One of the longest-selling products in J-List history is Megami Magazine [category link]. In this post, let’s look back at the golden age of anime magazines and see how anime posters and visual fan service have shaped anime marketing for 25 years!
J-List is your Friend in Japan, bringing you awesome products from Japan every week, and even letting you special order products we don’t normally carry through our new Megumi Express proxy buying service. We’re happy to announce that J-List Pocket Tissues are back, and will be included with all orders shipping from Japan, while supplies last. Start browsing now!
A New Type of Entertainment: The Golden Age of Anime Magazines
The first anime magazine was Animage, which was launched in 1978 by Tokuma Shoten. This magazine was so influential that it helped make the word “anime” a thing.
Before the late ’70s, most Japanese referred to animation on TV as terebi manga. The term anime was a shortened form of “animation,” through the same mechanism that saw paasonaru compyutaa get shortened to pasocon and rimooto kontrooru become rimokon. (There is a competing theory that suggests the term came from dessin animé, a French term simply meaning “animated drawing.”)
In 1985, Kadokawa noticed the success of Animage and decided to enter the anime magazine market. Their business plan involved overwhelming fans with double the number of color pages than competing magazines, and including lots of omake bonus items like posters. They were able to convince Gundam director Yoshiyuki Tomino to let them name their new magazine Newtype. It proved to be the perfect vehicle for marketing the just-launched Zeta Gundam series.
Educational book publisher Gakken had been participating in the industry too, publishing Animedia since 1981. In the late 1990s they noticed the rising popularity of “gal games,” as bishoujo visual novels were called. They created a supplement to Animedia focusing on moe-style characters called Megami Magazine in 1999. It proved so popular that it became its own monthly magazine a few years later. A new vehicle for anime marketing was born!
Megami Magazine: 25 Years of Anime Marketing Through Fan Service
One reason I love Megami Magazine is that it encapsulates the current era of anime so perfectly. Picking up an old issue immediately transports you back to 2011 or 2004, or whatever year the issue is from. All those natsukashii anime titles and characters immediately come flooding back.
The early focus of Megami Magazine was moe visual novels like To Heart and Tokimeki Memorial. But they quickly pivoted, becoming a general anime magazine for all things related to bishoujo culture.
Anime continued to grow in popularity. Soon, it became standard operating procedure for anime production committees to commission high-quality art for inclusion in Megami Magazine. The studios don’t pay to be included in the magazine, but they do contribute to the printing costs for their portion of the content. There are usually 18 anime posters in each issue, with a separate, extra-large pull-out poster included.
From the beginning, Megami Magazine used sexy visual images to draw in readers. As J-List has sold the magazine over the decades, it’s been fun to see how these images have evolved.
How Have the Anime Posters in Megami Magazine Evolved over the Years?
One goal in marketing a new anime is to make sure fans quickly form emotional attachments to the characters. When fans have positive feelings associated with the girls, they’re much more likely to follow the show and buy the figures. And there’s nothing like a sexy image of the characters to trigger a dopamine response in the brains of fans, giving them a rush of pleasure.
Part of the fun of being a fan of a given anime is seeing what kind of sexy official art gets created for the magazine. Tracking down physical copies of these classic magazines might be impossible in 2025. Happily, all the artwork is available on “Booru”-style image boards.
Many of the posters Megami Magazine gives fans put us in the action. Did we just get a choice view of Tiffania’s panties under her bloomers? Louise isn’t going to like that!
Using Anime Posters to Bring Happiness and Dopamine to Fans
Often the posters will reflect the kinds of content found in the anime. If you had any doubt that Strike Witches would be filled with close-up views of girls’ crotches as they flew through the air, this poster would dispel them.
What is the history of Moe? Read my thoughts here!
Other times, the sexy posters will go beyond what the anime will show us. You’d think an anime based on a manga called Mini-skirt Space Pirates would have lots of cute girls wearing mini-skirts floating in zero gravity, but the anime version made the choice to avoid on-screen ecchi content. However, fans did get this sexy illustration in an issue of Megami Magazine’s competitor Nyantype.
Can an Anime Poster Create a “Yuri-Shipping Boom”?
Sometimes a simple anime poster can have quite an impact. After this poster of Hiyori fantasizing about Konata and Kagami enjoying some “morning after” coffee together, there was a huge explosion in “yuri shipping” by fandom. Suddenly, fans automatically assumed any two female characters were having sex off-camera.
Working with visual novel maker Nitroplus was fascinating because I would get to see what goes on behind the scenes in the industry. Occasionally we’d ask for permission to use a certain illustration, only to be told we couldn’t use it because Gakken owned the copyright because of its inclusion in the magazine. “If we asked for permission to use it, they would agree. But we don’t want to ask, because we don’t want to have to owe them a favor later.”
Megami Magazine generally limits illustrations to ecchi-but-not-nude images. If you want to explore super sexy anime with more nudity, watch for the next issue of Megami RX. It comes out once a year or so.
Thanks for checking out this post about the history of Megami Magazine! When did you discover this amazing magazine, and how many issues do you own? You can browse all our stock of anime magazines on the J-List site here!
Let’s Chat
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J-List is your Friend in Japan, bringing you awesome products from Japan every week, and even letting you special order products we don’t normally carry through our new Megumi Express proxy buying service. We’re happy to announce that J-List Pocket Tissues are back and will be included with all orders shipping from Japan, while supplies last. Start browsing now!
