40 Years of Newtype Magazine

One of the most important things to any fan of anime, manga, or anything related to the fandom is having access to quality information. Whether the announcement of an upcoming anime in Japan or a license for the Western market, we have that knowledge coming across our screens within hours, if not minutes. In the days before the Internet, information like that would not have been so readily available. Instead, dedicated magazines would have been the speediest and most comprehensive source of information a person would need in Japan and, after many years, in the rest of the world. Even though the Internet has taken over many of the functions those publications provided, a fair share of them remain in Japan. One of the most famous in the community is Newtype. As the fads and fashions in the otaku community came and went, so too did the magazine both changed with the times, but at the same time stood as a bastion in the face of these changes.

Before we go into the magazine itself, we must briefly go into the general history of anime magazines. Before the mid-1970s, any information about anime could only be found in publications aimed at children, which was what most anime at the time was targeted. However, that began to change with the airing of Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers in the U.S.). According to Japanese film critic Tomohiro Machiyama, it all began with a publication called Out. Inspired by Rolling Stone, the magazine was conceived to cover counterculture topics such as rock music and science fiction. When the publishers put together an issue dedicated to Yamato in 1977, they found the issue surprisingly sold out. When the magazine returned to its regular content, the sales numbers returned to normal as well. When another anime-themed issue was released, it sold out again. It soon dawned on the publishers that there was a demand from older people for anime magazines. Out would then switch to this content exclusively, which lasted until the magazine folded in 1995.

Soon, magazines from other publishers covering anime from the very beginning appeared, such as Animage in 1978. With the boom produced by the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV and film series, many more magazines appeared on the scene such as Animec, Anime V, and Animedia among others. By 1985, publisher Kadokawa Shoten was ready to enter the anime magazine race.

When it began, Newtype was essentially the sister publication of another magazine, Weekly Television (Issues through the 1990s would have “The Television Family” printed on the upper right-hand corner of every cover), which covered general television and recent releases on home video, sort of like a TV Guide. Of course, the magazine's name comes from the Gundam franchise. According to Gundam lore, a Newtype is considered the next stage of human evolution, someone who can perceive and understand other people, though they are not mind readers. My favorite definition of the concept comes from the original Gundam novelization: “[Newtypes] was distinguished by a superior ability to read their own minds and understand information ordinary people might overlook.” So, it is quite fitting that Kadokowa would choose Newtype as the name for their magazine(it also helped that the magazine first hit the stands on March 8th, 1985, one week after the premiere of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, which that first issue had as its main feature). To me, this served the magazine well as the staff, such as then Deputy Editor Shinichiro Inoue (who would eventually become President of Kadokawa), seemed to give the reader a greater awareness of the various hobbies and subcultures that existed out there. The early issues focus on anime and other entertainment subjects. While I will go into some of the things a little later in this article, a brief list includes coverage of hard science fiction topics such as author Arthur C. Clarke and illustrator Jim Burns, film-making such as the piece on pioneer computer animator Robert Abel, a regular feature on RC car racing, a retrospective on The Beatles and even a board game in the August 1987 issue from the fantasy series Utso no Miko.

Despite all the changes made throughout the years, some features stayed consistent throughout the magazine's history. Each issue would have several articles detailing a particular anime being aired that season, usually with double-spread illustrations to go along with it. From time to time, the magazine would also feature other topics such as domestic and Western movies or an interview with various personalities who work in anime, film, or music. A section entitled Newtype Express relays that came out in the previous month. Another mainstay within its pages is the TV schedule for every anime series (and a few live-action shows such as various tokusatsu series) that are on the air during that month complete with a short synopsis of each episode. They also have a schedule for related radio programs for anime series similar to those seen in the recent anime The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio.

In addition, there have been various columns under the section titled Newtype Press by people who work in the anime or manga industry. These include Satsuki Igarashi of the manga quartet CLAMP, voice actresses Maaya Sakamoto and Megumi Hayashibara, as well as novelists Tow Ubukata (Mardock Scramble) and Yōsuke Kuroda (Tenchi Muyo!)among many others.

Newtype also has reviews ranging from various anime and manga to films, video games, model kits, and for a time, even doujinshi. These reviews give an excellent cross-section of what otaku culture at any given time during the past forty years to what they were watching, reading, and listening to.

