“Anime Insider” Ends Publication.

Anime News Network reports that Wizard Entertainment has ceased publication of its anime and manga magazine Anime Insider, after 7 years of publication. At this time there are no print anime and manga magazines (in terms of news and genre coverage) being published in the United States of America. ADV had previously been publishing a US version of the Japanese anime and manga magazine Newtype but they stopped publication of that in January of last year as part of other cost-cutting measures (including sourcing distribution of their Full Metal Panic licenses to Funimation). The Japanese version of Newtype is still being published.

Frankly, this is a sign of the slow death print has been experiencing in the United States, especially with the current state of economy. Earlier in the year, Ziff Davis ceased publication of Electronic Gaming Monthly, sold the 1up Network to UGO, and laid off much of their staff. The rest of the 1up Network’s print magazines had already stopped publication at the time. Currently, the only American video game magazines that aren’t house organs (official Nintendo, Playstation, and X-Box magazines) still being published are Hardcore Gamer, GamePro, and Game Informer.

Anime news, on the other hand, has practically entirely migrated online, through sites like Anime News Network for the actual news content, and sites like Anime Vice and here at Bureau 42 for most of the commentary and reviews. Perhaps the exception to the rule is Protoculture Addicts, a bi-monthly magazine which has migrated to a PDF distribution format, with the option for print subscriptions – but even then they haven’t published an issue for nearly a year (which is a shame, really). In this case, in particular, unless there are some really dren-hot anime news sites I’ve never heard of, the number of good anime news sites online (aside from podcasts like Otaku Generation) has gotten significantly less than the number of good video game news sites by leaps and bounds – 2-ish major anime news sites to the 10+ major video game news sites.

So, I’m going to take this moment, in the shadow of the dearth of anime coverage that I’m aware of, to say this – I, AceCaseOR (real name: Alexander Case), hereby publically promise to provide the best anime coverage I can, by finding the best and most relevant articles on other sites, or by doing my own investigative work, and providing the best commentary I can provide, with out pandering to advertisers (as we don’t particularly have any direct ad deals with any anime distributors), as well as writing honest reviews of licensed anime and manga – and directing you towards series that I find interesting, and warning you off from series that I feel to be crap.

Not that I really need to do that – that’s my job. That’s why I’m here. And this is getting way too melodramatic. So I’m going to stop here before it gets waaaayyyyy too silly.

(too late)