American Anime Magazines
Just stumbled on an iSugoi article tracking the various American anime magazines that have come and gone over the past few decades, from Protoculture Addicts to PiQ. The article’s a bit wordy, but very much worthwhile.
‘Tis a bit of a graveyard. Odd to think that, 18 years after the first issue of Protoculture Addicts, anime fandom’s produced only six
Matt (18)
Joe (13)
Nick (10)
thedigitalbug (8)
Constance (4)
” Is it because otaku gravitate towards the internet, and we get all our news there?”
Generally, though I think it’s more a matter of function over form. By the time magazines hit store shelves their headlines and reviews are already old news. If there’s one mind-frame that anime/manga fans are known for it’s ‘ we want it and we want it ‘now’ ‘
A nostalgic article though. Personally I miss the days of Animerica – I love how excited I was even to find a back-issue for the art and insight.
Lissa
20 Jan 10 at 1:00 am
Yeah, I got most excited over Newtype USA back in the day.
Brent
20 Jan 10 at 9:04 pm
I was really excited about PiQ and wished that it would have been given a chance to grow into something better. The anime coverage was the only reason I ever bought issues of the always-gorgeous and well-written Play, and I was sad to see it bumped out into a different magazine (the disasterous Rocket, which either morphed into Geek Monthly or actually became PiQ).
Newtype USA was a beautiful magazine, a fantastic object to sit down with and lose yourself in, a concept that seems completely lost on potential readers today. It’s too bad that no one under 25 subscribes to magazines anymore, and that no one under 20 has ever considered doing so. I don’t mean that literally but it might as well be true.
I don’t bemoan the loss of Anime Insider and found their editorial style disrespectful to both the reader and to the content itself. Visually it was a mess and it pandered to the dumbest audience it could. That was my impression of it, anyway.
Joe
20 Jan 10 at 9:53 pm
I don’t think it’s really too wordy, especially given the fact it’s trying to cover over twenty years of developments. I was surprised at the omission of ANIMAG, which was a very ambitious magazine in which many of the staff of ANIMERICA had their roots.
Carl
20 Jan 10 at 10:14 pm
I’d agree with Lissa. Print simply can’t compete with the immediacy and flexibility of the web. We did our best with Newtype USA to bring exclusive content from abroad, but most of the time that exclusivity didn’t last long. It was one of the reasons we tended to put more effort into long-form features, like interviews and profiles of projects that most people didn’t have access to.
And Joe, you hit on a key point. The areas that printed mags still have an advantage are in presentation and depth. Those are the two aspects we always held to a high standard, especially when we moved on to create PiQ. I’m glad you were able to appreciate what we were aiming for with those mags.
Robert
26 Jan 10 at 6:00 pm
Wow, welcome to the blog, Robert! You did great work with Newtype USA and PiQ.
Printed magazines definitely have those advantages. The question is, how can they best help their potential readership understand that?
I thoroughly enjoyed the issue of PiQ I bought, but that suffered (for me) from too broad a focus. I wasn’t interested in many of the topics covered, like games. But that could just be me!
Brent
26 Jan 10 at 11:18 pm
That’s a question that every magazine is tripping over themselves to answer right now. Helping a potential readership understand the importance of well-thought, reliable content and design is almost a lost cause if they don’t already value those things to begin with.
With the advent of social media, so much of the work that goes into “legitimate” publishing is losing value, and since the content on the web is largely free, it seems like people scoff at the thought of paying for anything now. It’s a fundamental shift in how people consume information, and the less they care about where it’s coming from or how it looks, the worse off magazines (and even web sites) will be. But that’s not to say all these things can’t co-exist in some way. It just means that keeping a magazine relevant is going to be a lot harder than it used to be.
(To digress for a moment, this is why I’m personally excited for something like the iPad to come along and help magazines/books/newspapers evolve into the electronic age in a way that keeps their best qualities intact while also adding the flexibility and interactivity of the web. Will it work? I don’t know, but the potential there is undeniable.)
In terms of building a readership, I don’t believe you can ever convince anyone that your magazine is worthwhile. Instead, you have to get it out in front of as many eyeballs as you can and organically “find” your audience. It’s hard to do but it does happen.
We skipped all that hardship with Newtype USA by riding on the name, but I saw it first-hand with each issue of PiQ. Sure, we were losing a lot of NTUSA readers because of the shift in focus (and because they were also pissed, rightfully so) but we were also gaining new readers who were genuinely interested in the other things we were covering. Those four issues were a lesson to me that a magazine can find an audience that appreciates the work involved, but doing so takes considerable investment of time and money—something we were never given the luxury of.
Robert
28 Jan 10 at 5:28 pm
Interesting!
I have to admit, I imagine that very few magazines will have that chance in the future. Mass media in general is losing its relevance; why would I buy a magazine dumbed down to appeal mildly to millions when I can buy half a dozen on topics that interest me specifically, and that are published in small batches? We’re entering a world where mass media won’t make sense.
That said, I love glossy, art-filled magazines (ideally, with interesting stories). I suspect there’s *some* kind of audience. Heck, I subscribe to Megami and Megami Creators, despite being unable to read a word of Japanese.
Perhaps we’ll see a change in the magazine formats. I can imagine an art-focused magazine working better as a mini-artbook.
These days, I’d rather see the folks behind Newtype USA or PiQ publish on a blog, to be honest. Then it’s searchable and delivered straight to my RSS reader.
Is everyone else in the market like that? Don’t know.
Brent
29 Jan 10 at 2:47 pm