The Old School Otaku Lounge

I'm sure everyone here probably remembers this old magazine. I was just looking at Kndy's oldschoolanime.com website and saw a graphic of one of the magazine covers.

I only bought one issue of Mangajin, and it forever changed the rest of my life (and no, I am not exaggerating). I was interested in Japanese bands like Shonen Knife and Pizzicato 5, so in 1994, I bought an issue of the magazine that covered Japanese music bands. I was interested in some bands like The Nelories, The Nenes, and Shang Shang Typhoon, but I never got around to buying any of their albums.

However, in the want-ads in the back of the magazine, there was an advertisement for the ALC Press Correspondence Club, enticing readers to apply for their pen-pal program and meet friends in Japan. It had me fill out some vague personal interests and such, and I was supposed to be matched with three people in Japan. It was free of charge, but apparently the Japanese participants had to pay for an application fee. I mailed my application in December of 1994.

I figured that I would be matched with a guy in Japan, and we would discuss Super Famicom and plastic robots and such. Well, it turns out that a precious girl named Mayumi was the only one who wrote to me (I wonder if I was ever matched with two others and they never wrote me). I received her first letter in March of '95, and I was so excited. She was a year younger than me, our birthdays were only four days apart, and we had a lot of various things in common. As the old Seinfeld episode would go, yadda yadda, we got married six years later. We just celebrated our 11th anniversary in March.

After we got married, we wrote a letter to ALC Press and told them our story, about how we became pen-pals through their service, fell in love, eventually met each other in-person, and eventually got married. It certainly wasn't a romantic matchmaking service, but it turns out that they ended up being the go-between in our eventual marriage.

I believe I kept that issue of Mangajin, but I have to find out where it is packed since we have yet to finish unpacking our stuff from America since we moved back to Japan in January of this year. I am pretty sure we were certain to keep it for sentimental value.

The editor of Mangajin was a guest at the first AWA - Vaughan Simmons, an interesting guy who had a lot of patience for us nerdy anime fans. One of my first professionally published articles ran in Mangajin. A lot of the manga he ran in the magazine was almost diametrically opposite to the kind of things we'd all been reading, and it was a real education to see the breadth and scope of the field. Low-key stuff like "Dai Tokyo Binbo Seikatsu" , which apparently was ahead of the curve on the whole collapsing bubble economy thing. Prophetic. Love to read more of that.

The magazine changed my life!!! It was one thing to be into anime but I grew up in a small town, I graduated high school and my only introduction to Japanese was through my father (who was in the Navy) and living in Los Angeles for one school year and watching the International channel every Saturday night.

But when I first saw the magazine at our local magazine store (when mom and pop magazine stores existed), I was so excited!!! And when I attended college (and discovered many Japanese in the city an hour away, and lo and behold, they taught Japanese at Fresno State), Mangajin really helped with learning Japanese and the culture and really prepared me for when I did go to Japan.

I still own these magazines and will never throw them away. But if you can...for those learning the language, look for the two books "Mangajin's Basic Japanese Through Comics"...you can find them cheap on eBay these days.

greg wrote:Well, it turns out that a precious girl named Mayumi was the only one who wrote to me (I wonder if I was ever matched with two others and they never wrote me). I received her first letter in March of '95, and I was so excited. She was a year younger than me, our birthdays were only four days apart, and we had a lot of various things in common. As the old Seinfeld episode would go, yadda yadda, we got married six years later. We just celebrated our 11th anniversary in March.

After we got married, we wrote a letter to ALC Press and told them our story, about how we became pen-pals through their service, fell in love, eventually met each other in-person, and eventually got married. It certainly wasn't a romantic matchmaking service, but it turns out that they ended up being the go-between in our eventual marriage.

And for this alone...that is so AWESOME!

Thanks! Yeah, it's funny to think how picking up that one magazine would change my life like that. I've had two friends who've found their loved ones through an online dating service. One is married with a brand new baby boy, and the other friend will be a dad in September, so he'd better marry that girl. That's not really the same as my own marriage, but it is somewhat similar.

Mangajin was okay, but I thought it was boring seeing Calvin & Hobbes translated into Japanese. J-Ent was a better successor. Another magazine called Pop J Neo was somewhat clever, but it was a bit expensive and they ended up disappearing, along with the rest of my subscription money.

Speaking of "Mangajin"...has anyone ever picked up any issues 1-15? I've tried for years to bid on these on eBay but they are too expensive at times. Some asking over $50-$100 for just one issue. I've not seen anyone sell #1-#4 though...

Wow, I never knew those older issues would be going for so much money. I wonder why?

Fredrik Schodt was at AWA this past weekend, and he mentioned Vaughan Simmons (Mangajin publisher) and apparently Simmons is in a rock band now. Kinda cool.

Aww, that is so awesome! I never actually got to read Mangajin because no one near me would carry it back in the day. I did get to see a few random issues at a library YEARS later. The old ads made me feel super nostalgic, heh. I was surprised to see how expensive they are now, too. Who even cares about them except older people like us?! XD

I met a couple of my closest friends via penpal want-ads in the back of the old Oh My Goddess single-issue comics back in the day. Penpaling with anime/manga fans was a huge thing for me for most of my high school years. I even dated a guy I met via penpaling for a while. Oh, memories~

Found the box of my Mangajin...man, this was a fantastic magazine back then. Looking at what issues I owned back then...I remember I collected it off and on as I was often lazy to pay $5 when I had so many manga and comics to buy at the time. It was not easy to find either until issue 40 and up and then it seemed more places seemed to carry it, including my local grocery store at the time.

But I had to scan the covers for all issues I had... Anyone luck to get #1-#15?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kndynt2099 ... 746935263/

Nice! My ex's cousin lent us a whole box full of em once, but my ex made sure that he took them when we split up (DRATS! XD lol). I think they had 1-5 in there, too.