Dead English Language Anime Magazines: “V.Max”

Publisher: V.Max, Newtype Press, Newtype Publishing, R. Talsorian Games
Format: 210mm x 280mm (Standard Magazine Size)
Genre/Type: Anime, Manga, Tokusatsu, Anime Music, Model Kits, Role Playing Games, Convention and Fandom Events Coverage
Years Active: 1991 – 1996
Issues Published: 17

As San Francisco Bay Area based anime magazine Animag entered the 1990’s, several internal issues within the magazine’s staff and its publisher, Pacific Rim, caused a major rift. Though the magazine did survive the internal and external conflicts, several staff left Animag for good. This included Animag’s co-founder, Matthew Anacleto, who was reportedly so frustrated with chaos at Animag that he along with other ex-staff created their own magazine; V.Max. Though not explicitly stated in the magazine itself but referred to in a line below the masthead, V.Max was intended to be an upgrade of the A.N.I.M.E. (Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange) newsletter. A.N.I.M.E. was the original newsletter of the fan collective/club that Animag was born from. The title of the magazine, V.Max, was taken from the mid 1980’s anime series “Blue Comet SPT Layzner”. In that series, the titular robot’s A.I. system Fouron could engage a high performance system named V-Max at will.

Like other magazines of the era,V.Max had similar content; several anime and manga series profiles, a rundown of several new OVA releases, CD soundtrack reviews, a short one page profile of someone in the anime industry, a somewhat light-hearted news section and lists of Japanese laserdisc releases which of course included catalogue numbers so you could order them. The magazine was initially bi-monthly and ran for 28 pages in black and white with a colour cover. With the exception of CD soundtrack reviews, no actually critical review appeared at this stage of the magazine’s life. Instead there were only short synopses of anime and manga. An editorial from editor Chris Keller explained that it wasn’t the magazine’s job to tell the reader what they should or shouldn’t watch. They would only provide information and it would be up to reader to decide. The magazine also included lyrics or quotes from various anime which began on the cover and concluded on the contents page. This was a rather cute idea, but it only lasted until the sixth issue.

As per other English language magazines of the era, the subjects chosen for the more in-depth articles were usually the more popular titles amongst US anime fandom of the time; “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”, “Video Girl Ai”, “Legend of the Galactic Heroes”, “Gundam”, “Record of Lodoss Wars” and “Patlabor”. Profiles of anime staff also were of people who were well known to fandom at the time; Naoyuki Onda, Hideaki Anno and Yasuhiko Yoshikazu. Interesting titbits in early issues included a report in the news section that in a Japanese supernatural magazine Go Nagai claimed that real demons were models for the creatures that inhabit his manga. Make of that what you will. Several conventions of the era were also comprehensively covered. Of most interest was coverage of Anime Expo ’92, held in San Jose, California in July. Though not sufficiently titled or explained, one photograph seems to show guests Haruhiko Mikimoto, Buichi Terasawa and Yoshiyuki Tomino performing karaoke!

As further issues of the magazine were released, it became quite apparent that the staff really didn’t think much of any English language adaption made for the US market, be it manga, or English dubbed or even English subtitled VHS tapes. The two main targets seemed to be Viz Communications and of course Streamline Pictures. The report on the Streamline Pictures panel at the Anime Expo ’92 was rather scathing. It stated that Carl Macek implied that “Robotech” was far better than “Macross” and that the core target of Streamline Pictures’ dubbed VHS tapes were people who “live in trailer parks watching TV and eating fish head sandwiches”. Not sure if this quote was 100%  accurate, but I think we all know that at time Macek could come across as bit of a narcissist and was often rather critical or downright hostile to anime fandom. While I think a far bit of criticism and bile directed towards him by elements in fandom was way out of line, its little wonder he pissed off a large section of fandom.

By mid-1993, things had changed substantially for the magazine. In the seventh issue it was announced that local model and garage kit shop Newtype had taken the publishing reins. The news section was gone. Profiles of newly released Japanese OVAs as well as the CD soundtrack reviews were replaced with reviews of locally released English language tapes, Japanese and some US CD soundtrack releases and an addition of video game reviews. And because a plastic model and garage kit shop was running the show, the magazine now included lengthy reviews of a garage kits. A fan art page was also added. By this time the magazine ballooned to 40 pages in length. In this short era of the magazine, it continued to stick to its core coverage of two or three manga and anime features as well as listing new and forthcoming Japanese laserdiscs and whatever new dubbed and subbed VHS tapes were being released in the US. Three big names in the anime industry were also interviewed for the magazine; Koichi Ohata (mecha designer and director of the infamous OVAs “M.D. Geist” and “Genocyber”), Haruka Takachiho (author of the “Dirty Pair” and “Crusher Joe” novels) and legendary Japanese voice actor Megumi Hayashibara.

Only after three issues, the era of Newtype running the show was over. Enter R. Talsorian Games, a role playing game company best known for their games “Mekton”, “Cyberpunk 2020” and their adaptation of “Dragonball Z”. In some ways they were a perfect fit for the magazine, but in some ways they weren’t. The first major change was the magazine went from bi-monthly to quarterly. The list of new and upcoming Japanese and US releases disappeared and the fan art page only continued to appear sporadically until it eventually disappeared altogether. Worst of all R. Talsorian Games devoted least eight pages to its anime related role playing games each issue. Despite the fairly sickening self-promotion by its new commercial publisher, V.Max continued to produce the same high quality articles on various anime and manga including features on “Yu Yu Hakausho”, “Compiler”, “Gatchaman” and more obscure manga such as “Desert Rose”.

This new era of the magazine also included a large focus on fandom, and not just reports on local US anime conventions. The very first issue of the R. Talsorian Games era included a report on Comic Market 45 (aka Comiket), the winter 1993 edition of Japan’s largest and most insane doujinshi festival. Written by then overseas coordinator for the Comiket organisation committee, US ex-pat Chris Swett, it gives a short but informative run down of the event. A more lengthy sidebar article presents a more detailed history of the event with a comment from the chair of Comiket welcoming foreign participants as well as an address to obtain more information on how to get a table at Comiket. I believe this is the very first time Comiket was profiled (or even mentioned) in an English language publication. A few issues later the recently opened Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture (half an hour from Osaka by train) was profiled.

The author of the sidebar article on Comiket was the infamous K.J. Karvonen. He gained quite a reputation due to a review of a book and various articles and opinions written for Hawaiian based anime magazine Animeco. I won’t be going into what he wrote or why his views were not appreciated (to put it mildly) in the US anime community at the time as I will be looking at Animeco sometime down the track. At any rate, Karvonen got his own regular column in the magazine in late 1994 called Otaku World. While his article on Comiket might have been informative and measured, his writing (and rantings) in Otaku World weren’t. His first article about Rumiko Takahashi’s panel at the San Diego Comicon in August 1994, wasn’t too bad. It did however get a little worse from there on. He got his wife, Tery, to write up a perspective on fandom from the viewpoint of female anime fans. Tery, being a comic book artist, supplied the drawings for the article as well. It’s as you’d expect and terribly fanish. A latter article on Canadian anime fans, in particular the Vancouver Japanese Animation Society and its fansub offshoot, the infamous Arctic Animation was just as embarrassingly fanish. Editor Chris Keller’s promise in the very first issue that it would never navel gaze or pander to this stuff seemed a rather hollow one.

