Ben Leinweber

Ben Cosplaying as Jean for the 2003 Halloween Party

Officer Positions

2001-2002	President
2000-2001	President
1999-2000	Treasurer

What I say

Hello everybody! I've been involved in the Minna no Anime club since the very beginning of my Freshman year in 1998. I remember the first time I went to the club and was greeted by Craig Kleen outside of the silo, as we had been kicked out into one of the business rooms that week. I was hooked instantly and never missed a meeting after that!

Pre-club

I got into anime rather late in my life when one of my high school friends rented Ghost in the Shell and Riding Bean with me. Riding Bean was freaking weird, but GiTS totally blew me away. The next anime I saw after that was the Ranma 1/2 series which I absolutely fell in love with, and rented all of the tapes I could from my local comic shop.

First year in club

My first year was a blast, and I couldn't get enough! I lived in Tenaya Hall[1] along with Tim Mok, Chris Perlus, Cliff Rowley, and Noel Priecs (sp?). After a quick dinner at the Outhouse, we'd usually walk down together to the silo, our haven of anime. First year we had some pretty bitchin' stuff showing. Check it out!

I remember spending time with my gang in Tenaya, copying all of the Rurouni Kenshin fansubs for 5 people, and watching the End of Evangelion movie in those small rooms as soon as a fansub came in! (One of the few times I watched stuff out of club before it was shown in club)

We were bribed into helping at Open House in 1999 with the promise of free copies of fansubs that were in the club library. I had a lot of fun there in spite of myself.

Treasurer in 1999-2000

For the 1999 elections, the club had a bit of a problem: no one wanted to do it! Mitch Losh and Craig Kleen ran against each other for president, and when Mitch took it, Craig ran unopposed for VP. Next came the treasurer position. No one readily volunteered for the position. I was hesitant as it was still only my first year, and I knew very little about running the club. But I had great fun at Open House that year, so I thought I'd give it a shot, and raised my hand.

My first duty started instantly as I had to remake the MNA Logo for the T-shirts that hadn't been printed yet. I had studied a lot of Graphics in High School, so I picked up a copy of FreeHand 8.0 from the Campus bookstore for the project. The T-shirts turned out great!

For the next three years, club was my life, and I spent every minute I could spare making plans for it. Mitch was in Japan for the first quarter, so and it was the first and only time Craig ran for a position, so we learned the ropes together (though Craig was a long time member, so he pretty much knew what he was doing).

President in 2000-2001

All of the old officers graduated the next year, and nobody but me was interested in taking the presidency of the club. Lucky me! Along with my new Vice President Dylan Hall and the rest of the staff that year, we put together a fine schedule that year.

I met Mark Salcido, an officer for the Atascadero Japanese Animation Society, at AX2K through Lee Bourgeois. We talked about doing a joint Halloween party together that year. With everyone's help we created the first annual MNA AJAS Halloween party. Unfortunately AJAS shrunk and all but disappeared so now it's just the Minna no Anime Halloween Party.

I also had all of the tapes that Viz had released up to that point of Maison Ikkoku. Though it had been shown previously in club, that was before I got there. So I had to see it for myself on the big screen! At that time the official starting time was 6:00, so we called it Before Hours and I showed MI in the first slot and Dylan started his Fansub o' the week in the second.

President in 2001-2002

Dylan and I ran against each other in a friendly race, and I believe that I won by only one or two votes that year. If I hadn't won, I would have gone for the newly created Librarian position. I had a couple of visions for it, but I couldn't enact them in the role of president. I just didn't have the time.

Anime was gaining popularity and digisubs had yet to make a big debut at the time, so our club grew to a height of more than 50 members at that time. All of my best friends were in the club and we could geek it up all night! Of course the posters that we received from ADV that we gave out with membership probably helped a lot too! ;)

I was not at all happy with the crappy "noise maker" system that Mark had come up with for trivia the previous year, so I developed the Trivia Buzzer System that we used the first time this year. Except for a few bugs here and there it worked fine. Improvements would follow each year for the next 4 years.

The previous summer I bought and received the Maison Ikkoku Box Set from TokyoPop, which was in the business of importing at that time. Due to some strong opposition from several officers to put it in the normal schedule (we already had which shows we were going to put in planned), I decide to create Maison Ikkoku Sunday Dinner Theater. We showed 6 episodes of MI livesubbed every other Sunday. I know there's a picture of the attendees around. I'll see if I can dig it out.

Ben in Japan 2002-2003

I would have been perfectly happy as a clam running as an officer until I graduated except for that I decided I liked all of this Japanese stuff to much to stay in the US forever. A 9 month home stay and studying under some seriously excellent proffessors at Waseda university filled my desired for knowledge. Because I was having too much fun with Japanese itself, I didn't really watch too much anime this year. But that didn't stop me from coming to club the next year.

Member in 2003-2004

My last year at Cal Poly was spent as a simple member. I'll write more about this later.

What others say

Ah Ben, our agent in Japan.  He was pres for 2000, and 2k1 (and treasurer 
before that I believe).  Ben was pres during the time club began to "evolve"
into what I consider it's greatest period.  Ben was always friendly and 
willing to take all the jokes with a grain of salt (He certainly withstood 
plenty of verbal and physical abuse).

Notable achievements: Programmed the buzzer and quiz program we use for 
trivia during Halloween (except this year's), first documented case of MNA 
cross-play at Halloween (Sailor Ben), managed to convince Cal Poly media 
services to give us access to the booth in order to gain club direct control 
of the projector, contributed scritps for live-subbing, Maison dinner theater 
on Sundays.

How do you spot him: It used to be really easy, look for the white guy with 
glasses, beard, and long hair.  He has since chopped off the mop, but he 
still got the beard and glasses, last I checked.

He's currently teaching english in Japan.

--Nik Kamachi, email to MNAMembers, 23 Dec 2005

Drive by .... He plays a good game of settlers of catan and the pictionary parties started at his place. Its all about the Yaoi! ^__^ Rebecca Goodwin

Pumpkins

My favorite part of Halloween was the pumpkin carving contest. I learned how to use the Pumpkin Masters Carving kit with my parents a long long time ago, and my skills in Graphic Communications helped a lot here. The first Halloween I made a picture of Rishu from Mammotte Shugogetten. Man she was cute.

In 2003 I made these pumpkins:

Nadia in the dark with a real candle.	Nadia with the room lights on.
Sailr Moon Henshin sequence pose.	Rakka still not used to her halo.

For the record, I designed Rakka, but Mike Whipp did all the messy carving work for me. Nadia is definitely my most favorite pumpkin I have ever done!

Later on I'm thinking of writing a pumpkin making guide for everyone! :)