Anime magazine history, Part 2: 1979
39 TV productions including Cyborg 009, Doraemon, Mobile Suit Gundam, Yamato The New Voyage, Gatchaman F, Rose of Versailles, and Blue Noah.
13 feature films including Galaxy Express 999, Aim for the Ace, and Lupin III: Cagliostro Castle.
January
Back from the dead! The original run of Fantoche vanished after its 7th issue (August 1977), then popped back into existence with a new No. 1 in January ’79. It continued to give a strong nod toward international productions such as Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings.
January 6: SF Bic No. 4
SF Bic was a short-lived monthly magazine from Someisha that felt more like a grab-bag than a periodical, with a hodgepodge of articles that covered random aspects of SF. In this issue, for example, you could find a catalog of foreign TV shows, various manga, short stories, pulp magazine cover galleries, and a 4-page review of Yamato novelizations.
January 20: TV Anime Theme Song Collection
This 368-page paperback was a companion volume to the ongoing series of books from publisher Akimoto Shobo that was the first to catalog TV anime in chronological order. It was a text-only digest containing lyrics for hundreds of anime theme songs from the very beginning up to the end of 1978. Just the thing to tuck into your pocket for karaoke night.
February
The third issue of Manific magazine was an oddball, sold as a “double issue” to cover two months (February and March), after which it would go through an important change.
March
The Best One, May issue
What’s THIS doing here? Gakken Publishing aimed this new bimonthly magazine squarely at youth culture with a heavy emphasis on music and TV stars, but it also contained a section titled Anime Channel devoted to popular TV anime such as Lupin III and Yamato 2. Though it’s long gone now, The Best One was a good milestone for the penetration of anime culture into mainstream media. Just two years earlier, it was unheard of. Now it was embraced by a major publisher. More importantly, Anime Channel laid the groundwork for an entire new magazine from Gakken titled Animedia in 1981.
Animec No. 5 (bimonthly)
This is the first appearance of Animec in our timeline, so where were volumes 1-4? Answer: they were titled Manific. Starting with Vol. 5, it changed names and went bimonthly with the following editorial explanation:
Enrich your Animec life
The title of this magazine has been changed from Manific to Animec. As you know, it is a compound word combining “animation” and “comic.” We have decided to use this word as the title. Our intention is to further promote anime and comics, which are the major culture of the younger generation.
Of course, the magazine has undergone major reform. We are making an effort to make it richer in content and to gain the support of anime and comic fans. In particular, we have devoted many pages to special features, so please pay attention to them. Animec is also going to have mania-like [otaku] content, and we don’t intend to make it a commonplace magazine. Anyone who is an anime & comic fan can enjoy it and enrich their Animec life.
Animec specialized in reviews and coverage of Nippon Sunrise’s works with strong emphasis on model sheets. Some of the concepts that were thought up in Animec, such as Gundam’s model number RX-78, were later made official. It’s also worth mentioning that the first anime specialty shop was called Animec, and their ads had appeared in every issue of Manific. No tie-in was mentioned, but there’s probably an interesting story lurking somewhere in the background.
March 25: TV Anime Compendium, from Mighty Atom to Space Battleship Yamato
Publisher Akita Shoten joined the effort to begin documenting the history of TV anime, which at this point had been around for a mere 16 years, not even old enough to drink yet. Their chosen format was a thick, digest-size paperback running 320 pages. It was organized by genre rather than broadcast dates. Volume 2 followed in October.
April
The next big revolution in anime arrived this month when Mobile Suit Gundam Episode 1 aired on April 7. It would soon become the darling of the publishing world, and Animage was the first to cover it, but OUT got the early adopter prize for running the first-ever cover story later in the month.
April 15: TV Anime Complete Works 3
The third volume of this series by director/historian Taku Sugiyama covered every series from Dog of Flanders (1975) to Ann of Green Gables (1979).
