Complete with the tape that held the badge onto the cover.

Ghost In The Shell was about to debut in the cinema, and so it gets the cover this month as part of the hype for that. Also it allows the magazine to indulge itself in all things “cyber” even more than usual. The four pages GITS gets is pretty dense, with the last two pages full of side bars packed with words in teeny tiny fonts.

Regular column Cyberdrome runs down other “cyber” films including The Net, Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days and Virtuosity. Only Hackers and Strange Days get the thumbs up. Similarly, the column Short Cuts covered various “cyber” anime and abused the word cyber something awful. Finally, replacing Dirty Pair, we get an Appleseed side story as the new comic this issue, alongside the continuing Akira and Striker (aka Spriggan).

On a less sci-fi note, there was also a feature on The Cockpit OAV based on Leiji Matsumoto’s Battlefield manga.

There was next to nothing anime related in the news, as the Xmas period was light on releases. Apparently a company called CD Vision had high hopes for VCDs and were going to put out Akira, Ninja Scroll, Appleseed and Streetfighter II. That was about it. Streetfighter II topped the Virgin Megastore anime charts.

The most interesting thing I found flicking through this issue was an advert for a Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct comic, as I had totally forgotten that Space Precinct had existed, let alone that it had a comic. And a sticker album. And action figures.

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There was a much longer version of this post but my blog ate it. Here’s what was going on in Issue 27 of Manga Mania, cover date October 1995.

This issue contained the most Manga Mania article in the history of Manga Mania, “CONFESSIONS OF A CYBER DUDE“. It was an interview with Tony Takezaki conducted by Tony Luke. There was also a huge news piece on all of Tony Luke’s projects. You’d be well and truly hammered if you were playing the Manga Mania drinking game with this issue, that’s for sure. Tony Luke.

Titles covered in the news included Babel II – The Beginning, Street Fighter II The Animated Movie, Madox-01 and SD Double Feature. Only one of these would turn out to be a massive hit.

As well as the “Cyber Dude”, there were features on Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and other fighting games turned into TV/Film, plus a profile of Ironfist Chin Mi creator Takeshi Maekawa.

Kekko Kamen was number 3 in the Top 20 anime charts, behind Akira and a volume of Angel Cop.

The Megabyte and Cyberdrome columns seem especially out of date with news of the Virtual Boy, the Apple Bandai Pippin, Iomega Zip Drives and Virtual IO I-Glasses.

Trish Ledoux weighed in again on the sub vs dub debate. Thank goodness that never rears its head anymore and there never arose a subset of fanatical dub fans that out-nutter anything sub fans did in the 90s. (Pretty sure I made that joke last time it came up in one of these recaps).

And finally Peter J Evans continued to taunt the readership with shows he’d seen and you hadn’t – this time it was Captain Harlock.

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NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got a news feature in bold)

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 4, Bubblegum Crisis 5 (dub)

East2West – Kekkou Kamen 2

Manga Video – Heroic Legend of Arslan 3, Project A-Ko 3, Angel Cop 5, New Dominion Tank Police 6

Japan News

Captain Tylor OAVs

Virgin Megastores Anime Top 20 

Top three were Space Adventure Cobra, New Dominion 8, Angel Cop 3

Reader Survey Results

It was a different time.

COMICS

Akira – Part 26

Striker – Part 2 (aka Spriggan)

Dirty Pair: Sim Hell – Part 2

FEATURES

Flesh and Blood – Julie Davis on Tokyo – The Last Metropolis and Zeiram.

Fist vs Freeman – Dave Hughes on the live action adaptations of Crying Freeman and Fist of the North Star.

COLUMNS

Cyberdrome – Lots on Doom, less on Descent, Hewlett Packard’s invisible toner and Spider-Man Cartoon Maker CD-ROM.

Animatedly Yours – Sailor Moon and Dragonball on their way to US television.

Get Animated – The final letter from future shading curmudgeon Paul “Otaking” Johnson, only he was using a different nickname in 1995…

MegaByte – Sega Saturn had arrived in the UK, and Playstation was due along shortly. Gundam on the Playstation got 70%.

Short Cuts – A robot size chart. Pretty sure they have done this already.

REVIEWS

One anime review. Arslan got 3 stars. This issue clearly came out during one of periodic stalls the UK anime market suffered.

In conclusion, if it wasn’t for the comics, this issue would have been pretty bad.