It is fitting that a magazine covering entertainment such as anime and manga would have manga within its pages that covered not only original works but adaptations as well. The most famous title to grace its pages is The Five Star Stories by Mamoru Nagano. This science fiction epic, which began running off and on in the magazine in 1986, is considered Nagano's life work. The magazine also carried other manga throughout its history. Some of these titles include Angel/Dust by Aoi Nanase, R20 by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Dark Angel by Kia Asamiya, Marionette Generation by Haruhiko Mikomoto, and Kobato. by CLAMP. The magazine also featured short manga intermixed with the above-mentioned news and columns, some detailing the day-to-day goings on of the Newtype staff, others are story manga or even gag manga such as Helvitica Standard by Keiichi Arawi (Nichijou).

It isn't just manga that Newtype also had within its pages, but serialized novels as well. Going back to the magazine's early days, there is Gaia Gear by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, which ran in the magazine from 1987 to 1991. This story takes place well into Gundam's Universal Century timeline past the time of the original show and even its successor series. Sticking with Gundam, another story was commissioned by the magazine for its 15th anniversary in 2000. Titled For the Barrel, it was a complete reimagining of the original Mobile Suit Gundam story from the ground up, using some of the most popular talents at the time such as Gichi Ohtsuka (Freedom OVA) working on the story as well as Shigeto Koyama (Eureka Seven) handling the character designs and Junji Ohkubo (Irregular at Magic High School) in charge of the mechanical designs. In more recent times, there have been other serialized novel projects that were made as side stories or as parts of multimedia franchises, such as Beatless by Satoshi Hase, which came out in 2011, several years before the anime. Others include a side story to the manga MPD-Psycho by Eiji Ohtsuka and Shōu Tajima and the High Card franchise as well.

Over the years, there have been features and subjects no longer in the magazine for various reasons. One of the subjects that met this fate is audio and visual equipment. As stated above, the early years of Newtype not only covered anime and manga, but other features, electronics being one of them. With the advent of physical home media such as video cassettes (both VHS & Betamax) introduced in the mid-1970s and both compact discs and LaserDiscs in the early 1980s (coincidentally helping to launch the first anime booms), it seemed prudent of the magazine to cover these developing technologies. Early issues devoted several pages in articles and advertisements to the most recent in stereos, VCRs, and other equipment. In time, these features went away, though they still held around in some form with the advent of DVDs in 1996 and Blu-ray ten years later. Yet by the mid-2010s, these features disappeared from the magazine altogether.

Another feature that disappeared from the magazine was their “The Art of—” section. This segment showcased the official character, mechanical, and setting designs for any given anime series along with other parts such as background art, the same materials that the animators of these shows would have on hand as they worked on their craft. There was also a feature entitled “How to Art.” This section comprised of either an animator, manga artist, or an illustrator showing off their skills and techniques, whether they were using manual tools such as pens and brushes or through the use of computers and specialized software to complete one illustration step by step, with the finished product part of the feature itself.

Like all magazines, Newtype had its fair share of advertisements. Often, they reflected the trends and topics that were featured in the issue, such as ads for a particular anime that was airing or had recently aired in the appropriate video format at the time (when a new format came out, you would see sets of anime from previous decades in a complete collection) as well as for music, electronics, games, or any tie in products related to those categories. There is even one of those learn while you sleep ads in one of the early issues. In the late '90s through the mid-2000s, there was a major focus on ads from famous retailers such as Animate and GAMERS. These retailers had ads listing all upcoming releases whether it was video, music, or various games such as visual novels. These ads sometimes covered up to several pages, and several different retailers contributed to making the magazine twice as thick during this time as the magazine today.

In addition, several special editions of the magazine covered a particular series or anime, such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica or the collected works of the all-female manga quartet CLAMP. There have also been spin-off versions of the magazine. These range from Newtype.com, which showcased the then new phenomena of Original Net Animations (or ONAs for short) and came with a CD-ROM to Newtype Romance, which focused on bishonen characters and targeted for female readers while Nyantype had its focus on bishoujo characters.

There have also been other works such as Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's first art book Alpha or even manga such as The Five Star Stories published under the Newtype label to even a manga magazine called Newtype Ace. Yet, the books that I want to bring to everyone's attention are what's known as the Newtype 100% collection. These books collect all material printed in the magazine on a particular anime series into one and sometimes two volumes. While a vast majority of these books cover the Gundam franchise, other anime from the 1980s through the early 2000s such as SPT Layzner and Evangelion were included as well.

