The First Anime Magazine
Unearthing a treasure.
Welcome! It’s time for a new Thursday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter. Today, we’re looking at an artifact from nearly 50 years ago: Fantoche, issue one.
It’s hard to picture the era. Animation wasn’t a major Japanese export when Fantoche appeared in October 1975. And Japan had no professionally printed magazines about the medium — only newsletters and fanzines. Fantoche broke the trend. Its debut issue was historic: the first true Japanese animation magazine.
For perspective, the start of Studio Ghibli was almost a decade away. Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo hadn’t directed movies; Gundam and Dragon Ball didn’t exist. The so-called “anime boom,” led by Space Battleship Yamato (1977), hadn’t arrived. And Heidi: Girl of the Alps (1974), the first Isao Takahata hit, was a recent memory.
Those factors make this issue of Fantoche especially fascinating. The snapshot it provides is revealing — about the whole history of Japanese animation.
The magazine’s been online since last year, when researcher Tim Eldred shared it on his site. But we’ve decided to preserve our own copy on the Internet Archive in high resolution, to offer a closer look at its contents. Today, we’re examining it in detail.
You can see the magazine via the link below. For a survey of what’s inside, read on.
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