So after Anime at Alamo Drafthouse switched from the West Oaks Mall location to the Mason Park location in Katy, Texas (after the closure of Drafthouse at West Oaks), attendance apparently dropped off markedly, to the point where both sponsors (FUNimation/Sentai Filmworks) put the whole program under a microscope and basically indicated that unless at least 40+ showed up for each screening during the month of April, they would be pulling the plug on this long standing Houston tradition.
I'm proud to report that Anime Fandom in Houston stood up and we made our numbers for April; Alamo Draftouse signed a new 3 month lease for more Anime screenings, so we are secure for Summer 2013. Our screening host, Rommel Salandanan, has wisely restructured the screening schedule such that everything is now screened Tuesday evenings, and there's an even split between Sentai Filmworks and FUNimation shows. When Sentai Filmworks had its own, separate night every 3rd Monday it was never as well attended as the FUNimation shows every Tuesday. Now that they are on equal footing with FUNimation, the Sentai Filmworks shows have been getting improved attendance numbers as well (though the audience does not like the over-long Sentai Filmworks dual credit sequences--once in Japanese with music, once in English in dead silence).
Anyway, I composed a video about our plight and tweeted it out...and I also contacted several Anime podcasters, and I am very grateful to all of the ones who made brief mention of our situation on their shows. Thank you, thank you all. If it put only one more butt in a seat that wouldn't have been there otherwise, it was totally worth it.
