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| To be fair, this does look like three guys who are annoyed because they just missed the bus. |
Before we get into the series itself, though, there's some publication & release history to go over, because it's a wee bit confusing & various places online have it wrong. Bus Gamer (pronounced "Biz Gamer", as in "Business") originally debuted sometime in 1999 in the pages of Enix's Monthly Stencil and may have actually been one of the very first manga serialized in the magazine, back when it was originally a quarterly supplement to G-Fantasy magazine (which is where Saiyuki originally ran). However, Bus Gamer actually only appeared on a bimonthly basis once Stencil became its own monthly magazine in 2001, and by the start of 2002 only 11 chapters had come out before it suddenly stopped getting published. While some have guessed that Bus Gamer was a victim of Monthly Stencil being cancelled altogether by Enix, that didn't actually happen until mid-2003. Instead, Bus Gamer's sudden stop was more a circumstance of Kazuya Minekura swapping publishers in early 2002. To keep it simple, Enix was going through a "family squabble" (yes, that's the literal translation for the term used) in 2001, which resulted in various staff establishing the publishers Mag Garden (which Enix actually went to court over, resulting in a settlement) & Ichijinsha (originally Issaisha), but the main focus here is that Kazuya Minekura was one of the managaka who wound up siding with Ichijinsha, more or less ending her association with Enix; this is also why Saiyuki transitioned into Saiyuki Reload. However, prior to all of this, Enix did manage to release a "Volume 1" for Bus Gamer in mid-2001, which included the first eight chapters, as well as produce a promotional anime short for the manga that saw release on VHS sometime in 2001. However, this is only the first half of Bus Gamer's general history!
After Minekura moved over to Ichijinsha, Bus Gamer 1999→2001 - The Pilot Edition would see release in mid-2003, which included all 11 chapters that existed; TokyoPop would later license & release this book in English in mid-2006. Earlier that same year as the TokyoPop release Minekura decided to finally revive Bus Gamer, though instead of simply continuing from where the original run left off at, she instead decided to reboot the entire thing from scratch. Debuting in the fourth-ever issue of the then-new Monthly Comic Rex magazine, the rebooted Bus Gamer would run for eight chapters throughout 2006, before going on hiatus. However, Minekura would actually return to the reboot in early 2008, likely to help hype up the release of Volume 1 for this new run on March 8, though this would only result in three more chapters between January of 2008 & May of 2009, resulting in 11 chapters (again!) before the series went on indefinite hiatus, one that has still been going on to this day due to Minekura's various health issues. Finally, pretty much to help promote the new Volume 1, an anime adaptation of Bus Gamer would debut on March 14, 2008, though instead of being anything remotely like your usual TV anime, this was just a 3-episode weekly run that initially aired on regional UHF channels, making it one of the shortest UHF anime of all time, though it did later air on more widely available networks, like TV Asahi & AT-X; this was essentially a short OVA (each episode even had its own DVD release) that first aired on late-night TV. I feel it's worth bringing this up first because it's definitely a wild little history (seriously, two completely different books both labeled "Bus Gamer Volume 1"?!) & if you were to look online it'd actually be ridiculously incorrect, like stating that there was only one serialized run from 1999 to 2001 & that it ran in the now-defunct Monthly Comic Rex, despite Comic Rex both not even existing back then & also is actually still coming out monthly to this day. So, with all of that out of the way, let's finally get to Bus Gamer itself, starting with The Pilot Edition.
Toki Mishiba, Nobuto Nakajo, & Kazuo Saito are three guys who normally would have absolutely no reason to hang together, but one thing makes them a team: The Bus Game (TokyoPop used "Biz Game", for phonetic's sake). Played by various Tokyo corporations for their own secretive amusement (& perhaps something more...), each company hires a trio of people to represent them in essentially games of one-way capture the flag, where the goal is for the "Away" team to acquire a minidisc from the "Home" team within a certain timeframe, while the "Home" team aims to play defense until time runs out. What data is actually on these minidiscs is irrelevant to the "Business Gamers" themselves, but they're paid well for succeeding on whatever side they're assigned to for a match, which is more or less entirely why Toki, Nobuto, & Kazuo are even playing along. After eight straight wins Team AAA (a.k.a. "No Name"), representing Midou Life, looks to be unstoppable, despite only raking in at #3 on the online leaderboards, but after they hear news of someone from the team they beat in their last game being found mysteriously dead, the trio start to truly wonder what the hell they've gotten themselves into... and they all know that they're way too deep in already to get out.
