Still, even though I started all of this by talking about "the streams", I'm going to start everything off with "the discs", because last year was all about the latter, so I think the former should see some focus again.
In November of 2004, Geneon announced that it would be entering a distribution agreement with Toei Animation that would result in Toei effectively entering the North American anime industry by way of its own US division. These first DVDs would start showing up in March of 2005, and Toei tried something interesting out by releasing the first two volumes simultaneously (at least, that's what info I can find indicates). Unfortunately, when anime fans started buying these DVDs, they found some pretty glaring problems with them, like episodes not having proper chapter breaks, the DVDs being programmed to return to the menu after an episode finishes (rather than go straight to the next episode, like usual), cheap-looking menus across the board, dubs which didn't really excel in any way, & subtitles that were a little too "localized" for fans' tastes; also, Toei effectively didn't market the releases at all, so no one really knew about them. After 2005, no more DVDs were coming out, and in 2006, Geneon announced that the deal was over. It's a shame, too, because Toei had a couple of really interesting anime that it had chosen, and one of them was Air Master.
Based on the 1997-2006 manga by Yokusaru Shibata that ran in Young Animal (i.e. it ran in the same magazine as Berserk), the Air Master anime aired in mid-2003 for 27 episodes & followed the life of Maki Aikawa, a former gymnast-turned-street fighter who also goes to high school. Unlike most action leads you'd expect, however, Maki was not much like the hot-blooded & impetuous male leads you'd think of, but rather was a quiet & extremely tall girl who simply found life when getting into intense battles; otherwise, she's more or less very timid & kept to herself. What really got people watching Air Master, though, were the fights, which were a combination of hard-hitting punches, fast-flying kicks, gut-busting slams, & (true to Maki's gymnast origins) a verticality that you just don't tend to see in fighting shows like this. What helped make Air Master's fights so amazing to see in action was that the anime was directed by Daisuke Nishio, the man behind the entire original Dragon Ball anime (both "OG" & Z), and starting the following year would be the man directing the first two entries in the Pretty Cure franchise. Unfortunately, Toei would only get three DVDs out, covering the first 12 episodes, while the fourth did get solicited but never saw release; no one knows how far the dub actually went, either.
Now, yes, if you are truly curious, Air Master is currently still streaming in full over at CrunchyRoll, but this series definitely deserves more than a botched DVD release, followed by being a catalog streaming offering. To this day, the show is still considered one of the finest action anime ever produced by those who have seen it, and it should be given the proper treatment it deserves.
Today, Hirohiko Araki is finally being celebrated in North America as the great mangaka that he always has been, with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure being given gorgeous hardcover manga releases, the anime currently airing on Toonami, & you can be sure that anytime someone even hints at JoJo online, you'll then see someone going, "Wait, was that a m***** f*****' JoJo's reference?!" Still, this was something that took literally decades of attempting to finally happen, what with Viz's prior manga release of Part 3: Stardust Crusaders during the 00s, Super Techno Arts' DVD release of the 90s/00s OVA adaptation of said Part earlier that decade, Capcom's releases of its CPS-III-powered 2D fighting games in the arcades, PS1, & Dreamcast during the late 90s & early 00s, & finally the earliest of any attempts to bring Araki over to North America. Yes, way back in the year 1995 two companies tried giving this iconic creator a chance over here, though not with the title you'd expect.
