Over the past decade+, this blog has played home to eleven different lists ("listicles", if you prefer) that gather together a wide variety of "older anime that deserve license rescues", some of which have since indeed been given that new lease on life, while others will likely never be given such a luxury. However, The Land of Obscusion is not a blog aimed exclusively at anime, though it is the main focus, so what about manga? Why have I never done a list of this type for manga? Simply put, it's because manga license rescues, let alone manga re-releases in general (i.e. not simply a reprint), are a rare breed in North America. While there is indeed an incalculable amount of anime out there over the course of history, it still pales in comparison to sheer inconceivable amount of manga that has been produced; quite simply, it's like comparing the size of the Moon to the Sun. There's just always so much new manga being produced that publishers will give priority to license towards, so whenever we do get a manga rescue by a different publisher or even a new release by the same publisher, it is both extremely rare & usually reserved for only the most notable of properties. Unlike when I make an anime license rescue list, I can't make such a list for manga with the idea that any of them could realistically happen, even if only hypothetically.
Still, I figure I should give sequential art from Japan previously licensed a spotlight, even if only once, and in doing so I asked people on Twitter to give me their own picks, to go alongside a selection of my own. However, what wound up happening was that I received so many picks that I decided to make this (possibly one-&-only) manga license rescue list super-sized, so instead of the standard two-part list of twelve this will be a three-part list of eighteen! Starting things off is the first half of what was chosen by others over on Twitter, and we begin with a series that, quite honestly, I am amazed is not still readily available, even if only digitally.
Ask any manga fan who's been around since the late 90s & early-to-mid 00s, and pretty much every single one of them will admit that they have "complicated" feelings when it comes to TokyoPop. I mean, this was the publisher that literally helped bring manga to the masses, shifting things over from comic book-style "floppies" to trade paperback "volumes" that were modeled off of the original Japanese tankouban (only larger), right down to requiring people to read from right to left, & changed the place to buy them from comic stores to bookstores like Barnes & Noble and (the long defunct) Borders. However, TokyoPop was also infamous for straight up licensing way too much crap, flooding bookstore shelves with numerous manga that just wasn't going to sell (not helped by all the other publishers putting titles out, many of which didn't last long), delivering translations that wildly varied in quality, books that often felt the cheapest, quality-wise, and I won't even bother to get into the OEL manga stuff, because otherwise this will never end. Regardless, TokyoPop was a big name during this time, and part of that was due to its extremely fruitful relationship with Kodansha, similar to how Viz Media was the home for just about any manga by Shueisha & Shogakukan. This finally brings us to GetBackers.
Running from 1999 to 2007 in Weekly Shonen Magazine across 39 volumes, GetBackers was the creation of artist Rando Ayamine & writer Yuya Aoki, one of EIGHT DIFFERENT PEN NAMES for Shin Kibayashi, best known as co-creator of Kindaichi Case Files (under the pen name Seimaru Amagi). GetBackers follows Ban Mido & Ginji Amano, a pair of superpowered lads who run the eponymous "GetBackers" recovery service around Shinjuku, and the manga tells twelve jobs of theirs (plus five "interludes"), usually revolving around recovering an item of some sort for their client, and fighting against anyone who gets in their way. In particular, Ginji has electric powers, while Ban has super-strong hands & an "Evil Eye" that hexes his foes. TokyoPop started releasing GetBackers in early 2004, just a few months prior to when ADV Films started releasing the 49-episode TV anime adaptation, which in turn made the series a bit of a hot property for a little bit; at least, I remember it as such when I first joined anime/manga fandom. In fact, it was so hot that TokyoPop actually wound up releasing it on a monthly basis for a few volumes during the Summer of 2005!
