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Opinions needed: special editions and the confusing numbering systems of Japanese publications


kitsunebi

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Sorry for the epic length of this post, but it's a convoluted topic that requires a bit of explanation.

Japanese magazines have extremely confusing naming and numbering systems which I sometimes adhere to and sometimes ignore, but I'd like to solicit people's opinions on how things should be handled to see if they match my own.

First, some background:  Japan does not sell print magazine subscriptions.  They are not obligated to a subscriber who has already paid money for 12 issues of Nintendo Power and thus expects to receive 12 issues of Nintendo Power delivered to their mailbox.  All sales happen at bookstores/newsstands.  So a retailer will choose to order x number of copies of any given issue, based on past sales of that title, and it's up to the customer to decide whether to buy it or not, but only after they've had a chance to hold it in their hands and flip through the insides to make sure it's something they're interested in buying.

Enter the "special edition."  The special edition is not a completely separate publication (despite often having a completely different title and cover logo), and is technically just a regular issue of the title it springs forth from, even going so far as to be a part of the same numbering system.  Imagine if, sandwiched in between Totally Rad Gamer Issues 10 and 12, was an issue of a mag called Bitchin' Gaming Xtreme, which despite not having the Totally Rad Gamer logo anywhere on the cover, was nevertheless, in actuality, Totally Rad Gamer issue 11.  This allows the publisher to pull a fast one on the retailer.

For example, let's say a retailer places regular orders for 20 copies per issue of Totally Rad Gamer.  If the publishers of Totally Rad Gamer decide to launch a new title, Bitchin' Gaming Xtreme, they have to somehow convince the retailer to order copies of that as well, in order to get it onto the stands and allow the customers to decide if they're interested.  But Japanese publishers are sneaky.  Rather than launch the new mag as an independent title, they launch Bitchin' Gaming Xtreme as a "special edition" of Totally Rad Gamer, thus insuring that 20 copies of each end up on the stands. 

Mind you, the only place any mention of Bitchin' Gaming Xtreme's ties to Totally Rad Gamer is in the almost microscopic print hidden on the outer edge of the cover (or sometimes the back cover) that includes the legally required publishing information.  To the customer, it seems like a completely new and unrelated mag unless scrutinized very closely.  But by publishing it as a "special edition," the publishers guarantee that a retailer who regularly orders 20 copies of Totally Rad Gamer will receive 20 copies of Bitchin' Gaming Xtreme as well.

Perhaps this is the reason that so many Japanese mags start out as "special editions" of a different magazine.  It's a low risk way of testing the waters when launching a new mag.  Unfortunately, it makes my job of organizing the databases a pain in the ass.  As an example, let's look at Dengeki Playstation, which is actually one of the least confusing mags out there, as they actually print "Vol.___" in large print on every cover:

Dengeki Playstation 110 (June 25, 1999).jpg

  Easy, right?  Er...no.  Technically, that number is not correct.  Not from a publishing standpoint, anyway.  You see, the first four issues of Dengeki PlayStation were actually "special editions" of Dengeki PC Engine.  Below is "Volume 1" of Dengeki PlayStation, and the circled bit is telling us that it is in fact a 増刊, or "special edition," of Dengeki PC Engine.

Dengeki Playstation 001 January 1995.jpg

It wasn't until the 5th issue of Dengeki Playstation that the publisher/retailers had enough confidence in the title to make it an independent magazine and not a part of Dengeki PC Engine.  This doesn't affect the large print "Vol.__" printed on the covers, as they just continued as normal.  However, when we look at the publishing information in the teeny tiny print, this is what we see:

Dengeki Playstation 110 (June 25, 1999)a.jpg

This tells us a number of things: This is the 17th issue published in the 5th volume (i.e. the 17th issue in its 5th year of publication), and the 106th issue overall.  You see, despite the large "Vol.110" in the upper left corner, the fine print doesn't count the first 4 issues (which technically were special editions of a completely different mag), and thus this is technically only issue 106.

Are you with me so far?  'Cause it's about to get weirder. 