While the first two chapters of Bus Gamer's run in Monthly Stencil focus more on the mystery of the game itself, we do get some general idea of who our lead trio are come Chapter 3. Toki is a 20-year-old undergrad student who's been slowly accumulating money for unknown purposes, seemingly related to the mysterious disappearance of his parents a few years back, though some panels indicate they were both killed by hanging; he's the most stoic & serious-minded of the trio, with the martial arts skills to match. Nobuto is a 22-year-old undergrad student & seeming playboy who has a past of gang involvement that got him kicked out of high school; he's the most relaxed of the trio, but is downright dangerous with a long pipe. Finally, Kazuo is an 18-year-old high school senior who lives with his adopted family, after losing his parents to a car crash as a toddler; he's the tech whiz of the trio, but isn't much of a fighter. Finally, though not a part of Team AAA, there's Keiko Ichinomiya, a detective for the Tokyo Police Juvenile Dept. who wants to continue investigating a series of mysterious deaths & disappearances of people in their teens & twenties, despite her chief taking her off the case, as they've all been deemed "accidents". She winds up meeting our leads after she & Kazuo have a heated (video game) battle in an arcade... followed by him accidentally revealing a gun he wound up with after the trio's last match. While Ichinomiya doesn't get to do much of anything in the last three chapters she's properly introduced in, her personality is at least given some time to shine.
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| Image is from a fan translation, but sometimes you take what you can get. |
Seeing as this wasn't actually cancelled, but rather simply went on hiatus, it's kind of hard to really judge this first run of Bus Gamer in any "complete" fashion, as the final chapter of the run just has the entire thing simply stop right at the end of a match. Still, there is a more than decent enough to chew on here, and re-reading The Pilot Edition for the first time since TokyoPop released it in English reminds me of why I actually did enjoy the book, despite it being utterly incomplete. Similar to Saiyuki's iconic Sanzo Party, there's a natural rapport between the members of Team AAA that make them fun to see in action, whether it's competing in a match or just interacting in between matches. They're also not just carbon copies of Sanzo's crew, despite some slightly similar character designs, with Toki being the stoic loner who slowly finds himself opening up (just a little) to his teammates, Nobuto's initial relaxed mannerisms slowly revealing himself to be the most careful & attentive of them all, & Kazuo being (more or less) the heart of the group, which also means that he's the most emotional of them all. Sure, Toki can come off a bit like Sanzo (though Toki is much better at anger management), but Nobuto is not exactly like Gojyo (his eye-covering hairdo also helps make him visually distinct), while Kazuo's differences from Goku are subtle enough that they are definitely their own characters; also, Kazuo looks more often like Hakkai than Goku, anyway. Ichinomiya is even amusing in her short time, showing both her dedication to her job, while also showing her more relaxed side, whether that's beating up foes in an arcade fighter featuring Saiyuki characters (we'll come back to this later), or getting downright piss drunk at a beer garden to wash away her anger & immediate self-loathing. Naturally, though, there's also a ton of underlying plot & character beats that are only hinted at here, like Toki's vague past with his twin brother Shigi (which haunts him both awake & asleep) & Nobuto's past as a gang member (when Kazuo's gun is confiscated by Ichinomiya it's indicated that only Nobuto's fingerprints would actually be on police record). Why any of Team AAA actually need the money is purposefully never revealed, not even to each other, though the idea of "How much is a human being actually worth?" is naturally an underlying theme.
