Ring ni Kakero, in Masami Kurumada & Others' Words: The Author's Notes & Afterwords (feat. shmuplations) Part 3: Volumes 19-25

As we reach the end of 2024, the year marking Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary as a mangaka, I think it's only appropriate that we see the third & final round of author's notes & afterwords from the original 25-volume tankouban release of Ring ni Kakero, which came out between 1978 & 1983 in Japan. Just as with the prior two rounds back in January & June these translations come by way of shmuplations, & while the first round featured mostly afterwords written by professional boxers (with only a couple of mangaka), & the second round was mostly mangaka (with only a couple of boxers & even an actor), this final round is nothing but mangaka, most of which either were already or would become icons of the industry! Of course, we also see the last remaining author's notes from Kurumada himself, and since we only have seven volumes to go over this time around I've also added in a bonus afterword from Kurumada that was written nearly 19 years after the final tankouban of Ring ni Kakero saw release in Japan.

So let's see what Kurumada had to say one last time, as well as how a veritable hall of fame of manga legends (for the most part, at least) felt about the man himself back in the early 1980s!

Volume 19 of Ring ni Kakero came out on November 15, 1981, roughly a month after the final chapter, the first one in Jump history to be published entirely in color (in this case, full color opening pages & red-toned pages for the rest), and it's the only tankouban to see release during the interim between RnK's finale & the debut of Fuma no Kojirou a few months later. Also, as you can see to the left, around this point Shueisha started including what looked like a proof of purchase of some sort in the bottom left of a tankouban's dust cover's inner front flap, next to the author's note, featuring the blue outline of an apple with "LOVE" written on the inside (*cue Haddaway*). For this volume's author's note we see Kurumada describe life itself as being like that of a poem, and that one should aspire to live their life as though it was poetry:

"For men, their life itself is a poem.

Poetry is an aspiration. When the anger, joy, sadness, and passion of the heart are embodied in our actions, without embellishment or pretense, it will surpass any great poem in the world.

I hope to write good poems that will touch your hearts and convince you."

Volume 19's afterword comes from Yoshihiro Takahashi, best known today as the creator of various dog-related action/drama manga, most notably the Ginga Series (Ginga - Nagareboshi Gin, Ginga Legend Weed, etc.). However, back in late 1981 Takahashi was still two years away from debuting Gin, though his OG dog manga, Shiroi Senshi Yamato, was still running in Monthly Shonen Jump. Instead, by this point he had completed his first hit manga, baseball series Akutare Giants, the year prior & was about 16 or so chapters into his next Weekly Jump series, the fishing manga Aozora Fishing, which he drew for writer Hiroichi Fuse; sadly, this series would end in mid-1982 after only 42 weekly chapters across five volumes. For this afterword Takahashi looks back on when he risked missing the deadline for the very first chapter of either Akutare Giants or Yamato, as they both debuted in the same year & Takahashi just says his "first serialized manga", so his editor sent over some scrappy little artist to assist him so that he wouldn't be late: Masami Kurumada. This would likely be in early 1976, after Sukeban Arashi's cancellation in late 1975, but before Ring ni Kakero's debut in early 1977 (& also before Kurumada's one-shot Mikeneko Rock, which appeared in Monthly Jump at the end of 1976), and is the only proof I've ever seen of Kurumada being an "assistant" to Takahashi, though it seems to have only been for a single chapter:

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: Yose (Endgame)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"And with that... we've finally come to the end of Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog! All 50(+1) officially released cartridge games in order of release date (more or less), and I hope through this series you've come to better understand the kind of life the Atari Jaguar had, because I sure as hell had... That being said, though... the overall official (cartridge) catalog is actually shockingly better than you'd expect!"

