Ring ni Kakero, in Masami Kurumada & Others' Words: The Author's Notes & Afterwords (feat. shmuplations) Part 3: Volumes 19-25

As we reach the end of 2024, the year marking Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary as a mangaka, I think it's only appropriate that we see the third & final round of author's notes & afterwords from the original 25-volume tankouban release of Ring ni Kakero, which came out between 1978 & 1983 in Japan. Just as with the prior two rounds back in January & June these translations come by way of shmuplations, & while the first round featured mostly afterwords written by professional boxers (with only a couple of mangaka), & the second round was mostly mangaka (with only a couple of boxers & even an actor), this final round is nothing but mangaka, most of which either were already or would become icons of the industry! Of course, we also see the last remaining author's notes from Kurumada himself, and since we only have seven volumes to go over this time around I've also added in a bonus afterword from Kurumada that was written nearly 19 years after the final tankouban of Ring ni Kakero saw release in Japan.

So let's see what Kurumada had to say one last time, as well as how a veritable hall of fame of manga legends (for the most part, at least) felt about the man himself back in the early 1980s!

Volume 19 of Ring ni Kakero came out on November 15, 1981, roughly a month after the final chapter, the first one in Jump history to be published entirely in color (in this case, full color opening pages & red-toned pages for the rest), and it's the only tankouban to see release during the interim between RnK's finale & the debut of Fuma no Kojirou a few months later. Also, as you can see to the left, around this point Shueisha started including what looked like a proof of purchase of some sort in the bottom left of a tankouban's dust cover's inner front flap, next to the author's note, featuring the blue outline of an apple with "LOVE" written on the inside (*cue Haddaway*). For this volume's author's note we see Kurumada describe life itself as being like that of a poem, and that one should aspire to live their life as though it was poetry:

"For men, their life itself is a poem.

Poetry is an aspiration. When the anger, joy, sadness, and passion of the heart are embodied in our actions, without embellishment or pretense, it will surpass any great poem in the world.

I hope to write good poems that will touch your hearts and convince you."

Volume 19's afterword comes from Yoshihiro Takahashi, best known today as the creator of various dog-related action/drama manga, most notably the Ginga Series (Ginga - Nagareboshi Gin, Ginga Legend Weed, etc.). However, back in late 1981 Takahashi was still two years away from debuting Gin, though his OG dog manga, Shiroi Senshi Yamato, was still running in Monthly Shonen Jump. Instead, by this point he had completed his first hit manga, baseball series Akutare Giants, the year prior & was about 16 or so chapters into his next Weekly Jump series, the fishing manga Aozora Fishing, which he drew for writer Hiroichi Fuse; sadly, this series would end in mid-1982 after only 42 weekly chapters across five volumes. For this afterword Takahashi looks back on when he risked missing the deadline for the very first chapter of either Akutare Giants or Yamato, as they both debuted in the same year & Takahashi just says his "first serialized manga", so his editor sent over some scrappy little artist to assist him so that he wouldn't be late: Masami Kurumada. This would likely be in early 1976, after Sukeban Arashi's cancellation in late 1975, but before Ring ni Kakero's debut in early 1977 (& also before Kurumada's one-shot Mikeneko Rock, which appeared in Monthly Jump at the end of 1976), and is the only proof I've ever seen of Kurumada being an "assistant" to Takahashi, though it seems to have only been for a single chapter:

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: Yose (Endgame)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"And with that... we've finally come to the end of Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog! All 50(+1) officially released cartridge games in order of release date (more or less), and I hope through this series you've come to better understand the kind of life the Atari Jaguar had, because I sure as hell had... That being said, though... the overall official (cartridge) catalog is actually shockingly better than you'd expect!"

Make no mistake: The Atari Jaguar was an unmitigated failure of a console that was produced by Atari Corporation, a company that was clearly unable to continue operating like it once did, i.e. being forced to return to consoles as its primary focus after its focus on computers had stopped being profitable. At only around 250,000 physical units produced it is now one of the harder to acquire video game consoles for most people to try its catalog on, though today there are other options out there, like the well regarded & constantly enhanced & updated software emulator BigPEmu by Rich Whitehouse, which first appeared in Digital Eclipse's celebrated Atari 50 collection in 2022 & even plays games better than the actual console ever could. So, after taking about 3.5 years to cover the entire official (cartridge) catalog for the Atari Jaguar, what have I learned... and how do the games rank for me, personally?