However I did enjoy the two part interview that Karvonen did with Running Ink Productions, a fan powered animation company that created the opening ceremony animation for Anime Expo ’92, called “Bayscape 2042”. The animation was obviously inspired by Daicon Film’s opening animations for Japan SF Conventions in 1981 and 1983 as well as borrowing heavily from various AIC OVA productions like “Bubblegum Crisis” and “Gall Force”. The two articles provide a very interesting insight to the production difficulties of the project and what they hoped to achieve in the future. This final era of the magazine also included interviews with really big names in the anime industry including Yasuhiro Imagawa, Go Nagai, Monkey Punch, Akemi Takada, Mamoru Oshii, Nobuteru Yuki and Scott Frazier (now known as Jan Scott-Frazier). The other big addition would be inclusion of a regular tokusatsu column in 1995 written by Bob Johnson, who co-founded “Markalite” magazine and would later go on to co-found the SciFi Japan website.

While a lot of the writing on anime, manga and various conventions and events was really well done, the major problem I had with this magazine was its issue with English adaptations, specifically English dubbing. Not a great deal of the reviews received anything beyond three stars out of five. I do think the US actors and directors who take on the task of dubbing anime always seem to have a difficult time with the material they're trying to localise, and the results are rarely as good as the original. But I understand that people like them, and for whatever reason a lot of people just won't read subtitles. But the staff at V.Max didn’t want to acknowledge this and hated dubs with a passion. No matter how well a dub was done, they seemed to just rip it apart, simply for the fact it was a dub. Chris Keller even wrote a three part editorial (meant to be a four parter, cut short by the demise of the magazine) devoted to why he didn't like dubbing. It was quite tiring at times. I really wished they concentrated on the content of the anime when reviewing, rather than the English voice acting.

By 1996 the end had come and R. Talsorian Games stopped publishing the magazine. The reasons as to why they took this decision were never made public. While the magazine had some great articles and good interviews with a lot of top Japanese creators and people associated with the anime industry, I sort of understand why they couldn’t compete with the competition. By the time the mid 1990’s had rolled around, magazines like Anime UK, Manga Mania, Protoculture Addicts and Animerica had entered the market several years prior, refined their content and had become major players. They had much better articles, more positive reviews and were less critical of English dubbing and companies trying to release anime and manga. A lot of anime fans, most who had only come into contact with the commercial US anime industry, chose other magazines over V.Max, and looking at other competitors, it's not hard to see why. While there are a number of issues are available in the second hand market, for general collectors I don’t think there is much value in collecting issues of V.Max other than for curiosity. This is yet another obscure English language magazine that has pretty much been totally forgotten, lost to time in the history of US anime fandom.

Dead English Language Anime Magazines: “Animenominous!”

Publisher: BDC Enterprises, Inc
Format: 210mm x 280mm (Standard Magazine Size)
Genre/Type: Anime, Manga, Japanese Music, Convention and Events Coverage
Years Active: 1990 – 1993
Issues Published: 5

Easily one of the more obscure anime magazines published in North America, with one of the stranger magazine title names, the origins of Animenominous! began as a loose meeting of fans on a Bulletin Board System (BBS, a kind of forum prior to the invention of HTML and web browsers) in 1987. Originally called Animation Anonymous, due to the fact many fans were closeted, the name was soon shorted to Animenominous. The small group managed to create five newsletters called Anime-E (Anime Electronic Mail) which were posted on various BBS. With the success of those five newsletters, and the success of other early anime magazines such as Anime-zine, Animag and Protoculture Addicts, some of the members decided bring the newsletter into comic book stores as an actual magazine.

Based in New Jersey, the magazine’s core staff included editor Jeff Thompson, composition and typesetting from Luke Menichelli, who previously did the layouts and composition for Anime-zine and the furry fandom zine Furtherance, and comic book artist Steve Rittler who did the covers for the magazine, created the magazine’s mascot, Animimi and had a comic running in the magazine called “Jasta”.

Issue one was published in the summer of 1990 and featured the rather obscure Rem Ayanokoji from “Dream Hunter Rem” on the cover. This character was from an Ero anime OVA from the mid 1980’s which was later reformatted into a mainstream OVA series. Running 40 pages long, the features and topics in the first issue were typical of the interests of many North American fans of that era; “Urusei Yatsura”, “Captain Harlock”, “Patlabor” and “Kimagure Orange Road”. Although several anime companies such as Streamline Pictures, AnimEigo and U.S. Renditions had begun selling video tapes to the small but dedicated fan base, the bulk of the articles in the magazine were in the format of episode and character synopses. This is because VHS fansubs had not become widespread (and were virtually non-existent), so most fans had to rely on synopses or take up Japanese to understand the untranslated tapes and laserdiscs they either bought or traded.

One of the more interesting articles in the first issue is one on the “Girls with Guns” genre, though the author, Stanley Jacobson, seems to include titles which are clearly not in that genre such as “Gall Force”. As per many articles in magazines of the period, there is some really questionable information stated as fact. The article claims that the title character from “Iczer 1” is male, which is blatantly untrue. However in the mook (magazine/book) “Iczer-One Mediamix Special Part 2”, it does state that the character Iczer-2 is male (judging for the anime OVA this seems to be untrue as well). Perhaps the author gleaned the information from that mook and got confused. Interestingly the article also makes mention of a very obscure Osamu Tezuka TV special from 1983 called “Prime Rose”. It’s kind of amazing that fans in the very early 1990’s would even know about these titles.

However the article from Animenominous! that caused the most controversy amongst fans was the one on “Kimagure Orange Road”. In the character profiles it erroneously stated that the lead character, Madoka Ayukawa, is half American and a “burakumin”, that is an outcast, the lowest of the low, a term derived from the Sengoku period (circa 1467 - 1600) when a caste system was introduced in Japan. While the author of the article, Walter Higgins, may have confused the fact Madoka was American due to the fact her sister was married to one, however claiming that Madoka is “burakumin” is just plain odd. The second issue corrected the “burakumin” label saying that it was meant to be “ai no ko” (literally love child), which back in the Showa era also colloquially could refer to a person of mixed race (which was not explained in the magazine's correction). The “Kimagure Orange Road” article certainly did not help the magazine. It was often cited by fans of the franchise as being error ridden, with some who believed that due to this fact, the writing in the magazine wasn’t to be trusted. The first issue also contained a fantastic bibliography and filmography (up to 1984) of Osamu Tezuka who had died in 1989.

Rounding out the magazine is a six page comic called “Jasta” by Steve Rittler. It follows the adventures of a German World War I fighter pilot named Rupert Volsung who ends up in another dimension after flying through a vortex. There he saves a young female pilot from being killed by two spacecraft and finds himself in the midst of an intergalactic war. While it is very much stylised “anime art” of the era, the comic is relatively original and quite interesting. As the story progresses we are giving a lot of the backstory to the world Rupert has ended up in, obviously inspired from “Gall Force” with heavy influences from Leiji Matsumoto’s work. Unfortunately the comic disappeared from the magazine by the fourth issue. As I previously mentioned, Rittler supplied the magazine with most of its cover artwork. My favourite of his would be the second issue which featured the cast of “Ranma ½” on the front cover and on the back cover all of them transformed after they had been splashed by water.

The next three issues followed on in three to six month gaps. These issues had a mix of anime titles which were quite popular with fans and some more obscure titles not covered in other magazines of the era such as “Blue Sonnet”, “Galaxy Express 999”, “Cutey Honey” and “City Hunter”. Issue two also included an excellent article on Roman Album mooks including a list of Roman Albums published to date and a CD review column which become a regular feature. Issue two also included the first letters to the editor column. Most of the letters were quite positive about anime and the magazine itself, however one Australian, Ken Stone, was rather negative about sever popular titles. According to him “Dunbine” and “Gundam” were both “major wastes of space” and “Dirty Pair wasn’t that great”. Yeah, righty-o Ken. It’s always interesting to see who wrote into magazines like this and what fandom was like during early eras of fandom. However the only name of note I spotted in this magazine was Tim Eldred who is probably the leading English language source on “Star Blazers” and “Yamato” and previously worked for the franchise's US arm, Voyager Entertainment.