Remember issue 1?  One of the "special edition" issues?  Well, if we look at the tiny print on that one, we find out that, in addition to being "Vol.1" of Dengeki Playstation, it's also the 2nd issue of the 3rd volume and 29th issue overall of Dengeki PC Engine.

Dengeki Playstation 001 January 1995A.jpg

Sigh.  With nearly all mags (Famitsu, Dengeki PlayStation, and Play Online being the only exceptions I'm aware of), the tiny publishing information is the only information printed anywhere on or in the magazine indicating what issue number it is.  This causes me headaches in two ways:

  1.  It's too goddamned small to see unless I have a high-res scan (or actually own the mag), which makes gathering accurate data a challenge, as high res scans of Japanese magazine covers that I didn't make myself are as rare as albino unicorns.
  2. The fine print "official" number of each issue is almost never what you expect it to be, due to those goddamned special edition issues mucking everything up.

In regards to Dengeki PlayStation, I made the (obvious) decision to ignore the fine print and go with the big numbers.  So even though Dengeki PlayStation didn't officially start its numbering system until Vol.5, I've decided to list it as Vol. 5 rather than Vol.1.

Problem solved?  Well, hold on.  What about Dengeki PC Engine?  It doesn't have big volume numbers printed on the covers - all it has is the fine print.  So unless I want certain issue numbers conspicuously missing, I either have to include Vol.1 of Dengeki Playstation as issue 29 of Dengeki PC Engine (and likewise for the other special edition issues), or else ignore the official numbering system in the fine print altogether and just use arbitrary numbers based on how many issues were published under the title Dengeki PC Engine (which in this case is what I've done.) 

Ignoring the fine print and just making up numbers based on the number of issues published under a certain title is probably the easiest way to do things, so long as I don't accidentally miscount or overlook anything.  It pains me a bit as an archivist, though, as I feel like it's important to keep track of the actual publication history.  Ignoring the official numbering to circumvent the "special edition" issues also bites me in the ass from time to time when the mag hits some important milestone and suddenly proclaims "OUR 200th ISSUE!!" in giant print on the cover, even though I've got it listed as the 178th issue because I'm not including the various special editions in the numbering.

But I digress. 

Did you think I was finished??  HAHAHAHAHAHAJapanlaughsinthefaceofyournotionthatnumberingsomethingiseasy!!!!

Let's keep looking at Dengeki Playstation.  OK, so we've decided to ignore the fine print and the fact that the first 4 issues were technically part of another mag.  Everything's going smoothly.  Wait, what's this?

Dengeki Playstation 008 October 10 1995.jpg

Hmmm...it's Dengeki Playstation's first special edition, Dengeki PlayStation G (the G stands for Gal, which covers Gal games, or bishoujo games as they're more widely referred to now.)  No matter, it still has "Dengeki PlayStation" in the title, so we'll just keep focusing on that giant "Vol.8" and ignore everything else. (A later special edition focusing on this type of game will be called "Dengeki Playstation G2," by the way).

Oh goddammit.  What now.

Dengeki Playstation 010 November 10 1995.jpg

Dengeki PlayStation F.  The F stands for fighting games, and that's all they'll cover in issues with this title.  Once again, let's just treat it like a regular issue.

Dengeki Playstation 012 December 10 1995.jpg

Sigh...The R is for RPG...

Dengeki Playstation 014 January 10 1996.jpg

...Oh for crying out...!  ...I guess the Z stands for "zentai" (whole, entirety), since the issue has a catalog of every game released that year.  This is getting stupid.  Thankfully, they've hit the end of the alphabet, though, so --

Dengeki Playstation 017 March 10 1996.jpg

SON OF A BITCH!!!!  The S stands for "SON OF A BITCH!"  (actually it stands for "strategy games")

Luckily, they calm down a bit after this, and settle on using and abusing one more letter for what will ultimately be a total of 46 special edition issues:

Dengeki Playstation 039 January 31 1997.jpg

The D stands for "disc," for the demo disc included with these issues.

Well, that was a little annoying, but nothing we can't handle.  What's next?  BRING IT ON, DENGEKI P!!

