Eighteen(?!) Older Manga That Deserve License Rescues Part 2

In Part 1, I mentioned how the concept for a license rescue for manga is much rarer than it is for anime because of the sheer amount of manga that gets produced, resulting in publishers putting more focus towards licensing new works over rescuing older titles. However, that's only part of it, as there's another big reason to consider, and it's arguably even more important. You see, part of the appeal in an anime license rescue is that it can not only be released in better quality than before (an HD remaster, improved audio quality, a better translation, etc.), but it can also take up less shelf space than before, because of improvements in physical media storage, from the VHS to the DVD to the Blu-Ray (&, in certain instances, the SD-BD). It's just harder to do that for manga, as a page is a page is a page, with the best you can do being re-releasing an older manga via omnibuses, but even that can only help with shelf space so much. Sure, there is more merit to buying manga digitally, and there are tons of series today that are only available in that fashion, but physical will always be something to consider for a manga license rescue, and in that circumstance there's really not much else that can be done, in that regard, outside of small little changes, at least when compared to anime.

OK, that looks to be a good length for an intro, so let's move into Part 2 of this list of eighteen manga that I & others have felt deserve a new release in English. For this part we'll be looking at six manga that I've personally chosen, prior to going to Twitter for picks. Amusingly enough, none of my picks actually were brought up by others, so is that a bad thing... or a good thing? I'll let you decide!

We're starting things off with a series that I don't believe I've ever really brought up on the blog before, and by a creator I've never actually covered before: Kaori Ozaki. Making her debut back in 1993 & seeing her first serialization with 1995's Piano no Ue no Tenshi, Ozaki would see her biggest success with her second serilization, 1999's Meteor Methuselah, which ran in Shinshokan's shojo magazine Wings until 2011, lasting 11 volumes; Wings is a bi-monthly magazine, as in "every two months", hence why it took so long. The manga tells the story of Machika, the granddaughter of Zol the Grim Reaper, a bounty hunter with a nigh-perfect success rate... except for one man, Rain, who's nicknamed "Methuselah" for his seeming immortality. After Zol's passing, Machika takes up her grandfather's weapon & hunts after Rain, only for the two to eventually fall in love with each other, made all the more difficult due to Rain being repeatedly hunted after by Yuca, an old acquaintance who has the opposite power, i.e. Yuca can never stay dead, instead reincarnating into a new form every time. Simply put, Ozaki created a perfect fusion of shonen & shojo sensibilities, giving readers well done action sequences, a fittingly dramatic plot, characters you care about (even for the villains, to an extent!), & an absolutely perfect love story between Machika & Rain; plus, Ozaki's artwork is just outstanding. It is, without a doubt, one of the best manga I have ever come across by complete & total accident.

TokyoPop would license & release Meteor Methuselah starting in mid-2004, though with a change in title to the more direct Immortal Rain; personally, either one is good. The first six volumes came out across both 2004 & 2005, but because of the manga's slow release schedule in Wings this already meant that TokyoPop had literally caught up, as Volume 7 wouldn't come out in Japan until later that December. Over 2006 & 2007 TokyoPop managed to release Volumes 7 & 8, once again catching up to Japan, but in the end that wound up being the end of it all for Immortal Rain's English releases. As mentioned in Part 1, Kodansha pulling its licenses away from TokyoPop in mid-2009 dealt a major blow to the publisher, and while TokyoPop would still continue to release books up through 2010, which we'll get to later in this part, Immortal Rain was still nowhere to be found. That being said, it's not like there would have been much more for TokyoPop to release, as only Volumes 9 & 10 (plus a side-story prequel book all about Zol) were out in Japan by the time Stu Levy put his baby into hibernation, so it would never have been finished anyway; part of me feels it was better to not continue releasing, only to stop at the penultimate volume.

Ever since then, there's been good news & bad news, in regards to Kaori Ozaki. The good news is that we've continued to see English releases for her later works, as Vertical has released both 2013's The Gods Lie & 2017's The Golden Sheep, so it's awesome that Ozaki still gets some love over here; both are Kodansha titles, so that makes sense. The bad news, though, is that Immortal Rain has yet to be given a second chance, and I remember Denpa founder Ed Chavez, back during his time at Vertical, consistently indicating to me that it wasn't likely to ever get a re-release, despite Ozaki's other titles apparently doing well. My only guess would be that something was up with Shinshokan, possibly due to a partnership it started with Digital Manga Publishing in 2009, though that looks to be long dead by now. Regardless, I desperately hope things can change one day, because while I do know that those last three volumes (& even the Zol side story) have since been fan translated, I'd rather much prefer to finally read the end of Immortal Rain the same way I started it.