Speaking of which, issue two also had a “Yamato” article with author lamenting that North American fans no longer followed the franchise for a fair chunk of it's length. But the lack of fandom engagement with the franchise was to be expected as no anime had been produced since 1983. By issue three, a news section was included. However as with a many early anime magazines in English, a lot of the material presented as news was a bit suspect. One news article erroneously attributes the film “Only Yesterday” as being one directed by Hayao Miyazaki, another news article suggests “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas” would be getting an OVAs series. The magazine also stated that they would have an interview with Kenichi Sonoda in the following issue (with Animecon ’91 around the corner, which he was a guest of), however this did not eventuate. Other articles of note in the last couple of issues of the magazine include one on “My Neighbour Totoro”, an article recommending anime to beginners (bizarrely absent in most anime magazines of the era), a write up on the first big anime convention in the US, Animecon ’91, and one on “Gatchaman”.

The “Gatchaman” article is pretty extensive, running 16 pages long, covering not only the original series but the two follow up TV series; “Gatchaman II” and “Gatchaman F”. But the article also contains the author’s hilarious laundry list of “problems” she had with the franchise such as Jun’s supposedly bad haircut, the “bad” animation in the first 20 episodes, the fact the Science Ninja Team wear the same clothes all the time, the children in the show are apparently drawn “ugly” and the fact Berg Katse’s personality is all over the shop.

Issue five, the final issue, was delayed by almost two years. While the magazine had by this time expanded to 52 pages, it was apparent from the editorial that things had gone quite badly for the magazine in that time. Steve Rittler had already left the magazine by the time issue four was published to work on his own comic book projects. Luke Menichelli had also left the magazine which meant that Jeff Thompson was running the entire magazine by himself. Not helping things was the fact the magazine had moved address, but all of their mail hadn’t been redirected and a lot of it had got lost. Thompson promised that a sixth issue would follow as soon as he could replace Menichelli and Rittler, however that sixth issue never materialised. As far as I can figure out, the magazine still attended anime conventions in the US with tables in the dealer’s room or Thompson as a guest representing the magazine until at least late 1994.

Jeff Thompson would later work in the emerging US anime video distribution industry, first as a freelance video box designer then as an employee of the Right Stuf where he edited the famed paper catalogue for the company as well as working a producer on many of their English language adaptations of anime. He was also instrumental in helping start one of the biggest anime conventions in the US, Otakon, in Baltimore, Maryland. Sadly Jeff died in 2006, leaving large shoes to fill at the Right Stuf. Steve Rittler went on to illustrate the comic “Morrigan” in 1993. I think this comic didn’t get beyond one issue and Steve doesn’t seem to have worked on anything else after this. After Animenominous!, Luke Menichelli seems to have disappeared into the ether in terms of participation in fandom.

As I said at the beginning of this post, Animenominous! has to be the most obscure of all English language anime magazines published in North America. Back in the very early 2000's, it took me several years of searching to find all five issues. I found the debut issue via a bookstore in the UK and a few other issues from less well known online comic book shops which no longer exist. Currently the only issue I can find for sale is the third issue on eBay, selling for US$11. Issue four can be found on the Internet Archive. Due to the many errors in the magazine (well, not a great deal, but enough to be of a concern) and the fact you can easily get the information elsewhere, this is probably not a magazine that’s essential for most people’s collection. Unless of course you’re like me and enjoy collecting these English language oddities. However Steve Rittler’s art is quite fun and is easily one of the best elements of the magazine. It is a real shame though that a lot of these early anime magazines are lost to time and forgotten by anime fandom as whole, even to those who archive and document early anime fandom.

Dead English Language Anime Magazines: “Protoculture Addicts”

Publisher: Claude J. Pelletier, Ianvs Publications, Protoculture Enr, Protoculture, Christopher Macdonald, Protoculture, Inc.
Format: 170mm x 240mm (Comic Size), 167mm x 255mm (Comic Size), B5, 207mm x 270mm (Standard Magazine Size)
Genre/Type: Anime, Manga, Japanese Live Action, Japanese Music, Convention and Events Coverage
Years Active: 1987 – 2008
Issues Published: 97 + 6 Special Issues

Note: Originally published on the “Anime Archivist” blog in June 2014.

Protoculture Addicts felt like one of those magazines that seemed to be around since the dawn of time. I recall seeing the magazine at various comic book shops during the mid to late 1990’s, but for whatever reason I thought that it just didn’t seem to be worthwhile purchasing it, especially when I was already buying Anime FX (formerly Anime UK), Manga Mania and Animerica. However when Anime FX fell off the perch and Animerica seemed to be overtly gunning for a general casual audience rather than the core fandom, I decided to pick it up. Despite the rather lacklustre design, I was rather surprised at the depth of the articles and how it was overflowing with information and data. I became a devoted reader.

Once I had acquired a few back issues, I realised the magazine wasn’t always like this. Starting as a number zero test issue in Autumn 1987, then the first true debut issue in Spring 1988, it was through and through a “Robotech” fanzine. Based in Canadian city of Montréal, Quebec, it was started by three French Canadians; Claude J. Pelletier, Alain Dubreuil and Michel Gareau. From 1988 to the end of 1991, the magazine was published in comic book formats, black and white, 36 pages long, typically in a bimonthly schedule. While the first seven issues (to April 1990) had the by-line “The Official Robotech Fanzine” on the cover, there was absolutely no evidence in the magazine or its credits to show that this was the case. However I was advised by one of the former writers that did indeed have a licensing agreement with Harmony Gold. Certainly the word “fanzine” was never in dispute. The early issues are amateurish as hell. Regular columns in the initial issues included “Robotech Trivia”, “Uh?! The Chronicle and the Bizarre & Odd in Robotech” (named because of the overuse of “Uh” by characters in “Robotech”), information on Robotech RPGs and news on the franchise. The layout looked pretty awful (a lot worse than Anime-zine and Animag, whose layouts were mediocre at times) and the writing was quite “fanish”, naïve and ignorant, certainly in comparison to the other anime magazines being published at the time.

For example Pelletier’s article on “Japanimation” in issue 2 really highlights the fact he practically knows nothing about the subject outside whatever what was available on TV or in local video stores (again, compare with the contents of Anime-zine and Animag). Other articles included an utterly fanboyish series on making an actual Macross Valkyrie and a truly horrible comic called “Operation Aborted”. The story, and I kid you not, involves a female veritech pilot who is considering an abortion. Her pilot boyfriend is killed in a battle with Zentradi and she decides to keep it. Obviously Christian right wingers wrote comics for the magazine. At any rate, it’s a comic that’s just so horrible in so many ways, including artwork. By issue 8 (April 1990), things were changing. The “Official Robotech Fanzine” by-line had disappeared from the magazine’s masthead and anime other than “Robotech” related material had started to appear on the covers as well as in the articles. The letters section show there was a minor backlash to the format change, but as Pelletier rightly pointed out in some of the first issues, Robotech’s popularity was on a downward swing. The only way for the magazine to be truly viable was to expand out into the wide world of Japanese animation.

