It's been a long while since the last volume of Demo Disc; three months shy of a full year, in fact! Not just that, but it's also been two years since we last looked at any Shonen Jump anime pilots, something which I'm honestly running out of. In fact, excluding the Kochikame pilot that Tatsunoko made back in 1985, which looks to have essentially become a lost anime, there are only eight Jump pilots left for me to cover, and they all come from 2002 & later. Therefore, let's get half of those out of the way with this 19th volume of Demo Disc, and see what 2002 to 2005 offered in terms of first-time-ever looks of hot Jump manga properties!
The fifth touring event that Shonen Jump ever had was Jump Super Anime Tour 2002, four years after the previous one in 1998. Whereas the previous tour was nothing but pilots, JSAT 2002 only had one, which ran alongside new specials for Hikaru no Go & The Prince of Tennis. However, this pilot would be notable in that it was first one to be made for a manga that ran in Monthly Shonen Jump, instead of the more synonymous Weekly Jump. Debuting at the start of 2000, Kousuke Masuda's Gag Manga Biyori/A Perfect Day for Gag Manga was a series of comical manga shorts that would appear in Monthly Jump right up until its final issue in June of 2007, before being one of the handful of manga that would carry over into the magazine's successor, Jump Square, that November; it also made a special one-time appearance in Weekly Jump during the interim between magazines. It'd eventually end in 2015, after 15 volumes, before starting a second series, Gag Manga Biyori GB, in Jump Square, which is currently at five volumes. The manga's success would eventually result in four seasons of short anime from 2005 to 2010 done by Artland (Seasons 1 & 2) & Studio Deen (Seasons 3 & 4), as well as even some stage plays from 2015 to 2018, but it really all starts here with this late 2002 anime pilot, animated by Tokyo Kids & Kishousha, so let's see what acted as the creamy filling to this JSAT anime sandwich.
The 12-minute pilot adapts two main shorts, with a smattering of micro-shorts in between. First is "A Cold Signing", which is about Saki Ushiyama, a potential new idol singer who can't get anyone to want to sign her new single, so her label forces her manager to put her in a one-day contest with another new signee, Bururu-san, in order to see who can get more autographs. Second is "Satan", in which a school student named Hajime Miyahara tries to summon Satan in order to get vengeance on a radio show that accidentally read his real name before reading the embarrassing pen name he used for a joke card he sent to the show. Unfortunately, Satan gets stuck in the floor during the summoning, resulting in only his upper head (just above the eyes) being fully summoned, which pisses off Miyahara & his grandfather to no end. Bookending the pilot are a live-action intro & outro featuring gaijin talent "portraying" Kousuke Masuda & his (alleged) Monthly Jump editor, Colin Smith.
Gag Manga Biyori is an anime series that I'd absolutely love to cover here on the blog, but there's one major problem: It's absolute sheer insanity that I feel is impossible to truly convey in words. For example, that intro/outro pairing sees the live-action talent voiced over by Japanese actors, though you can just make out the (possibly?) English they're actually saying at points, while Masuda is played by a woman, and asks to be called "Suzy" for short; in real life, Masuda is a man. Meanwhile, "A Cold Signing" sounds silly but rather straightforward in the description, but it's all the little details that really sell it, like the fact that the autograph signing is by a baseball game being played at a park, Saki's single is absolutely terrible, her manager explains that the song's writer lives in a swamp, Bururu-san looks like a humanoid monster, the manager literally sends a child flying for not taking his offer to get an autograph, and just too many other gags to count. You see, Gag Manga Biyori isn't simply an absurdist comedy, or a manzai comedy, or a visual-focused comedy, or a violent slapstick comedy... It's all of them & more. Because of the fact that it's a series of comedic shorts, Masuda is truly able to make a gag manga that can literally be anything he wants it to be on any basis, though there are recurring bits & characters. This pilot manages to carry that kind of madcap insanity over, and sometimes the gags come so fast that you almost want to rewatch a short, because you might have missed one, because you're still reacting to a previous one. Gag Manga Biyori is truly something that has to be seen to be believed, because explaining it does it no justice.