Make no mistake: The Atari Jaguar was an unmitigated failure of a console that was produced by Atari Corporation, a company that was clearly unable to continue operating like it once did, i.e. being forced to return to consoles as its primary focus after its focus on computers had stopped being profitable. At only around 250,000 physical units produced it is now one of the harder to acquire video game consoles for most people to try its catalog on, though today there are other options out there, like the well regarded & constantly enhanced & updated software emulator BigPEmu by Rich Whitehouse, which first appeared in Digital Eclipse's celebrated Atari 50 collection in 2022 & even plays games better than the actual console ever could. So, after taking about 3.5 years to cover the entire official (cartridge) catalog for the Atari Jaguar, what have I learned... and how do the games rank for me, personally?

The Jag Was Screwed From Day One

Let's be totally frank here: Atari Corporation was never truly a well run company. While there were certainly flaws to be found back in the OG Atari, Inc. days run by Nolan Bushnell, arguably enough so that he needed to sell the company to Warner Communications just so that the VCS/2600 could even become a reality, there's no doubt that Jack Tramiel was not the right person to run an "Atari". While he inherited the console gaming side of things he showed no interest in it until the NES had hit it big... and even then he relied on outdated tech to compete, as the 2600 was nine years old when it got revived in 1986 as a budget-priced option, while the 7800 came out two years too late (tech-wise, at least); these endeavors were, at best, successful enough to break even. Meanwhile, Tramiel was already an infamous name in the personal computer industry from his time with Commodore, so while the PC side of things was still somewhat viable when Tramiel formed Atari Corp. his bad reputation put a glass ceiling on it, and when that started to underperform we got dumb ideas like the Atari XEGS (which actually sold even worse than the Jag, at only around 100,000 units!). Things weren't much better with the handheld Lynx in 1989, with Atari Corp. generally considered to have purposefully messed around with Epyx precisely so that Atari could have full ownership of the handheld itself, which in turn only made it easier for Epyx to eventually declare bankruptcy, rather than use the Lynx to help keep Epyx around to benefit both companies.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1997 to 2001

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"When I first started Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog a little over three years ago I honestly wasn't 100% sure how long it'd take for me to finish it, or even if I would actually finish it. However, we're now down to the final stretch... and while all prior parts of this series required multiple entries to cover a single calendar year, our next & final part will kind of feel like a whirlwind."

In 2021 RetroHQ released the Jaguar GameDrive, a microSD card-driven flash cart that allowed one to play just about any game ever released for Atari Corporation's final console, including Jaguar CD games without needing the actual accessory (though compatibility still isn't quite 100% there, last I checked), opening up the console's catalog to anyone who owned an actual Jaguar console but didn't want to spend the exorbitant prices for many of its more cherished & rare titles. Since I happen to own a "Jag" I decided that the GameDrive would be perfect for me, turning my console into essentially an "All-in-One" device... and that put a thought into my head. Inspired by much more talented people than me, namely the likes of Jeremy Parish's "Works Series" & PandaMonium's "PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game" (which both tackle console catalogs in chronological order of release), I decided to take a look at the Atari Jaguar's own catalog release history; at only 50 officially licensed games it felt reasonably doable. Instead of tackling it one release at a time in immense depth, like Parish or Panda, I decided to bundle them together in batches of four or five (& later a couple of trios, due to later changes in release order being unearthed), which I felt was fair enough. Starting with my look at the original test launch line-up in late 1993 on June 6, 2021 I have since spent the past 3.5 years occasionally returning to this series, and while I initially planned it out as an 11-part series, some later revelations about a more accurate release schedule made me change it into a 12-part series (& it'll technically be 13, since there'll be a final thoughts piece after this), but I have finally made it to the end.

Atari Corporation may be long dead (at least, in the form it was when it first launched the console), but the Atari Jaguar itself has continued to live on to this very day... so let's prowl the catalog one last time & see how things fared between the years 1997 & 2001.