Though I doubt that these two efforts were done in a collaborative effort, both Viz & AnimEigo wound up licensing & releasing Baoh the Visitor, the series Araki did right before JoJo, via manga & anime, respectively, in the same year. While Viz's release did seem to be with the intent of moving on to the more iconic work if sales were good, as the release did mention JoJo, AnimEigo's release seemed to be nothing more than being part of a larger licensing deal the company had with Toho at the time. Anyway, Robert Woodhead's company would release the Baoh OVA on both VHS & LD back in the day, complete with both dub & sub, where it would essentially just come & go, becoming mostly forgotten to time. Then, in early 2003, AnimEigo would re-release Baoh via dual-audio DVD, and since then the OVA has gone on to become a strong cult-classic. Sure, some of it is memetic due to the rather silly & awkward dub ("Baoh has a laser cannon!"), but at the same time the OVA is simply an excellent adaptation of a wild, crazy, & hyper-violent ride of a story by Araki, one that remains in your mind long after having watched it; if anything, the manga's quick cancellation only helped grow the legend of Baoh. Today, the manga is long out-of-print (I've long felt that Viz should seriously give the manga a new single book release, one that matches the hardcover treatment its younger sibling is getting), while AnimEigo's DVD goes for downright insane prices, making it nigh-impossible to get a hold of for anything resembling a reasonable price. Robert Woodhead has admitted that he finds Baoh's current popularity confusing, but you never know... It could be a potential HD remastered Blu-Ray Kickstarter for the company one day; it'd certainly be a quick success, I'm sure.
Yoshiki Takaya's Bio-Booster Armor Guyver debuted back in 1985 & is still technically running irregularly to this day (did you know that the most recent tankouban actually came out in 2016?!), and quickly became an iconic manga equivalent to your dark superhero stories. Naturally, with that kind of popularity will come anime adaptations. The most well known ones would be the 12-episode OVA series from 1989-1992, which saw release on VHS by U.S. Renditions & later DVD by Manga Entertainment, & the 26-episode TV anime from 2005-2006, which was first released by ADV Films & then later re-released by FUNimation. Before either of those, though, was a hyper-violent "theatrical animation" (though really an single OVA) from 1986 titled Guyver: Out of Standardrized (no, that's not a typo; it was written like that in Japan), which only ever saw a VHS release by U.S. Renditions... Sort of.
You see, one of the people who started with one of the earliest "strictly anime" distributors in North America was Ken Iyadomi, who worked as a translator for titles like Gunbuster & Dangaioh. Not long after, though, Iyadomi would start his own company, L.A. Hero, though he would still work heavily with Renditions. At the same time, Renditions launched its own secondary label, Dark Image Entertainment, which would release anime meant for much older audiences, & this original Guyver OVA, given the more reasonable subtitle of Out of Control, was one of those titles. Whether or not this specific OVA was technically licensed by U.S. Renditions or L.A. Hero isn't quite known, because when Manga bought up L.A. Hero, it would release some of its titles, like the later Guyver OVA series, the Devilman OVA, & Macross II, but this specific gore-filled OVA was not one of those re-released anime. Admittedly, a new release would likely be tricky, since it hasn't had any sort of remaster in Japan, VHS & LD-only over there, and there wasn't even an English dub made for this, but it is sad to see that there remains a Guyver anime out there that was never given the DVD treatment. English-released anime on VHS isn't going to remain in "good" quality (or at least as good as it can be) for much longer, no matter how well the care given to it is, and unlike many others, this at least is a part of an iconic franchise.
When it comes to anime that tends to get ignored in North America, the World Masterpiece Theater series is one of the last major ones out there, at least in terms of being available on home video. While it technically started with the original 1969 anime adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Dororo (half-way through, at that), it quickly moved over to being all about adaptations of legendary non-Japanese novels, usually European, and would run continually across 29 series until early 1997, and it would return for a three-year revival from 2007 to 2009. One of the most beloved entries in the series over in Japan is 1975's The Dog of Flanders, based on the 1872 novel by "Ouida" Marie Louise de la Ramée, which remains a standard that gets rerun to this very day. The story of Nello & his beloved dog Patrasche is such a beloved anime in Japan that in 1997 it was actually remade into a theatrical form, though still animated by Nippon Animaton & directed by Yoshio Kuroda, who directed the original TV anime. Interestingly enough, it was this movie remake that actually saw release on DVD in North America, and it was both given a slight push, while also being screwed over at the same time.
