They like Shoujo, dislike "Lodoss War," enjoy karaoke, eating at Japanese restaurants and visiting cons in their spare time. From the country that brought us the Beatles, Shakespeare and divorce, in one of the world's most renowned universities, meet the one, the only, Oxford Anime Vision.

The president's office, currently held by Ian Roberts, reigns supreme since OAV lacks any other officer positions. Membership is open to everyone for a fee of 3 pounds a year (about five dollars). Though OAV membership is open to everybody, in practice only students participate. "We have advertised occasionally by putting flyers into the Manga sections of local book stores but with limited success - students are just so easy to advertise to," Roberts explains. OAV's roster includes about 180 people "signed-up," 20 regular attendees and 10 die-hard members. Regular screenings take place every Thursday from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Titles include "Bubble Gum Crisis," "Revolutionary Girl Utena," "Kodomo no Omocha," "Excel Saga," "Angel Sanctuary," "Pet Shop of Horrors," "Cowboy Bebop" and "Kare Kano." With a philosophy of "if it's good we'll show it," OAV generally tends to screen shoujo.

OAV had just finished organizing the "FLCL" marathon in St. John's College when Roberts kindly agreed to an interview. Question number one obviously had to be, what is the "FLCL" marathon in St. John's College?

"Ah, well, that's when we hire out the St. John's College Auditorium and show all 6 'FLCL' OAVs back to back for the ultimate in Gainax-related brain-melting. And boy is it beautiful. Definitely the best series we've seen in ages," Roberts answers.

Apart from watching anime, OAV members dream of pursuing careers in the field. "There's a couple of us with the skills and desire to be part of the anime industry. Our latest fansubs are DVD quality for crying out loud and with a license and DVD authoring abilities we could do great things," laments Roberts. "These are only pipe dreams, though. None of us are really anime artists so no fan comics, but I'm a film studies academic and will give anime as much publicity as I possibly can. We even have our own in-house digital fansubbing (Phlebas Anime) via my good friend Tom Jordan," reports Roberts. Jordan's credits for OAV include "Kare Kano," "Modern Love's Silliness," "Angel Sanctuary," "Adolescence of Utena" and "Saiyuki." "We do contribute quite considerably to UK anime fandom in general as we supply much of the new anime material to be found at UK cons," Roberts boasts.

In the never-ending search for new titles, OAV mainly gets their stock from the United States or Japan. "We mostly show subbed American releases or fansubs acquired from the states or we sub our own from Japanese DVDs," admits Roberts. Anime's popularity in England leaves much to be desired.

"I'd love to say it was very popular but I couldn't really justify it. We've lots of bad publicity for anime in this country and the super-violent and super-sexual releases by Manga Video have given rise for a definition of anime in the shorter Oxford English Dictionary as 'Japanese Animation predominantly known for excessive sex and violence.' Nice, huh?"