As for the story that is told here, it's primarily focused on setting up our characters & the mystery and danger of the Bus Game itself, with only two matches actually being showcased in any real detail. The first (Chapters 6 & 7) follows the standard rules, with Team AAA playing Home in an abandoned building against a trio of experienced fighters, and we get to see our leads actually pushed to some degree as Toki & Nobuto take some injury in their fights, while Kazuo gets to showcase his skills by creating a makeshift switch-activated flash bomb using the fluorescent lights in his room & the generator on the roof. The other fight (Chapters 10 & 11) changes the rules up slightly by giving both teams their own minidiscs & having the fight take place in a public setting, the aforementioned beer garden Ichinomiya is getting drunk at, though the concept of "Home" & "Away" still plays a factor, as Team AAA's Home opponents act as waiters & patrons to sneak attack our leads; naturally, this also results in Ichinomiya demanding a beer from one of the Home "waiters". Beyond that we get moments like the guys being followed & bugged by possible future opponents (one even tries to shove Kazuo in front of a moving truck), a couple of scenes involving a seeming rival team (Team Bug, one of which, Junichi, is the son of the Chief of Police) & small bits of the larger facets behind the Bus Game itself. Beyond members of failed teams seemingly dying after defeat, there's also a mention at one point of entire corporations going bankrupt (likely because of the trade secrets they lost from the game), with Team AAA's Midou Life seemingly being the one that's slowly gobbling up the remnants. For 11 chapters totaling ~230 pages or so of content, Bus Gamer 1999→2001 - The Pilot Edition actually has a decent amount of set up & intrigue behind itself, with a plot that had obviously only just started going but with a lot of potential directions to go in.
Overall, while obviously not for those who want a complete story, I still think the Monthly Stencil run of Bus Gamer remains a fun little read, especially for fans of Saiyuki who want something a little different from that series, but with some touches that will feel familiar. It is admittedly a little weird that TokyoPop even bothered to license & release The Pilot Edition in English, but Saiyuki was a hot title for the company at the time (& they also were releasing Wild Adapter), & I certainly won't complain about a publisher actually trying go beyond a popular mangaka's most successful work(s); makes you wish this kind of thing happened more often today, honestly.
So up next is that promotional anime trailer that Enix produced in 2001. Released on VHS, the 4-shi Goudou/4 Magazine Combination Special Anime Video is a 13-minute collection of promotional trailers (each ~3 minutes long) for four different manga Enix was publishing at the time, each one representing a different magazine: Tokyo Underground by Akinobu Uraku for Monthly Shonen Gangan, E's by Satoru Yuiga for Monthly G-Fantasy, Nightmare Children by Moyamu Fujino (a.k.a. Asa Kuwayoshi) for Monthly Gangan Wing, & (of course) Bus Gamer by Kazuya Minekura for Monthly Stencil; of the four, only Nightmare Children would never receive a "proper" anime adaptation. Amusingly enough, Moyamu Fujino would also leave Enix during that exodus, moving over to Mag Garden, while Gangan Wing would eventually go defunct in 2009, being replaced with Gangan Joker, so this VHS tape kind of became only half as useful as a promotional product, as two of the manga would be no more by the end of that same year, while the two respective magazines said manga each ran in would both be done for by the end of that same decade; I'd say this whole thing was kind of cursed. According to the credits at the very end, all of these trailers were animated by the now defunct Tokyo Kids (Gallery Fake, Toward the Terra TV), and that's actually rather fitting for Bus Gamer, as that studio had previously handled the Saiyuki "Premium" OVA that came out back in 1999 (which was also released by Enix, hence why it's never been licensed or re-released), which results in Bus Gamer's trailer actually looking super similar to the very first Saiyuki anime; they both even share the same person in charge of color design, Sanae Kimura.