With issue 12 in 1991, the layout and design was given a much needed revamp. Over the next few issues, the magazine developed a content template which it would pretty much use until the final issue some 17 years later. The magazine now contained regular sections such as news and reviews, anime synopses, reports on conventions (and anime club info), regular in depth articles on Japanese live action titles as well some fan art and RPG material. While the writing and layout had improved dramatically, some of that cringe worthy fanboy stuff of early issues remained. A section called “Anime Gossips” was introduced which was fanboy humour at its most lame. Here’s a sample; “Thanks to the success of rock singer Priss with her layout in Easyriders magazine, the National Rife Assocation has chosen S.W.A.T. commando Deuan Knute to be the centrefold for their organization’s journal”. Yes, a whole page that junk was wasted for way too many issues. Eventually it was scraped around 1995 or so (I’m missing few issues from that era).

Prior to their new layout and general change in direction, the magazine released a couple of specials. One was pretty mainstream; a full colour “Akira” poster/magazine (produced in conjunction with ex-Anime-zine staff), however the other caused some waves in the anime fandom community. Pelletier had noticed that many anime included shower and bath scenes. He decided to produce a rather tongue in cheek “Anime Shower” special. Produced in the same black and white comic book format as Protoculture Addicts, it featured still shots of anime girls having showers or baths. Toren Smith even wrote an article for the special which notes how mixed public baths were common place prior to WWII. While Toren acknowledges the voyeurism in these scenes in anime, he cheekily adds that it’s good that anime was sending a positive message to youth about personal hygiene and that his favourite shower scene is from episode 124 of “Urusei Yatsura”. Some of the fandom reaction was negative citing that the concept was sexist and exploitative. Yes, there were some seriously uptight fuckers in anime fandom even back in the early 1990’s. Regardless, two more “Shower Specials” were produced by the magazine with the final issue published in 1993. There also was a sister magazine published by Ianvs Publications from 1991 to 1995 called Mecha Press, however other than coming from the same publisher, it really was a separate magazine to Protoculture Addicts, so I won’t be dedicating any time to it. I only have two issues anyway so I currently have no plans to write about it as a separate blog post either.

The first issue of 1992 saw Protoculture Addicts’ format expand to B5 size. Alain Dubreuil stepped down as editor and publisher Claude J. Pelletier took up the role. The US anime industry was in its infancy with AnimEigo, US Renditions, Streamline Pictures and U.S. Manga Corps all releasing titles every month (with a list of titles and release dates now regularly published in the magazine until it’s last issue). The magazine stated publishing semi-regular interviews, mostly with people connected with the North American side of things. People like comic book artist Ben Dunn and John O’Donnell of U.S. Manga Corps. Interestingly in the O’Donnell interview, the magazine stated that John was formally head of Sony Video Software, which explains the bulk of the company’s early catalogue. Some Japanese creators were interviewed such as Johji Manabe Haruhiko Mikamoto and Yoshiyuki Sadamato (all guests of AnimeCon ‘91), but these were few and far in between. The magazine also began publishing regular articles on Japanese music and a short lived section on non-Japanese animation. Information on RPG material disappeared.

The magazine’s format expanded to a standard US magazine size with issue 22 (March/April 1993), but still remained back and white except for the cover. Over the next couple of years the magazine also expanded to 60 pages in length and fine-tuned its regular columns. From 1995 to its final days, the magazine was split into six distinct sections; editorial/letters; a news section on anime, live action, manga with a comprehensive list of US release dates; short reviews on anime, manga, live action, model kits and some music; long form in depth “Spotlights” on anime series and films; “Anime World” which included reports on conventions and film festivals, as well as in depth articles on various parts of the anime industry and fandom; and finally “Anime Stories”, which were short write ups on anime, about one or two pages long. Outside of those sections the occasional video game review popped up and model kit news was occasionally published.

The gradual change from what was frankly a really unprofessional, scrappy looking fanzine into a polished and really well written professional anime magazine (though not as visually pleasing as say Animerica or Manga Max) is quite amazing. There was also some quite exceptional writing. Of note are parts of the long running series “Anime World”. From 1998 to 2000 the magazine published a sixteen part (yes that’s right, 16 parts) series on censorship called “Anime Under Fire”. It outlined the “for” and “against” arguments, and as you can imagine there’s lots of dodgy and misleading stats for the pro-censorship side. For example, in regards to a link between TV violence and real violence it is noted that the homicide rate in South Africa rose to 130% in 12 years after TV was introduced. No, of course the violence had nothing to do with apartheid! It’s all the fault of television! Correlation does equal causation apparently. In another section, a proponent of censorship actually admits there isn’t any evidence to show that any media causes social unrest or crime, but asks for censorship anyway. In 2000 Protoculture Addicts also published their first and only book; “Anime: A Guide to Japanese Animation (1958 – 1988)”, which was actually an English translation of an Italian book.

From 1996 to 2005, the magazine continued on its way with very little in terms of content or layout changing, maybe a few more colour pages added and a gradual increase in pages to 72, but that was about it. Then with issue 82 in 2005, the magazine became a sister publication to AnimeNewsNetwork.com (ANN) with its owner, Christopher Macdonald, taking over as publisher. Many of the site’s staff including Bamboo Dong, Carlo Santos, Therron Martin and Zac Bertschy wrote for the magazine. While I’m not the biggest fan of ANN, I must admit the injection of new staff didn’t make the quality of the magazine suffer, in fact it improved. Only two issues of the magazine came out in 2004, compared with a full six in 2005 when ANN took the reins. With the May 2006 issue, number 88, the magazine finally went full colour, became binded instead of stapled and had a revamp of its layout. A manga preview was also published in every issue.

However the end was coming. Issue 97, the July/August 2008 edition, was published, and that became the final issue. In June 2009 Pelletier cited that the collapse of the US anime industry, the Global Financial Crisis as well as personal illness had caused delays in publishing issue 98. The fact was most modern anime fans had no need for magazines; they could get whatever information they needed from the internet. While many online anime retailers had already stopped stocking the magazine a couple years prior, Protoculture Addicts’ website formally announced the cancelation of subscriptions in February 2010. It was later stated that the next issue would be a special 100 page issue entitled “80 Anime You Must Watch!” to be released in Summer 2009, with a second special to be released later in that year. Right through 2010 and a little beyond, the public were constantly promised that issue 98 would be coming. It never arrived. Meanwhile the staff from ANN gave flippant responses to people who questioned them about the status of the magazine on their forums. Eventually the Protoculture Addicts section on ANN’s forums was deleted.

Supposedly the magazine still exists per se, in name only. You can buy back issues in ebook format from DriveThruRPG. The magazine’s website still existed recently as 2017, but hadn’t been updated since 2012 and was partly non-functional. A more recent visit to the website confirms it has been finally taken offline. Though Protoculture Addicts had an extremely amateurish, and quite frankly poor beginning, it really turned out to be quite an informative and well written magazine. The last ten issues are fantastic with the content and design coming together really well, though the magazine’s content had been quite good since the mid 1990’s. I suppose regardless of a magazine’s quality, English anime magazines (and print media as a whole) are doomed to die. The current generation doesn’t really give a rat’s about most physical media. I would guess Protoculture Addicts’ incredibly sporadic publishing schedule during its last few years also helped them reach their eventual fate. In some years as little as two issues out the promised six were actually published. I can’t imagine advertisers or subscribers were happy about that. Even though I have pretty much dumped printed media as a whole, there’s a part of me that feels that we have lost something important with the demise of these magazines.

