I recently acquired a handful of Newtype magazine issues from the 1999-2000 era, primarily for Turn A Gundam research purposes. It’s my first time really diving into Newtype magazines in detail, and they’re very interesting—almost nostalgic—as if I’ve uncovered a time capsule of sorts. Lots of promotional material, roundups, overviews, interviews, Q&As, etc. for anime, manga, and video games; Turn A Gundam, Cardcaptor Sakura, Cowboy Bebop, Utena, You’re Under Arrest, Nadesico, The Five Star Stories, to name a few off the top of my head. From what I’ve parsed through, there’s little new Turn A content, but I still plan to do an overview and maybe publish interview translations later on.

What I find most intriguing about these magazines are the raw data they provide: TV station ratings & monthly reader rankings for a plethora of categories. This type of information tends to be difficult to find online, in both English and Japanese databases, so it’s nice to have hard data on-hand. I’ve compiled and assessed Turn A Gundam‘s TV ratings & popularity rankings, so I figured I’d write a little blog post about it.

For years, Japanese fans have celebrated the 9th of September as an “unofficial” Turn A Gundam day of sorts—the “official” day of course being its April 9th anniversary. The reasoning stems from the Turn A’s model number, the System ∀99, hence 9/9. Basically, it’s another convenient opportunity to celebrate one’s love for Turn A Gundam! In recent years, fans all across the world have celebrated the event, and you can search the Twitter hashtag #9月9日はターンエーの日 to see what people have posted this year. Lots of fan art, collection photos, and just general love for the show. This is just a quick blogpost roundup picking out some highlights. Enjoy!