As for what's showcased in this trailer, there is a tiny bit of adaptation to be seen with a couple of shots showing the match fought in Chapters 6 & 7, with quick bits of our leads' respective pasts also being given some attention; Kazuo losing his birth parents is framed here with a tiny bit more importance, I feel. The staff for this promo is made up of rather small name talents, like Yusaku Saotome (Prayers, Junk Boy) doing the storyboards & direction, Yoshihiro Watanabe (Haganai, Testament of Sister New Devil) handling the character designs & animation direction, & Minoru Nishida (Mind Game, A Thousand & One Nights) in charge of the backgrounds. Meanwhile, all members of Team AAA are voiced here, with Shinichiro Miki doing well as Toki, Jouji Nakata honestly sounding just a tad too deep for Nobuto, & Yuji Ueda is just fine as Kazuo; of the three, only Miki gets enough time to really shine. Overall, the Bus Gamer anime promo is a neat little curiosity to watch, and it's arguably the best promo of the four on this VHS tape (followed by Tokyo Underground, Nightmare Children, & finally E's, in my opinion), but that's really it. I actually happen to still have a fansubbed version of Bus Gamer's promo on hand (which I totally forgot even happened), so I might as well just include it in its entirety here; I'm usually not for uploading fansubs on this blog, but this is just a short promotional trailer.
So now we move on to the Monthly Comic Rex run for Bus Gamer, which actually starts off by showing how Team AAA first met, namely in that they all responded to a seemingly random postcard in the mail advertising a game in which big money can be made, but with no guarantee of one's safety, & they were the only three who put nothing down on "Why" they needed the money, indicating that none of them want anyone else to know their reasons. The first chapter also introduces Kiryu, a new character who acts as our leads' "supervisor" for the nameless company that they'll be representing; he only appears in the first two chapters, though a similar looking person is seen once or twice in the Monthly Stencil run. We're also given a little more detail regarding the Bus Game itself, namely that the winner's purse compounds with each victory, so while it starts at just 10,000 yen for the first match, it'll be 100,000,000 yen by the 15th (& final) match. By the end of Chapter 2 our trio agree to work together simply because they all want the max prize, despite how different they all are, a reason is given for their "No Name" moniker (they never agreed to a name by Kiryu's deadline, so he just used "AAA"), and we also get out first introduction to Team Bug, with Junichi now being renamed to Junya, pretty much confirming that this is indeed a full reboot that's just starting from the beginning, instead of simply giving backstory to the original run that began in media res; unfortunately, this is literally the only time Team Bug is ever seen in this run.
Continuing on, this reboot shows Team AAA's first two matches, an Away match at an abandoned bowling alley (Chapters 3-6) & a Home match at an elementary school (Chapters 7-10), that latter of which just happens to be the one that Toki & Shigi attended as kids, with Toki's knowledge of an old secret playing a major part in the climax of the match. An interesting rule change for this reboot is seen with the very first match, where Away now not only has to retrieve Home's minidisc, but they also have to hold onto it for the remaining time limit, whereas in the Monthly Stencil run a match ended the moment Away retrieved the minidisc; I imagine the intent was to have later matches maintain tension for the entire time limit. The first match also shows some short interstitials, no more than a panel or two, which give a teensy bit more backstory for our leads, like showcasing how Toki learned to fight, establishing that Nobuto was originally meant to inherit his family's hospital (but his love of bloodshed made him the black sheep, instead), & Kazuo making reference to his "sensei", a nun from the orphanage he lived in after losing his parents. We also actually get to see Shigi in some flashbacks during the second match, though now there's no mention of him being Toki's twin (though a page recapping things in Chapter 11 does establish that they're still brothers), and while it's never brought up in the manga itself Shigi does happen to look remarkably similar to Junya from Team Bug; whether this was intentional or not will just remain a mystery, I guess. Finally, Chapter 11 re-introduces Keiko Ichinomiya but otherwise just shows Team AAA in their "native" environments: Toki jogging until he passes out, Nobuto visiting someone at the hospital but stopping just shy of actually going into their room, & Kazuo being annoyed that his school ran out of yakisoba bread & croquettes for lunch; once again, Kazuo's status as the "normal" one kind of makes him the most mysterious. To be perfectly honest, I can't tell which sudden stop is harsher, Monthly Stencil stopping right at the end of a match or Comic Rex stopping right after some minor introspection before the next match.