Pioneer Animation, which would later become the (dearly departed) Geneon Entertainment, decided in 2000 to give the movie a try, hoping to take advantage of the then-recent live-action movie that Warner Brothers had produced. However, in an apparent attempt to market the movie more for children, Pioneer decided to excise roughly 10 minutes of footage, mostly violence against children & animals, which not only wound up ruining the flow & emotional impact of the story, which was also the main complaint about what Warner did for the live-action movie, but it also resulted in the DVD being dub-only, effectively making it super unappealing to most anime fans. Even with the dub utilizing (smaller name) Hollywood actors like Brady Bluhm, Robert Loggia, & Sean Young, the movie was just as neutered as the newest movie, making it lacking for fans of the book, and not being able to include the original Japanese version made it lacking as an anime DVD. Still, the movie itself (or at least in unedited form) is still considered just as classic as the 1975 TV series, and today it'd be very easy to include both the edited dub & the original Japanese version with English subtitles. While the novel has lost a lot of its importance around most of the world, a classic remains a classic, and The Dog of Flanders should be given a proper attempt.
During the 90s, it was much more common for anime companies to license OVAs for English release than TV series, and the reason why was simple: VHS (& LD). Simply put, it was cheaper & more cost-efficient, for both the company & consumer, to release OVAs & movies that only need a single VHS tape (or maybe three or four, max), especially since most anime VHS releases only held two episodes; more tape length = more costs for the company to recoup. As time went on, though, DVD became the new standard, and with that it become more cost-effective to release TV series, especially once boxsets became the "new" new standard. What I'm trying to get at is that there are a lot of very good OVAs that have now gone out-of-print & could really use a new release, even if getting a hold of said old VHS or (ideally) DVD isn't exactly hard or expensive today. A great example of that would be the Sukeban Deka OVA from 1991, which ADV Films first released on VHS & LD in the 90s, before later releasing a dual-audio DVD in the early 00s.
Admittedly, this pick is a bit of an emergency one, as one that I had originally planned to include (Twilight of the Cokroaches) was recently license rescued by Disoctek Media. Still, this was such an enjoyable recent watch of mine, due to Ani-Gamers' Evan Minto acting as my Anime Secret Santa, so if I didn't include it here, it would have gotten included in a future list, eventually. Simply put, this OVA is an absolutely joy of old-school 70s style mixed with the execution of an 80s OVA (it was still early in the 90s, so it counts), and the fact that it was done by a studio as small name as Sido Limited & directed by Takeshi Hirota, who rarely works on anime, simply makes this OVA also double as a perfect showcase of how you don't always need big name studios or directors to make something impressive. This really is an anime that should be given a nice HD remaster, because I'm sure it would absolutely gorgeous, but sadly there hasn't been any sort of new release for it since the Japanese DVD in 2000, so who knows if it will ever happen, especially since re-releasing it as is would be kind of pointless, as ADV's DVD still goes for fairly cheap today. Still, should this ever see a new release, I'd give it my complete recommendation.
Finally, we end this first half with the other unfinished anime from that Toei/Geneon distribution deal; the third anime, Interlude, was a short OVA & got fully released on one DVD. Admittedly, while Air Master was a series that was likely to be fully released had the DVDs not gotten cancelled, as that likely would have only been six or seven DVDs to finish, I highly doubt that Slam Dunk would have managed to see all 20 single DVDs, at least, that would have been required to cover all 101 episodes. Anyway, while basketball is one of the most popular sports in the United States, it's generally considered a niche in Japan, with the only time people there tend to give it any attention is when it comes to high school competition; there is NBA Japan, but it's not a major player, unlike in China or the USA. Still, when you look at a list of the most successful & influential manga to come out of Shonen Jump, Takehiko Inoue's Slam Dunk is always up there near the top. Inspired by Inoue's days playing B-Ball with high school friends, the manga was one of the biggest titles during Jump's Golden Age, right up there with Dragon Ball. In fact, Slam Dunk's finale is generally what's considered the end of Jump's most successful period, as the magazine lost roughly 2,000,000 readers after Inoue put an end to his manga, which was about four times the number of readers Jump lost the year prior with Dragon Ball's ending. Not just that, but when Slam Dunk got re-released last year in Japan, complete with new cover art for each volume drawn by Inoue, it sold so well that a 28 year old manga became the 4th Best Selling series for 2018, behind only Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, & One Piece.