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NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got a news feature in bold)

Manga Video – Tokyo – The Last Megalopolis, Macross Plus 3, Angel Cop 4, New Dominion Tank Police 5

Kiseki – Fly Peek – Peek The Baby Whale

East To West – 8 Man After 2

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 3, Bubblegum Crisis 4 (dub)

Upcoming Japan Releases

Dirty Pair Flash II

El Hazard

Legend of Christiana

Slayers The Motion Picture

“New Century Evangelion” – a city under threat from the mysterious Apostles organisation is protected by a young girl and her robot! Sometimes these previews of Japanese releases are like a window into an alternate dimension.

Virgin Megastores Anime Top 20 

Top three were the Patlabor movie, New Dominion 7, Angel Cop 2

Other News

Channel Four to air Cyber City Oedo 808, Tokyo Babylon, Devilman and Doomed Megalopolis. I taped every single one off the telly at the time. Anecdotally it seems to have been a key point in growing the UK anime fandom at this point in time.

COMICS

Akira – Part 25

Striker – Part 1 (aka Spriggan)

Dirty Pair: Sim Hell – Part 1

FEATURES

First Love – Cathy Sterling on Love City. Mainly comparing it to Akira, which leads into the next feature…

Deja Views – A one page feature comparing KO Century Beast Warriors to Ladius, then losing it’s theme totally with some Macross vagaries before a flippant Guyver remark.

Short Cuts – A one page “comedy” feature about anime hair cuts from Dave Jerrom. Totally filler in the proud tradition of UK publishing.

Renaissance Man – Julie Davis on Yuji Moriyama, and the Project A-Ko sequels in particular. This probably helped cement Yuji Moriyama in my brain as the earliest Japanese animator I was familar with.

COLUMNS

Get Animated – Letters include complaining about a dearth of robot shows available in the UK, dumb questions and people saying how great the magazine is.

Cyberdrome – A guide to getting on the internet and what to do once you are there.

Mega Byte – Here’s your regulation reference to Buichi Terasawa’s Apple, as Hudson Soft were apparently planning to release Space Adventure Cobra Digital Comic in the UK. Anyone know if that happened? Panzer Dragoon got 89% in the review.

Animatedly Yours - More on versioning manga for the US market.

REVIEWS

Top rated release was Ushio & Tora Comical Deformed Theatre with 4 stars. Of course it was. Starting to see harsher anime reviews now too, with nothing else getting more than 3 stars.

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Cover this month was by Metin Salih

NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got news feature in bold)

Manga Video – Project A-Ko 2, Patlabor the Movie, Wings of Honneamise (sub version), Space Adventure Cobra, Angel Cop 3, New Dominion Tank Police 4, Orguss 02 2, Legend of the Four Kings 11 & 12

Western Connection – Love City, Ushio & Tora 6

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 5, Bubblegum Crisis 5 (dub)

East To West – 8 Man After 3, The Adventures of Kekko Kamen 3

Upcoming Conventions

Anime Expo ’95 – 30 June – 2 July, Los Angeles – Guests announced were Koichi Ohata and Satoshi Urushibara. 

Anime America – 6 -9 July, Anaheim – Guest announced was Megumi Hayashibara.

Robocon 10 – 6 – 8 October, San Jose – Guests included Carl Macek and Arlon Ober.

Minami Anime – 22 July, Portsmouth – One day con at Portsmouth Hilton, two video rooms, a traders hall, a fan artshow room and a video programme that ran 10am to 10pm!

Japan News

Fire Emblem OAV

Shin Megami Tensei OAV

Virgin Megastores Top 20 Anime

Top three were New Dominion 6, Angel Cop 1 and Akira.

COMICS

Akira – Part 24

Silent Mobius – Part 5

Firetripper – Part 3

FEATURES

Speed – Yes that is the title of this Julie Davis piece on 8 Man After. There’s also a side bar on the 1994 live action 8 Man film

How to draw the manga way part 3 – No mention of Buichi Terasawa’s Apple this time! Instead some instruction on cel painting and animation.

Yeah, that was it, six pages of features total. I think they wanted to burn off two of the strips so they could launch two more with the price hike next month.

COLUMNS

MegaByte - Ultra 64 was on it’s way with a promised November launch in Japan and the US, no mention of the Europe release date of course. This was the way of things in 1995. The Story of Thor on the Megadrive got 86%

Cyber Drome – Yes, the fastly dated tech column was back. With a big piece on digital actors, no mention of Avatar yet, I think we have to wait until Cameron is linked with Battle Angel Alita before we start to see Avatar mentioned in the magazine.