However, eventually all things cool down, and the same happened to GetBackers. In mid-2008, after 25 volumes, TokyoPop tried doing a sort of soft reboot by restarting the numbering & calling the remaining 14 volumes GetBackers: Infinity Fortress, after a recurring iconic location in the manga. This was obviously an attempt to reinvigorate sales, as this happened right as an origin story flashback arc began. Unfortunately, only two more volumes would ever come out in late 2008 (a third was scheduled & even got a cover, but I can't tell if it actually came out), and in mid-2009 Kodansha pulled all of its manga licenses away from TokyoPop, which eventually forced TokyoPop into hibernation for a long time. While Kodansha would eventually finish up series like Samurai Deeper Kyo & Rave Master, which each only had 3-4 volumes to go, the same would not be true for GetBackers, leaving the final 11-12 volumes unreleased in English to this very day. Ironically, the "Infinity Fortress" label would never actually reach the final arc that saw everyone return to that location one last time. However, I will admit that I am really surprised that Kodansha has yet to release GetBackers again, even as a digital-only option. In 2019, the publisher worked with Comixology to release all of Initial D, including translating the last 15 volumes that TokyoPop never got to, and I think that the same should be done for GetBackers. While it's nearing an entire decade since the last time the anime saw a physical release, Sentai is still offering it via streaming over at Hidive, so it's never really left the market. Meanwhile, the manga is just an extremely solid & fun action romp, with memorably unique characters (who can ever forget Dr. Jackal?), an interesting hook, cool powers & mysteries, and lots (& I mean LOTS) of spikey hair. It's time in the limelight may have long passed, but I think it's time to "get back what shouldn't be gone".
Up next is a manga that's more infamous than famous, and even then it's primarily because of the two-episode OVA adaptation from 1996, directed by Toshihiro Hirano, that originally came out in 2000 by Media Blasters. In Japan this is known as Kakugo no Susume, which actually is a rather multi-layered title, since it can be translated as either "Kakugo's Recommendations", since the lead's name is Kakugo, or "The Recommendation of Preparedness", since Kakugo's name is done with the literal kanji that mean "Preparedness", and it still actually makes perfect sense, thematically. Understandably, when MB licensed it for English release, it simply went with the completely original name of Apocalypse Zero, a blatant fusion of both the iconic war film Apocalypse Now & the Zero power suit that Kakugo dons in battle. The manga by Takayuki Kawaguchi details the battles fought by Kakugo Hagakure, a teenage warrior who fights to protect what little beauty is left in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, after both nuclear war & environmental pollution. Specifically, Kakugo fights against the forces of his own older brother Harara, who commands a legion of horrific beings known as "Tactical Fiends", and has gone down a path of destruction that's resulted in Harara becoming one that transcends ever gender, having somehow transformed his body into something that's effectively female.
Apocalypse Zero ran in Akita Shoten's Weekly Shonen Champion from 1994 to 1996 for 11 volumes, during the era in which the magazine could be best described as "breaking all boundaries of decency when it came to manga for young boys". Therefore, the manga is absurdly violent, gleefully grotesque, has no qualms with sexual visuals, and quite honestly makes fellow Champion series Grappler Baki look rather tame, in comparison. For many, especially those who watched the OVA, Apocalypse Zero is nothing more than Z-grade schlock that has nothing to it but a sick & perverse obsession with gore & violence, though said reputation likely helped sell the OVA to a good enough amount to warrant MB licensing the manga for release. However, Yamaguchi is a mangaka who's smarter than that, as beating beneath that violent skin is a pure & honestly loving heart for the human spirit, one that believes that humanity can rise up from the worst that's thrust in front of them. In short, Tactical Fiends are people who have given in to their own sick wants & desires, which Harara corrupts into an even more perverse & horrific form, while Kakugo represents people who stay true to pure & honest ideals, and no matter the challenge can rise up & succeed; it's just that Kakugo does so by killing Tactical Fiends rather violently. It's definitely not for everyone, but I personally feel that the Apocalypse Zero manga is one of the most misunderstood titles that ever saw release in North America, so it's not all that surprising that MB only ever released the first six volumes across 2005 & 2006, before going on infinite hiatus. To be fair, most of MB's manga failed to really sell, outside of (surprisingly enough) Eiken, though not for a lack of quality; if anything, I'd argue that the stuff MB was releasing was too soon for this market.