May
June
July
August
In the same month Animage and OUT both featured Gundam covers that seemed to be responding to each other, a new shot was fired across the bow.
Scholars of anime journalism know that a publisher named Kindaieigasha (Modern Movie Company) entered this arena with a publication titled The Anime. This, however, wasn’t it. Instead, it was a one-shot spinoff of Kindaieiga magazine showcasing the rise of theatrical and TV anime such as Yamato, Galaxy Express, Lupin III, Future Boy Conan, and many others. It appeared in bookstores just one day after the premiere of the Galaxy Express movie, which explains the cover.
September
The 7th issue of Animec should have appeared in late August, but turned up instead at the start of September and would keep that position going forward. Chronologically, that made it the first anime magazine of the month, appearing on shelves alongside various manga anthologies rather than OUT (its closest competitor).
The Best One and OUT, meanwhile, held their positions later in the month, appearing alongside new entertainment and movie magazines. In this way, publishers were gradually staking out their spots on the calendar. Animage still had the 10th all to itself, but that would soon change.
September: Voice Actor & Animation Encyclopedia
By 1979, voice actors were becoming as popular as the characters they played, and this 274-page book from Tokyo Sansei Co. spent most of its pages profiling 106 of them with questionnaires and dossiers. About a quarter of the book was devoted to a study of anime production, including discussions with prominent industry personnel.
October
October 10: TV Anime Compendium Part 2, Latest TV Anime Hero Encyclopedia
Seven months after publishing the first volume, Akita Shoten continued documenting the ever-growing history of anime. Whereas the previous volume was organized by genre, this one highlighted hero characters in favorite programs.
November
This marked the second time two magazines ran Gundam covers in the same month. The series was cruising into its climax at this point, struggling to get ratings but laying a rock solid foundation for the boom years to come.
Two new magazines entered the fold in November. The Anime reappeared after a successful flight of its earlier trial balloon. Its format and publication date were exactly the same as Animage, which was quite a gauntlet to throw down. From this point forward, the 10th became an iron-clad date for mainstream monthlies, which would become known as 10th-day anime magazines. The anime industry itself soon began using it as an anchor date to release new products and take advantage of the news cycle.
The Anime was the first to publish the names of screenwriters and directors for each episode of a TV series. It also had a section for original plans and scripts, and upped the stakes with tucked-in bonus items, a practice pioneered by monthly manga anthologies. Animage would later respond with extras of its own.
As a side note, the name of the magazine itself could be taken as a challenge. It’s rendered as ジ・アニメ with ジ (ji) representing “The.” But “The” is more typically represented as ザ (za). So why did they go with ジ? Well, if you take the katakana characters for “Animage” (アニメージュ) and rearrange them slightly, you get ジ・アニメ. It’s pronounced “Ji Anime.” Kinda provacative, huh?
Monthly Animation, published by Bronze Co., differed from its contemporaries. Rather than packing in as much news and promotion as possible, they took a journalistic approach. The main articles were essays and interviews with prominent industry figures written for a maturing audience.
It previously started in November 1978 as a bimonthly supplement to Monthly Picture Book magazine under the simple name Animation. Five issues were published with cover dates from November ’78 through July ’79. It then ceased publication due to the bankruptcy of Subaru Shobo, but changed publishers to Bronze Co. and added Monthly to its name.
Monthly Animation No. 0 was a preparatory issue before relaunching. When issue 1 arrived in December, it took the brazen step of publishing on the 10th, which put it the same spotlight as Animage and The Anime. As it turned out, that may not have been the best move.
December
(now monthly)
December 28: Voice Actor Festival
Published by Shogakukan, this 72-page book is as good a representation as any for the enormous popularity of anime voice actors at the end of the 70s. A huge crowd of “Seiyuu” was catalogued and profiled along with articles and interviews that explored their exciting careers.
At the end of 1979, there were six contenders for your anime dollar (five monthlies and one bimonthly), twice as many as the previous year. What would happen next?