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.

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.
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.
As an up-and-coming young animator, Hideaki Anno worked on big animated films like NausicaƤ 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.
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.
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.
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.
Renzo revisits the classic Otomo artbook ‘Kaba,’ highlighting the world-renowned director’s work outside of anime and manga.
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.
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.
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.