While I'm sure this was almost exclusively due to Shueisha forcing things onto the publisher it co-owned, I really do miss the days when Viz would release more than just the biggest work(s) for a successful mangaka, especially when they were series that, for lack of a better word, "failed". I liked seeing titles like Zombie.Powder, Waq Waq, & Gun Blaze West get released alongside their more successful brethren (Bleach, Hoshin Engi, & Rurouni Kenshin). In fact, I wish we still got those kinds of titles, because it's always interesting to see where something went wrong with a successful creator, or if a short-lived idea was actually really good & just wasn't given the chance to succeed. Where's Satoru Noda's Supinamarada to go alongside Golden Kamuy? Why haven't we gotten Ayatsuri Sakon or Cyborg Grandpa G for the Takeshi Obata fans? Instead of simply waiting forever for the next volume of Hunter x Hunter, why not release Level E or even Ten de Showaru Cupid? Kazuki Takahashi had been in manga for a good while before creating Yu-Gi-Oh!, so how about a release of Ten'nen-iro Danji Buray? My Hero Academia is one of the biggest things right now, but it's done bugger all for Oumagadoki Zoo, while Barrage only managed to happen because it was Viz's first ever simulpublication. However, the one that astounds me the most is that Viz has not yet expanded out beyond JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, ever since it blew up in popularity, despite the fact that it's actually how Viz first got started with Hirohiko Araki.

Before the upcoming debut of the Stone Ocean anime on Netflix, before Viz's current hardcover releases of Parts 1-5, before the start of David Production's recurring TV anime adaptation of JoJo, before A.P.P.P.'s infamous movie adaptation of Phantom Blood, before Viz's initial manga release of Stardust Crusaders, before Super Techno Arts' release of the original Stardust Crusaders OVAs, before Capcom's CPS3-powered 2D fighting games, and even before JoJo's debut all the way back in 1987... There was Baoh the Visitor. Debuting back in late 1984, Hirohiko Araki's second ever serialization told the story of Ikuro, who was experimented on by the mysterious Doress Laboratory & given the ability to transform into Baoh, a monstrous creature, as he now fights against Doress agents out to kill him, and to protect Sumire, a psychic girl who freed him from captivity. Despite only lasting two volumes before cancellation, Baoh has maintained a cult following because it was just really well done & still told a complete story. In fact, Baoh was the first work of Araki's to ever see release in English, as Viz had initially released it across eight "floppies" (i.e. comic-style single issues with flipped artwork), before compiling everything across two trade paperbacks way back in 1995. Even then, though, Viz still advertised it on the back cover as "From the Creator of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure", despite it having never come over in any way up to that point.

Considering how successful JoJo (& Araki) has since become in North America, after a ton of prior attempts, I am honestly shocked that Viz still hasn't given Baoh a similar hardcover omnibus release as that of JoJo. It's stuff like this, and the lack of releases for what I mentioned earlier, that really feel like the authors themselves don't matter as much as "the brand" does to a manga publisher, and that's just wrong. Would something like Baoh sell anywhere near as much as JoJo? No, I highly doubt it, but it is annoying to essentially get told that all we should care about is JoJo, and that nothing else by Araki is worth our attention; let the manga fans decide that for themselves.

Up next we have another title Viz had put out back in the 90s, and one of my all-time favorite manga. Debuting back in 1991 with the fantasy series Loan Knight, Akihito Yoshitomi wouldn't see notoriety until late 1996, when he debuted Eat-Man in the pages of Media Works' Monthly Dengeki Comic Gao!. A mostly episodic series that follows the various jobs of Bolt Crank, "The World's Greatest Mercenary", Eat-Man would run until 2003 for 19 volumes, and today is considered to be Yoshitomi's "life's work". Personally, I'd argue that Bolt (& his ability to reproduce through his body any inorganic material that he eats, usually a weapon of some sort) is right up there with Mushi-shi's Ginko, Mononoke's Medicine Seller, the eponymous Vampire Hunter D, & even Zatoichi as one of the most iconic wandering drifters in modern Japanese fiction. Yoshitomi would eventually return to Bolt with Eat-Man: The Main Dish, a sequel that ran in Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Sirius from 2014 to 2019 for an additional 6 volumes; Bolt even appeared in a special crossover chapter of Yoshitomi's medical drama manga Ray, which he made after finishing up the original Eat-Man.

