NEO magazine is the UK home of Japanese pop cultural content and this issue presents an excellent set of articles with cover-to-cover features, exposs and reviews.
This month is once again split with the back of the magazine being dedicated to Dragon Quest Monsters The Dark Prince (read the Cubed3 review here). The feature covers a lot of information on the newly released game including what is in line for the story and for players who want to take the monster battling systems online! The main magazine side is fronted by the upcoming Anime Limited release of Shirobako.
The Shirobako “Animating the animators” feature is fascinating, opening with a description of the show and leading into how real-life animation studio concepts are explored. From the titular “Shirobako” or “white box” to “keyframes”, it’s a well-researched and interesting piece. There are of course lots of different features to read through from the aforementioned Dragon Quest and Shirobako pieces to one about the new Godzilla movie.
With the emergence of Godilla Minus One this two-page NEO feature compactly covers 70 years of Godilla history. The new movie itself has quite a limited run up here in Scotland but it is proving to be quite popular for a subtitled movie. According to the feature, it builds on the original concepts of the franchise and offers a more hopeful, interesting take on the people vs the monster.
The final mention for the feature content goes out to the recently aired The Boy and the Heron, the latest movie from Studio Ghibli and from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki. This review/feature is an in-depth look at the themes of the movie and is quite spoiler~y, for those who are hoping to go in fresh avoid reading this bit!
The issue also covers the staple information such as upcoming anime releases alongside some more lengthy writing on specific anime, movies and games that piqued the interest of the staff that month. This month has a lot of good gaming content from Super Mario RPG (read the Cubed3 review here and Naruto X Boruto the recently released CyberConnect fighting game.
It’s once again a fantastic effort from the team behind NEO and closes the 2023 anime scene on a high. This is the one stop shop for Japanese culture info for UK based readers and we hope to see more stellar content this year!