Dengeki PlayStation 186 (September 21, 2001).jpg

Hmmm...I see...Dengeki PS2.  There were a great number of these published as well, and it might be tempting to treat them as a separate title.  I mean, Famitsu and Famitsu PS2 are two separate titles with independent numbering systems, after all.  But no, this is still "Vol.186" of Dengeki PlayStation no matter what the masthead says (or technically issue 182, as the fine print will tell you). 

Stay on target.  Almost there...Stay on target.  Almost there...

Dengeki PlayStation 258 (January 9, 2004).jpg

@#$%@#$%@#%#&$&!#$%^@!!!!!!!!

Why is this especially problematic, you may wonder.  Sure, it covers games aimed at girls featuring lots of dating games where the player woos their prince charming from a roster of handsome yet effeminate guys, and thus might not be of much interest to some of Dengeki Playstation's regular readers, and perhaps might benefit from being a separate title.  But hey, it's right there, large as life: "Vol.258."  Problem solved.

NOT.

Dengeki PlayStation Girl's Style proved to be so popular, it was eventually given its own mag, simply titled Dengeki Girl's Style.  Don't get me wrong, I'm listing this issue as issue 258 of Dengeki PlayStation (even if, all together now - it's technically issue 254 according to the fine print.).  But when I eventually create the listing for Dengeki Girl's Style, do I make any allowances for these early prototype issues?  Surely anyone seeking information on all issues of Dengeki Girl's Style would want to know about these issues as well.

What to do...?

 

If you read all of that, congratulations, your gold star is in the mail.  But as I said, Dengeki PlayStation is just about the LEAST CONFUSING of all Japanese mags.  Most mags, as I said, don't print giant "Vol.___" info on the cover, and the tiny print publishing data is all I have to go on.  Unfortunately many mags publish special editions that don't have titles that share any similarity to their parent mag.  I often will know that a mag has published special editions under different titles due to the discrepancy between the "official number" and the actual number of issues with a given title.  But I have no idea what those special editions are called.  I'm not kidding when I say that Retromags is going to be the definitive source of information on Japanese gaming mags - NO ONE in Japan is keeping track of this stuff.

For instance, a mag I have yet to add to the site (due to the...er...mature nature of its covers) is called MegaStore.  Through a lot of exhaustive research and a little luck, I have a more or less complete reckoning of its entire publishing history, which includes special edition issues under a nearly a dozen different titles, most of them unrecognizable as being related at all.  Titles like Doujin Factory, Game Urara, Kouryaku Max, and G-Type (which would later be launched as its own separate title...sigh)

Basically, it's a giant cluster@#$!.

 

One final example, and tell me your opinion on how it should be handled, please (disclaimer - I am under no obligation to listen to opinions different from my own.  But still, give it.  Please.:P)  There is a mag called Dengeki Ou (or Oh, depending on how you want to romanize it).  It covers all systems, including PC and adult games in addition to the consoles.  They published this as a special edition:

znon3592.jpg

It clearly is titled Dengeki 3DO, but it is also a special edition of Dengeki Oh (電撃王) and is included in that mag's official numbering system.  This is the only issue ever published under the Dengeki 3DO name.

Would you:

A: Give it it's own DB entry under Dengeki 3DO, or

B: Include it in it's officially-numbered location within the Dengeki Oh run of mags???

Opinions are not a request, they are a requirement.  LOOK AT ALL THAT $@#% I TYPED!!!  THE LEAST YOU COULD DO IS GIVE ME YOUR OPINION!!!:lol:

 

PS - I don't EVEN want to check this for spelling and grammar mistakes.  Thank you for understanding.

 

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Well, you've all made a lot of fine points and given me much to think about.  Thanks for the feedback!

...