All that being said, though, one could still technically look at this reboot as more of a prequel to the original version, as that started with Team AAA winning their eighth match, while this started from the beginning. Really, had Junichi not gotten his name changed to Junya, these new chapters more or less would have slotted in just fine as taking place before the original chapters. They establish how Team AAA came together, give some hints as to their own individual backstories, and showcase that the three of them actually do make for a good team & care for each other's well-being, despite Toki & Nobuto claiming the opposite. While there is definitely a missing gap of time after that second match in the school, it would still feel somewhat natural to read the Comic Rex run first & then move on to the Monthly Stencil run, as it would just feel like you've jumped ahead six matches in the timeline. Team AAA now has a little more camaraderie between them, though Toki still maintains the most amount of distance from his teammates, the matches themselves become tougher & experience rule changes the closer they get to that precious 15th victory, and even Ichinomiya's single appearance in the Comic Rex run can simply be looked at as an early hint as to her later run-in with our leads in the Monthly Stencil run. The only real hang up would be with Team Bug, which aside from Junichi/Junya's name change just gets pretty much nothing to work with in either run, in terms of plot or development; in fact, one of their members, a man with dreadlocks, never even gets named in either run!
Another thing notable about the Comic Rex run is in how variable the lengths of the chapters are, starting at just over 20 pages (the usual standard for most manga), but by Chapter 4 Minekura is already shortening them down to only 8 or 9, before averaging around 15-17 pages for most of the run, though she still snuck in an 8-page chapter near the "end". To better put things into context, consider this: Bus Gamer's run in Monthly Stencil totaled about 230 pages, or just a little over a single traditional volume of manga, hence why The Pilot Edition was a sort of a special edition re-release. In comparison, Bus Gamer's run in Monthly Comic Rex totaled about 160 pages, or not even a full volume's worth of content; even the Volume 1 tankouban was notably smaller than a normal one. Honestly, I'd wager a guess that Bus Gamer's run in Monthly Comic Rex was more or less a victim of Kazuya Minekura's long history of medical problems, which include illness requiring a hysterectomy, surgery that removed part of her upper jawbone & left her with an impaired sense of touch in spots, hearing problems, eye problems, being diagnosed with spinal canal stenosis, & even being told she has had problems most had never heard of before, like First Bite Syndrome. To be perfectly honest, it's a miracle that she's even had as successful a career as she's gotten, and despite all these problems she has still indicated a drive to continue making manga.
If I had to compare to the two runs of Bus Gamer & pick a "superior" one, despite each being unfinished, I would honestly give the win to the original Monthly Stencil run. While I fully understand why the Comic Rex run likely wound up the way it was, there's no denying that the first run gives you just a bit more to chew on & work with, both in terms of character development for Team AAA & in the underlying plot of what exactly is the point of the Bus Game itself. That being said, though, the Comic Rex run is still an essential part of the overall plot and, despite one or two little elements that try to make it out as a full-on reboot, works really well as the starting point of a shared storyline. In fact, I'm kind of surprised that Ichijinsha hasn't re-released both runs of Bus Gamer in a single collected omnibus (again, it'd only be ~400 pages, max), because they could honestly do just that & organize it in either publication order or simply (faux) chronological order, and either one would work out just fine; in fact, the last two chapters of the Comic Rex run have never been released in a compiled book.
Finally, there's the TV anime adaptation of Bus Gamer, which finds itself in an interesting situation that most manga adaptations don't really come across: Having two technically different manga sources to choose from. Also, despite having two different runs to choose from, there's only a total of 22 chapters to actually adapt from (technically 20, since those last two chapters came out AFTER the anime). Therefore, the team at Anpro & Studio Izena went with (what's honestly) the most logical solution: Mix both versions of Bus Gamer together! Episode 1 adapts solely from the Comic Rex run, adapting Chapters 1 through 5 before ending right before the finish of the bowling alley match for a cliffhanger. However, things get interesting once we move into Episode 2, as after Chapter 6 is fully adapted to finish Team AAA's first match together the anime switches instantly over to the Monthly Stencil run, starting with that run's Chapter 6 & adapting from there; since the match in the school wasn't fully told by this point, it had to be skipped. While this switch from manga runs doesn't make it instantly obvious, though, the anime does indeed simply treat both runs as a single continuity, as Kazuo questions how long the Bus Game will go on for, showing quick flashes of earlier scenes from the Monthly Stencil run, like Kazuo being shoved in front of a moving truck; the only real change is that the match in Episode 2 is now the 6th match, instead of the 9th or so. Episode 2 also adapts Chapters 7 & 9 of the Monthly Stencil run, covering the entire match featured & the introduction of Ichinomiya.
