Missing Newtype

I miss Newtype USA.  There, I said it.  They had the best coverage (of current anime in Japan) of any of the English language mags available to me.  It was nice and not nice at the same time.

On the one hand, you got to read about all of these incredible shows and their enthusiastic creators.  Sure, it was more of a marketing magazine than a critical magazine, but if you knew that going in, you could take the articles with the necessary salt.

On the other hand, most of them weren't licensed and were unlikely to be licensed, so if you read about one you adored that had little mass appeal, it was sort of torture, knowing that you'd probably never get to see it.  (Remember that I am a law-abiding fool, so if it's not licensed here, it's no dice for me.)  I loved looking at all the articles anyway. 

When something does get licensed years after the fact (like "Big Windup"), I get to be all nostalgic about how I thought upon reading about it in Newtype, "Oh!  A baseball anime made recently with modern-appealing character designs and good character development!  Maybe it will get licensed!  Oh, wait, it's sports anime, which doesn't do real well here, and the economy isn't great right now, and who on this earth would take a chance on something like this?"  Weeping.

Thank you, Funimation, from the bottom of my baseball-loving, sports-anime-adoring heart.  I may want to kick the main character, but I love the show.  Thank you!