davemerrill wrote: ↑Sat Oct 13, 2018 5:36 am
and now I'm asking myself, do I need to start shelving these by publisher, instead of by series?
Granted, my collection probably isn't as extensive as yours or Steve's or Sean's, but I've got mine grouped by book series (ok, my NewType 100% books) then by anime series.
davemerrill wrote:I'm familiar with the New Type 100% books, but have never owned any. The publication range of the 100% books seemed to be about 90% Gundam and 10% other shows I wasn't interested in.
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. Being quite the Gundam nut, I was good with quite a bit of the 100% book line, but I remember seeing the same couple Evangelion and Nadesico film books all around in the 90s and thought the line was generally mecha focused but looking at the Mandarake link, that line gets a lot wider. Much wider than I'd ever could have thought and now I'm glad I ditched the idea of focusing on a collection specifically of 100% books.
SteveH wrote:The Newtype 100% books were generally nice, with great production design but somewhat shallow content-wise. I felt the same about the magazine.
Yeah, at a time where there weren't a consistent line, like the Roman Albums for instance, and what seems like a lack of series specific books, the 100%s are a good enough reference material. Agreed though that the art and production values are fantastic.
davemerrill wrote:I was never that big a fan of New Type, and I can't tell if it's because the magazine was focused on shows I wasn't that interested in, or if I wasn't interested in the anime that was being made at the time, and New Type just happened to focus on what was being made at the time. The magazine was very stylish, lots of white space, big illustrations, a little more upscale than Animage, I guess.
I'd think it is a mix of all of those. I have only a few copies of the magazine from the early 2000s when I was trying to keep up with what was coming out in Japan, staying ahead of the curve. I also only have a couple of Animage's from that time and they seem to be about the same in all terms of quality and depth. I have a couple of older Animage's from the 1980s but have never had corresponding NewTypes to do a side-by-side comparison.
I will say that both magazines (and others like them that I've browsed online, like OUT or The Anime) are good for seeing what was big and getting pushed at an instance in time or what time/networks something might have been airing but I haven't seen too much research value in them beyond that. Even then, what's being pushed can be misleading for what actually has some lasting impact. I'd hate for someone to come back in another ten years and look at those spreads from 2002 or 2003 and think that Noir was all the rage
Of course, those types of spreads are good for finding what might be hidden gems (or just rocks) that aren't really talked about anymore. That's kinda what I get out of thumbing through my old Animage magazines.
SteveH wrote:I mean, here's part of the thing. These mooks existed when home video was just starting. They were time capsules for a show one might not be able to see again. (see also anime comics) but as VCRs became cheaper and more prevalent, as VHS and LDs and DVD sets started to enter the marketplace I'm sure it was thought "why bother" but it's not just those pages of photos from episodes that matter, it's the chara and mecha and setti sheets, it's the title lists, it's all that 'behind the scenes' stuff that still has value
I think this is important to keep this in mind when it comes to comparing why the 80s seemed to have multiple books for a variety of shows and there's substantially fewer books about anime series as the decades march on. If a series from the 90s had mooks printed, like some of my Kenshin mooks, the size and depth of those mooks got a lot thinner. But in the late 90s with prevalence of cheap of tapes and VCRs, there was zero chance that series would disappear from fans who wanted to see it again. Quite different from the 1980s when tapes and VCRs were much more expensive and a commercial home video release was far from guaranteed, mooks like this from a variety of publishers made a lot more sense.
DKop wrote:Since you guys brought up Newtype (im assuming the magazine from Japan), did anyone ever read the ADV version of their Newtype USA mags?
Yeah - NewType is the monthly magazine, the NewType 100% books are series specific collections of animation work, character & mecha designs, settei, etc. Both are published by the same company, Kadokawa.
I have one issue of the NewType USA that ADV published and flipped through a couple of other issues. Side by side, it is exactly what you get from the Japanese NewType magazine.