Most interesting of all, though, is Episode 3. The first half is nothing more than a full adaptation of the last two chapters of the Monthly Stencil run, the match in the public beer garden, but it's what comes after that's worth bringing up: Brand new plot! Yes, the Bus Gamer anime actually explains what happens AFTER the beer garden match, detailing that Ichinomiya gets moved from the Juvenile Dept. to Archives, due to her unprofessional behavior after getting the gun Kazuo had on him, i.e. bringing it with her & getting drunk at a beer garden, instead of reporting it to the precinct. However, it's also indicated (much more so than in the manga) that her boss, Yanagida, is actually also part of the Bus Game itself, as he was the referee who took the disc from Team AAA after the beer garden match (which, by the way, are now CDs in slimeline cases; maybe to avoid a lawsuit from Sony?), making it obvious that he's simply trying to keep Ichinomiya from eventually finding out the truth of those mysterious deaths; Ichinomiya, though, vows that she'll still find out the truth, somehow. Episode 3 then ends with adapting Chapter 8, which sees Team AAA enjoy a late-night meal before they all head home (a much better stopping point, honestly), before showing a montage of our leads at their respective jobs (Nobuto is a construction worker directing drivers around, Toki is a bartender at a gay bar, & Kazuo works at a Lawson knock-off), which is yet even more brand new content; Kazuya Minekura acted as a supervisor for this anime, so I'd say it's all canon. The last thing to make note of for the anime, in terms of adaptation, is that Team Bug is nowhere to be seen at all here, which is honestly for the best; Shigi gets one flashback scene taken from the Monthly Stencil run, though.
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| What can I say, "Kazuo making a fool of himself" is timeliness. |
In terms of the staff for the Bus Gamer anime, it's admittedly not really super notable, and that is reflected in the show looking nothing more than decent, to be fair. Director Naoyuki Kuzuya is primarily a storyboarder & episode director, though Bus Gamer would actually mark the start of him directing some other Kazuya Minekura adaptations, namely the Saiyuki Gaiden & Wild Adapter OVAs. Writer Hajime Yoyogi (or maybe it's Hajime Sasaki?) isn't really known for anything else, but would also go on to write the Saiyuki Gaiden OVAs, and to be honest the way Bus Gamer was adapted into anime, from a writing standpoint, is more or less the only way it could really be handled. With only three episodes to work with, it made sense to adapt the first half of the Comic Rex run before then moving into the second half of the Monthly Stencil run, so that you can get one match per episode guaranteed, and the brand new content with Ichinomiya after the beer garden match is really cool to see; the transition from Comic Rex content to Monthly Stencil content could have been a little more obvious, though. As for the animation itself, though, it really isn't anything remarkable, and at points has some slightly off-model character drawings, most notably in Episode 3; that being said, I did watch from a fansub that used TV rips, so maybe the DVD version saw some fixes. Also of note is that during the scene when Kazuo & Ichinomiya fight each other in the arcade, the game they play is actually the Saiyuki Reload Gunlock fighting game released for the PlayStation 2 back in 2004 by Bandai, which is a neat little touch to remain accurate to the manga's reference to it being a Saiyuki fighting game; the actual game itself is actually pretty fun, too.
