Animal Academy and the value of American anime/manga review magazines

Or magazine, as the case may be.  Sometimes, for whatever reason, a manga will seem unappealing to me.  I will leave it to fall to the bottom of the list or just forget about it and read something else.  Sometimes, this will be a big mistake I will find out about later when I am reading a magazine.

Animal Academy was one such title.  I passed it over until I read a review in Otaku USA that made me think I'd like it, so I gave it a try, and I really enjoyed it.  It was cute but not saccharine and dodged many shojo manga tropes that make me crazy.

Basically, it's the story of a girl so dumb she only got into one high school she'd never really heard of out in the extreme boondocks.  As it turns out, it's a school where animals able to transform into humans go to learn how to be convincingly human.  She's the expert in that, which is a novelty to someone who's always been at the bottom of the academic stack, but she isn't supposed to tell anyone she's human. 

For some reason, it reminded me of a less-hyper version of Gakuen Alice.  It's genuinely adorable, and I'm looking forward to where it goes from here.


Have you ever read a review somewhere that made you give something you'd overlooked a try that lead to you finding a new favorite or just a good read?  Do share where you found the tip and maybe why it made you reevaluate if you remember.

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!