As for the pilot on a visual level, it's honestly rather interesting. Rather than traditionally "adapt" the manga into animation, the pilot instead aims to look very much like the manga, right down to it being all in black-&-white for the shorts; "Suzy" Masuda even complains about this at the end, because she was expecting color. However, there is still proper animation being done, resulting in an interesting visual style which almost looks like it's just a manga panel when still, only for it to start animating properly when moving; it's honestly rather effective. That being said, the pilot also has no problem tossing in other live-action elements, like old stock footage or for making a scene appropriately creepy. However, despite being animated at completely different studios than where the later TV adaptations would be done, this pilot was still directed by comedy anime legend Akitaro Daichi, who would return for the later anime seasons. However however, it's likely that the real star of direction would be Hiroshi Nagahama, who is credited as "Episode Director", which likely means that he was the person more directly involved in leading this pilot, while Daichi more or less oversaw his work; the same would be done between the two with Jubei-chan 2: The Counter Attack of Siberia Yagyu in 2004. Nagahama would go on to become the director of Mushi-shi, Detroit Metal City, Flowers of Evil, & the Uzumaki anime currently in production, though he would also direct the quick OP animation for Gag Manga Biyori's first season, & would direct one of the episodes for the second season. In fact, the promos shown so far for Uzumaki feature a very similar "manga, but animated" visual style as the pilot for Gag Manga Biyori; Nagahama has come full circle, in a sense (pun fully intended).
In the end, the Gag Manga Biyori pilot is exactly what I was expecting from it, and that's nothing but high praise for me. Seriously, if you're a fan of weird & wild gag series, then I implore you to check out both this pilot & the later four seasons of anime, because it's a riot.
JSAT 2003 would see no anime pilots, instead only offering specials for Naruto (which did see official English release, but only in Australia) & The Prince of Tennis, so instead we move on to the following year. Instead of the Jump Super Anime Tour, however, we now have the very first Jump Festa Anime Tour, naming itself after the yearly Jump Festa events that had started up back in 1999 & still continue on to this day. However, though the tour uses the actual year, the event uses the next year, so while this was Jump Festa Anime Tour 2004, the event was Jump Festa 2005; confused yet? Alongside another Naruto special (which actually managed to see release in North America!), three anime pilots were produced (four, if you count the "pilot footage" for Onmyou Taisenki, which had already debuted on TV at this point), but we'll be taking a look at what are easily the two most notable ones. First up is Bleach: Memories in the Rain (not to be confused with the 2006 movie, Memories of Nobody), which is honestly rather vague in how much of a "pilot" it really is. For one, it's done by the same exact staff as that of the TV anime that debuted that same year over at Pierrot, right down to having Noriyuki Abe direct (& Shiro Sagisu compose the music), very much like what happened with the Ninku "pilot" in late 1994; in fact, Noriyuki Abe directed both shows! Second, it's completely possible that many viewers didn't actually see this "pilot" until after the TV anime had already debuted early that October, as these anime tours happen from September to November of their respective year. However, I would still technically classify this as a "pilot", if only because it likely was produced prior to (or, at least, alongside) the first episodes of the TV series, and there's the fact that supporting character Kon is voiced here by original creator Tite Kubo, instead of the TV anime's Mitsuaki Madono. But enough about semantics, how's this "pilot"?
Ichigo Kurosaki is a 15-year old student who's been able to see ghosts for as long as he can remember. He's also a part-time Shinigami, a warrior who fights & kills beings called Hollows, evil spirits that roam the Earth in search of the next human it wishes to kill. On the sixth anniversary of his mother's death, Ichigo & his family head to her grave to honor her life, but on the way there Ichigo gets sidetracked to speak to Rukia, the Shinigami who gave him his powers & keeps watch over him. On his way back to his family, however, Ichigo sees an image of his mother, only to eventually find out that it was all a ploy by Grand Fisher, a powerful Hollow that wishes to devour Ichigo's two little sisters... And is the thing that killed his mother six years prior, as she was protecting Ichigo from being killed by Fisher.