Within a year or two of the manga's debut, it already got licensed for English release by Viz, which also initially released it via 11 floppies, before later compiling what it had released into two traditional volumes that came out in late 1998. Viz even managed to get iconic comic book artist Jim Lee to draw cover art for Volume 2, which would later be included in greyscale in the Japanese Volume 6, along with a bonus sketch & some words of appreciation for the manga from Lee himself; even Rob Liefeld was apparently enough of a fan of Eat-Man to trace over it for a comic! Unfortunately, all Viz would ever release of Eat-Man are those first two volumes, and while the stories told in them are great, there are just so many other stories starring Bolt that we never got, and even the second (manga-accurate) anime series, Eat-Man '98, only ever covered as far as Volume 4. Without a doubt, I have wished for Eat-Man to be given a second chance in North America, and while I am happy to see both anime series be given that opportunity via Discotek (& various streaming partners), there's still the manga. To celebrate the debut of The Main Dish, Kodansha re-released the original series via a 10-volume "Complete Edition", and that's the version that I'd love to see get licensed one day; naturally, I'd love to have The Main Dish as well, but this entry is for the OG series. Likewise, I'd be all for a license rescue of Ray, which ADV Manga released the first 3 volumes for (out of 7, 8 if you include Ray+).

So in Part 1 I brought up ComicsOne, the short-lived but highly ambitious publisher that seemingly felt that nothing was beyond them, whether it was licensing old manga, super-long manga, Korean manhwa, Chinese manhua, or even releasing certain titles digital-only... all in the early 00s! One of the titles that probably best exemplifies ComicsOne's seeming "no kill like overkill" mantra was Iron Wok Jan!, a cooking manga by Shinji Saijyo (with cook/author Keiko Oyama acting as an advisor) that ran in Weekly Shonen Champion from 1995 to 2000 for 27 volumes. Yes, this ran alongside titles like Apocalypse Zero & Grappler Baki during that time in Champion's life where the mantra was to just go wild, crazy, & insane, with the end result being that Iron Wok Jan! is possibly the most untamed, uninhibited, & rowdy cooking manga ever created. The manga stars Jan Akiyama, a cocky, inconsiderate, & ferociously talented chef who joins the Chinese restaurant owned by the Gobancho Family, the grandfather of which was best friends/rivals with Jan's grandfather. After an initial episodic start, the manga goes straight into various tournaments, with the focus being on ultra-high-concept Chinese cooking, featuring food using anything from rice to chicken to shark to even ostrich! And while Jan starts off as an incorrigible bastard... Wait, no, he remains the uncouth, brash, & egotistical jackass he started off as, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Jan Akiyama is that rare main character who remains a jerk the entire time, but at the same time he's so entrancing that you can't fully hate him. Plus, Saijyo definitely has "his type", as pretty much every woman has rather large chests, that seemingly grow over the course of the manga, and they never get in the way of any cooking anything. Iron Wok Jan! is completely unhinged, and I love it.

So ComicsOne started releasing Iron Wok Jan! in 2002, putting out books on a bimonthly basis consistently until Volume 11 in early 2005, when ComicsOne pretty much went out a business. However, some of that publisher's catalog was rescued by DrMaster, which had been the company that actually printed ComicsOne's releases the entire time, and IWJ! was one of those titles saved from cancellation. DrMaster would then continue releasing Saijyo's manga on a bimonthly basis until the final two volumes, which came out every three months, finishing the entire manga at the end of 2007. DrMaster itself would then go out of business in 2009, leaving numerous titles (including some inherited from ComicsOne) unfinished. In the years since, some word came out that translating Iron Wok Jan! was sheer insanity, due to all of the Chinese cooking terminology, and almost never had a consistent translation team throughout its entire run, as both translators & editors kept entering & leaving; it sounds like a miracle that it even had a consistent & complete release schedule. However, it was pertinent that DrMaster continue releasing the series, because it's also been admitted numerous times that Iron Wok Jan! was DrMaster's best-selling title, with some even saying that it alone was what was keeping the publisher in business! In fact, I remember once talking to Ed Chavez, shortly after he first joined Vertical, about potentially licensing Iron Wok Jan! R: The Summit Operations, a 10-volume sequel series that ran from 2006 to 2008, and he actually admitted that he'd honestly consider it, because he had known that it did well for DrMaster; I can only imagine that it never happened, because it would likely be another piece of translation hell.