When we last left off, JT Storage (the steward of Atari Corporation's lifeless husk, at this point) made a deal with liquidator TigerSoftware on December 26, 1996 in order to just sell off & get rid of the remaining Jaguar stock that was left over, i.e. ~100,000 unsold consoles & a variety of unsold games & standalone controllers. Well, come the next issue of TigerDirect's catalog in January 1997 people could mail order a special Atari Jaguar bundle that contained the console, one standard controller (i.e. the OG model with only three face buttons & the keypad), and the trio of Cybermorph, Checkered Flag, & Kasumi Ninja (what a roster...), all for just $59.99, "a $300 value"! Meanwhile, an additional standard controller was available for $19.99, while four different three-game bundles were available for $29.99 each. Said packs were Iron Soldier, FlipOut!, & Tempest 2000 (a pretty damn good deal), White Men Can't Jump, Doom, & Attack of the Mutant Penguins (a bizarre combination, for sure), Defender 2000, Super Burnout, & Missile Command 3D (a solid bundle, at least), & FlipOut!, I-War, & Supercross 3D (easily the worst bundle). Even then, though, the tradition of "stretching the truth" when it came to the Jag was maintained, as Tiger labeled it "The World Most Advanced 3-D Game System!", despite the Nintendo 64 already being on the market by this point, at least in Japan & North America. From what I can tell there's next to no real info as to how successful TigerSoftware was at selling the Jag via mail order catalog, but I will admit that being able to buy the console with the first & third bundles (i.e. nine games) for around $120 honestly wouldn't have been a bad deal; toss in the second bundle (if only for Doom) to make it $150 & it'd still be a solid enough deal.

Demo Disc Vol. 24: World War Wumbo

While the concept of the "console war" in video gaming still exists to this day, it's arguable that nothing has ever truly reached the notoriety of the "16-bit War" between the Sega Genesis & the Super Nintendo in North America. In the region that I call home the 80s were mainly dominated by the Nintendo Entertainment System, a console that managed to revitalize the home video game console market following the Crash of 1983, though a big part of that domination was due to tactics & regulations from Nintendo of America that would later be called out as being monopolistically illegal, like literally prohibiting all third-party publishers from publishing games for the competition, at least for a certain period of time. This domination would change with the launch of the Sega Genesis on August 14, 1989 (which had previously launched in Japan as the Mega Drive on October 29, 1988), Sega's 16-bit console that had a slightly slow start but in 1990 would see stronger sales, and once Sonic the Hedgehog debuted in 1991 (& was bundled with the console, replacing Altered Beast) the "war" was truly on. The Genesis would consistently outsell the SNES across four Christmas seasons (1991 to 1994), with it even getting to the point where the Genesis would outsell the SNES 2:1, but in the end Nintendo would still manage to defeat Sega in the "16-bit War" for one main reason: Nintendo Played the Long Game.

The release of Donkey Kong Country in late 1994 would help start a surge in SNES sales, while Nintendo of America's continued support of the console for the remainder of the decade with major new game releases continued to entice people to buy the console during the era of the PlayStation, Saturn, & N64. In comparison, Sega of America's own massive disarray in the mid-90s prevented the Genesis from seeing quite as consistent late-game support (~150-ish games from 1995 to 1998, compared to the SNES' ~250-ish), and the Mega Drive's consistent lack of popularity in Japan certainly didn't help things (no more than just 10 games developed in Japan on Genesis from 1995 to 1998, compared to a little over 40 on SNES). Still, the Genesis vs. SNES "war" makes for some really fun storytelling...