Dead Anime Magazines in English: “Animag”

Publisher: Animag, Pacific Rim Publishing Company, Malibu Graphics
Format: A4
Genre/Type: Anime, some manga, some convention coverage
Years Active: 1987 – 1993
Issues Published: 15

Note: Originally published on the “Anime Archivist” blog May 2014, based on previous versions published on the "Lost World of Anime" website and blog in 2004 and 2009.

As the 1980’s wore on, anime in North America slowly increased its popularity almost by stealth. In the mid 1980’s, a group called Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange, or A.N.I.M.E. for short, had sprung up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and by 1987 up to 200 people were showing up to monthly club meetings. Out of this group in October 1987 emerged not only the debut issue of the second English language fan published English anime magazine, but arguably the best anime magazine to be published in North America; Animag.

Started primarily by Matthew Anacleto, Ann Schubert, and Dana Fong, the debut issued featured articles on anime that were quite popular amongst fans in North America at the time such as “Area 88”, “Iczer 1”, “Laputa: Castle in the Sky” and of course “Gundam”. Like most fan publications of the time and being in era where there was no English language anime home video market to speak of, all of the articles were essentially synopsises. The second issue followed the same format as the first, but with a couple of colour pages and colour centrefold type posters at each end of the magazine’s cover. The magazine also increased its page count from 36 pages to 44 pages. A couple more familiar names joined the magazine at this stage including Toren Smith and Toshifumi Yoshida who would latter work for Viz (and become the husband of Trish Ledoux). The third and fourth issues in 1988 brought about a number of changes. Trish Ledoux (of Animerica fame) joined as an associate editor in the third issue and would become editor the following issue. A news section was added in issue three and the following saw two new columns including a Q&A section with contributions from readers and Anime Ja Nai (“It’s Not Anime”, a title taken from the opening theme song from “Gundam ZZ”). Anime Ja Nai began as series of articles looking to various aspects of anime culture and production, but soon devolved into an Animage style character poll and eventually morphed into a humorous look at anime. I think Animag also was the first anime English language magazine to publish manga as an insert, with sample pages of “Grey” placed in issue four and another insert containing a sample of the manga “Appleseed” in the following issue.

By the fifth issue in 1988, the magazine was published by Pacific Rim Publishing Company and in the process received wider distribution. A number of regular features began this issue including Mecha File and in the following issue a regular look at manga called Mongo’s Manga and a column on model making called Animated Plastic. A new insert/newsletter called Ronin Network appeared in the magazine from issue six. This was a newsletter that contained fan club information as well as giveaways and additional anime news. Initially it came free with the magazine, but soon required a separate subscription. Unfortunately due to rising costs the newsletter disappeared after a few issues. While the magazine continued to mainly contain anime synopses, other articles began to slowly appear such as Frederick L. Schodt’s article on robot icons in issue five and an article on Osamu Tezuka in issue seven. Around the late 1988 and into 1989, the magazine had begun interviewing some big names in the anime industry; Leiji Matsumoto, Yoshiyuki Sadamato, voice actor Maria Kawamura and even Carl Macek.

As the years progressed some familiar names would join the staff roster. Along with Trish Ledoux and Toshifumi Yoshida, other future Animerica staff members such as Mark Simmons and Julie Davis also joined the magazine. With this roster of talent, as you can imagine the articles were very detailed and well written. A magazine of this standard was extremely useful to an English speaking fandom that for the most part could not speak a word of Japanese. Especially since this was an era with little internet usage, practically no fansubs or even commercial video tapes, let alone anything resembling a North American anime industry. For a lot of fans of that era, the only time they saw anime was on horribly expensive laserdiscs imported from Japan, or on snowy multiple generation video tapes, or on TV as “Robotech” or “Star Blazers”. It’s safe to say that the magazine was an absolute godsend to many fans. Apart from the articles, the most striking thing about Animag was its cover artwork. Unlike most magazines that just use promotional artwork supplied by anime companies, nearly all of Animag’s covers were drawn and painted by US fans. A lot of them, especially the early covers, are just spectacular and I’m sure a lot of Japanese anime magazines would be proud to have the artwork on their front cover.

1991 saw a number of changes. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but the magazine left Pacific Rim and with issue, volume 2, issue 1, Malibu Graphics became the publisher. Matthew Anacleto became editor once again (for a single issue), with no sign of Trish Ledoux in the staff credits. This was around the same time Viz began publication of Animerica, so one can only assume she was working for Viz by now. Some posts on rec.arts.anime.misc suggest Ledoux did work on the final three issues of the magazine, albiet uncredited. Dana Kurtin took over editorial duties for the final two issues of the magazine. Apparently the move from Pacific Rim wasn’t exactly amicable and there were some allegations the magazine had been subjected to, or at least threatened with legal action. A number of posts on rec.arts.anime.misc from posters claiming to be linked with Animag staff refute these allegations. Another post from October 1992 included excerpts from an letter to a subscriber of Animag from Pacific Rim head honcho Jeffry Tibbetts. In the letter, Tibbetts laid out his side of the story and placed the blame for the split squarely on Yoshida and Anacleto. Tibbetts also claimed he sicced his attorney on to them, apparently to no effect. Whether that’s true or not, I really have no idea. What I do know is that the situation with Animag apparently had unintended consequences for another magazine in Pacific Rim’s stable, Markalite magazine (a magazine I’ll be looking at some time in the future). Allegedly Pacific Rim had cut and run leaving Markalite out in the cold and effectively killing off the magazine as the publisher was taking care of their subscriptions and the cash flow.

However the magazine continued to survive through 1991 and on to 1992. The final three issues included articles on the anime that were popular at the time; “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”, “Record of Lodoss Wars” and “Legend of Galactic Heroes” as well as a smattering of older, mostly mecha anime. Early anime conventions such as Animecon ’91 and Anime Expo ’92 were reported on in great detail. A short lived video gaming column was introduced as well as a couple of articles on western animation. In 1993 with the volume 2, issue 3 magazine finally published after a long delay, Animag just seemed to implode. Why this happened is a bit of a mystery. There’s very little in the public domain which explains its fate. I did read some messages on rec.arts.anime which allege that the final issue was delayed when one ex-staff member had threatened to sue the magazine over the use of a photograph. Also around that time Viz was launching their new anime magazine Animerica. We know a lot of staff that worked on Animag would later write for Animerica. Who knows if that had any influence on its demise?

It’s very unfortunate and ironic that a high quality anime magazine as Animag would disappear at the very moment anime conventions, fandom and an industry had just stated to make its presence noticed by the community at large. The final issue of Animag included advertisements from the main players in this new emerging industry such as A.D .Vision, Animego and Central Park Media, as well as an article on US Renditions.

Flipping through the magazines as I write this article, the thing which sticks out like nobody’s business is the really heavy focus on mecha and other related “shonen” type anime. Sure the magazine had the usual articles you’d expect to find such as synopses of Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli films, but practically nothing on anime or manga which was aimed at young women or girls. I suppose this was a sign of the times. The fact was a lot of anime fans in the late 1980’s to the early 1990’s were mostly interested in sci-fi type anime and overwhelmingly male, so I suspect it wasn’t the case that the staff were ignoring those genres. The second thing which struck me was the fact the magazine continued to be predominantly printed in black and white for its entire life. Again, I suppose this shouldn’t be too surprising. US anime fandom was still in its infancy at this time. And like a lot of magazines of this period you can dig though and find a fair wack of information which you certainly can’t find on the web. For example issue three has an excellent article on Gainax’s pilot film for the unmade “R20: Galactic Airport” movie. A latter article on Animecon ’91 has a side bar on the child killer Tsutomu Miyazaki (the infamous “Otaku” killer) and the impact it had on the Japanese anime industry, though from what I’ve read elsewhere about the case maybe some of the information on Miyazaki in this article should be taken with a grain of salt.

