The host was an air force officer that'd been stationed in Okinawa for a while and fell in love with anime there. When he came back to the states he got friends to buy and ship him laserdiscs of anime from Japan on a regular basis, and showing those to friends gradually became the club.

Fun enough we'd host lan parties pretty often too. This was back when you had to daisychain coax ethernet, and one person having to leave meant everything had to shut down for a bit lol.

In the pre broadband era there was this sort of local collaboration in a way that I miss, but I'm also not blinded to the negatives of that era. Like the anime club had some very enthusiastic loli fans that with the benefit of adult hindsight were way past the creep line and definitely had a chilling effect.