For those familiar with Bleach, then this will sound immediately familiar. That's because Memories in the Rain adapts Chapters 18 to 25 of the manga, which would then be re-adapted into Episodes 8 & 9 of the TV series, the former of which is titled "June 17, Memories in the Rain". In fact, it is possible that footage from this pilot was re-used for the TV series, though that'd require seeing if the key animators are the same between the two for those specific episodes & this pilot. However, while the two adaptations do share obvious similarities when it comes to the plot of this story, the pilot is much more strictly focused on just the story of Ichigo, his mother Masaki, & Grand Fisher. The TV series features secondary character Eikichiro Saido getting involved with the story, mainly in an attempt to bring Rukia back to their home of Soul Society, while (the closest thing to a) mascot character Kon is actually set up & given importance early on. In comparison, the pilot excises Eikichiro's part of the story entirely, while Kon literally just comes from out of nowhere to help out when needed; also, this results in Tite Kubo himself only having two short lines, barely making a cameo. This results in Memories in the Rain being solely about Ichigo's guilt over feeling responsible for his mother's death, & the revenge he wishes to achieve by killing Grand Fisher on his own.
In the end, though, that results in a very strong pilot, & an excellent introduction to Bleach, especially in its early days. Sure, the pilot doesn't give any real introduction into what exactly Shinigami & Hollows are, or how Ichigo got his Shinigami powers, but none of that really matters in the long run for this production. What we do get is a well told story about a teenager having the chance to right a wrong he felt he had committed, one that resulted in his mother's death, and we see that Ichigo is able to keep his emotions in check just enough to force Grand Fisher into retreat. Also, Ichigo's father later explains to his son that he shouldn't blame himself for something his mother willingly did to protect her oldest child. The animation seen here is very good, Shiro Sagisu's score remains just excellent, the voice cast all do well in what was likely their first time with their respective roles (& Kubo sounded decent enough for his quick cameo), & overall Memories in the Rain is just a really good 30-minute pilot; plus, we get a teaser for the Soul Society Arc after the credits, focusing on the 13 Gotei Captains. Unfortunately, however, it doesn't exactly feel like an essential thing to watch for Bleach fans, seeing as the TV series not only tells the same part of the story early on, but does so in a more expansive way, likely even using the same exact animation at points. Still, if you want a more Ichigo-focused take on this part of Bleach, then Memories in the Rain does so swimmingly.
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| I'm using an old fansub for this source, so this is likely not the same logo seen in the original Japanese. |
However, whereas Bleach's pilot is one of dubious distinction, that isn't the case at all with the other JFAT 2004 pilot we'll be looking at here! Debuting in mid-2002, Eyeshield 21 by writer Riichiro Inagaki & artist Yusuke Murata would go on to do what one might think was impossible: Create a manga about American football that'd become a massive hit. Running for seven years before ending in mid-2009 after 37 volumes, Eyeshield 21 wouldn't see a TV anime adaptation until the Spring of 2005, with animation duties coming from Gallop. In comparison, Eyeshield 21: The Phantom Golden Bowl, based on an original screenplay by Inagaki himself, is a true-blue Jump anime pilot, with animation duties coming from Production I.G., direction by Tamaki Nakatsu, & music by Kenji Kawai & Shin Iwashina, none of which would be involved with Gallop's production (unless you want to count I.G. doing "finish animation" as being a "major" part); plus, the voice cast is completely different. This is the kind of pilot I love to see, so let's check it out & see what Production I.G. brought to the table prior to passing the ball to Gallop.
After having been knocked out of the upcoming Kanto Tournament for Japanese high school american football teams, the Deimon Devil Bats receive a mysterious flyer for the "Golden Bowl", as it takes place during Golden Week, which will pit the Devil Bats against the Uraharajuku Boarders, who were knocked out in the second round, with the winner seemingly gaining entry into the Kanto Tournament. However, the fact that such a team has been chosen as the Devil Bats' opposition, combined with the fact that the match is literally the next day, makes club manager Mamori Anezaki suspicious about how legit this match really is. Regardless, though, the game does indeed happen, though with a unique twist: It's played on an asphalt "field" in the middle of downtown Tokyo. Still, with giant defensive lineman Kurita, expert long pass catcher Monta, the devious quarterback Hiruma, & their secret speed star Sena (known publicly only as "Eyeshield 21", due to his # & visor), the Devil Bats might be able to win this game, regardless of its legitimacy.