I probably put Animag as an equal second (with Manga Max) in terms of my all-time favourite anime magazines (Anime UK/FX is my favourite English language magazine of all time). Though it certainly didn’t have the slickness in terms of design like many magazines which followed it, Animag was certainly a lot more substantial than most of them. The articles were brilliant and I still refer back to the magazine for info occasionally. I’d really recommend hunting down copies of the magazine if you’re into anime nostolgia and old 1980’s mecha shows. Copies of almost every issue are quite plentiful and cheap on eBay.

Dead Anime Magazines in English: “Anime-zine”

Publisher: Robert Fenelon, Beverly Headley, Minstrel Press Inc
Format: A4
Genre/Type: Anime, some tokusatsu coverage, some western animation
Years Active: 1986 – 1988
Issues Published: 3

Note: Originally published on the "Anime Archivist" blog April 2014, based on a previous version published on the "Lost World of Anime" website in 2006.

During my initial years in anime fandom, especially in those early pre-internet years, one of the things I loved doing was collecting anime magazines. Most were a wealth of knowledge and data, especially for information starved fans like myself. Certainly in the early years of fandom these were an important source of news and info, especially if you were completely Japanese language deficient. As I’ve already gone through a brief history on the Japanese side of things, I thought it might be good to have a look at what happened in the west. With this series of posts, I hope to cover the majority of English language anime (and some tokusatsu) magazines that are no longer published, but it will be by no means a definitive list. Some are just too obscure (such as ones published in Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa) or were printed in such a low number that they were practically impossible to find when published, let alone years afterwards. Before I begin, I must note that I am including any publication that has been printed on proper printing press as a magazine. Though I am not including fanzines, however I am including magazines which began as fanzines/newsletters which eventually became magazines.

So the first magazine on the pile is “Anime-zine”. Widely considered to be the first English language anime magazine, it’s debut issue was published in April 1986. The magazine born out of the ashes of the Star Blazers Fancub. Club founder Mike Pinto was instrumental in getting the magazine up and running, though the actual core staff of the magazine were editor Robert Fenelon, co-publisher Beverly Headley and Luke Menicheli who did the layouts and graphics. While the presentation of the magazine was a little rough in spots, the debut issue was quite impressive. In its humble 28 pages it included articles on “Megazone 23”, “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” and an article on the “Godzilla” films. In it’s pages you’ll also find some pretty good fan art for the period, including a Desslar “Gamilon Express Card” comic which Fenelon would later act out in cosplay at AnimeCon ’91.

The second issue, released in 1987, saw the magazine expand to 44 pages and a full colour cover. The magazine had improved substantially with articles on “Saint Seiya” and the third “Yamato” TV series, which included a detailed section on the original aborted plan to make it run for 52 episodes. The late Toren Smith (founder of Studio Proteus) also contributed with an article on “The Wings of Honeamise” that included a script comparison of Go East’s obscure and so-dreadful-it-only-played-once English dub of the film titled “Star Quest” (screened at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in February 1987, a month before the Japanese release). Also in the issue was an article on Toho’s sci-fi films of the 1950’s and 1960’s and what was meant to be a continuing column; Toren Smith’s “News From Japan”. Looking back through some of these old magazines, some of the info really of surprises the bejesus out of you. Toren Smith tells us that Harmony Gold have done a horrible English dub pilot of “Aura Battler Dunbine” and that mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi (who would go on to direct “RahXephon” and “Yamato 2199”) told him that Lucasfilm will be providing special effects for a live action version of the series. Toren seems to swear black and blue that he saw Harmony Gold’s English dub, but that news about a live action “Dunbine” is kind of hard to swallow.

But regardless of the what could described as somewhat dubious information presented as fact, these three issues are prime examples of why I usually keep these old magazines and sometimes use them as a main source for reference rather than the internet. There’s just some brilliant nuggets of information here. Apparently Viz were considering publishing Mitsuru Adachi’s “Touch” and even the “Doraemon” manga in English. Mark E Rogers’ fantasy short stories book “The Adventures of Samurai Cat” was apparently getting an animated movie adaptation by Hyperion Films (“The Brave Little Toaster”) with character designs by Go Nagai. However quotes from Rogers in a news article in the third issue have him cursing the studio who seem to have led him up in the garden path. Apparently the Go Nagai thing was a lie by the studio, and his characters were reduced to ethnic stereotypes. Unsurprisingly the film was never made. As you may have guessed, general western animation was also covered to a degree with several news items including the aborted attempt to make a sequel to the 1968 animated film “Yellow Submarine”. It was reported in two issues that the new film, titled “Strawberry Fields”, was in pre-production at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab, who had previously produced sequences for the “Lensman” movie. The magazine also noted that ITC Productions was putting up $6 million for the project. Apparently it was due for a summer 1988 release, but in a latter issue it was reported it had been moved to a spring 1989 timeframe. Surprisingly I cannot find information on the web about the film which is as detailed as what is in this magazine.

The final issue saw the magazine reach 60 pages and included articles on “Gundam: Char’s Counterattack”, The “Dirty Pair” and “Crusher Joe” franchises (with the “Dirty Pair” material taking up more than a third of the magazine), “Dragonar”, 1960’s anime “Eight Man” and a small article on musician Ryuichi Sakamoto (formerly of Yellow Magic Orchestra and composer for the film scores of “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”, “The Last Emperor” and The Wings of Honneamise”). There were also articles on the works of American animator Ralph Bakshi; one on the 1980’s remake of “Mighty Mouse” and the 1977 film “Wizards”. The “Wizards” article was written by the late Jeff Thompson who would later publish Animenominous magazine in the early 1990’s and also would later become a producer at the Right Stuf. Patricia Malone of the New York chapter of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organisation also wrote an interesting article on the ethnicity of characters in anime and a column called “New Visions” which focused on new TV and OVA releases was published in place of Toren Smith’s “News From Japan”.

It was promised that issue four to was to contain articles on “Zillion” and more on “Saint Seyia”, but luck was not on the magazine’s side. A post on rec.arts.anime in 1991 by Winston Sorfleet of Ianus Publications indicated that the publisher suffered a stroke and during the same period the editor had a serious car accident. Publication of the magazine halted immediately, and it never recovered from these terrible setbacks. Subscribers were given issues of Ianus Publications’ and Protoculture Addicts’ “Poster-zine” (which used many of the staff from “Anime-zine”) to make up a year’s subscription. Despite its short life and humble beginnings, it contained some great info, some of which you can’t find on the web today. Unfortunately I only discovered the magazine in a second hand bookstore in Sydney some eight years after it ceased publishing. It would have been interesting to see how the magazine may have developed had it continued, as each issue was better than the last. While it certainly wasn’t as polished as the magazines which followed it, “Anime-zine” is a great little read if you want to see what pre-US anime industry fandom looked liked. Despite the fact nearly 30 years have passed since it was first published, all three issues can be found easily on eBay.

Long Lost Japanese Anime Magazines Part 4 (of 4)

Note: Originally published on this blog in late 2011, republished on the "Anime Archivist" blog in March 2014.

In the final segment of this series we’re looking at the first decade of the 21st century. Unlike previous segments, I don’t own a single issue of any of these magazines, so I’m going off other people’s descriptions of them. Like the prior decade, the magazines which popped up in this era barely saw out three years, with most barely making it to a second year of publishing. None made it to the end of the decade. Of course this decade saw the rise of the internet and the start of the beginning of the end of printed media, though the Japanese print media industry seems to be infinitely healthier today than its western counterparts.

