my take on old American anime magazines

[SteveH]

Yeah, sadly no one really seems that interested in back issues of old anime mags, esp. American ones. He'd probably have better luck taking them to a swap at an anime/comic con, or something like that.

Oh, I have some interest, because I'm OCD about holes in collections, so I'd have to go and find what I'm missing and all that. It's not a list I carry like the one I have for Gerry Anderson based fan mags.

But my interest comes with Scottish cheapness. I've no interest in $15 copies of Animag, check? Couple of bucks, yep.

of course THEN I need to find an accurate listing of how many issues exist for each magazine...

[greg]

NewType USA had a pretty great staff, including Kevin Gifford of Magweasel fame, but I got the impression they were hamstrung by the original Japanese magazine's lack of critical focus.

Magweasel! I haven't looked at his blog in forever, but now that you mention it, he's been posting like crazy again! Happiness!

I did not care for NewType USA much at all. Animerica did have their focus on interviewing the actual Japanese creators and such, so I certainly respected it. NewType just reeked of weeaboo nonsense for the most part. Especially annoying were ADV's ads for the magazine in the beginning of each DVD that kept saying, "What's anime? Anime is...." So annoying, and I hated the voices in those ads. Just a bunch of pretty pictures and people saying, "Omigosh, Japan is like, SOOOOO KEWL!" At least that's all the memory that stuck with me. What I enjoyed most were the stuff in the back of the magazine, such as Megumi Hayashibara's column and other misc stuff (plus the videogame section).

[davemerrill]

that's what I like, or liked, about OUSA, the editors sort of took a holistic approach and would cheerfully place trendy "cool Japan" pop culture flavor of the week material right next to reviews of 40 year old live-action Toho monster movies or bloody Sonny Chiba flicks. It didn't seem driven by press releases or "here's the latest new thing!!" to the exclusion of all else.

[usamimi]

From Peepo Choo, because I seriously wish I could tell kids this sometimes.

But yeah, I agree...it seemed like Newtype USA was very much just a dressed-up way to sell kids anime advertisements. The few issues I flipped through didn't feel like they had much substance. At least with Animerica, you knew that the people who ran it (well...at least in the first years of the mag, imo) were actually fans themselves and not just magazine workers doing a job. And there just seemed to be a LOT more varied content in Animerica, with more interviews with actual industry people from Japan (with the occasional American ones, which was ok, too). I mean, yeah, style-wise Newtype looked a bit more polished...but I'd rather have more stuff to read than pictures to look at any day.

I've only picked up Otaku USA ONCE (I'm not a huge fan of the word "otaku", I think if it wasn't called that I'd probably feel more comfortable buying it, lol.) but I agree that even though they have a lot of the "what's new and hip right NOW" stuff, they surprisingly had a fair amount of older things/references to older things, which was nice.

Greg, I hated those promos, too! UGH! I remember one year I was at a con Sakura-con, I think?) and someone had a TV at their booth that played some of those promos over and over...oh man. It was annoying as hell.

[SteveH]

Newtype USA suffered from many problems, and I know that there have been people claiming to be staff who have said that basically the Japanese f**ked it all up with unrealistic demands and instructions. I'm not sure I buy that because it's become a 'thing' to blame the Japanese for EVERY screw-up.

Still, there were things they did (or didn't do) that just had me scratching my head the entire short run.

1. Printing 'back to front' or 'Japanese style' if you prefer.

This was just plain crazy. It makes sense for manga because, you know, 'honoring the source material' and the honest truth of lower production costs. There's still touch-up but nothing like the huge work Torin Smith put into his 'flopped/Americanized' releases. A magazine like Newtype USA, the 'back to front' made reading ANY article more than a page long just a massive headache. And I don't think it really was needed. I have no idea how source materials were produced, I assume digital files but I don't know if the page art (those lovely 2-page works that are the signature of the magazine) had text that had to be covered, if there were just empty blocks for the text to be flowed into, or if the art was completely bare and the editor/art director/whoever selected where the text blocks went, but it DIDN'T have to be stripped in 'backwards'! The art generally didn't have a strong left or right 'eye draw' image, most everything was pretty much 'center of page' focused. If the text blocks were fixed by the Japanese publisher the English text could still have flowed 'left to right'. I have no idea if what I'm saying makes sense but I'm pretty sure both Dave and Kid Fenris are rolling their eyes at my fumbling trying to describe this.

Short form, I don't think there was anything in the actual art that without question NEEDED to flow right to left.

2. The big "we're not doing the bonus DVD anymore" lie.

Yeah, that bugged the heck out of me. I thought the original $9.99 MSRP was steep, but there came that time when they decided (and I can't recall the stated reason) they just wouldn't do the DVD anymore, one, maybe two issues without and BAM "due to demand we bring back the DVD...and oh yeah, we're now $12.99". Now, anybody who knows a thing about magazine newsstand distro knows you're not getting a true understanding of how a choice affects sales until 4 months down the road, because you don't get the final numbers (shipped+subscription-returns=actual sales) that far down the road. Given the timeframe involved, the whole 'put it back to justify a price increase' had to be in place before they published the issue that was DVD-less. It's not a conspiracy, it's cold logic from the structure of publishing for newsstand distro. I'm not even tossing in disc production lead time.