The Jag Was Screwed From Day One

Let's be totally frank here: Atari Corporation was never truly a well run company. While there were certainly flaws to be found back in the OG Atari, Inc. days run by Nolan Bushnell, arguably enough so that he needed to sell the company to Warner Communications just so that the VCS/2600 could even become a reality, there's no doubt that Jack Tramiel was not the right person to run an "Atari". While he inherited the console gaming side of things he showed no interest in it until the NES had hit it big... and even then he relied on outdated tech to compete, as the 2600 was nine years old when it got revived in 1986 as a budget-priced option, while the 7800 came out two years too late (tech-wise, at least); these endeavors were, at best, successful enough to break even. Meanwhile, Tramiel was already an infamous name in the personal computer industry from his time with Commodore, so while the PC side of things was still somewhat viable when Tramiel formed Atari Corp. his bad reputation put a glass ceiling on it, and when that started to underperform we got dumb ideas like the Atari XEGS (which actually sold even worse than the Jag, at only around 100,000 units!). Things weren't much better with the handheld Lynx in 1989, with Atari Corp. generally considered to have purposefully messed around with Epyx precisely so that Atari could have full ownership of the handheld itself, which in turn only made it easier for Epyx to eventually declare bankruptcy, rather than use the Lynx to help keep Epyx around to benefit both companies.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1997 to 2001

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"When I first started Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog a little over three years ago I honestly wasn't 100% sure how long it'd take for me to finish it, or even if I would actually finish it. However, we're now down to the final stretch... and while all prior parts of this series required multiple entries to cover a single calendar year, our next & final part will kind of feel like a whirlwind."

In 2021 RetroHQ released the Jaguar GameDrive, a microSD card-driven flash cart that allowed one to play just about any game ever released for Atari Corporation's final console, including Jaguar CD games without needing the actual accessory (though compatibility still isn't quite 100% there, last I checked), opening up the console's catalog to anyone who owned an actual Jaguar console but didn't want to spend the exorbitant prices for many of its more cherished & rare titles. Since I happen to own a "Jag" I decided that the GameDrive would be perfect for me, turning my console into essentially an "All-in-One" device... and that put a thought into my head. Inspired by much more talented people than me, namely the likes of Jeremy Parish's "Works Series" & PandaMonium's "PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game" (which both tackle console catalogs in chronological order of release), I decided to take a look at the Atari Jaguar's own catalog release history; at only 50 officially licensed games it felt reasonably doable. Instead of tackling it one release at a time in immense depth, like Parish or Panda, I decided to bundle them together in batches of four or five (& later a couple of trios, due to later changes in release order being unearthed), which I felt was fair enough. Starting with my look at the original test launch line-up in late 1993 on June 6, 2021 I have since spent the past 3.5 years occasionally returning to this series, and while I initially planned it out as an 11-part series, some later revelations about a more accurate release schedule made me change it into a 12-part series (& it'll technically be 13, since there'll be a final thoughts piece after this), but I have finally made it to the end.

Atari Corporation may be long dead (at least, in the form it was when it first launched the console), but the Atari Jaguar itself has continued to live on to this very day... so let's prowl the catalog one last time & see how things fared between the years 1997 & 2001.

When we last left off, JT Storage (the steward of Atari Corporation's lifeless husk, at this point) made a deal with liquidator TigerSoftware on December 26, 1996 in order to just sell off & get rid of the remaining Jaguar stock that was left over, i.e. ~100,000 unsold consoles & a variety of unsold games & standalone controllers. Well, come the next issue of TigerDirect's catalog in January 1997 people could mail order a special Atari Jaguar bundle that contained the console, one standard controller (i.e. the OG model with only three face buttons & the keypad), and the trio of Cybermorph, Checkered Flag, & Kasumi Ninja (what a roster...), all for just $59.99, "a $300 value"! Meanwhile, an additional standard controller was available for $19.99, while four different three-game bundles were available for $29.99 each. Said packs were Iron Soldier, FlipOut!, & Tempest 2000 (a pretty damn good deal), White Men Can't Jump, Doom, & Attack of the Mutant Penguins (a bizarre combination, for sure), Defender 2000, Super Burnout, & Missile Command 3D (a solid bundle, at least), & FlipOut!, I-War, & Supercross 3D (easily the worst bundle). Even then, though, the tradition of "stretching the truth" when it came to the Jag was maintained, as Tiger labeled it "The World Most Advanced 3-D Game System!", despite the Nintendo 64 already being on the market by this point, at least in Japan & North America. From what I can tell there's next to no real info as to how successful TigerSoftware was at selling the Jag via mail order catalog, but I will admit that being able to buy the console with the first & third bundles (i.e. nine games) for around $120 honestly wouldn't have been a bad deal; toss in the second bundle (if only for Doom) to make it $150 & it'd still be a solid enough deal.