In the 14 years since DrMaster released that last volume of Iron Wok Jan!, not only has there been The Summit Operations, but Shinji Saijyo has also made two other series. There's the mahjong-themed spin-off Iron Tile Jan!, which ran in Takeshobo's Monthly Kindai Mahjong across two series from 2015 to 2019 for a combined 10 volumes, and then there's the next-generation sequel, Iron Wok Jan! 2nd, which ran in Kadokawa's Monthly Dragon Age F from 2017 to 2020 for 7 volumes, plus a currently-running spin-off series starring Gogyo, one of Jan's tournament rivals. I have since long accepted that we'll likely never see any of these later titles licensed for English release, but I'd love for the OG series to be given a new release, even if it's just re-using the old ComicsOne/DrMaster translation (with at least a look over for polishing), because this is a cooking manga that's truly unlike any other. If you thought Food Wars was crazy, then you ain't read Iron Wok Jan!.

The last third of Part 2 features a pair of manga that mean a lot to me, so much so that I've actually reviewed both on the blog in the past. So first up is Kazushi Hagiwara's Bastard!!, which debuted in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump back in 1988 & told the story of Dark Schneider, an egotistical & powerful wizard who once tried to take over the post-apocalyptic-turned-fantasy Earth 50 years prior, only to be stopped & sealed within the body of a child named Lucien Renlen. Fifteen years later, D.S.'s compatriots have reunited & started conquering the land, so it's decided to release the seal on D.S., with hopes that he'd be willing to help the people, rather than conquer them. Luckily for everyone, Lucien's good nature manages to keep D.S. just in check enough, especially since the beautiful cleric Tia Noto Yoko is able to reliably punish D.S. for any of his overtly-violent & sexual transgressions... of which he has a habit of doing constantly. Despite having a turbulent year-long run in Jump, Bastard!! was not simply cancelled in 1989, but rather was allowed to continue running on a quarterly basis in the pages of Jump's Seasonal Specials from 1990 to 1996, when the Specials came to an end. It then returned to Jump proper from 1997 to 2000 on an irregular basis before getting moved over again, this time to seinen magazine Ultra Jump, where it ran irregularly from 2000 to 2010, before going on a hiatus that remains in effect to this day, with the manga currently stalled at 27 volumes.

Simply put, because I went super deep into it last year, Bastard!! starts off as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign done by a munch of hardcore heavy metal aficionados, before eventually switching over to being about humanity having to survive the revived war between Heaven & Hell itself, all starring a pompous & sexually deviant main character who eventually becomes so utterly powerful that "Godlike" might not even be a proper term. Also, literally every character, place, & most spells are music references of some sort, though most are modified just enough (even in the original Japanese) to not be quite as blatant as they are in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Anyway, Viz first licensed Bastard!! in 2001, with an initial flipped trade paperback release of the first five volumes coming out in 2002 & 2003. Right before Volume 5 came out, however, Viz then started re-releasing the series in "unflipped" format across 2003 & 2004, before sticking with only unflipped books from then on out starting with Volume 6 in early 2005. After Volume 14's release in early 2007, though, Viz slowed the releases down from quarterly to just twice-a-year, and after Volume 19's release in mid-2009 simply stopped releasing Bastard!! at all, though Volume 20 was originally scheduled for release in early 2010 & even had cover art shown. Yes, much like Reborn! in Part 1, Bastard!! was another victim of Viz's quiet cancellations after managing to free itself from Shueisha-enforced licenses & releases, likely due to low sales.

Despite all of that, though, I can definitely say that Bastard!! is, without a doubt, the manga that I'd love to see be given a second chance in English, as it truly is just that damn excellent of a series. That said, the only publisher that could realistically make sense would be Seven Seas' 18+-only Ghost Ship label, though said label looks to be content with being only for highly sexualized fanservice manga, and not for anything as action-heavy as Bastard!!, despite it being just as highly sexual at points. In Japan there have been a couple of re-releases of Bastard!!, but I'd say just use the 2014 bunkoban release, which looks to collect Volumes 1-18 across 9 books (with the first two or so featuring completely redone artwork), while Volumes 19-27 could be released as two-in-one omnibuses, and (if legally feasible) maybe Volume 27 could be combined with 2000's Unused・Revised Edition, Hagiwara's self-published collection of the unfinished part of the story that Volume 27 started expanding on.