“Newtype.com”

Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
Frequency: Bimonthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: September 2000 – May 2002

This magazine was of course an offshoot of Newtype magazine which has been running since 1985 and continues to be published today (in fact it’s still the highest selling anime magazine in the market). Initially a special issue of Newtype magazine itself, this short lived magazine became its own entity and was dedicated to the rare internet anime (Original Net Anime or ONA as they were called). The magazine also looked at the ever increasing commercial websites for anime series. Issues also came with a CD-ROM. Looking at some of the Japanese fan comments on the magazine, it’s rather interesting that some criticise the magazine because it was behind the times. As far back as the mid 1990’s, anime companies already had websites up for their shows. Indeed like the US, there was also a large anime fandom presence on the web in Japan. Looking at the contents of the first issues, there really isn’t much difference in content from a normal issue of Newtype magazine. That lack of differentiation makes this magazine a bit redundant, which was probably the reason it was eventually discontinued.

“Dengeki Animaga”

Publisher: Media Works
Frequency: Quarterly, Bimonthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: August 2002 – November 2005

While writing this section of this series up I only just realised that Dengeki Animaga was a successor to Dengeki Animation Magazine, which in turn had its origins from B-Club magazine. Like many of the magazines which appeared and then disappeared just about as quickly in this period, there seems to very little in this magazine to differentiate it from its competitors. The question is why have five or six different clones of Newtype or Animage when the originals are superior? Though from what I understand, this incarnation of magazine went straight for the bishoujo anime fan and featured the girls from the top anime series of the time (as can be explicitly seen from the cover I’ve chosen). After its name change from Dengeki Animation Magazine, in August 2002, it shifted to a quarterly release schedule. Sometime later it eventually went bimonthly. All toll 19 issues of the magazine were released. Two “best of” mooks (magazine/book) were released in the months following the final issue. The magazine was succeeded by Dengeki G’s Magazine which still continues to this day.

“Nikkei Characters!”

Publisher: Nikkei Business Publications
Frequency: Bimonthly, Quarterly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: March 2003 – August 2006

The other thing to make note in the new crop of anime magazines that popped up in this era, is that the majority of them were offshoot of other successful magazines. “Nikkei Characters!” was initially a special issue of Nikkei Entertainment magazine. Obviously it was successful enough to warrant a regular bimonthly issue. Again like all other magazines of this period it contained information and news on anime as well as games and manga, though with more of a focus on the business side of things as I understand it. One thing I do quite clearly recall about the magazine is that it had a number of minor scoops. In particular I remember they were the first to announce the news that AIC was going to release a TV series of “Megazone 23” in 2004 or so. Pity the scoop never became reality as AIC seems to have cancelled the production. Nikkei stopped production on the magazine with the June 2006 issue, only to announce that it would come back as a quarterly, which only lasted one solitary issue in August 2006. It was never seen again after that.

“Anime Studio”

Publisher: Ozora Shuppan
Frequency: Bimonthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: October 2004 – December 2004

This magazine is quite an interesting one as it focuses more on the production side than the fandom side. Despite this difference in focus to anything in the market at the time (or perhaps because of it), the magazine only managed to last a grand total of two issues. Reading through the contents of the second issue, it’s a bit of surprise as there is quite a lot interesting material here. First there’s a feature on Mitsuteru Yokoyama of “Tetsujin 28” and “Giant Robo” fame. Then there’s an Osamu Dezaki interview who’s done everything from “Tomorrow’s Joe”, “Aim for the Ace!”, “Black Jack” OVAs and even the film adaptations of “Air” and “Clannad. They also look at the outsourcing of anime production to Korean studios, another interview, this time with Masahiro Maeda on “Gankutsuou” and the cover story on the 20th anniversary of Gainax. I suppose Japanese anime fans are more interested in pages and pages of pictures of bishoujo than anything with any depth.

“Ani Colle Dragon”

Publisher: Fujimi Shobou
Frequency: Irregular
Size: A4
Publication Dates: October 2004 – January 2006

Yet another off shoot of a successful magazine, but with a major difference. Ani Colle Dragon was a mail order magazine spin off of the monthly magazine Dragon Age (which itself was an amalgamation of two older Fujimi Shobou magazines; Comic Dragon and Dragon Junior). While it had the usual items you’d find in anime magazines of the time such as features on various anime (mostly related to Dragon Age and its parent magazine Dragon Magazine which serialised light novels), fan created content like letters and art etc., the magazine was essentially a mail order catalogue for various items publisher Fujimi Shobou was flogging off to Dragon Age’s readership. One of the items I recall was a doll of Teresa Tesutarossa from “Full Metal Panic”. The magazine also came with special extras every month such as a DVD full of promotional films for related Dragon Age/Dragon Magazine anime and related merchandise and a life size poster. In the end the magazine was shelved after only four issues in January 2006.

“Animation RE”

Publisher: Index Communications
Frequency: Bimonthly (?)
Size: A4
Publication Dates: October July 2005 – March 2006

Yet another very short lived magazine from this period. The information I have on it pretty sketchy to say the least. It seems that Animation RE mostly focused on interviews with the staff of various anime. One issue contents page shows that it contained interviews with the staff from “Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa” and “Fantastic Children”. In fact the magazine I saw also seems to contain a big feature on Studio Bones who produced the first “Fullmetal Alchemist” series. Not only are there main features on the main staff of these shows, but also singers of the show’s theme songs and naturally voice actors as well (actually pretty much every anime magazine has a section interviewing voice actors or singers, so it’s not that unusual). A fair number of anime magazines which popped up from the late 1990’s were printed in mook form, and Animation RE is no different. Like an increasing number of magazines of the period, this one also came with a bonus DVD. Alas it wasn’t enough to save the magazine. As far as I can tell it never got past its third issue.

“Bessatsu Anican R”

Publisher: Emu Jiitsu
Frequency: Monthly
Size: A5
Publication Dates: November 2007 – June 2008

Yet another anime magazine spin-off of a successful parent magazine; Anican R. That magazine is mostly dedicated to idol singers and groups, but also voice actors, live events and of course anime. It seems like an all-encompassing otaku magazine of sorts. Why it was decided by the publishers to create an all anime magazine, I don’t know. Unfortunately I have even less information on this magazine than Animation RE, so please bear with me. From the meagre results I have obtained with my research on the magazine, it contained the usual stuff you’d find in just about any other anime magazine; features on anime shows and films, interviews with staff and of course voice actor and idol singers, fan sections, reviews on anime DVDs and related soundtracks etc. There really isn’t anything here at all to differentiate it from the other magazines in the market. It was published in a mook format and only lasted six issues.

So that’s it for long lost Japanese anime magazines. While print media is on a steady decline in the west, there still is a market for magazines in Japan, including anime related ones. Certainly the amount of issues sold per month may have decreased somewhat, but sales for magazines like Animage, Newtype, Animedia and Megami magazine are still pretty solid. However I have noticed some changes such as Animage’s page count, which has been significantly trimmed back. The magazine is like a shadow of its former self. I must confess that for about 14 years I religiously collected both Newtype and Animage, but stopped as of the January 2012 issue for each. Undeniably the magazines do take up a lot of room, and let’s face it, I can get all the information in the magazines including pictures from the web. The internet has practically killed off all but two English language anime magazines; Otaku USA and the UK’s Neo Magazine, who stubbornly refuse to lay down and die (I don't include UK's MyM really as magazine as it focuses on other pop culture and hasn't had a cover dedicated to anime for a very long time). It also seems that it will still take quite a while for anime magazines to die off in Japan with about half a dozen magazine titles focusing solely on anime still being published monthly.

