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PiQ Magazine: Anime Fans' Reactions

Pop culture magazines are a tough sell these days. The anime industry is popular, but not very lucrative. Fan-subbed material is accessible through Bittorrent for the low cost of zero dollars, so how do you sell related reviews and culture when the same is available online for free?

The newly-launched PiQ Magazine hopes it has the answer. Reborn from the ashes of NewtypeUSA, PiQ is a little less specialised than its predecessor. Its focus isn't solely on anime and manga. Western DVDs, cartoons and games are included in its reviews and columns. If you'll pardon the cliche, PiQ is a jack of all trades, though it's far too early to judge if it's a master of none.

Fan opinions differ. Some love the extended coverage; others not so much. A few bored individuals, like the habitants of AnimeRoot loathe it enough to organise a monthly burning of each issue until their money is refunded (Newtype readers had their subscriptions automatically transferred). Striking a match is easier than offering suggestions for improvement.

The burning of literature is unsettlingly primitive in any context, so we'll move on to a very thorough, fair and sensible postmortem of issue one by Comics212.net. The blog's proprietor, Christopher Butcher, has concerns about PiQ that echo some of my own. For instance, is it really a smart idea to launch your anime-related magazine with “IS ANIME DEAD?” screaming at your audience from the front cover? Why not just put a blurb by the price: “This is a magazine about a dead thing.” Anime's longevity is a topic that's been well-visited, but it remains compelling and always sows heated discussions. “Is Anime Dead?” makes an impact, albeit a negative one. There are a thousand ways to announce the article without pushing people away.

At the very start of the article, Butcher wonders about the derogatory manner in which PiQ addresses its new audience:

“I think it’s important to point out that in the first issue of PiQ, the magazine calls its readership the following names: nerds, dorks, geeks, freaks, maniacs, and pervos.”

Indeed, PiQ emphasises that its reader base is not “normal”--as if pastimes like anime, games and movies rank among collecting dead flies off cold windowsills in December. The writing in PiQ is pretty high-energy, and words like geek and dork keep up that momentum...but once again, in a negative manner. Anime is more or less mainstream now; the days of sparsely-populated convents huddling in the aura of sweat and tacos is long gone, and was exaggerated in the first place. Nobody wants to pay for a magazine that calls them an anti-social jerk, even if it's done in jest.

It's too early to write off PiQ, though. With a change in editorial tone and some organisation (publishing a manga review, then a game review, then another manga review is not cool), something worthwhile might come of it all. The jury is still out on whether or not the mixed content is a good idea: Anyone who wants to read a game review won't have trouble finding a magazine dedicated to the subject matter. The folks at PiQ will no doubt have a lot to sort out over the next six months or so. There are plenty of fans on hand to flame the bad stuff. Literally.