Do I seriously ever expect to see the Apocalypse Zero manga get license rescued? Not really, but there was a 5-volume re-release in Japan back in 2007, so that at least makes for a somewhat less daunting direction to go in.
OK, here's something that was chosen for me to include by someone over on Twitter that I am honestly only familiar with by name & nothing else. However, it does allow me to bring up ADV Manga, a short-lived division of ADV Films that best exemplifies just how wild things were during the 00s manga boom in North America. On the one hand, ADV was one of the giants of the anime industry, so opening up a manga label in 2003 honestly made sense, and many of the titles it licensed were related to anime it had put out, like Azumanga Daioh, Chrno Crusade, Cromartie High School, Those Who Hunt Elves, and (the subject of this entry) Steel Angel Kurumi. Unfortunately, ADV quickly just became yet another manga publisher in an industry that was just filled with too many at the time, putting out way too many titles, resulting in poor sales (with very few exceptions), and many titles never being completed, with some only ever seing as few as just a literal volume or two released! I mean, ADV thought it was actually smart to announce 37 new manga licenses all at once in early 2004!! By 2006, most of ADV Manga's titles went on infinite hiatus, with TokyoPop & the then-new Yen Press taking over publishing duties for certain titles, and the manga division eventually just died out completely before ADV itself went into the current zombie status it's had ever since 2008.
But what about Steel Angel Kurumi? It's the professional debut of the duo of Hitoshi Ota & Terumasa Shichinohe, better known by the shared pen name of Kaishaku, who had first started making doujin manga back in 1993. As for Kurumi, it debuted in late 1997 in Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Ace Next magazine, before moving over to Monthly Shonen Ace in 2002 & then ending in 2003, after 11 volumes. It follows Nakahito Kagura, a teenage boy living in the Taisho era who comes across a lifelike doll called a "Steel Angel" after running into a mad scientist's house to escape some bullies, only to accidentally activate the doll, named Kurumi, with an inadvertent kiss. From what I can tell, it's really at this point that the manga & later two-season anime adaptation diverge greatly, though both look to involve time travel (or, at the very least, take place across different eras), a mysterious "Academy" that wants Kurumi destroyed, and the requisite harem hijinks for Nakahito. Unlike some other titles, ADV Manga actually wound up releasing almost all of the Steel Angel Kurumi manga over the course of one year from late 2003 to late 2004, putting out 9 of the 11 total volumes, though this apparently only happened because ADV was releasing the series on a nearly-monthly basis!!! See what I mean about some manga publishers just heaving out new books in an unsustainable way during this time?
I'd say that the Steel Angel Kurumi manga came out at pretty much the only real time it would have made sense, but in actuality it kind of came out too early. Kaishaku went on to see a lot of attention during the mid-to-late 00s over here, though namely via anime adaptations (Kannazuki no Miko/Destiny of the Shrine Maiden, Magical Meow Meow Taruto, UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie, & crossover title Shattered Angels), so while ADV did indeed do it first with the Kurumi anime, it may have been too soon to put the manga out, though considering how short-lived ADV Manga was it's not like there really was a choice in the matter. Today, Kaishaku is more or less a forgotten mangaka duo, so I highly doubt their first series will ever get a second chance, but there's at least one person out there on Twitter that hopes it might, one day.