Get Animated - Hey it’s the eternal when will we get some Ranma anime released in the UK question. There’s also a weird letter justifying next months price hike announced in this issues editorial. 

Animated Yours – Trish Ledoux talks “versioning” manga.

REVIEWS

Top release was Patlabor the Movie with five stars. Though bear in mind Kekko Kamen got four stars, as did every other anime reviewed release this month.

ADVERTS

In the inside front cover was this beauty of a time capsule of UK anime fandom…

Did anyone actually join this thing? If so, please elaborate in the comments below. I am curious about the Japanese cartoon fueled decadence depicted in the photos in this advert that could attract the presence of grinning, greedy, poisonous, bearded balloonist Branson.

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That’s a Kev Walker (ABC Warriors, Thunderbolts) cover up there.

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NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got a news feature in bold)

East2West – 8 Man After, Kekko Kamen and The Wicked City (not that one, this one)

Bloomsbury Publishing – Ironfist Chinmi

Manga VIdeo – Angel Cop 1, New Dominion Tank Police 2, Macross Plus 2, Legend of the 4 Kings 4, Godzilla vs Mothra, Tokyo Drifter

Columbia TriStar – Street Fighter (the live action film)

Western Connection – Dancougar, Hummingbirds, Ushio & Tora 4, Slow Step 2

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 3, Bubblegum Crisis 3 (dub)

Kiseki Films – Robotech 5, Star Blazers 6

Pioneer Video – Kishin Heidan 1 & 2, Green Legend Ran 3

Japan News

Lupin III Get Lost Nostradamus was airing

The X movie was announced.

Virgin Megastores Top 20 Anime Chart

Top three were The Guyver Volume 12, Ninja Scroll and Macross Plus Volume 1

COMICS

Akira – Part 22

Silent Mobius – Part 3

Firetripper – Part 1

FEATURES

Hard Labor - Peter J Evans gives a history of the Patlabor franchise. While the article mentions the first film is out in May, no mention of it is in the news pages. Looking it up, it actually came out in June, so I guess this was a case of articles not synching up with release dates. As good as this article is, I think the mainstream coverage the release got (I remember NME covering it) brought it more to my attention. Interesting to read about how special the idea of leaping from OAV to TV was still thought of here, in three years time that specialness would be dead and buried.

Fanimania – Dave Hughes reviews five UK fanzines, Animace, Animejin, Animenia, JAMM and Tales of the Cajun Sushi Bar.

Animejin leapt from print to web and for a while was the source for UK anime news in the absence of print publicaitons. I have a few issues of JAMM, a pretty great Belgian zine that filled a niche that barely exists now (episode and series summaries of shows you might never see). Animenia was the product of “Gaijin Press” that would lead to the launch of a magazine called ANIMEX at the end of 1996, that promptly evaporated into thin air. They were based in Grimsby, as I was at the time, but I don’t think I ever knowingly encountered them. Cajun Sushi Bar was a fanfic fanzine that was inexplicably popular among people who wrote reviews of fanzines, but that might be just be because I don’t understand people getting excited about fanfic unless it’s Shakespeare Hemingway.

Idol Worship - Simon Taylor on the concept of idol singers and the UK release of Hummingbirds in particular.

Branded To Thrill – David Chute on the director Seijun Sezuki. What is this doing in an anime magazine? Well the magazine was owned by Manga Video now and they were putting out two of his films with the ICA.

How To Draw The Manga Way - Wil Overton with a three part guide to how to draw in the Manga Way. There is no practical advice whatsoever in this first part, instead it is two pages of vague history & terms and two more pages of discussion of CG art. Because it was the nineties and CG art was THE FUTURE. We would all be Buichi Terasawa in the glorious world of Apples and comics.

COLUMNS

Get Animated - STANDARD LETTERS PAGE. Which is to say – one letter addressing a “controversy”, in this case subs vs dubs, one letter asking questions and a final letter rating each part of the magazine bit by bit.

Megabyte - Apparently the Saturn and Playstation might not take off in the West as we don’t like to change systems that often, so why not buy a 32X for your Megadrive instead. And apparently Nintendo might come out on top with their mystery Ultra 64 project. Also: Mega Man X2 gets 75%.

Cyberdrome - NANOMACHINES ARE GOING TO EAT US ALL. A wireless gamepad. Wristwatch telephone. 