:)

I guess the benefit of being the only person who cares about and/or is working on adding new titles to the database is that I pretty much have carte blanche in regards to how I choose to do it. :P

And to that end, I guess I'll add Dengeki Gamecube next and ignore the official numbering.  According to the tiny print publishing info, Dengeki Gamecube is a direct continuation of Dengeki GB Advance, and so following the final issue of Dengeki GB Advance (issue 8) comes the first issue of Dengeki Gamecube (issue 9).  Unfortunately, there are only 52 issues of Dengeki Gamecube, which should bring the total number to 60, and yet the final issue is #75 according to the tiny print.  That means that there are 15 extra issues somewhere in there - the mother@#$#ing special edition has struck again.  The problem is - I haven't a clue what the missing issues are.  They certainly don't have "Dengeki Gamecube" in the title, so it's pretty much impossible to find out.  So since there's no way I can number everything according to the publisher's official numbering system, I'll just have to use arbitrary numbers starting at 1 for every monthly issue of the regular issues of Dengeki Gamecube.  If I ever discover what those 15 special edition issues are called, I'll likely add them as a separate title(s).

If anybody has any issues of Dengeki Gamecube that have in-house ads for their other mags being published at the time, let me know if you see anything that gives you a clue as to what those special editions are called.  Thx, yer a pal.:hugs:

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Because of the situation with specials, if I were designing a sortable by user database, I would set it up with primary magazine name and secondary magazine name. If it was a special you would use that name in the secondary. If it was not a special, the primary name and secondary name would be the same. This way the magazine would only be listed once, but the user could find the specials by sorting the secondary name. Phillyman's database does not support this. Your choices are list the magazine once, doing the best you can to sort out the mess or list it twice, once in the primary name list and again in the special name list. I think you are going to have to just wing it for now. It would be great if you had some kind of document that included a list of special issues and where they were buried in the primary magazine list and a list of specials that you were not sure what primary magazine they were from and a third list of primary magazines with quantity of unknown specials.

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2 hours ago, perfinpuz said:

 It would be great if you had some kind of document that included a list of special issues and where they were buried in the primary magazine list and a list of specials that you were not sure what primary magazine they were from and a third list of primary magazines with quantity of unknown specials.

It would be unlikely to have any specials that I was unsure of which primary mag they were a part of.  I would either know, or I would have no idea they were part of a primary mag at all.  With a large enough cover scan I can confirm a mag's parentage, but since the Japanese Internet is designed primarily to be mobile/bandwidth friendly, it's unusual to find anything larger than thumbnail size, which makes reading the fine print impossible.

It's also perhaps a bit unfair to think of things in "primary mag" and "secondary mag" order.  I use the term "special edition" since that's what the direct translation is of these things, but the way they're marketed and sold to the public is as completely separate titles.  This is why any reference to the parent mag is usually so small and unnoticeable, since they aren't trying to convey that it has any connections to the parent mag.  I tried to touch upon my thoughts on why this is in my original post - I believe it to mostly be a case of politics between the publisher and the newsstands to insure that new publishing ventures get a chance to prove their worth before leaping headfirst into launching new titles.

And how does one decide what is primary and what is secondary?  If I were to sort things in the order you describe, Dengeki PlayStation Vol.1-4 would be listed with the Dengeki PC Engine issues, and the first issue in the Dengeki PlayStation database would be volume 5.  That doesn't seem right to me, since Dengeki PlayStation Vol.1-4, despite having been published as special editions of Dengeki PC Engine, have nothing to do with Dengeki PC Engine, aside from the word Dengeki, which just about every mag from that publisher shares.  They were clearly released with the intent of launching a new, completely unrelated magazine.  Perhaps there's a lot of red tape or expensive legal fees when officially establishing a new publication title, so publishers are hesitant to do so until they have a proven success?

Let's say the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was published on a monthly basis, and from front-to-back was nothing but pictures of girls in bikinis.  Now let's say that the Sports Illustrated logo was nowhere to be found anywhere on the cover, and instead the logo on the mag, and what it is universally known as, is Girls in Bikinis.  Remember, there's no such thing as a subscription, so no one is going to get one of these in the mail just because they subscribed to Sports Illustrated.  No, they can only be found at the newsstand, where to all but the most attentive eye, the mag is simply called Girls in Bikinis.  Why would anyone who didn't see the tiny print in the corner of the cover linking it to Sports Illustrated have any inkling that the two were related?  They wouldn't, which is the publisher's intent.  It's being marketed as a completely separate mag for all intents and purposes.