As mentioned, in Japan the battle wasn't really between the Mega Drive & the Super Famicom, but rather was more between NEC & Hudson Soft's PC-Engine & the Super Famicom, and even then it was more of a battle for second place, as the Super Famicom handily outsold the PC-Engine. However, Sega has always maintained a cult following in Japan, and sometime in the mid-00s that resulted in something interesting. Around that time a writer by the name of Anastasia Shestakova (which could very well be a pen name; their real identity is unknown) debuted a doujinshi in the digital pages of doujin web magazine Red Road titled Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de/The Center of the Blue World, with art by adult doujinshi artist Crimson, who herself had previously worked with her brother under the name Carmine & today also works as a YouTuber; despite the pedigree, Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de is not an H-doujin. This doujin reinterpreted the various console wars as literal wars between warring fantasy nations, & over time around 200 chapters (including the various side story chapters interspersed between the numbered ones) were produced by Shestakova & Crimson across five "Parts", with the first 50 being collected physically across nine volumes between 2007 & 2009; officially the doujin is still considered ongoing, but hasn't had a new chapter since November 11, 2018. The success & notoriety of Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de would result in publisher Micro Magazine wanting to publish it as an "official" manga, & the duo would take this opportunity to revamp their doujin, implementing new additions, making some changes, & properly inking all of the artwork this time, minus some scenes, like flashbacks, solely for effect. This resulted in Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de Kanzenban/The Core of the Blue World: Complete Edition, which came out between 2010 & 2013, collecting all of Parts 1 & 2 across 10 volumes, including the ~15 chapters that the initial nine-volume run didn't.

It's with the Complete Edition that Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de would find its greatest notoriety. A three-episode anime adaptation of Part 1 would get announced in early 2012, which Crunchyroll simulcasted before Media Blasters would eventually release it on dual-audio DVD & BD in 2017, and in early 2013 Seven Seas announced that it had licensed the Complete Edition of the manga for official English release; all of these official English releases would change the title to the, admittedly catchy, World War Blue. Seven Seas' release schedule for World War Blue did look to be a bit inconsistent, regularly swapping between every two months & every three months for the first seven volumes, before taking the better part of an entire year to release Volume 8 in mid-2015... and then that was it! Yeah, Seven Seas just stopped releasing World War Blue after Volume 8, despite there only being two more volumes to go of the version it was releasing, and their webpage for the manga is even still up to this very day. Seven Seas actually did respond to a question about World War Blue's cancellation in 2016, citing poor sales, & not even Media Blasters giving the anime a physical release a year later made them revive it for a mere two books. Despite coming out at a time where digital releases of manga were becoming more common, the World War Blue manga was a print-only release (in English, at least), though in all fairness the books Seven Seas did release remain relatively easy to get a hold of at (more or less) the original retail price; still, the irony that a digital doujin is physical-only in English is ridiculously thick.

If you're fine with Japanese, the original doujin version is still available in full on its official website, all the way up through Part 5's current hiatus (Part 2's links are oddly broken & need the Wayback Machine to actually read, though), though for this Demo Disc I'll focus solely on the eight volumes that came out in English; that said, I'll rely on the official site for images here, for simplicity's sake. Was World War Blue deserving of its cancellation by Seven Seas a mere two books before finishing because it wasn't actually all that good, or was it just a victim of other factors beyond its control? Let's boot it up & find out!

Doing It "The Wrong Way": My History with Masami Kurumada's Works as an English-Speaking American Fan

Unlike (seemingly) most English-speaking anime fans, of any generation apparently, I kind of got into anime a little bit later in life. Sure, I watched some anime that aired for kids growing up in the late 90s & early 00s, like Pokémon & Digimon, I do vaguely remember seeing the likes of Voltron & Transformers via reruns in the early 90s, etc., & that era of both FoxKids & Kids WB was filled with anime, as it's how I first saw stuff like Ultimate Muscle, Shaman King, & even Escaflowne. But I didn't even know about Toonami on Cartoon Network until 2002 or so (i.e. my first Gundam was G Gundam, not Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, or the UC-era stuff between all of those), and it wasn't until 2004 that I decided to really get into anime more in-depth, despite already owning a handful of official DVD releases by that point. Entering into mid-2004 I was already 17-going-on-18 & a senior in high school, about to graduate & go to college, a far cry from the young teens (or younger, even) that I tend to see most anime fans reminisce about how they got into the fandom, & I hadn't watched stuff like Sailor Moon growing up, rented anime VHS tapes or DVDs that rental stores really shouldn't have been renting out to kids, seen other anime-focused programming blocks like Anime on Sci-fi in the 90s or Anime Unleashed in the 00s, or engaged in tape trading & the like. For me, my start into anime was as someone who was entering young adulthood & discovering digital fansubs, while also buying official releases as well. Also, I live & have grown up in the United States of America all my life, having only traveled outside of the country a handful of times (namely Hungary & Canada, both to visit family).

