By David on June 17, 2008
PiQ Magazine, which was the ‘next evolution‘ of NewType USA after they ceased publication is ceasing publication with issue #4:
For those readers that were just starting to get behind the magazine, the staff of PiQ gives a hearty “thank you” to all of you for your support. To those of you who subscribed (or were formerly subscribed to NTUSA), more details will be coming soon. – PiQ
So did you read PiQ Magazine? If so, what did you think about it? Give us your thoughts!
Posted in Anime News
I love anime. Specifically, series involving any of the following things: weird fantasy elements, super-powers, robots, aliens, wicked humor, crazy villains, horror, ninjas and samurai. I guess that means I like a lot of anime. I am pretty particular about the quality of animation and voice acting. If the character designs and animation quality aren't of über-quality, I quickly loose interest.The first anime-related series I ever watched was Battle of the Planets - otherwise known as Gatachman. The first true theatrical anime feature film I saw was Akira. My first exposure to manga was later in life when I read Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy.There are so many incredible elements of Japanese culture. Some of the most exciting to me are the style of design and storytelling. I'm a web designer & illustrator, and I find myself looking to Japanese design for inspiration all the time.Anime blogging has taught me even more about Japanese culture and anime than I ever expected, and I continue to learn more every week. In fact, I'd love to travel to Japan. Rachel and I hope to visit sometime within the next few years.
I’m really surprised this happened. I collected the 3 issues of PiQ I found in stores. But I can’t lie, I maybe looked through each one a few times. I wasn’t really drawn to read the articles except a few and it just wasn’t NewType. I think they tried to stretch it too far. Seeing American television that had no relation to Japanese culture was weird for those who liked NewType and I don’t think there was a big enough audience to capture the “occasional Japanese fans but more into American culture”.
Why would they change the name of Newtype? Newtype was the ultimate anime magazine. Whenever I could afford one I found it a treat, but before I had a job and responsibilities and useless things like that.
If I saw a Newtype I wouldn’t always buy it but I’d at least read though it (if it wasn’t shrink wrapped) and attempt to find a reason to buy it. The pictures were always great quality, the size of the magazine made it feel special. Plus it had an established reader-base and brand recognition in the Anime community.
Why would they change their name and product?
I think they had to get rid of the name because for financial reasons since they had to pay to use the name because of the Japanese Newtype it was copied off of. As for the size, I would imagine it would be cheaper to produce a smaller magazine.
As for PiQ, we got it because when we canceled our subscription to Newtype it apparently never went through.
We were canceling our subscription to Newtype, because we were tired of seeing the same shows being looked at over and over again. It just seemed like I was hearing about new shows off of the internet before the magazine would get to them anyway. And I had already either seen shows that they had put on the dvd, or already owned them.
I will say I was starting to enjoy some aspects of PiQ more as each issue came out, but I really was just flipping through and ignoring a lot of it. I think covering items such as movies over here that weren’t even anime related was a big mistake.
The reason I had been buying Newtype in the first place was for anime/manga news, wanting to find out about what was new and cool in Japan.
I don’t really want to read about Dirty Harry The Ultimate Collector’s Edition, or the guy behind every piece of stock footage you’ve ever seen, there are movie magazines for that.
And the way it was organized was kind of annoying too. A manga review here, then pages of movie stuff, book stuff, then an anime review, then maybe another manga review. Maybe they thought if they did it like that something would catch your eye in between the anime/manga stuff. But if that isn’t what you are interested in then its kind of annoying.
I think they cast their net too big and tried to appeal to fans of too many different interests and in doing so alienated whatever readers they may have been able to get from Newtype.