Animerica

• 1. Introduction

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  Animerica began as a preview issue numbered zero, dated November 1992 and printed in very small numbers. Viz Media published it, and almost nothing about that first copy suggested a long career. What exactly filled its pages? Why would a court one day have to rule on its name? And what became of the magazine when the market around it shifted?

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• 2. The Launch Team

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  March 1993 brought the first official issue of Animerica, a few months after the zero issue. Viz Media had a useful advantage in its connections to Shogakukan. Thanks to those ties, the magazine became one of the first professional-quality publications in the United States devoted to anime and manga.

  Three people shared the editing at the start: Seiji Horibuchi, Satoru Fujii and Trish Ledoux. Together they set the tone for a magazine that looked at both Japanese animation and Japanese comics.

  From that debut, the magazine would keep appearing for well over a decade.

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• 3. Inside an Issue

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  One chapter of a current Viz manga series sat in the middle of the original Animerica, and over the years that slot belonged to X, Area 88, Galaxy Express 999, One-Pound Gospel and Urusei Yatsura. Around the serial, the magazine ran news about releases in both the United States and Japan.

  Interviews gave readers a way to hear from the people behind the screen, including voice actors and directors. Reviews judged individual anime and manga series. The coverage also stretched into neighboring hobbies, with pieces on games, model kits and music releases.

  During 2002 the serial chapter would disappear from the magazine.

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• 4. A Fight Over a Name

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  In 1997, a Japanese company called Redsun began using the web address animerica.com. Its site was adult-oriented and distributed hentai. Viz had registered Animerica as a trademark when it started publishing, so the match was a problem.

  Viz offered to buy the domain name, but Redsun refused. Viz then sued, arguing that the website infringed its trademark.

  The court agreed that the site was causing confusion with the magazine. It also found that the confusion was mostly limited to American audiences. For that reason, the judge declined to order the site shut down or its assets frozen.

  Instead, Redsun had to place a disclaimer on the website and in all of its advertising. The notice had to say that the site had no affiliation with the magazine or with Viz Media. It also had to link to the magazine's official site at www.animerica-mag.com.

  Redsun's adult website closed in November 2004. Viz claimed the name in 2005, and by October the address had been relaunched as the official website of the new Animerica.

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• 5. Makeovers and Spin-offs

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  A second magazine arrived in 1998 under the name Animerica Extra, which was the first monthly manga anthology Viz had produced. Over time it narrowed its focus to shojo titles alone. Viz canceled it in 2004.

  The parent magazine got its own overhaul to mark its ninth anniversary, beginning with the November 2001 issue. It received a new cover design and a new logo. News, reviews and Japanese trends took up more of the space. Every issue now carried a fold-out poster.

  The format changed again during 2002, when the magazine became square-bound and printed in full colour. By 2003, each issue ran to double the page count of the earliest ones.

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• 6. Readers and Rivals

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  At the Anime Expo convention in July 2000, the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation named Animerica the Best English-language publication. For nearly a decade, it ranked among the most popular anime and manga magazines in North America.

  In 2004, the magazine had a circulation of 45,000. Eighty percent of those copies were sold at newsstands, not through subscriptions.

  That figure was lower than in earlier years. Competition from other magazines, including Newtype USA, was the cause.

  Viz would answer the slide by changing the magazine itself.

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• 7. Free Copies

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  In April 2005, Viz announced that the paid monthly subscription version of Animerica would end. In its place came two free editions.

  The first resembled the original but ran fewer pages. Advertisers sponsored it, and it was produced exclusively for specific anime and manga conventions, where it was handed out.

  The second was a quarterly, digest-sized magazine with a wider range of content than the convention edition. Viz called these digest editions "magalogs" and gave them away at Borders and Waldenbooks. The first free issue went to 1,000 stores around the United States. Later, a third variety was added for Best Buy stores.

  The last monthly issue of the original magazine carried a cover date of June 2005, Volume 13, No. 6. The final issues still offered articles on releases, reviews and manga previews. Each piece was shorter, and with so few pages, there were fewer of them.

  Subscribers who had paid for Animerica received subscriptions to Shojo Beat instead, a manga anthology that Viz launched in July 2005.

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