I suppose the opinion of which is primary and which is secondary might depend upon which ones were successful enough to be turned into separate mags, but setting up a system based on exceptions just proves how overly complicated this is.

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For me in that situation, just to make it easy, I would pay attention to the title of the magazine above any numbering system.

I would look at each variant G,F,R,Z,S as separate magazines in the Dengeki PlayStation line. If that causes gaps in the numbering, so be it. Year/Month means more to me than the volume number. If they skip a month and print a Dengeki PlayStation S instead of the main line, we can just leave a blank icon for the month and just call that out as a note.


Really surprising to hear that Japanese magazines do not offer subscriptions. It makes accomplishments such as the complete run of Famitsu even more impressive. Would you say gaming magazines are still successful in Japan?

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17 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Well, you've all made a lot of fine points and given me much to think about.  Thanks for the feedback!

...

:)

I guess the benefit of being the only person who cares about and/or is working on adding new titles to the database is that I pretty much have carte blanche in regards to how I choose to do it. :P

I thought sarcasm was a western phenomenon.  I caught it even though it doesn't translate well into text.  For example the episode of Simpsons when Homer placed a letter in the suggestion box at work that said, "No more apples in the vending machine Please!!"  Burns knows it is Homer's letter and reads it aloud.  The amusing part is that Burns believes Homer is such a simpleton with poor grammar that he meant to say he wishes a refill of apples.  

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5 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

For me in that situation, just to make it easy, I would pay attention to the title of the magazine above any numbering system.

I would look at each variant G,F,R,Z,S as separate magazines in the Dengeki PlayStation line. If that causes gaps in the numbering, so be it. Year/Month means more to me than the volume number. If they skip a month and print a Dengeki PlayStation S instead of the main line, we can just leave a blank icon for the month and just call that out as a note.

The Dengeki PlayStation letter variants covering specific genres of games don't really deserve their own listings and can truly be considered special editions of the main title.  It could be argued that Dengeki PlayStation D (the one with the demo disc) should be a separate title, since the magazine is of secondary importance to the disc, meaning it is quite short and very different from a typical issue of Dengeki PlayStation.  And as I said earlier, it could also be argued that Dengeki PS2 or Dengeki PlayStation Girl's Style could be listed separately (or later special issues like Dengeki PlayStation 3 or Dengeki PSP, for that matter).  But in this particular case, I stand by my decision to list them all together.  There is a difference between the prominently displayed numbering system of Dengeki PlayStation and the tiny publishing info that most mags use.  One is meant to be seen and one is there simply because of legal requirements, but is made as small as possible so as not to interfere with what the publisher actually wants to be seen.  Therefore, I consider the Dengeki PlayStation numbering system to be a more important one to adhere to than a mag where the numbering system isn't meant to be noticed.

Here's a better example of where it might make sense to list things separately.  This is from the magazine MegaStore, which as I mentioned before, I'm unable to list at the moment while I wait for Philly to figure out how to handle magazines with "adults-only" cover images.  As such, I'll just show the cover logos.

Here's an issue of the regular mag:

original logo:MegaStore 004 October 1993.jpg

current logo: MegaStore 305 July 2013.jpg

And now here are some special edition issues of MegaStore.  Glancing at these on a newsstand, would you make the connection that they were the same magazine?

MegaStore 008 January 1994a.jpg

MegaStore 025 May 1995.jpg

MegaStore 084 November 1998.jpg

MegaStore 096 August 1999.jpg

And a couple of others where the name "MegaStore" (メガストア) is at least part of the title:

MegaStore 065 August 1997.jpg

MegaStore 111 May 2000.jpg

 

This is the crap I have to deal with.

6 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Really surprising to hear that Japanese magazines do not offer subscriptions. It makes accomplishments such as the complete run of Famitsu even more impressive. Would you say gaming magazines are still successful in Japan?

Not as successful as they used to be in the 16/32-bit era, but sure, they still do pretty well here.  Books, magazines, and comics are a part of everyone's lives to a much greater degree than they are in America, in my opinion, and the internet is less of a factor in decreasing sales.  While the USA currently publishes Game Informer and...er...that's pretty much it (aside from a couple of UK reprints like PC Gamer and the Official Xbox Magazine), Japan still has Famitsu, Dengeki PlayStation, Dengeki Nintendo, and Nintendo Dream as their main videogame publications.  There are also a few titles aimed specifically at young children, several titles aimed specifically at girls, a few titles about mobile app games, and 7 or 8 titles about adult PC games.  Not too shabby in this day and age.