The Phantom Golden Bowl fits a bit of a unique hole in the grand scheme of Eyeshield 21 in that it's essentially a "filler", but could theoretically still happen & be canon... If the events matched up better. You see, a lot of talk is brought up about the Kanto Tournament, & the Uraharajuku Boarders don't actually qualify for it, but that doesn't actually happen until much later in the series, while the very end of this pilot actually explains how exactly Hiruma managed to rent out Tokyo Tower in order to test out new prospective applicants for the team. Unfortunately, while the Tokyo Tower event does happen in the original story, it's relatively early on (Chapters 31 & 32 in the manga, Episode 14 in the TV anime), which makes the plot of this pilot a bit of a self-contradictory one; you'd think Inagaki himself would have found a way to better slip this story in. Still, what we get here remains a lot of fun, and since Inagaki wrote the script it does feel accurate to the style & feel of an Eyeshield 21 story, with Uraharajuku's Gairo having an appropriately silly but understandable way of relating his side-job as a DJ to how he can guess what his opponent will do on the field. Also, the "street football" concept of the match itself does introduce a neat wrinkle for the first half, which is that everyone on the Devil Bats is afraid of hurting themselves or their opponents by going all out on the asphalt; Hiruma's the only exception, but he walks around casually with machine guns & rocket launchers.
Production-wise, I can't help but compare this pilot to another Jump pilot that Production I.G. made, which would be One Piece's pilot from 1998. In that regard, The Phantom Golden Bowl doesn't really stack up against that pilot, but it is admittedly a bit of an unfair comparison. When taken on its own, this pilot is still a fun time & very much worth a watch for fans of Eyeshield 21, though the music by Kawai & Iwashina is fitting, if a bit unmemorable. Luckily, the voice cast all do a great job, whether it's Romi Park's Sena, Masato Amada's Kurita, Yuji Ueda's Monta, or Fumihiko Tachiki's Gairo. However, the star of this pilot is easily Shinichiro Miki, who plays the wild & cocky Hiruma absolutely perfectly. Also, kind of surprisingly so, the Hiruma in this pilot is an absolute potty mouth, dropping F-bombs when describing all manner of people or situations, and while most fansubs of this era (i.e. the 00s) had a penchant for "spicing up" the translation more than necessary, this is one of those rare instances where dropping a ton of F-bombs into the subs was actually true to the source. Beyond that, Eyeshield 21: The Phantom Golden Bowl isn't one of the greatest Jump pilots out there, but it's still a fun time to be had.
Finally, in regards to Gallop's later TV series, I know that it's generally not well regarded by fans of the manga, but I absolutely loved watching the 52 episodes that Sentai Filmworks released a little over a decade ago, so you won't find me saying much bad about it.
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| Finally, a title splash that isn't simply a black backdrop! |
JFAT 2005 (for Jump Festa 2006, of course) shrunk things back down to just three offerings, with only one pilot. Alongside new specials for Bleach & Eyeshield 21, there was Gintama ~Everything is Important at the Beginning, So It's Best to Stretch a Little~, a pilot for the manga by Hideaki Sorachi that would run from 2003 to 2019 for a total of 77 volumes. However, we once again have a "pilot" of dubious nature, as while this does predate the later TV anime adaptation in April of 2006 by a few months, this "pilot" is produced by literally the same exact staff at Sunrise & cast as that of the TV series. Therefore, this is more like the Ninku & Bleach "pilots" in that it's really more of an advertisement for the upcoming TV anime adaptation, instead of a look at what could have been, ala Eyeshield 21, Kochikame, or any of the JSAT 1998 pilots. But, hey, beggars can't be choosers, right? Plus, this does still definitively predate the TV anime by all accounts, so it's got that over Bleach's "pilot".
It's the Age of the Samurai in Japan... Or, at least it was 20 years ago. Even since the Amanto arrived from space, Edo has become a place where the samurai are now nothing more than a minority. Anyway, the trio of Gintoki, Shinpachi, & Kagura (a.k.a. Odd Jobs Gin) head over to the park to celebrate the cherry blossom's falling with Shin's sister Otae, only for their lunch to be interrupted by the Shinsengumi, who want their spot for themselves, since it's the best spot for viewing the cherry blossoms. The two groups agree to decide who gets the spot via a trio of Jan-Ken-Pon games, which involve the loser having to protect themselves against the winner's attack by grabbing a helmet in time... only for all of those games to go badly in an instant. However, their games are interrupted by Zura ("It's not Zura, it's Katsura!"), one of the members of the anti-government Joui faction, who has managed to "acquire" a giant mobile suit that's totally no Zaku, boy(! No Zaku!), and it's up to Gintoki to put a stop to Zura ("It's Katsura!!!").