So, naturally, an anime adaptation was a no-brainer, & while it didn't cover the entire manga, stopping at around Volume 22 (of 31), it did run for 101 episodes from 1993 to 1996, as well as receiving four anime-original movies. Therefore, it was completely understandable that Toei wanted to give the anime a go in North America; after all, it's an out-&-out classic & is based around a mega-popular American sport. Unfortunately, a combination of a lack of any real marketing, poorly produced DVDs, & releasing a 101-episode sports anime in the mid-00s via 5-episode DVD singles effectively killed any chance Slam Dunk had at selling, and those chances were "slim to none", to begin with. In the end, only 4 volumes, which totaled 20 episodes, saw release, and today some of them seem to go for ridiculous prices on the secondhand market. That's not the end of this tale, though, because Slam Dunk was given a second chance on DVD a decade later... Only to be handled in its own brain dead fashion.
In mid-2015, Cinedigm/New Video Group license rescued the anime for DVD release & streaming. At first, it sounded great: A DVD boxset containing Episodes 1-14 for $19.99. At that style, it'd take seven or eight boxsets, which wasn't ideal, but overall still reasonable. But then the DVD set came out, and people found out that it was a dub-only release, even though it was solicited as being dual-audio. Now, to be fair, Cinedigm technically never released an anime via dual-audio, as its Digimon & Beyblade sets were dub-only, & Saint Seiya TV & Mononoke were both sub-only. That being said, the first two were edited dubs, so it made sense that they'd be dub-only, while Slam Dunk's dub was originally released alongside the Japanese audio. To no surprise, Cinedigm's boxset likely bombed hard, because nothing else ever came out, so the re-release wound up releasing LESS OF THE ANIME than the original release; if I'm not mistaken, that's a first in the entire history of the license rescue lists here. Now, technically, I don't believe that Cinedigm's license of Slam Dunk has actually expired yet, as those 14 dubbed episodes are still currently available via streaming over at CrunchyRoll, & Toei does offer the entire show subbed, but I kind of don't want to count the existence of this latest DVD release & streaming option, because it might be a better release in a purely technical fashion (i.e. the DVDs work as fans expect), but it's actually worse than Toei's original DVDs from any sort of actual value perspective.
To finish, the Slam Dunk anime desperately needs a proper home video release here in North America, one that includes all of the dub (who knows if it went beyond Episode 20) and all 101 episodes (plus the four movies) subtitled, in a properly executed DVD or Blu-Ray release. There was actually a Blu-Ray release in Japan back across 2014 & 2015, too, so the potential for an excellent release might be there.
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And that brings an end to Part 1 of this list. Check back next week for Part 2, where we take a look at anime (plus a live-action production that's too insane to ignore) that had once been available via the modern magic of streaming, but are now nowhere to be found (legally, that is). If nothing else, it should be a good, sobering reminder that the way anime fans consume the medium nowadays isn't perfect, by any means.
Air Master © 2003 Yokusaru Shibata/Hakusensha・VAP・NTV・Toei Animation
Baoh © 1989 Shueisha/Toho
Guyver: Out of Control © 1987 Yoshiki Takaya/Tokuma Shoten/G.P.
The Dog of Flanders © The Dog of Flanders Prod. (© Nippon Animation Co., Ltd. in Japan)
Sukeban Deka © 1991 Shinji Wada/Hakusensha/J.H. Project
Slam Dunk © Takehiko Inoue・I.T. Planning・Toei Animation
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