[Mobile Suit Gundam FC / MGFC] MOBILE FIGHTER II Vol. 1 Issue 8 (1981) [発行:機動戦士ガンダムF.C MGFC] MOBILE FIGHTER II VOL.1 (通营8号) (1981)

I acquired this book from Yahoo! auctions on a whim simply because the cover was striking, and there already is a dearth of Gundam FC books being archived as is. This book, hailing from the MGFC (Mobile Fighter Gundam Fan Club), was published August 5th of 1981. The group seems to have hailed from Shimozaki, Yukuhashi City, Fukuoka Prefecture and was managed by a Junichi Ishikawa (石川淳一) (not to be confused with the movie director) and Genichi Yano (矢野元一).Fuyumi Shiraishi (白石冬美樣), Mirai Yashima's voice actress, who not only gave an interview, has several fans make art for her in this particular issue. Fuyumi appears to have allowed the group to have access to several aspects of her life at the time, though as information on this group is fairly limited, one can assume she helped facilitate aspects of those features alone. Her note of collaboration is mentioned in the back byline.

This book, based on the back byline, had a relatively large readership but underwent an extreme amount of changes with more shifts in quality, mainly for the betterment of the publication itself and to take a once private fan journal to a larger, public scale:

Finally, it's done! Two months behind schedule, but finally, VOL.1 of M-F II (short for MOBILE FIGHTER Ⅱ) is complete. Let's start with the change in the name of the journal. The reason we changed it from M・F to M・F II was because we thought that MGFC had taken a step up. I think that by creating seven volumes of M・F, we have finally gained the ability to create a journal that can be published by staff and to the public at large. So, we changed the name of the journal a little. I actually wanted to call it M・F VOL.10, but I added Ⅱ because it would be easy to confuse it with the previous M・F.

The group exhibited at Comiket, starting off as a 'small group from Yukuhashi, who've suddenly come to appear at Comiket in Fukuoka.' but with limited success initially. A press conference held by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko to discuss the 1st Gundam compilation film is mentioned, which the group attended and gave out copies of past books to attendees to raise membership.

The publication is very similar to many earlier books created during the beginning of 1979 with fan submitted art, sometimes crude, specs, character data and impressions on the series at large. Given its publication date, Gundam had long been off of the air, though the spirit of each fan is palpable in the spread. The book was published by Kokura Izutsuya Quick Print (小倉井筒屋 クイックプリント), who took care of a variety of doujin and FC booklets I own. The materials are very well made and just as professional as possible in comparison to other FC books I've seen, showing that the group had adequate funding. This book in particular is Issue 8 in the series even though it says vol. 1 on the cover.

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