By the early 2000s, the magazine was known enough outside Japan that two versions for foreign readers were created. The first and perhaps most famous is Newtype USA, which ran from November 2002 to February 2008, though a special preview issue was handed to attendees at the 2002 Anime Expo. It should be noted that it wasn't Kadokowa who was the publisher, but rather anime distributor A.D. Vision who had the license. This allowed ADV to decide what to put in each issue without any direction from Kadokawa, which was probably for the best in the beginning as during that boom period, there could be releases that first came out in Japan in the 1980s or '90s and later in the same month there would be another title coming out that had its Japanese release only the previous year.

Like its Japanese counterpart, NTUSA had many of the features mentioned. It also included columns from people in the North American anime industry at the time, such as voice actress Monica Rial discussing her views on voice acting and other things on her mind, Jonathan Clements showing the reader how the anime business works while Gilles Poitras bringing to light facets of Japanese culture and history that wouldn't be apparent to Western audiences. The magazine also covered news from the United Kingdom and Australia and covered Western pop culture topics in a section covering American comics. Like its parent magazine, Newtype USA also had manga. While some of the titles were the same as the Japanese version, such as Angel/Dust and Kobato., they also had titles that were not in there originally (and usually from ADV's catalog) such as Full Metal Panic! or Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days or those that had their debut before serializing in Japan such as Lagoon Engine Einsatz by Yukiru Sugisaki.

However, one of the most interesting features of the magazine was the free DVD that came with every issue. Each disc came with two or three episodes of various new anime with several trailers for other shows. In the days before legal streaming, and at a time when an individual volume of a series containing three or four episodes could cost as much as a complete series today, this could be considered an advantage to potential buyers to see if any of the shows on the sampler appealed to them.

The magazine enjoyed immense success with ADV printing 100,000 issues monthly within a year of its debut. Yet, it was announced at the beginning of 2008 that the February issue would be its last. That issue would have nothing regarding the magazine folding save a blurb on the last page at the bottom in fine print. What was more frustrating was that it was only a few lines and even then they tried to make a lame joke out of it. ADV promised that a new magazine would replace it called PiQ (pronounced “peek”). It never achieved the popularity of the previous magazine and folded after four issues. While there was speculation over what caused the collapse of NTUSA, it turned out that it was part of the general collapse of ADV, which declared bankruptcy three months after PiQ ceased publication.

It wasn't only in America that Newtype expanded to. Beginning in July of 1999, the magazine began running in South Korea. Like NTUSA, Newtype USA was not published by Kadokawa itself, but licensed by Daiwon C.I. It used translated content from the parent magazine but devoted a lot of focus to Korean animated projects. For a time, an editorial from both the editors of the Japanese and Korean editions appeared in NTUSA. Unlike the other two magazines, which used a right-to-left format. NTKOR was formatted to read left to right like Western publications. While the Korean edition began before its American cousin and remained in publication after the latter's demise, it too ended with the June 2015 issue.

Despite the cancellation of NTUSA over 15 years ago, Newtype has recently released more of its content to English-speaking parts of the world. Back in June, they created an official subreddit providing users with information such as the cover for the most recent issue and links to translated articles. In addition, ANN's partnership with Kadokawa allows articles and interviews from the magazine that have been translated into English to be read on this site. More recently the magazine collaborated with Crunchyroll to produce a special edition released at the New York Comic Con. They have also, in collaboration with Nippon Broadcasting System, began using the AI translation program Lingueene to translate the radio program “Japan Anime News” into English and 27 other languages while maintaining the presenter's voice. As for the future of the magazine, that is hard to say. We'll probably get an idea when the April 2025 issue, the 40th anniversary, hits the stands in Japan (expected street date, March 10). I know I'll be eagerly awaiting it.

Sources & Further Reading

Machiyama, Tomohiro. “The Birth of a Nation: Yamato and the Beginning of Anime Fandom.” Otaku USA Volume 1, #4 (February, 2008).

Kennedy. “Looking Back on Newtype USA 15 Years Later.” April 13th, 2023. One of the best resources about NTUSA aside from the magazines themselves.

The Melancholic Middle Aged Anime Fan This blog gives an extensive list of anime magazines no longer running in Japan.

OldtypeNewtype. While it has been several years since this blog was last updated, it still is a useful site to see pages from various issues of Newtype from the 1980s and 90s.