3. Never used the magazine to actually promote their product past the first volume launch.

ADV had some tough things to sell. Saint Seiya. Aura Battler Dunbine. City Hunter. Releases that didn't wrap up with a 6th volume. I could go on endlessly about THAT issue but the thing is, knowing the retail environment from the VHS days that was unfriendly to long series releases (remember when Blue Seed stopped being 'volume something' and every tape got its own title like it was a movie? yep. ), shows like Seiya and Dunbine needed help. Would it have been so wrong to have a page talking about the show, paired with an ad proclaiming "Volume 7 in stores (date), if you don't see it ask for it!" ? People say Newtype USA was just a shill rag for ADV's product. Maybe so, but I think they could have pimped things past volume one just a little bit better than they did. Of course, dead now, so.

4. Where were the American 'Newtype 100% collection' books in English? I think they did something for Rahxaphon (but it was published in Japan before the series was over, so missing lots) and Full Metal Panic (ditto), but these got weak distro and frankly overpriced for what they were.

5. That whole 'PIQ' nonsense. Feh. I'm still convinced that existed because they has a firm contract with a printer and the money was already spent.

Blah blah.

[llj]

Newtype USA was a great picture magazine. That's about all the good I can say about that mag.

About Otaku USA, it sometimes feels like I'm reading a magazine version of the ANN website, as many of their writers often find their way to writing for ANN. There's a similar attitude and "feel" in OUSA that I can't quite put my finger on.

that's what I like, or liked, about OUSA, the editors sort of took a holistic approach and would cheerfully place trendy "cool Japan" pop culture flavor of the week material right next to reviews of 40 year old live-action Toho monster movies or bloody Sonny Chiba flicks. It didn't seem driven by press releases or "here's the latest new thing!!" to the exclusion of all else.

My one complaint here is that sometimes their reviews of live action films feel like anime fans writing about live action Japanese films. You get a pretty good sense after a few paragraphs in a review whether or not the critic knows his or her stuff when it comes to Japanese genre films. At least they're handled better than the live-action film reviews in the UK magazine NEO though. I remember a review of Floating Weeds from a few months ago where the critic breathlessly declares that Yasujiro Ozu is overrated by "modern" film critics and suggests that this Ozu love in the film community is a relatively "new" thing.

Protoculture Addicts covered some interesting topics, but I believe that many of their writers were from Quebec and the magazine certainly felt like it was written by people for whom English was a second language.

I would say that in the 90s, Animerica was probably the most professionally produced anime magazine out there. It may have had its issues when it came to pimping the Viz stuff (although I genuinely believe the editorial staff truly loved Maison Ikkoku and the Leiji Matsumoto stuff, which dominated many of the mid 90s issues), but it was basically the go-to magazine for anime fans for a pretty good reason. I started to lose interest in the magazine when every other issue they did was about Pokémon.

As for Macross II...well, I actually kind of liked it! By the way, Trish Ledoux was REALLY excited about being in the Macross II dub at the time. I remember she spent a number of issues talking/bragging about it in the editorial page.

What is Trish doing these days anyway?

[greg]

As for Macross II...well, I actually kind of liked it!

I do, too. Granted, the last time I saw it was dubbed and on cable TV about 10 years ago, but the premise was cool, and I'll take the Valkyrie II mecha designs over the new Macross F Valkyries anyday! I also really liked the mini-Macross battleships in it, too.

[Drew_Sutton]

I did a write-up ages ago comparing several of the magazines here (holy crap, it feels weird digging up that article). I never got Animag and Animenonimous as they were published, I got them much much later as a gift. I read Animerica a bit in the late 1990s since they seemed to be the only game in town but I seem to recall being irked a by some of their print choices (weird hang up of mine, I suppose). I did pick up an issue or two of Otaku USA when they first started publishing after never supporting NewType USA. Though, I am glad to see there are so many more than the four or five I knew about.

As for Macross II...well, I actually kind of liked it!

It can't be that terrible - I saw MacII before I saw the original or even Robotech and I wasn't so turned off I didn't explore the rest of the franchise. Granted, I can't remember if I ever bothered to re-watch it and it is pretty weak as a part of the franchise. I think the last time I "saw" it was at a Goodwill several years ago - old US Renditions copy, too - but the price of $2.00 was way too much to pay for Macross II.

[gaijinpunch]

Hands down the worst North American anime magazine I ever saw was "Anime Iku".

I wonder if they know how pervy and awful that sounds to a Japanese speaker...especially one w/ his mind in the gutter such as myself.

[greg]

Ha, that's true! "Iku" means "I'm coming/cumming."