Up next for "manga publishers that didn't last long" is ComicsOne, which was only around from 1999 to 2005, but you certainly can't blame this publisher for not having any ambition. Apparently, ComicsOne must have followed the motto of "there's no kill like overkill", because it licensed & released classic manga like Bride of Deimos (from 1974), absurdly long manga like Wild 7 (from 1969 & 48 VOLUMES!!) & Ginga Legend Weed (60 VOLUMES!!!), more recent titles like Dark Edge, Tsukihime, & the Please Friends series, and also licensed some Korean manhwa & Chinese manhua. In fact, ComicOne was one of the earliest publishers to offer digital manga releases, in this case via Adobe Digital eBooks, and even released certain titles as digital-only, like Bass Master Ranmaru, Loan Wolf, or Pachinko Player; these eBook releases even outlived their publisher for a good number of years. Another thing ComicsOne was seemingly big on was releasing various works by celebrated mangaka, like Buichi Terasawa (Karasutengu Kabuto & Goku Midnight Eye), Junji Ito (Tomie), the duo of Kazuo Koike & Ryoichi Ikegami (Wounded Man), & the focus of this entry, Yoshikazu "Yas" Yasuhiko.
While Yas is known primarily for his work with anime, & in particular the Gundam franchise, he's also an accomplished mangaka, debuting way back in 1979 with Arion. Today, Yas' most notable manga released in English would easily be Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, his complete & expanded retelling of the original anime series, but ComicsOne went in a different direction 20 years ago. You see, another thing Yas likes is making manga based on or inspired by actual historical events & figures, with ComicsOne releasing two of those titles. One was 1997's Jesus, based on the life of the Son of God himself (& only released digitally in English), while the other is the pick chosen for this list, 1995's Joan. However, rather than being a biographical account of the life of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc in French), it instead takes place after she was burned by the stake & follows Emil, a young woman during the later years of the Hundred Years' War who's raised as a man by Robert de Baudricourt, the same man who started Joan's rise up the military ranks. The manga sees Emil follow a very similar path as that of Joan, only now with a more direct foe in the form of Dauphi, though I must admit that I have no familiarity with this manga. Still, at only three volumes long ComicsOne managed to release all of it in full-color physical books, so props there.
Really, what's likely holding Joan (or any of Yas' similarly history-based manga) up from being license rescued is the simple fact that it comes from the book publishing division of NHK, Japan's equivalent to PBS or the BBC. Simply put, it comes from a place that manga publishers over here don't really think about when licensing titles, as I believe TokyoPop is the only other publisher to ever license manga from NHK. Could Joan possibly get rescued one day? Maybe, but it'd require a publisher to think outside of the box a little to do so. As for what happened to ComicsOne, we'll cover that in Part 2 of this list...
Back to Media Blasters for our next outsourced pick, and probably one of the more curious manga the company released, if only because of how little actually came out. Debuting back in late 1992 in the pages of Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan, Twin Signal is Sachi Oshimizu's most iconic work, running until late 2001 for 19 volumes, with the last year seeing it moved over to Monthly G Fantasy magazine. It focuses on the eponymous Signal, a "Human Form Robot" (a.k.a. an android) created by Prof. Shinnosuke Otoi, though a mistake occurred when Signal's programming was being written & applied. Otoi's grandson Nobuhiko sneezed during the process, and for whatever reason this now results in Signal transforming from his young adult form to a "chibi" form, and vice versa, whenever Nobuhiko sneezes; this "Chibi Signal" is also immensely hyperactive & loves chocolate. While the manga apparently started off as a gag series, it eventually moved into more of a mix of comedy & serious storytelling, especially once other "A-Numbers", like Signal, were introduced, along with Prof. Otoi having rival designers who wish to take out Signal with their own HFRs, and the manga starts looking more into the idea of if humanlike robots would be treated as truly "human" by the world, at large.
However, in North America, Twin Signal is more known for its three-episode OVA adaptation from 1996, which Media Blasters would then license & release in English on both VHS & (later) dual-audio DVD. Said OVA was highly regarded & beloved by anime fans at the time, so when MB started up a manga division, it only made sense to give the original manga a go in 2006. Interestingly enough, though, the version that MB licensed for release was not the original 19-volume edition by (Square-)Enix, but rather the 11-volume reprint by Asashi Sonorama, which meant that MB's releases were 360+-page omnibuses that were honestly a bit of a steal at just an MSRP of $9.99. Well, I should correct myself & say that MB released an omnibus, because all we ever got in English was the first book; a second book was scheduled for late 2006, but never came out. Unfortunately, Twin Signal came out right as MB's initial experiment with manga was coming to an end (i.e. 2005 & 2006), and while the company did continue to put out the occasional manga in later years (like Akihabara@DEEP & Doujin Work), that original slate of titles was not heard from ever again... Except for Eiken, but even that didn't get finished in the end. Unless Sachi Oshimizu's manga had done amazing numbers right away, it was effectively dead on arrival over here, which is sad to see for any manga release.
