances that don’t always make sense to someone just starting to watch anime. One of the big focusses was on anime lingo as well as the cliches found in anime TV shows and movies, many of which can be found on Crunchyroll.com While there were a lot of attendees who already knew much of this information, Mitchell took care to explain each of the concepts for those who hadn’t been watching for that long. With each slide, there was a lot of laughter over how absurd certain parts of anime might seem to an outside viewer, such as the many over the top facial and body expressions characters make. After the presentation, attendees enjoyed a viewing of the first four episodes of the half hour comedy anime “Ouran High School Host Club.” This was a huge attendance draw to the event. “Ouran” is a widely...

By Charlotte Martinez/Photos by Natalie Abel   From the wall paintings on St. Francis’s auditorium in downtown Santa Fe, an image of the catholic saint gazes with pastel eyes at the scene forming in the front of his pews. Three robed members of the Tahoma One Drop Zen Monastery from Whidbey Island are seated on the stage, peering indifferently at the audience as they file in. A fourth member stands, monitoring a pile of blank canvases and a bowl of black ink on the stage floor. Positioned in front of these tools is at camera that projects the image on a large screen. This, no doubt, is for the convenience of those audience members who just hate when they can’t see. Japanese Master Shodo Harada Roshi stands on Francis’s stage with his hands clasped against his long black robe. He, like the others, looks serene and statuesque in what I can only label as a zen zone, but looking at the wise wrinkles and slick head I can’t help but calculate the master’s age. If he was born in 1940, his face is that of a 73-year-old, but even this doesn’t seem right. His face is too shaped and his posture too perfect; could this be a side effect of a disciplined life? If I feel like shaking his hand to obtain wisdom, is that too “western” of me? His interpreter and facilitator, Daichi-Priscilla Storandt, sits next him with a kind-looking grin which contrasts the Roshi’s stoic one. If balance is essential in Buddhism, then the coupling is just short of perfect. Books on the Roshi’s calligraphy works are for sale in front and I wonder if St. Francis objects to this display. The Roshi perhaps feels this too, and despite his title, practice...