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Not to beat the dead horse with yet another example, but here's another case where I chose to list a mag separately.  Below is an issue of Dengeki Nintendo DS. The hideously garish cover is because this is what children's magazines look like in Japan.  Rather than design something tasteful, the assumption is that children prefer their mags to have a million different things vomited all over every available space.  But I digress.

nds_201007_1_l.jpg

These are also (technically) Dengeki Nintendo DS:

gallery_19000_614_87946.jpggallery_19000_614_234889.jpggallery_19000_614_129858.jpg

I chose (quite sensibly, I think) to ignore their ties to Dengeki Nintendo DS and list them as "Dengeki Games," which is the logo on the cover.  Only in the tiny print in the upper right corner do we discover that these are actually special editions of Dengeki Nintendo DS.  Why would a mag covering all systems and clearly aimed at an older audience be published as part of a magazine covering a single system and meant to be read by kids in early elementary school?  Because as I said before, releasing new titles as part of an existing title is all publisher/retailer politics, special editions rarely have anything in common with their parent titles, and the customer isn't really meant to make the connection between the two anyway.

EDIT: As if to rub my face in the fact that I was confident that this title was handled exactly as it should be, I discovered literally seconds after posting this that there was a different magazine called Dengeki Games (written in roman alphabet letters) that was published years before this version of Dengeki Games (written in Japanese.)  So I guess I'm gonna have to change the above mag to Dengeki Games Vol.2 or something.  Sigh.

 

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1 hour ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Well you've killed my idealism that everything the Japanese do is very reasoned and logical :lol:

(minus the panty vending machines and poop stuff)

The panty vending machines are an urban legend only known to people outside of Japan.  I'm not saying there wasn't ONE...somewhere...at some point in history (probably outside of a sex shop in the shadiest red light district of Tokyo), but for a country PACKED with vending machines, I can tell you that 100% of the ones I've come across in my 10 years here sell nothing but drinks (and occasionally ice cream).

As for "poop" stuff, I don't EVEN want to know what you're talking about.  Seriously.  Ignorance is usually bliss where "poop stuff" is concerned.:lol:

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Wow, for non-speaking/reading Japanese people like me, Japanese magazine covers looked confusing, bu it's much worse than I thought. Thank for this funny post, and thanks for your amazing work. :) I wanted to know if there was any old magazine preservation website in Japan, now I have the answer.

I don't know how the Retromags database is structured, but as an admin of Abandonware France, it looks to me that Japanese mags violate the cardinality "one issue belongs to one and only one magazine". It should then be possible to link an issue with several "magazines", and consider the table "magazines" as ordered lists of issues. This way, the first Dengeki PlayStation would be linked to both Dengeki PlayStation and Dengeki PC Engine. This could be useful for certain Occidental issues, when two or more magazines of the same publisher release a common issue for a specific event. And it should also be possible to create a custom title for some issues, like Dengeki 3DO.

On 22/01/2018 at 11:43 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

I'm not kidding when I say that Retromags is going to be the definitive source of information on Japanese gaming mags - NO ONE in Japan is keeping track of this stuff.

This reminds me what Joseph Redon (president of Game Preservation Society in Japan) said in a colloquium of the CNJV last month : there is no culture of preservation in Japan. It's sad, regarding the huge amount of material this country released since more than three decades.

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The main problem with strictly adhering to the publisher's official numbering is that I can't see it most of them time.  I only own so many mags, and only from a handful of different titles, so most of the time when I'm constructing a new database I have to try to piece things together from what I can find here and there online.  As I said before, high-res cover scans are almost non-existent in Japan, especially on older mags, so I usually end up with a pic that's 500px high (sometimes even smaller) to use in our gallery/database.  It's useful for identifying the magazine at a glance, but completely useless for determining the publication numbers.

