There was no shortage of anime magazines in the 1980s, but what about all those other things the maniacs cared about? Cosplay, garage kits, doujin, dinosaurs… Do-Pe covered an eclectic array of otaku interests over its brief three-year run.
Category: Books & Magazines
Monthly Halloween: How American Horror was Translated for Shoujo Manga
At a glance it may seem like the intermingling of Japanese and American horror movie motifs with manga-literate millennial artists is a relatively new phenomenon. And yet, as is often the case, this is not the first time these flavors have mingled.
Hideaki Anno’s Macross Movie Production Comic
As an up-and-coming young animator, Hideaki Anno worked on big animated films like Nausicaä and Macross: Do You Remember Love? For a brief time in 1984, he had a short comic feature that ran in Comic Box Jr. detailing his production experiences.
Bandai’s Brain Bank Media: B-Club
At the tail end of the gunpla boom, Bandai’s enthusiast publishing and garage kit division, B-Club, unleashed a monthly magazine and dozens of garage kits on a modeling community that was growing out of normal plastic model kits.
Hobby Japan’s Experimental Otaku Subculture Magazine Mark 1
Way back in 1985, Hobby Japan (the biggest name in hobby magazines) attempted to diversify with an all-new periodical focused on the broad spectrum of otaku subculture. The experiment lasted three issues.
Visual Horror Magazine V-Zone
The rise of video in the 1980s inspired plenty of new magazines dedicated to specific genres — particularly horror. Originally positioned as an otaku “jack-of-all-trades” magazine, V-Zone soon pivoted exclusively to horror.
Kaba and the Commercial Art of Katsuhiro Otomo
Renzo revisits the classic Otomo artbook ‘Kaba,’ highlighting the world-renowned director’s work outside of anime and manga.
SMH: The Magazine for Sex, Violence & Resin
Though it lasted for less than twenty issues, SMH gave artists and model builders the opportunity the flex their creativity outside the constraints of normal hobby magazines.
Let’s Read: Dual Magazine, No. 3
Dual Magazine was created as a house organ to promote Takara’s efforts in ‘real robot’ anime and take advantage of the model craze kicked off a few years prior by Bandai’s Gundam kits.
Let’s Read: Combat Comic, No. 6
Published in September, 1986, Combat Comic No. 6 provided readers with a mixture of military-themed comics, articles, and model kit features stretched across over 200 newsprint pages.