August 2002 Cover 1 of 2
Sightings Galore!
Wizard's Anime Invasion
And Get Ready To Read From Right To Left!?

For years, the only major Anime magazine available in English was Viz's Animerica. Viz has had some competition via other publisher's single-issue specials, comprehensive guides, and one-off stories in other monthlies but the first actual Anime Magazine to go head-to-head against them is Wizard's Anime Invasion.

Wizard of course being one of the most popular monthly comic collectors' magazines available. It's mostly focused on American comics, with price guides, artist interviews, and the like, but it also has a bit of info on manga. (Comic book fans find it easier to adapt to Anime/Manga than most mainstream Americans do; after all, they're already used to special powers, epic struggles, spicy romance and hand-drawn violence!)

Anime Invasion weighs in at 100 pages with a cover price of $4.99 (which is about the same as Animerica) but is to be published on a quarterly basis (every 3 months). If successful, look for it to go monthly.

One of our members checked out the new magazine in depth and said "It's an Anime magazine much like Animerica except for some reason I find this one has a lot more useful info in it. (For one thing, they know what's hot and what needs hyping, whereas Animerica had specials on oooold stuff half the time.)" He did concede that as a quarterly magazine, it can more easily concentrate the "best" of its info into each issue rather than researching new content every month. (A major pain we assure you.)

Love Witch

In the Summer 2002 issue, on page 81 is an article entitled "Witchy Woman: Sailor Moon's Takeuchi begins a new series." Among other developments, the article sheds a bit of light on the plot of Love Witch. The manga series is about a girl named Ai "Love" Anju (note that "Ai" means "Love") who becomes a witch when she turns 13. Her grandmother, parents and twin brother have all died, though she unsuccessfully tried to save her brother with her newfound powers. The mood sounds a bit more bleak than that of Sailor Moon, which may be an interesting change of pace. We're looking forward to seeing whether anyone picks up the English rights!

Another news story, which may be of interest, is, "Eye of the Toonami", a funny interview of the Cartoon Network's Toonami staff done in the style of a comic book using photographs. Not just any photographs, mind you; here we find a narrative of the interviewer's evil plot to get himself into a Dragonball Z episode, in pursuit of which he winds up running into employees as they play with their Voltron toys, assault him with a 1/16th scale Gundam axe, or turn Super-Saiyan and punish him for his evil deeds. Perhaps even more impressive is the horde of Anime merchandise decorating their offices! But some of us in the SOS Treehouse (okay, the member who is Bad-Badtz Maru) found this whole coverage revoltingly stupid considering what's really going on in these (and AOL's) offices. The ever-fawning entertainment press drives Bad-Badtz batty.

2 panels from Comic

Sailor Moon appears yet again within the same issue via a "Top 10 Hottest Romances" contest; in fact, the romance between Usagi/Serena and Mamoru/Darien came in first place! The article talks about how their love has played out across planets and millennia, experiencing both the ups and downs of a relationship, yet even if they break up they are inexorably pulled together by their mutual destiny. Occupying the next three slots in the contest were the Rick/Lisa/Minmei love triangle from Robotech, Miaka and Tamahome from Fushigi Yuugi, and Yuu and Miki from Marmalade Boy.

But shucks; making Usagi & Mamoru's relationship number one was more than enough to raise our interest in this new magazine. Check it out today!

Still yet another new mag???
NewType English Edition!
March '99
Of course it doesn't fit on our scanner!
A 2-page spread
A full page spread intros an article.

In Japan there are (big surprise!) plenty of Anime magazines but one of the most well-known is NewType. Though some our members find it leans too much toward mecha anime for their tastes, none dispute the fact that NewType is known for its big, beautiful full-page, full-color pictures and incredible access to Anime production companies in Japan. The magazine itself is extra-large; not just in terms of its 250 pages, but also the fact that it's 9.5 inches wide and a foot tall! By comparison, standard American magazines are 8 inches by 10.5 inches. NewType's size is definitely a gimmick since everything else in Japan seems to be geared towards miniaturization. The magazine usually comes with various extras such as posters, postcards, and mini-art-books. Strangely, the cover price is still only ¥520 (about $5.00), the same as both American Anime magazines.

Recently NewType has announced plans to release an English Language Edition of their magazine in America. Animenation confirmed that the first issue of the English edition of the magazine will debut at this year's Anime Expo and then will become available at typical retail channels starting in August. Besides covering both the American and Japanese sides of the Anime scene they claim that the monthly will be presented in the original Japanese right-to-left format. (We hope NewType is ready for a lot of complaints from fans who don't know or can't appreciate this Japanese custom! )




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