Animatedly Yours - Trish Ledoux talks about voice acting, and it all gets confusing at the end when it starts contradicting itself. I blame the editor.

Sumo Family - Robots fear can openers.

REVIEWS

The first two volumes of the Maison Ikkoku manga get 5 stars.

Anime picks this month include Kishin Heidan, New Dominion, Green Legend Ran and Plastic Little(!) with 4 stars each. Bottom of the pile was Legend of the Four Kings with 2 stars.

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NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got a news feature in bold)

Manga Video – New Dominion Tank Police 1, Orguss 02 1, 3 x 3 Eyes Part 3, Legend of the Four Kings 3, Godzilla vs King Ghidorah

Western Connection – Slow Step 1 & 2, Lupin III Gold of Babylon, Ushio & Tora 3 & 4, Salamander 3

Pioneer – Armitage III, Kishin Heiden 1 & 2, Green Legend Ran 3

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 2, Bubblegum Crisis 2 (dub), Urusei Yatsura TV 5

Kiseki Films – Starblazers 5, Adventure Duo 3

Japan News

Ghost In The Shell in production

Iczer Girl Iczelion released.

Elementalors released.

Editorial

Again, pretty much worthless, duplicating the contents page really.

COMICS

Akira – Part 21

Silent Mobius – Part 2

Dominion – Part 10

Dirty Pair – “I Honestly Hate You”

FEATURES

MACHINE GOD CORPS – Julie Davis on Pioneer’s Kishin Heiden. Framed as part of the “retro anime” fad here, I wonder if looking back now it fits better in the alternate history fad that would hit its peak with Sakura Wars.

Dreamweaver – Jim Swallow and Cefn Ridout with a profile on character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto and his work on Macross in particular. Also puff pieces on Macross Plus, Orguss 02 and Megazone 23 are littered through the feature in sidebars.

Pet Shop Girls – Peter J Evans draws the short straw and gets to write about Plastic Little.

COLUMNS

Mega Byte – Some blather about videogame and manga links with Buichi Terasawa (including his early adoption of using computers in his art) and Akira Toriyama. Every time Terasawa got mentioned in the mid to late 90s by law you had to mention him using computers, or later, his website. Secret of Mana got 90% in the review

Animatedly Yours – Trish Ledoux discusses the sub vs dub debate. Thankfully in 2012 that has all be laid to rest and definitely hasn’t flipped itself over entirely into a bizarro version of the 90s arguments.

Cyberdrome – Kids were hacking US government networks to listen in on the North Korea nuclear crisis. Kids were hacking and vandalising UK government sites. Like the subs vs dubs debate, we’ve thankfully moved on from such concerns. A guy was spending $23 million of government money on inventing owner locked smart guns ala Judge Dredd’s Lawgiver. Compuserve anime forums were 89% men. And apparently there were dirty pictures of anime girls on the internet.

Sumo Family - Dad ate all the noodles.

REVIEWS

In a sign of things to come for both the magazine and the anime industry in the UK in the 90s, the best reviewed titles are John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow and Wong Kar Wai’s As Tears Go By.

Wait a minute, there was a 5 star anime too, the first volume of Oh My Goddess, beating Ninja Scroll and Macross Plus.

Worst reviewed was another Hong Kong movie, Lethal Panther.

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I’ve clearly lost the FREE ESSENTIAL ANIME GUIDE, so I can’t tell you what was in there. If you know, tell us about it in the comments.

It’s been over two years since I did one of these posts, so a recap. My brother bought Manga Mania up until issue 18, then I picked it up in order to continue to read AKIRA and 17 years later here we are.

NEWS

Upcoming Releases: (titles that got a news feature in bold)

Manga Video – Macross Plus 1, Ninja Scroll, Legend of Four Kings 2, Guyver 12

Western Connection – Lupin III – The Gold of Babylon, Devil Hunter Yoko 2, Ushio & Tora 2 & 3, Salamander 2 & 3

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 1, Bubblegum Crisis 1 (dub)

Kiseki Films – Plastic Little, Starblazers 4, Robotech 4, Macross Do You Remember Love

Pioneer Video – Kishin Heidan 1 & 2

Japan News

DNA² had an OAV coming out.

OAV adaptation of Warships on the Bottom of the Sea, or as it would be know when ADV eventually release it in English, Super Atragon is announced.