Long Lost Japanese Anime Magazines Part 3 (of 4)

Note: Originally published on this blog in late 2011, republished on the Anime Archivist blog in January 2013.

After “Evangelion” tore its way through the landscape of Japanese animation and became a runaway hit, many companies decided to cash in like mad and pumped as much product as they could onto the airwaves. The main method for doing this became “Late Night Anime”, with tons of shows of rather questionable quality appearing in the wee hours of the night, and then promptly disappearing from the memories of anime fans and producers alike as soon as they finished their broadcast run. Naturally magazine publishers decided to get in on the act and a number of anime magazines appeared on the market, only to disappear within 6 to 24 months later.

“AX”

Publisher: Sony Magazines
Frequency: Monthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: March 1998 – October 2001

Very much like the top three selling monthly anime magazines (i.e. Newtype, Animage and Animedia) this magazine initially contained the same sort of content; features on upcoming and screening anime, animation design reference sheets, interviews with creators and voice actors, manga, poster inserts, new game releases, broadcast and video release information and fandom sections (fan art and letters). The magazine also heavily promoted “Nurse Naniko” and “Jubei the Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch”, with excerpts of manga adaptations. However Naniko was pushed very heavily. I’m assuming Sony must have had a sizable financial stake in the series. In mid-1999, the occasional issues came with a free VCD, filled mostly with trailers for anime and games. In 2000, select issues came with a CD-ROM. It was rather noticeable by this time that with the inclusion of the discs, the magazine had gone from about 170 pages to about 80 and with a 100 yen price increase. A bonus DVD came with most issues from mid-2000 to the magazine’s eventual end. However the DVD increased the cover price by 200 yen, with no increase in length (still only 80 pages). Sony pulled the plug in October 2001.

“Dengeki B-magazine” and “Dengeki Animation Magazine”

Publisher: Media Works
Frequency: Monthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: April 1998 – April 2001

When Bandai pulled the plug on B-Club magazine, the editorial staff went straight into publishing this B-magazine. As you’d imagine, there isn’t much that is different in content from other anime magazines of the era including; features on currently screening anime, the obligatory manga insert, animation design sheets, several columns from industry people, album, singe and video release dates, TV broadcast times, bonus poster etc. The odd thing which I never seen before in a magazine of this type is that they covered hentai anime OVAs. There’s four pages of reviews and some of the pictures are a little explicit. In May 1999 the magazine changed its name to Dengeki Animation Magazine. Mostly the format didn’t change much. There was an expanded fandom section (fan art, letters and the like) and there seemed to be quite a lot of hentai game reviews. I note that in the latter issues of the magazine, the hentai games/OVA reviews are pretty much non-existent. Some issues also contained CD-ROMs, though none of the issues I have include these.

“G20”

Publisher: Asukii
Frequency: Bimonthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: October 1998 – February 2000

Specifically created for the 20th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam, this bimonthly nine part magazine series covered a number of topics in the Gundam universe. In particular there was a number of articles on the various mecha ns equipment that appeared in the various TV series, OVAs and movies. Being the 20th anniversary of Gundam, there were of course a number of articles devoted celebrations, events and merchandise being held or released around the time the magazine’s publication. In 2005 publisher Enterbrain republished two mooks (i.e. magazine/book) based upon the material published in the nine magazines. The first called “Side A” contained the material relating to mecha and equipment from the Gundam universe. The second book, “Side B”, contains material relating to the 20th anniversary. Unfortunately both mooks are now out of print.

“Character Damashii (Character Spirit)”

Publisher: Tatsumi Shuppan
Frequency: Bimonthly
Size: A4
Publication Dates: January 1999 – January 2000

This is one magazine which I have never owned or seen a copy of. I believe this magazine ran for only five issues. Known as “Charadama” for short (the title of which adored latter issuees), this magazine was actually published as a soft cover mook with a dust jacket. The main readership the publishers where courting seems to be the older anime and tokusastu otaku male. There is an obvious emphasis on older anime and tokusatsu series. The very first issue has a major feature on “Getter Robo” and includes synopses, manga excerpts and images of various toys and figures. Other articles and features on old anime and tokusastu series not only focus on the series themselves but also merchandise such as figures, diecast model and model kits. The first issue also contains a feature on UFO Catcher prizes released the previous year, and an article on Fujiko from the “Lupin III” series. It is unknown why this magazine was discontinued, however I have read on one or two websites that the cover price was considered too high, so that may have been a contributing factor.

“Kikan Anime Hihyou (Quarterly Anime Review)”

Publisher: Maikuro Magajin Sha
Frequency: Quarterly
Size: A5
Publication Dates: February 1999 – October 1999

This magazine was initially a special issue of the magazine “Game Review” and was first published in February 1999. Yet again this is one magazine which I have never had the opportunity to see or buy. From what I have read, this magazine published essays and criticism on various anime. The proper debut issue, volume one, contained an extensive essay on Gundam. There were also reviews of anime currently being broadcast, the burgeoning digital anime industry and features on voice actors. In one particular review of the magazine, the author criticised the magazine for being unsatisfactory in terms of its writing. In the end, only three issues of the magazine (including the initial Game Review special issue) were published.

“AIC Comic Love”

Publisher: AIC
Frequency: Bimonthly (?)
Size: A5
Publication Dates: May 1999 – 2000

As you can imagine, this magazine was created to blatantly promote AIC properties. Yet again, this is another magazine that seemingly didn’t make to over to any of the speciality shops or Japanese bookstores shops in Australia, so I never got a chance to look at it. However I do know that the magazine contained at least four manga titles in each issue such as “Kachoh Oji (Legend of Black Heaven)”, “Battle Athletes” and of course “Tenchi Muyo!” properties like “Magical Girl Pretty Sammy”. So, lots of AIC tie-ins there. I suppose you could really argue that this magazine sits on the cusp of manga anthology rather than anime magazine. However there seems to be quite a lot of non-manga content in this magazine, and most Japanese websites seem to lump this magazine in with anime rather anime anthologies. Other features included plenty of articles on AIC anime series including merchandise, articles on the girls from the series, a regular column on bikini models (I suppose then know their target audience well…) and a feature on cosplay (AIC characters only I’m assuming). The magazine lasted 7 issues.

“Tokyo Robot News”

Publisher: Keibun Sha
Frequency: Quarterly
Size: A5
Publication Dates: August 1999 – January 2001

Yet another mook (magazine/book), which is this time solely focused on robots. Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before? This one is pretty bog standard; every issue focuses on one particular common feature of robots (such as transformation or special items such as drills), then you have the usual anime magazine stuff like game reviews, animation design reference sheets, interviews with creators, video and CD release information, and fandom sections (fan art and letters). As you’d expect there were large sections devoted to new figure and model kit releases. Like all other anime magazines, it contained a manga insert, naturally one which involves robots, but also quite strangely with anamorphic cat girls as the lead characters. The magazine also didn’t limit itself to anime in terms of robots. There’s also a number of small mentions various tokusastu show robots. The copy of the magazine I have focuses on robots with drills. Not only does include a massive feature on the subject, it also includes a listing of every robot with a drill in all anime and tokusatsu from 1957 to 1999. The magazine ceased publication when publishers Keibun Sha went bankrupt in early 2001.

Next time we’ll be looking at the magazines that commenced and ceased in the first decade of the 21st century.