For example, this is of a scan I made myself (cropped, but not resized.) Looking at the bottom line, we can see that this is the 9th issue published during the 4th year of publication, and the 40th issue overall:

Dengeki_N64_Issue_40_001.jpg

Now here is the exact same issue, using the best available pic available elsewhere on the web, also not resized:

c5pa5wzm.jpg

And now enlarged for your viewing pleasure:

c5pa5wzm.jpg

As you can see, the publishing info is just too damned small to be visible on most of the covers I come across.  When I do come across a large enough pic to be able to see it, and the numbers don't match up to the number of regular issues that I know were published, then it's obvious to me that there were some special editions published at some point, but I have no idea which numbers they were (and usually don't even know under what title they were published.)

Even mags that don't publish special editions, like Famitsu, can be difficult to keep track of.  Well, that's not exactly true - they did publish 4 special editions just before going weekly, but that was ages ago and luckily we have high res covers for each of them, and at any rate, that was before Famitsu printed issue numbers on their covers.  Once they did, they included the special editions as well, so problem solved.  Or is it?

The reason that Famitsu was confusing (before I spent a couple of months researching the dates and issue numbers in order to construct our database), is that Famitsu breaks another cardinal sin of publishing - that of "one issue, one issue number."  Yes, Famitsu publishes their issue numbers quite large (unfortunately, except for a brief period in the late 2000s, they print them on the back cover, making it useless to me).  However, their official numbers printed on the mags don't actually match the number of mags they've published, since a few times each year, they publish an issue and give it TWO issue numbers.  This occurs during certain holiday times in Japan when the staff is allowed a break, and there will be a week where they don't publish an issue.  Their numbering system will continue on as if they had, though, and the issue prior to the missing issue will receive two issue numbers.  So even though they publish only 49 issues per year, their official number increases by 52 issues per year.

What did I tell you?  MADNESS!

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I HEREBY OFFICIALLY END THE DISCUSSION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT I SHOULD GIVE A DAMN ABOUT JAPAN'S PUBLISHING NUMBER SYSTEM.

AND THE ANSWER IS-----!!!!!

No.  No, I do not.

Seriously, %@#! them sideways.

 

Guess what this is:

imd_015.jpg

If you guessed it's a magazine about cell phones, you're right on target.  If you guessed it is Vol.15 of "i-mode de asobou!" then good for you - you can read Japanese!

It also happens to be issue 30 of Dengeki Gamecube

In fact, Vol.15 through Vol.27 of i-mode de asobou are technically special editions of Dengeki Gamecube.

"WTF?" I hear you say.  "Why is an adult-oriented magazine about cell phones considered part of a children's magazine about Nintendo games?"  A very logical query.  Unfortunately, you made the beginner's mistake of assuming there was some kind, ANY KIND, of logic at work here.  Let's continue:

Vol. 28-29 of i-mode de asobou are part of Dengeki Nintendo DS.

Vol. 30-31 are part of Dengeki Comic Gao!, a manga anthology magazine.

Vol. 32 is part of Dengeki PlayStation

Vol.33 is once again part of Dengeki Nintendo DS.

Vol. 34-37 are part of Dengeki Maoh, yet another manga magazine

Vol. 38: Dengeki PlayStation

Vol. 39: Dengeki Maoh

Vol. 40: Dengeki PlayStation

Vol. 41: Dengeki Maoh

Vol. 42: Dengeki PlayStation

Vol. 43: Dengeki Maoh

Vol.44-58: Dengeki PlayStation

And what about i-mode de asobou Vol.1-14, you ask?  Well, I couldn't find info for all of them, but Vol. 9-14 are part of Dengeki Games.  The first issue of Dengeki Games is actually a part of Dengeki Hime, btw, just in case you were wondering.

 

So.  Basically, everything is a part of everything AND NOTHING REALLY MATTERS.  Also, from what I can tell, i-mode de asobou was a 58-issue magazine that never once existed as its own publication, but was randomly released as a part of at least 6 other magazine titles and included in their official numbering systems.

 

I quit.

From now on, I will pay the publisher's number no heed.

Because it is stupid.

 

 

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