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.