“I think print media is incredibly open. You can hand it to someone, you can read it together,” Obara says, calling mobile phones “very insular.”
(…) Many authors and publishers around the world fear the trend will be accelerated by artificial intelligence and social media — in the United Kingdom, a 2025 study showed that half of novelists believe AI is likely to replace their work. However, like in other countries worldwide, do-it-yourself publication including zines — which originated in the 1930s with sci-fi fans in the U.S. — is growing in Japan, especially among younger generations.
‘AI simply can’t replicate it’: Japan embraces zine trend
Zines (fanzines, back in the days) aren’t a magical door giving access to a better or suddenly purer and more honest kind of information (they’re as filled with propaganda and partisanship, and they can be as plainly dumb as most traditional and social media) but they still are a great way for people to share whatever information they want. Freely.
And, for more and more people, it’s a way to just realize they can share and publish stuff offline, without needing The Internet or social media. And that it is indeed quite easy to do.
Also, some of those zines are truly remarkable, too.
Published: 2026 Aug 17