The music by Hiroyuki Nagashima (Saiyuki Gaiden, Cannon Fodder from Memories) is actually very fitting for a story set around underground matches, with a heavy focus on hard rock, with a little industrial, & being very moody; the beer garden's use of more tribal dance music really helps make it stand out, in comparison. However, the best song of all is easily OP theme "No Name" by Team AAA (yes, the main characters themselves), an instantly memorable & semi-upbeat little song with lyrics written by Minekura herself, just as with Saiyuki Reload -burial-'s own memorable OP theme. As for the ED theme, we get "Train", another enjoyable Minekura-written song that's sung by each of the three leads, with each episode having a different character sing it; makes perfect sense to me. Finally, there's the cast, which understandably doesn't see the three from the 2001 promo reprise their roles. Instead, we have Kenichi Suzumura as Toki, Junichi Suwabe as Nobuto, & Hiroki Takahashi as Kazuo, and all three do very good jobs; while Suwabe is also a deep voiced actor, I just felt he fit Nobuto better than Jouji Nakata did. Meanwhile, Michiko Neya does a similarly great job as Ichinomiya, while we have Yasushi Miyabayashi as Kiryu & Mugihito as Yanagida when it comes to other named characters of note. Much as with the two manga & the anime promo, the Bus Gamer anime is really anchored completely by Team AAA, and the trio of actors voicing them here are a great fit.
Overall, the Bus Gamer anime may very well be the most ideal way to experience this series, in general, at least in terms of telling anything remotely close to a "complete" story. By mixing the two manga runs together in a (mostly) chronological fashion, we get a version of this story that feels the most natural from a storytelling perspective, i.e. something with a beginning, middle, and even something resembling a climax with falling action. Combine that with some actual post-manga content to help expand on the plot just that little bit more & it's honestly something I can recommend watching, especially since it doesn't take more than a little over an hour to watch.
Without a doubt, one can consider Bus Gamer an interesting case of "making the most out of very little". It's rare enough to see a manga that suffered a sudden stop, whether because of cancellation or outside circumstances (like a full-on "family squabble" happening at the publisher), being given a second chance like Bus Gamer did in 2006 (only to then come to a sudden stop once again), but to then see it actually manage to receive an anime adaptation like it did in 2008 is honestly rather astonishing, especially considering the way it originally came out; there are countless manga that got outright cancelled that would kill to get what Bus Gamer got. It's also a testament to the general appeal, marketability, & interest Kazuya Minekura has over in Japan, since even by her own restrospective account she more or less shouldn't have entered manga considering the literal physical pain it's put her through; obviously, making manga isn't the direct cause of most of her health problems, but it definitely didn't make things easier for her. While Bus Gamer is by no means one of Minekura's finest works, it's also not exactly hard to see why it's had the life that we've just gone over. At this point I doubt it will ever return for a third run, mainly due to Minekura's health problems, but it'll always remain an interesting little curio for me, personally.
Luckily, it's entirely possible to experience Bus Gamer in all of its forms with an English translation today. As mentioned before, TokyoPop released Bus Gamer 1999→2001 - The Pilot Edition in English & it's still very affordable to purchase to this day; otherwise, I'm sure you can find it "elsewhere" online. The entire Comic Rex run can also be found "elsewhere" online, and I already included the fansubbed promo trailer earlier in this piece (otherwise you'd have to go to Niconico for the entire 4-trailer video), while the Bus Gamer anime can be found on YouTube with English subs (unofficially, of course). As for the chances of Bus Gamer ever being given a second chance in English officially, I it really depends, though it's nothing more than "unlikely". Due to the manga's repeated start-&-stop publication history it really wouldn't be appealing for any Engilsh-speaking publisher to give another go (again, TokyoPop releasing it back in 2006 was bizarre enough), while the anime's age & short length (& lack of any real finale) will likely keep it off most company's radars. However, maybe Discotek might give it a go now that they've admitted to running out of Saiyuki anime that's actually available to license, and Bus Gamer's short length actually could make it something maybe appealing to an dub-focused outfit like Ascendent Animation, though (ironically enough) it might actually be too long for their tastes, since they deal with ultra-short anime.
Bus Gamer 1999→2001 - The Pilot Edition © Kazuya Minekura
4-shi Goudou Special Anime Video © Enix
Bus Gamer (Monthly Comic Rex) © Kazuya Minekura
Bus Gamer (Anime) © 2008 Kazuya Minekura・Ichijinsha/Bus Gamer Production Committee
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