Crikey, it has been ages since I’ve done one of these write ups of old Manga Mania issues. This is Issue 13, cover date August 1994. So about 15 years old.
The theme this issue is “sex, lies and video nasties”, in part due to censorious climate at the time. Specifically, David Alton’s Amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill and Michael Howard’s subsequent compromise. But if you want more on that, I’d check the Melon Farmers.
Articles include a Go Nagai overview from Helen McCarthy, some of the facts in which I’m not entirely sure are correct. Did he have involvement with Guy Awakening of the Devil/Double Target? The internet suggests not, yet this article is written to highlight that Animania were releasing it.
Actually the entire issue seems to be pushing the title as it has the cover and in the next article Peter J. Evans repeats that same Go Nagai link. This makes me think Animania had been selling this title on that “fact” or had been sold it themselves on that “fact”. If someone can point me in the direction of what the connection, if any, is, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Anyway, the rest of that article is made up of pocket sized reviews of the more violent and sexual anime releases in the UK to date, thrown together with some hysterical quotes from the UK press, including my favourite “Cartoon cult with an increasing appetite for sex and violence”.
Finally there’s an article of Jonathan Kane aka Depth Charge’s Made In Hong Kong video label that was bringing lots of Hong Kong action films (particularly from John Woo and Tsui Hark) to the UK for the first time. And it was a wonderful video label.
Comics continue to be Akira, Dirty Pair, Dominion and Sumo Family.
UK NEWS
- Animeigo were releasing dubbed Bubblegum Crisis, UY Movie 4.
- Manga Video had Tokyo Babylon, The Guyver vol. 5, Crying Freeman Part 5 and screened Appleseed at the NFT’s Fantasm ’94.
- Kiseki had more Ambassador Magma and Urotsukidoji, Return of the Overfiend IV.
- Columbia Tri-Star had Guyver: Dark Hero
- Screen Multimedia were releasing Metal and Lace – The Battle of the Robo Babes on CD-ROM.
US NEWS
- The US releases list took a turn for the worse here, with labels being dropped from most of the descriptions. Anyway, someone released My Neighbour Totoro it seems.
- Urotsukidoji, Legend of the Overfiend was coming out of the futuristic medium of CD-ROM. No mention who the publisher was.
- The one notable manga release was Oh My Goddess! from Dark Horse.
JAPAN NEWS
- According to this nothing was happening in Japan.