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.
Ahh, nostalgia! This issue was one of the first anime magazines I’d ever had, though it must have been someone else’s old copy when I got it, since I would have been 8 in march 1995, and I’m sure no newsagent would make such a sale.