The fire started with a knock.
A thick envelope lay at my doorstep—creased, bulging, smelling of hot paper and damp glue. No sender. Just one word scribbled in shaky blue ink on the flap: Animonster—a locally made (Indonesian) anime magazine that circulated in the early 2000s in the city of Malang. This magazine is not an official publication—it’s indie, made simply but passionately by anime fans.
I hadn’t heard that name in over fifteen years. And yet, I knew exactly what it meant.
Back then, in early 2000s Malang, the city buzzed differently. The internet ran like a tired ojek driver: slow, inconsistent, always apologizing. We didn’t scroll. We waited. Anime didn’t arrive by stream—it came in flashes, in Sunday morning TV blocks, and in magazines sold behind glass counters in places like Mitra II Market, where the smell of rubber sandals mixed with fried tahu petis (fried tofu with fermented shrimp paste).
Animonster wasn’t even official. It didn’t need to be. Glossy but just cheap enough to feel illegal, it featured hand-translated articles, fan letters, and clumsily photocopied posters. But when you peeled open the centerfold and saw a full-page spread of Cowboy Bebop, your world expanded.
I was thirteen when I bought my first copy. Rp6,000. I skipped lunch for it.
I didn’t know it then, but that thin magazine would pull a small circle of names into my life. Haris was the first, a boy who sent letters filled with rough sketches and strange theories that felt too big for our small city. Then there was Soya, the designer who worked quietly in a corner office near Mitra II Market, piecing together pages with cigarette smoke on her fingertips. And then there was me, a hungry kid who would one day turn thirty, still carrying the smell of damp paper and fried tahu from those afternoons in Malang.
Haris’ letters weren’t normal. He didn’t ask how I was doing or what anime I liked. He sent critiques. Wild theories. A full breakdown of why Inuyasha represented the failures of post-Suharto masculinity.
In his last letter to me, he wrote:
“Kalau anime itu agama, maka majalah ini kitab sucinya.”
(“If anime is a religion, then this magazine is its holy book.”)
He signed it with a doodle of Kenshin Himura riding a bajaj (a small three-wheeled motorized vehicle).
We never met. Not once. But I still have all his letters in a yellow envelope. I don’t know why I kept them.
Then Animonster stopped. One issue never came. And just like that, it vanished. I moved on. Got a degree. Found work. Grew up. Sort of.
But when the envelope showed up last month, everything snapped back.
Inside were three old issues—crackling, faded, real. One had a cover of Trigun drawn in colored pencils. Another featured a fan article about Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Javanese concept of laku prihatin (stoic suffering).
And one had my name. Misspelled. But unmistakably me. A fan comic I drew in junior high. I never sent it in.
So how did they have it?
I chased the answer through a forgotten internet. Old forums. Dead LiveJournal links. One Facebook group—“Animonster Nostalgia Fans ID”—hadn’t posted since 2017, but someone named Soya had once commented on a post about printing errors in the December 2003 issue.
I messaged her. She replied after four days. Her response? “I remember you. You and Haris used to send letters. We kept everything.”
We arranged to meet in Malang.
Soya still lived in Dinoyo. Her house sat behind a small shop that sold pecel rawon (rich beef stew with vegetables in a spicy peanut sauce). She was waiting on the porch when I arrived, drowning in a faded Slam Dunk tee, the spicy-sweet sting of clove smoke curling around her.
One slow drag. Then, eyes narrowing, “You’re not what I pictured!”
I kicked at a loose floorboard. “Yeah, well. Time made me shit at aging.”
She laughed. “Then you’ve aged like a true fan.”
She brought out a cardboard box marked Animonster. Inside were folders, printed proofs, uncut sheets, original sketches, and a bundle of letters tied with red string. Haris’ handwriting hit me like a punch.
“Is he… still around?” I asked.
Soya hesitated. “He came to the office once. He brought a stack of drawings. Left before we could thank him. That was in 2004.” She paused. “Then we heard he got into a fight at a warnet (internet café). Something about someone insulting One Piece. He… disappeared.”
She handed me a yellowing envelope. “We printed your comic because he gave it to us. Said it was a gift. Said if we didn’t publish it, we were cowards.” I opened it.
Inside was a copy of my comic, my name scribbled on top in a different handwriting. Haris had written in the corner:
“Seni itu perjuangan.”
(“Art is resistance.”)
That night I couldn’t sleep. The fanboy part of me was screaming, but beneath it was something else—grief? Shame? I hadn’t realized how much of myself I’d left behind in those ink-stained pages.
The next morning, I walked to Mitra II Market. The anime stall was gone. A phone case kiosk stood in its place.
The man behind the counter squinted at me when I asked. “The one with the Naruto poster on the wall, right? Skinny kid ran it, good at drawing. Always talked about Japan. Never been there, just dreamed.” He scratched his head when I asked for a name. “Umm… what was it?” he said at last, his face still searching. “Oh… right. He called himself Haris Animonster.”
I returned to Soya’s. I told her everything. She dug through the box and pulled out a CD-R labeled Project V2: Revival? It contained a half-finished PDF layout for a relaunch issue—2010 date. Haris’ handwriting filled the margin notes: “Add fanart! Needs bad pun for headline! Don’t make it look too clean!”
Soya shook her head. “He wanted to bring it back. He sent me this. But I never responded.” She looked at me. “You think it’s too late?”
“No!” I said. “I think someone’s still waiting.”
That was six weeks ago. Now, I’m sitting in my apartment with Soya on video call, staring at an open Canva template. We’ve recreated the Animonster logo—messy, bold, wrong in all the right ways.
We posted a teaser yesterday. No hashtags. No sponsors. Just an image of a folded poster of Gundam Wing and the words:
“Kalau kamu tahu ini, selamat. Kamu masih hidup.”
(“If you recognize this, congrats. You’re still alive.”)
The post exploded. Thousands of likes. Comments from users named “OtakuJadul_98” and “EvaUnit_Fanboy.”
Even one DM from someone who wrote: “I thought I was the only one who kept this magazine.”
We’re not relaunching Animonster exactly. We’re making something else. Something slower. Deeper. Maybe three issues a year. Maybe just one.
And on the last page of the first new issue? A comic. Drawn in pencil. Sloppy panels. Too many speech bubbles. It’s mine. Next to it, we printed a scan of Haris’s letter, with one sentence highlighted in bold:
“Kalau dunia tidak peduli, kita yang buat dia peduli.”
(“If the world doesn’t care, we make it care.”)
Last week, I got another envelope. No return address. Inside: a new fan comic. Signed:
A.A.
The style was unmistakable. The same messy lines. The same crooked dialogue boxes. Haris hadn’t vanished. He’d just gone underground. Watching. Waiting. At the bottom of the page, a note:
“I saw the post. You didn’t ruin it. You made it better. Let’s not stop.”
So no, this story isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about unfinished work. About the messy, painful love that fandom used to demand. About a time when we printed the things we loved—because nothing else made them feel real.
And maybe, if someone finds Animonster again someday—stapled, cheap, too thick for its own good—they’ll remember:
We were here. We cared. And we left ink behind.
The Fanboy Gospel: When Anime Came in Stapled Pages – Fendy S. Tulodo