Unscripted Anime

At an anime/manga club meeting a few weeks ago at my library the presidency wanted to have an activity where the members would write scripts with anime characters and themes and then act them out at the next meeting. So between the meetings I gently reminded the kids to work on their scripts. They all told me they were hard at work.

At the meeting I asked, "So, who wants to share their script?" There were no scripts, even from the presidency who came up with the idea in the first place. I knew the Japanese snacks would not hold all these energetic teenagers for long. I had to think fast. "Okay," I said, "Everyone pick out what character you would like to be and then just make up whatever you want." I held my breath and hoped this wouldn't be a total bust.

The teens immediately got into it. They first picked out characters for half an hour. There were fights over who could be Sakura from Naruto, we had a surplus of ninjas, someone insisted that they be a dog, and everyone else changed their characters half a dozen times.

Once that was finally figured out they could finally act it out. I expected half the teens to stand at the sidelines looking cynical but everyone participated. Somehow the story devolved into a giant ninja fight with a barking dog. I had to remind some teens several times that we are "play fighting." They were a little too into it. Next meeting they want to do it again with full costumes, props and a video camera. Let's just hope they don't bring real swords.