Finally, we end Part 2 with what I would have to assume was blatantly obvious to anyone who's been reading this blog, or follows me on Twitter, for at least some some period of time. Yep, it's a Masami Kurumada manga! However, seeing as Viz still offers its old Knights of the Zodiac-branded release of Saint Seiya digitally, & Seven Seas is still releasing Saint Seiya: Saintia Sho, that leaves only one other title for consideration, so let's welcome back TokyoPop! When DiC announced that it had licensed the original Saint Seiya anime back in 2002, it didn't take long for Viz to get involved with the manga, while ADV Films worked out a deal to not only release DiC's KotZ on DVD, but also put out an uncut release for Seiya TV. However, this left good ol' TokyoPop without any way to potentially take advantage of the seemingly potential hit that DiC was hoping to have in the works (*cough... coughcough*), so it did what seemed like the most logical idea: License a different Masami Kurumada manga! So at Anime Expo 2003, alongside the announcement of titles like Fruits Basket, GetBackers, & even Cyborg 009, TokyoPop announced that it had licensed B't X ("Beat X"), which ran in Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Shonen Ace from 1994 to 2000 for 16 volumes. With the lower left corner emblazoned with "From the Creator of Knights of the Zodiac", TokyoPop released Volume 1 of B't X on January 6, 2004, apparently beating Viz to market by two weeks, as Volume 1 of Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya didn't come out until January 21, 2004.

Unfortunately, by the time either manga saw release in English, DiC's Knights of the Zodiac had already long been moved to a 12:30 AM "death slot" on Cartoon Network's SVES programming block. Oops.

Still, maybe there was hope yet for B't X, so TokyoPop continued on with a bimonthly schedule, though the left corner promotion was dropped after Volume 4, until Volume 8's release (the halfway point) in early 2005. Volume 9 would then come out three months later, but after that TokyoPop moved B't X over to a twice-per-year schedule, slowly trudging out Volumes 10-15 across 2006, 2007, & 2008. After that, there was essentially nothing but silence on the B't X front, & for all intents & purposes the story of Teppei Takamiya trying to rescue his brother Kotaro from the mysterious Machine Empire with the help of a living machine known as X looked to have been cancelled, right before the final volume saw release. Here's where I come in, as I used to peruse TokyoPop's forums during this time, and there was a thread where staff would answer questions about releases & the like. I asked every now & then about B't X's final volume, and over time the staff admitted that they were not sure if it would ever see release. They said that "only 8 people bought B't X" and that coworkers were even making bets as to whether or not it'll ever get finished. Then, from out a nowhere, in late 2010 (after a two-year hiatus) came a solicitation for Volume 16 of B't X for that November. Sure, it was now priced at a mark-up of $12.99, instead of the usual $9.99, but somehow B't X managed to get finished, and ironically enough it came out the same exact year Viz had released the final volume of Saint Seiya, which came out earlier that February; TokyoPop would then go into extreme hibernation a handful of months later. To this day, I wonder if my (not quite, but sort of) incessant asking about B't X on the TokyoPop forums actually helped get it finished.

Despite me putting B't X on this list, I know that it will NEVER be given a second chance, as even Seven Seas' release of Saintia Sho looks to have been a bomb. Ironically, B't X editor Lianne Sentar now works at Seven Seas, though only as a marketing manager. The best chance B't X had at a re-release was in 2014/2015, when Viz licensed a bunch of old TokyoPop titles for its digital-only Viz Select label, which included some titles that came from Kadokawa Shoten, like D.N. Angel, Trinity Blood, Judas, & Fate/stay night. However, Viz seemingly actively avoided license rescuing B't X, despite the fact that, unlike a good amount of Viz Select's catalog (which literally just released what TokyoPop put out, & nothing more), it was actually complete. If that doesn't say it all, then I don't know what would.

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Dang it, now I'm sad. This marks the end of Part 2 of the manga license rescue list, but while this would normally mark the end of such a list, I still have yet another six manga that were picked by others over on Twitter. So check back next week as go into overtime & return with more Viz, TokyoPop, & even ADV, plus a couple of other publishers we haven't covered yet!