As it is today, Twin Signal is more or less a forgotten gem of a prior age of anime fandom, but while the OVA could potentially see a re-release one day (It's technically under Aniplex today, so it's a hung jury on that), the same likely can not be said for the manga.
Finally, we end Part 1 with a pick that, quite honestly, was bound to get brought up by someone at some point, so I might as well make sure it gets included here. Debuting back in 2004 in Weekly Shonen Jump, Katekyo/Home Tutor Hitman Reborn! by Akira Amano would go on to become one of the most successful manga in the magazine's history to be created by a woman, running until 2012 across 42 volumes & receiving a 203-episode TV anime adaptation from 2006 to 2010, among other things. The series stars Tsunayoshi Sawada, a milktoast junior high student who finds out that he's actually the great-great-great grandson of the first head of the Vongola Family Mafia, and that he's in line to become Vongola X. To help train (& protect) Tsuna, he's been sent Reborn, an infant who's actually a master hitman for the Vongola, and the series is extremely notable for initially starting off as a pure gag series, as Tsuna has to deal with all sorts of zany circumstances that Reborn puts him through, often resulting in him being shot with a "Dying Will Bullet", which kills Tsuna before being reborn stronger than before to fulfill whatever his dying wish was. Eventually, though, the series moves over to a more action-oriented path, as Tsuna & the friends he's made (which form his "Family") have to take on all manner of foes, who wish to take Tsuna & the Vongola Family out.
Things then get really weird when the cast swap places with their 10-year future selves & to save the future, before eventually dealing with the "curse" that the various infant Arcobaleno, like Reborn himself, have on themselves. Yeah, Reborn! got really weird at points.
Anyway, Viz Media licensed Reborn! in 2006 as part of its Shonen Jump Advanced line, and started putting it out that October. Viz would stick with releasing the manga until July of 2010, when the series stopped seeing release after Volume 16, though the next two volumes were in fact scheduled & even had final cover art shown for their listings. Essentially, around this time Viz seemingly was able break away from being forced to license & release manga that co-owner Shueisha wanted them to do, no matter how poorly they were actually doing sales-wise, and it looks like Reborn! was one of those under-performing series that got the axe. Now, yes, ask just about any hardcore fan of this series (they may not be large in scale in North America, but they are most certainly loud & vocal), and they will all bring up how Viz's translation was not considered a good one to them, which in turn made them feel like it was not worth supporting, but therein lies that old Catch-22: If you don't support it, then it only makes sense that the publisher won't continue releasing it. By the time Viz released Volume 16, Japan was on the verge of releasing Volume 30 (which finished off the "Future Arc" that Viz had just started), and by that point there was still no real idea as to when the manga would be ending, so I honestly can see where Viz was coming from with the decision to stop releasing Reborn!, and I say that as someone who also got burned by Viz's cancellations around this time (wait for Part 2). Personally, I don't think we'll ever see the Reborn! manga get rescued, mainly due to its sheer length which literally matches that of Dragon Ball, but I am glad that someone brought this up when I asked for picks, because now no one can say that I "forgot" to bring this one up.
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This brings an end to Part 1 of this three-part look at 18 manga that I (& others) feel should be given a second chance in North America. As I said, this is just half of the twelve manga that were mentioned to me when I asked for picks, & we'll get to that second half in due time. For Part 2, though, we'll take a look at the six manga that I personally picked for this list. Some of them you can likely guess if you're familiar with my general tastes on this blog, but hopefully I can still surprise you all with at least one of them.
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