Virgin Megastores Top 20 Anime Chart

Top 3 spots held by Guyver, AD Police & Genocyber

Editorial

Absolutely nothing of value, just hyping the free gift, other magazines and a competition

COMICS

Akira - Part 20

Silent Mobius - Part 1

Dominion - Part 9

FEATURES

It Takes A Thief – A profile of Monkey Punch adapted from material from Kappa magazine.

Slient Knights – A profile of Kia Asamiya by many hands (including material reprinted from Animerica)

Flights of Fancy - A profile of Hayao Miyazaki, again by many hands (including material from a BBC interview)

I don’t recall feeling it was this piecemeal and recycled when I read it originally, but looking back there’s not much fresh material here outside some bits Peter J Evans added to the parts taken from elsewhere.

COLUMNS

Animatedly Yours - Trish Ledoux produces the first “Otaku dictionary” I ever saw. Even then it felt like a lazy way to fill column inches, and I have grown to hate the “anime glossary” feature more and more each time I see one.

Cyber-Drome - Suspended Image Systems (yeah I don’t know either), Cyberwar (a Lawnmower Man game), Netscape and finally some anime/manga related content with Anime Resources and Info Home page at the easy to remember URL of http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/d/g/dgaxiola/www/anime.html (no longer there)

Mega-Byte – News of Crime Crackers and Space Griffon VF-9 on the Playstation and a new SNES Godzilla game. And Wil Overton finally finds a game that disagrees with him, as Rise of the Robots gets a score of 20% in the review.

Sumo Family - A joke that requires familiarity with the film Forbidden Planet is made.

REVIEWS

Green Legend Ran and Ushio & Tora are the pick of the bunch for the reviewers this month, with Salamander getting the worst of it.

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Manga Mania Issue 19 (February 1995)

What better way to celebrate Valentines Day than to look at a 15 year old manga/anime magazine?

Articles on The Legend of the 4 Kings (oddly enough a gateway anime in the UK due to it’s televised broadcast later on), Green Legend Ran (something I totally ignored back then, wouldn’t mind checking out now), Ushio & Tora and a review of the year just gone. The editorials now have become utterly worthless, just talking about the issue’s theme, but there’s still Trish Ledoux’s column. Here she’s talking bishonen, nothing ground breaking now, but it was news you could use back in 1995.

There’s also a column, Manga Watch, not sure if it’s new this issue, or so small I missed it before. Anyway, this issue has a few words on British artists working in Japan at the time. Obviously, the ubiquitous Tony Luke is featured, but so are Manga Mania’s own Woodrow Phoenix, who was working on Inseparable for Morning at the time, Carl Flint on Giant Baby and Chris Webster on Mr Pillow.

UK NEWS

• From Western Connection: Lupin III – The Fuma Conspiracy, Salamander 1, Devil Hunter Yoko 1
• From Kiseki FIlms: MD Geist, Adventure Duo 2, Macross: Do You Remember Love, Return of the Overfiend 4
• From Anime Projects: Bubblegum Crisis 1 (dub), Urusei Yatsura 5
• From Manga Video: Legend of the Four Kings Eps 1 & 2, Wings of Honneamise, The Guyver 11, AD Police File 3, Genocyber 3
• From Pioneer Video: Green Legend Ran 1, Tenchi Muyo 3, Moldiver 3

US NEWS

• Ianus Publishing released the Project A-Ko Roleplaying Game. I have this, but have never played it. Nor have I managed to sell it on eBay.
• No US video releases mentioned this time round.
• Just the one notable new US manga release – They Were 11

JAPAN NEWS

• Magic Knight Rayearth TV and Saturn game.
• Darkside Blues in the theatres.
• Red Baron on the TV.

More fun in the letters pages!

I’m not trying to pick on Paul “Otaking” Johnson, but these teenage fan letters he kept sending are full of value. If you are familiar with him it’s probably either through his rant about fansubs or his Doctor Who “anime”, but he has more strings to his bow than that. He also likes to complain about the lack of shading in anime and how everything new doesn’t compare to Madhouse OAVs of the 90s.

Well, this issue’s letter from the future self styled “Otaking” sheds some light on that viewpoint:

His first anime purchase was Cyber City Oedo, a show he turned into a manifesto! Though, considering the first anime I purchased was Urusei Yatsura, I probably shouldn’t be throwing too many stones from my glass house. There’s one more letter from him to come and it’s a real doozy, but that’s not until issue 26.

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