Demo Disc Vol. 24: World War Wumbo

While the concept of the "console war" in video gaming still exists to this day, it's arguable that nothing has ever truly reached the notoriety of the "16-bit War" between the Sega Genesis & the Super Nintendo in North America. In the region that I call home the 80s were mainly dominated by the Nintendo Entertainment System, a console that managed to revitalize the home video game console market following the Crash of 1983, though a big part of that domination was due to tactics & regulations from Nintendo of America that would later be called out as being monopolistically illegal, like literally prohibiting all third-party publishers from publishing games for the competition, at least for a certain period of time. This domination would change with the launch of the Sega Genesis on August 14, 1989 (which had previously launched in Japan as the Mega Drive on October 29, 1988), Sega's 16-bit console that had a slightly slow start but in 1990 would see stronger sales, and once Sonic the Hedgehog debuted in 1991 (& was bundled with the console, replacing Altered Beast) the "war" was truly on. The Genesis would consistently outsell the SNES across four Christmas seasons (1991 to 1994), with it even getting to the point where the Genesis would outsell the SNES 2:1, but in the end Nintendo would still manage to defeat Sega in the "16-bit War" for one main reason: Nintendo Played the Long Game.

The release of Donkey Kong Country in late 1994 would help start a surge in SNES sales, while Nintendo of America's continued support of the console for the remainder of the decade with major new game releases continued to entice people to buy the console during the era of the PlayStation, Saturn, & N64. In comparison, Sega of America's own massive disarray in the mid-90s prevented the Genesis from seeing quite as consistent late-game support (~150-ish games from 1995 to 1998, compared to the SNES' ~250-ish), and the Mega Drive's consistent lack of popularity in Japan certainly didn't help things (no more than just 10 games developed in Japan on Genesis from 1995 to 1998, compared to a little over 40 on SNES). Still, the Genesis vs. SNES "war" makes for some really fun storytelling...

As mentioned, in Japan the battle wasn't really between the Mega Drive & the Super Famicom, but rather was more between NEC & Hudson Soft's PC-Engine & the Super Famicom, and even then it was more of a battle for second place, as the Super Famicom handily outsold the PC-Engine. However, Sega has always maintained a cult following in Japan, and sometime in the mid-00s that resulted in something interesting. Around that time a writer by the name of Anastasia Shestakova (which could very well be a pen name; their real identity is unknown) debuted a doujinshi in the digital pages of doujin web magazine Red Road titled Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de/The Center of the Blue World, with art by adult doujinshi artist Crimson, who herself had previously worked with her brother under the name Carmine & today also works as a YouTuber; despite the pedigree, Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de is not an H-doujin. This doujin reinterpreted the various console wars as literal wars between warring fantasy nations, & over time around 200 chapters (including the various side story chapters interspersed between the numbered ones) were produced by Shestakova & Crimson across five "Parts", with the first 50 being collected physically across nine volumes between 2007 & 2009; officially the doujin is still considered ongoing, but hasn't had a new chapter since November 11, 2018. The success & notoriety of Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de would result in publisher Micro Magazine wanting to publish it as an "official" manga, & the duo would take this opportunity to revamp their doujin, implementing new additions, making some changes, & properly inking all of the artwork this time, minus some scenes, like flashbacks, solely for effect. This resulted in Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de Kanzenban/The Core of the Blue World: Complete Edition, which came out between 2010 & 2013, collecting all of Parts 1 & 2 across 10 volumes, including the ~15 chapters that the initial nine-volume run didn't.

