The idiosyncratic nature of anime released in English on VHS during the ‘90s means that certain titles—and I’m thinking mostly of OVAs, here—have an oversized importance or perhaps, notoriety, within Western fan circles than they do in Japan. The realities of the fledgling subtitled anime industry meant that TV series were too much of a commitment in an uncertain VHS-based market and films weren’t always easiest to license. The result was that, for a while, anime available in English felt like it was overwhelmingly skewed towards direct-to-video titles.
This kind of stuff has been on my mind over the past few months as I’ve been working on finishing up the latest Zimmerit ‘zine, the ARTMIC Fan Book. As the name suggests, it’s focused entirely on the anime design studio that brought us Mospeada and Bubblegum Crisis (two touchstone series for different periods in Western anime fandom, to be sure). ARTMIC also spent most of its existence adjusting to the whims of the OVA market following a period of mixed success in the crowded gunpla boom TV market. ARTMIC wasn’t a typical animation studio in that it didn’t really handle anime production, but instead focused on creating original story pitches and design work that could then be realized by animation studios. The fact that the studio kept dedicated artists and writers on staff meant there was a certain degree of continuity between their work that stands out decades later.
I’m not sure if other studios operated similarly to ARTMIC, but with a permanent staff of talented creatives like Shinji Aramaki, Kenichi Sonoda, and Hideki Kakinuma, the studio managed to create distinctive titles that were recognizable as their own… at least until most of those folks left.
The party never lasts and ARTMIC shut down sometime around 1997, but for a few years, they created visually distinctive titles like Gall Force, Riding Bean, Dragon’s Heaven, and MADOX–01. Their stuff rarely touched the hyper-violent stuff that defined a lot of that English VHS-based fandom of the early ‘90s, but you could find at least a couple of titles they worked on in any rental or retail shop that stocked anime VHS tapes. As a result, ARTMIC left a lasting impression on older anime fans.
But they did a lot of other stuff, too! Not just anime. I tried to include as much as I could in the book to convey just how many projects and things the studio got involved in, from their earliest activity playing a small role in the creation of Macross to perhaps the least-known ARTMIC OVA: Whatever, White Bear. Other stuff, like their work on the American TV show M.A.S.K. or design work on Megaro Zamac model kits, will have to wait for a second volume (no promises).
Unlike our first three ‘zines, this one has a bigger page size (7×9” instead of 5.5×8.5”) and it’s got twice the page count (56 pages instead of 26). You can get your copy on garagekit.club.