Smile magazine: April '99 issue

The April '99 issue's cover model is Catherine Flournoy, who's offering a 1970's look (straight hairs and stripes-shirt!), and you can see her in the fashion page as well (7 pages!). It's a very fan-oriented magazine with full of fan art, photos, letters, and also celebrity sightings with Danielle Fishel and Jenna Bon Oy from shows like "Boy Meets World". It is all a lot of fun. Most of anime materials are boy-oriented, so it is quite refreshing to see some "girl Power" in a magazine like Smile to appeal teenage girls. They also introduce computer games in the "Girl ware" page. Reading "Ask the Goddess of Advice" always reminds us that everyone has problems to be solved, about family, friendship, relationships. This issue gives a big plugs for a 16 year-old professional comic book writer, Maggie Whorf, who wrote the story of herself and friends, titled "BoHoS", (published by Flypapers Press, illustrated by Byron Penaranda) so you readers should check this out and give a chance to Maggie! "Sound Bytes" pages offer you the review of new CDs from Spice Girls, Beastie Boys, Jewel, etc. The "Sailor Moon Super S" manga is always a lot of fun with Bunny (Usagi), Darien the Tuxedo Mask and the Cutie Rini (Chibi Moon).

Recruiting "Girl-Power" and girl-readership is very important to anime and manga industry in North America, and a magazine like Smile surely gives us the right direction! [MM]

Ok, it might sounds odd to put here the review of a 1999 magazine, but the review was written anyway (even if never published in the magazine for lack of space), and it serves the point of showing how this magazine was an important step in the development of the anime & manga industry in North America. Mixx Entertainment started publishing its Mixx Zine magazine in 1997. In late 1998, they starts a separate magazine, Smile, for Sailor Moon and other girl-oriented manga. In August 1999, among great controversies (you can read Animefringe's Full Circle: The Unofficial History of MixxZine for the details) Mixx Zine become TokyoPop and the company also adopts the name. In May 2000, Smile changed from magazine to comic book format and continued publishing for another couple of years. Those magazines are now death, but they left their mark. Stu Levy once said that he would revolutionize the manga publication in North America and he did: now Tokyopop is one of the biggest manga publisher in America! [CJP]

Reviewed by Miyako Matsuda [With notes by Claude J Pelletier]