It's with the Complete Edition that Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de would find its greatest notoriety. A three-episode anime adaptation of Part 1 would get announced in early 2012, which Crunchyroll simulcasted before Media Blasters would eventually release it on dual-audio DVD & BD in 2017, and in early 2013 Seven Seas announced that it had licensed the Complete Edition of the manga for official English release; all of these official English releases would change the title to the, admittedly catchy, World War Blue. Seven Seas' release schedule for World War Blue did look to be a bit inconsistent, regularly swapping between every two months & every three months for the first seven volumes, before taking the better part of an entire year to release Volume 8 in mid-2015... and then that was it! Yeah, Seven Seas just stopped releasing World War Blue after Volume 8, despite there only being two more volumes to go of the version it was releasing, and their webpage for the manga is even still up to this very day. Seven Seas actually did respond to a question about World War Blue's cancellation in 2016, citing poor sales, & not even Media Blasters giving the anime a physical release a year later made them revive it for a mere two books. Despite coming out at a time where digital releases of manga were becoming more common, the World War Blue manga was a print-only release (in English, at least), though in all fairness the books Seven Seas did release remain relatively easy to get a hold of at (more or less) the original retail price; still, the irony that a digital doujin is physical-only in English is ridiculously thick.

If you're fine with Japanese, the original doujin version is still available in full on its official website, all the way up through Part 5's current hiatus (Part 2's links are oddly broken & need the Wayback Machine to actually read, though), though for this Demo Disc I'll focus solely on the eight volumes that came out in English; that said, I'll rely on the official site for images here, for simplicity's sake. Was World War Blue deserving of its cancellation by Seven Seas a mere two books before finishing because it wasn't actually all that good, or was it just a victim of other factors beyond its control? Let's boot it up & find out!

Doing It "The Wrong Way": My History with Masami Kurumada's Works as an English-Speaking American Fan

Unlike (seemingly) most English-speaking anime fans, of any generation apparently, I kind of got into anime a little bit later in life. Sure, I watched some anime that aired for kids growing up in the late 90s & early 00s, like Pokémon & Digimon, I do vaguely remember seeing the likes of Voltron & Transformers via reruns in the early 90s, etc., & that era of both FoxKids & Kids WB was filled with anime, as it's how I first saw stuff like Ultimate Muscle, Shaman King, & even Escaflowne. But I didn't even know about Toonami on Cartoon Network until 2002 or so (i.e. my first Gundam was G Gundam, not Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, or the UC-era stuff between all of those), and it wasn't until 2004 that I decided to really get into anime more in-depth, despite already owning a handful of official DVD releases by that point. Entering into mid-2004 I was already 17-going-on-18 & a senior in high school, about to graduate & go to college, a far cry from the young teens (or younger, even) that I tend to see most anime fans reminisce about how they got into the fandom, & I hadn't watched stuff like Sailor Moon growing up, rented anime VHS tapes or DVDs that rental stores really shouldn't have been renting out to kids, seen other anime-focused programming blocks like Anime on Sci-fi in the 90s or Anime Unleashed in the 00s, or engaged in tape trading & the like. For me, my start into anime was as someone who was entering young adulthood & discovering digital fansubs, while also buying official releases as well. Also, I live & have grown up in the United States of America all my life, having only traveled outside of the country a handful of times (namely Hungary & Canada, both to visit family).

In that case, it's kind of all the more bizarre that I became such a massive fan of Masami Kurumada & his works... because, from all indications, I shouldn't be.

Effectively the way "North of Mexico"
sees Masami Kurumada, as proven by history.

Honestly, I don't like to write about my personal life here, mainly because I don't think there's really all that much to say. I've done it before, sure, but that was because they were related to the only real times I had anything interesting to tell the story of, like that time I got published on GameStop at age 17, or that one year I made next-to-no-effort YouTube videos (relatively) early on in the site's life, or that "Proto-Blog" I did before starting The Land of Obscusion. I really don't consider myself all that special, so I don't find much point in writing about my past as a fan of stuff, because (in the grand scheme of things) I'm not really all that different from most people. My love of writing about obscure & forgotten stuff isn't all that different from stuff other people love doing; it's just a difference in specificity of the subject itself. However, this is one of those exceptions, because this is truly something that's honestly rather unique about me, when compared to other English-speaking anime fans. Considering where I live, how long I've been into anime as an earnest fan, & how little anyone really cares about him in English-speaking fandom, there should be no feasible reason why I am such a fan of Masami Kurumada. And, indeed, it often feels like I am utterly alone in that regard, because while there are English-speaking "Saint Seiya fans" who have been anime fans for much longer than me (& are much more notable & cooler than me, in every way)... I did not become a fan like they did, it's why I have always referred to myself as a "Masami Kurumada fan", and it's why I went as far as dedicate an entire year of this blog to a single mangaka for his 50th Anniversary.