Eastern cinema, anime, cosplay, and manga specialist magazine NEO has just published its final issue.
This has been a pretty awful year for those who care about print magazines here in the UK (appreciating it’s not been the best of years for many other reasons too). For film fans in particular, we’ve lost Total Film and Home Cinema Choice over the last couple of months. And now, sadly, we can add NEO to this list.
A title I was involved in right at its start (for which I can take no credit, I just remember how it fought its way to life as an independent), NEO has burned brightly for two decades. It’s covered the likes of anime, manga, East Asian cinema and more, launching back in November 2004.
Now it’s been confirmed that issue 245, the 20th birthday edition of the title, will be its last. It’s really dreadful news, and we send nothing but the very best to editor Gemma Cox and the team, and all affected by the closure.
Given the enormous costs involved just in getting magazines stocked by shops, which I natter about a little in the video below, it does feel like something has to give here. Print film magazines, in an era where Google basically encourages outlets to delete articles to make their website faster, just from an archival standpoint feel incredibly important. Unfortunately, they’re dropping like flies at the moment, and it feels like we won’t fully appreciate what we’ve lost until more of them have gone.
The final issue of NEO magazine is on sale now, both in digital and print editions. You can order a copy over at its website, here.
To keep a magazine of its ilk going for two decades is an incredible achievement, and I’m very aware it hasn’t been easy. This is a title that was doing something others weren’t covering anywhere near as well. Its loss is incredibly, incredibly sad.
