Nostalgia: Questor, The Ultimate Anime Magazine

It started with a random sentence when I was chatting with some of my fellows at the Ravenclaw Portal. Actually, I was urging someone to smash the cockroach that was flying around in that someone's room. Another person then said that the cockroach just wanted a hug and although he meant that the cockroach, as a bug, was going to give a hug, I suddenly had the thought of a cockroach turning into a human and it giving a hug... which in turn made me remember of a little, short-run manga called Gokitomo. Such a random thought ultimately made me think and miss that magazine that became the 'bible' for anime fans here in my country. Questor was big in the late 1990s and somewhat in the early 2000s. I own around ten magazines (I think) since I couldn't really afford it that much, what with me being in elementary (and high school in early the early 2000s) and I had to beg my mother to buy one of them whenever there was a supply in our far-flung town. I wish I could take a picture of them now but I left them in the province... And my camera is dead. Anyway, although it was not as big nor as fancy as Shonen Jump (which I have the pleasure of perusing in comic stores nowadays), it was still a gratifying read for those of us who were hankering for more anime that our television could afford us and for those who did not really have internet access in those days. Those who have copies of Questor would lend the entire class their copies and they would be passed around. What I miss most about Questor, aside from those articles that gave me more info about my favorite anime and lyrics about my favorite anime songs, are the myriad of original manga that the staff of Questor created:

Nopperabo

In Japanese Obake / Kaidan folklore (ghost stories), the nopperabo is a woman without a face. The Questor manga Nopperabo was not a ghost but an angel of vengeance. A woman suddenly becomes faceless then takes on the face of a crime victim to exact justice. Source

Source

Occhio del Dio

When Bathala rested on the seventh day, He gathered all of his creations to bless them. Bathala journeyed through his newly-created world and began to bless everything that He saw and came across. But there were creatures who did not hear the call of Bathala. They remained in their hiding places and, unfortunately, were not blessed by their creator. Since then, those creatures thrived in the darkness... and because they were unable to receive the grace from God, they changed their form. They were the ancestors of the creatures that we now know as aswang (ghoul), halimaw (monster) and maligno (ghost). Source

These serial manga were the things that I looked most forward to whenever I got my hands on a Questor magazine. They were really good art but the best part was that they were such great stories. My favorites were Nopperabo and Occhio del Dio. Questor also spawned a sister publication called Questor Extreme Mangamania which exclusively published some more manga like Sidesweepers, Free Spirits, Big Camp V and Canta Ista. Sadly, Questor stopped its publication in 200-... I don't even remember when they stopped publishing the magazine. The manga were never finished and I've always wondered what would've eventually happened with the stories. I guess we'll never know... unless someone reboots them.