Running from 1992 to 2005, Animerica was a magazine I was never exposed to on local store shelves. It was a series I knew of through the Internet and periphery conversations with anime fans across the United States, but was never a series I was able to get my hands on. That is until I bought a lot of magazines on ShopGoodwill early last year at the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
If I had gotten these during their original run, these issues would have been my jam. Looking through them in 2021 is a straight nostalgia trip with advertisements for Suncoast Motion Picture Company, Manga Entertainment, Sam Goody and Media Play. Ads for VHS tapes with a choice between subtitles and dubs. And an overview feature covering Cowboy Bebop and how it “has all the makings of a modern classic”. They were right, to be fair, but far more than a modern classic, its reverberations are still felt today. Two pages each month are dedicated to covering the entirety of anime releases for the month. I’d be curious to see if the same could even be summarized on two pages today.
Animerica is split down the middle with black and white pages and color pages for the more important features and interviews. This magazine is dense with writing; hardly an inch of space is wasted.
Another interesting thing as I read through these issues was the reviews are also focused on individual volumes of a series, instead of series as a whole. Of course, that makes sense due to the release nature of shows in the 90’s and aughts, just something I had forgotten about and something that simply doesn’t happen in today’s series binging releases. Seeing a review of Outlaw Star Volumes 2-4 and how it’s shaping up to be similar in tone Gundam Wing is both quaint and adorable. Come back next month as we review the last third of this series.
Volume 9, Issue 7’s feature on the second dub of Akira from Pioneer/Animaze has a really cool in-depth look at why Akira has the significance it does and why this new dub would become the go to for subsequent releases all the way to today (though, writer Andrew Osmond wouldn’t know that at the time.) The latest issue I own from 2004, Vol. 12 Number 1, has a really cool multi-page write up on Big O season 2, a co-production between Cartoon Network and Sunrise.
In these issues Animerica also featured the manga Galaxy Express 999 as a serialized publication each month. That’s a unique and bold choice. And it is a series I really need to sit down and watch/read.
Not that I’m getting older - I’m planning on living forever and so far so good - but it is odd to see that DVD releases start to become advertised while Game Boy Color and Playstation One games are being advertised. I remember when DVDs first started coming out, and they made my Outlaw Star VHS Box Set 2 purchase a bit silly in retrospect even at the time. Why spend $100 for half of the series when you could get the whole series for the same price and with less changing of tapes or discs? And both subtitles and dubs are available on the same disc? It’s still magic.
As usual, there are some great interviews, Amanda Winn-Lee and Ren Usami. While the layout of these issues isn’t on par with what we see in Otaku USA, it is still a really fun deep dive into 90’s anime. Something kind of neat about seeing One Piece and Naruto as volume one releases... I hear they’re pretty good.
Next time, even more magazines.
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