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.