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| It's Gintama, so I can't really best showcase it with a single image. ("It's Mobile Suit Katsura!!!!!!!") |
Simply put, the Gintama anime pilot is the Gintama anime as we would come to know it as, nothing more & nothing less... And that's perfectly fine by me. In terms of if this is an adaptation or an original plot, it's actually the former, but unlike Bleach's pilot would not be re-adapted & actually does act as a proper "special" episode of the later TV series! Specifically, this pilot adapts Chapter 17 of the manga, only with minor changes & the addition of Zura's ("It's Katsura's!!!!") whole involvement with the mobile suit, which was obviously only possible because Sunrise was doing the animation; this kind of reference would happen repeatedly in the TV series. Not just that, but Episode 125 of the TV series would be a "best of" recap episode, and would actually include this pilot as part of the recap, making this the first time a Jump pilot would actually be directly referenced in the later TV series. On the whole, though, it's Gintama, which means that it's filled with so many gags, jokes, punchlines, & visual references that it's kind of hard to properly describe, so I guess I'll just stick to just listing some of my favorites: Gintoki being caught sleeping at the very beginning, ruining his "grand" anime debut (& calling out everyone who thought he'd sound different); Otae straight up destroying Shinsengumi Captain Kondo in Jan-Ken-Pon, despite Kondo getting his helmet on in time; a drunken Hijikata mistaking Gintoki for the giant dog Sadaharu... and constantly losing to "rock"; Katsura ("It's Zura!!!!!!!") obeying the rules of Jan-Ken-Pon, despite piloting a giant robot; & a post-credits Class 3-Z Ginpachi-sensei skit where Kondo accidentally outs himself as having stolen a girl's flute.
As mentioned, this pilot was done using the exact same staff & cast as the later TV series, so we have Shinji Takamatsu directing, who had previously made his mark on this mix of slice-of-life/gag anime by directing the large majority of the anime adaptation of Kochikame (Episodes 72 to 313, specifically), and Gintama really does feel like a true contemporary to that, being able to switch between completely absurd & silly to serious & dramatic on a dime (though Gintama's switches are much more diametric). While Takamatsu would only wind up directing the first 100 episodes of Gintama's TV series, he would stay on as both supervisor & sound director (i.e. he directed the actual voice recordings), so his touch would remain all throughout. Combined with Akatsuki Yamatoya's on-point script, Audio Highs' generally lighthearted musical score, Shinji Takeuchi's character designs accurately carrying over Hideaki Sorachi's original style (& Sorachi's gorilla avatar does make a cameo in this special), & the absolutely perfect voice cast, the Gintama anime pilot is just a ton of fun to be had; Kunio Okawara was even brought in to design Katsura's mobile suit. Sure, it's not a pilot in the way I would prefer (Gin's joke about not having the voice people had expected would be even better today if he actually did have a different seiyuu for this pilot), but when it's one as constantly enjoyable as this to watch, I can't really complain much, if at all.
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This brings us to the end of yet another volume of Demo Disc! With every single one of these I do, I continue to reach what seems like a looming end of the road, & not just because I simply want to cover each letter of the alphabet (I'm down to just E, H, K, U, V, W, Y, & Z now!). I think I definitely have enough stuff in the waiting to make it there, but the trick is that most of it at this point are single-series volumes, and not a lot of these multi-series volumes. But now's not the time to be thinking about that, so I'll see all of you this winter for the next volume of Demo Disc, where we finally break into the 20s!
Gag Manga Biyori © Shueisha
Bleach: Memories in the Rain © Tite Kubo/Shueisha・TV Tokyo・Dentsu・Pierrot
Eyeshield 21: The Phantom Golden Bowl © Shueisha
Gintama ~Everything is Important at the Beginning, So It's Best to Stretch a Little~ © Hideaki Sorachi/Shueisha
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