About us

First, a little context

1997 was a special year for manga in Italy. After Granata Press closed down, Star Comics took up the baton and became the most important manga publisher. The Kappa Boys imported the most popular manga from Japan and republished some of the interrupted titles. In the wake of that success, other publishers, large and small, tried to find a place in the market. The hunger for manga was so great that fanzines were born and did quite well. In this lively scenario, though, there was one territory nobody had explored yet: the Internet.

The first Italian online magazine on Japanese comics and animation

In 1997 the internet was for the few. Websites were not found with Google but with Altavista, there were no social networks, no blogs. If you didn’t know HTML you couldn’t have a website of your own. So it seemed natural for a small group of computer science students (plus a few outsiders) passionate about comics to try something new: bringing fanzines onto the internet. Tiphares was born, “the first Italian online magazine on Japanese comics and animation” (was it really the first? Who knows). The public’s response was positive, so much so that a couple of years later the Fat’s Dream comic shop in Bologna funded the CD-ROM version: the first issue, distributed in a limited number of copies, was something never seen before. Video, audio, interviews, reviews, goodies by the dozen and a free mouse pad, all at a time when YouTube and Spotify did not exist. After a second issue and a third in the works, the magazine closed.

And now?

This website, maintained by the magazine’s former editor-in-chief, aims to collect and archive, for future memory, the articles and reviews published on the old website and on the CD-ROM.