In that case, it's kind of all the more bizarre that I became such a massive fan of Masami Kurumada & his works... because, from all indications, I shouldn't be.

Effectively the way "North of Mexico"
sees Masami Kurumada, as proven by history.

Honestly, I don't like to write about my personal life here, mainly because I don't think there's really all that much to say. I've done it before, sure, but that was because they were related to the only real times I had anything interesting to tell the story of, like that time I got published on GameStop at age 17, or that one year I made next-to-no-effort YouTube videos (relatively) early on in the site's life, or that "Proto-Blog" I did before starting The Land of Obscusion. I really don't consider myself all that special, so I don't find much point in writing about my past as a fan of stuff, because (in the grand scheme of things) I'm not really all that different from most people. My love of writing about obscure & forgotten stuff isn't all that different from stuff other people love doing; it's just a difference in specificity of the subject itself. However, this is one of those exceptions, because this is truly something that's honestly rather unique about me, when compared to other English-speaking anime fans. Considering where I live, how long I've been into anime as an earnest fan, & how little anyone really cares about him in English-speaking fandom, there should be no feasible reason why I am such a fan of Masami Kurumada. And, indeed, it often feels like I am utterly alone in that regard, because while there are English-speaking "Saint Seiya fans" who have been anime fans for much longer than me (& are much more notable & cooler than me, in every way)... I did not become a fan like they did, it's why I have always referred to myself as a "Masami Kurumada fan", and it's why I went as far as dedicate an entire year of this blog to a single mangaka for his 50th Anniversary.

Obscusion B-List: Video Game Ports That Shouldn't Have Been Possible... But Actually Happened... STILL Yet Again

Complete transparency here for this piece: This was not originally planned in any way. I had hoped for something else to be ready for the first half of November that's (to some extent) out of my control, and it unfortunately didn't come to pass. I'm under no obligation to provide new writings every week or two... but I like to try. Therefore, instead of the usual introduction I would give this kind of Obscusion B-List article, I've decided to be 100% honest & admit that this was literally started on the prior Wednesday; for stuff like this I try to give myself at least a week, just to think things out & take my time. Also, let's face it, after three prior entries of this subject it's honestly just getting hard to make an intro that's somewhat unique from the prior ones. At least it's been around two years since the previous version of this B-List, which just happened to be how I wound up pacing these, completely by accident. Finally, I just like making these lists, because this is a really fun subject to look into.

Anyway, let's go over still yet another six video games that were ported to hardware that, in essence, really had no reasonable right or reason to be playing them!

In theory, every new piece of gaming hardware needs a handful game types at launch, and I don't necessarily mean specific genres. What I mean is that a good hardware launch should have at least one killer app that makes people want to buy it, at least one title that'll keep people coming back for more over & over, & at least one title that can showcase what the hardware is capable of. For that last example a common direction used to be releasing a port of some sort, something that wasn't capable at all on prior hardware (at least, not without major changes) to show people that this truly was "next-gen". Both the ColecoVision & NES had Donkey Kong, the Genesis had Altered Beast, the SNES had Final Fight & Gradius III, and the Dreamcast & PS2 had SoulCalibur & Tekken Tag Tournament, respectively, among other examples. The Game Boy Advance had a bunch of hardware spectacles for its launch in 2001, showcasing the handheld's ability to handle things that the Game Boy & Game Boy Color never could, and there were also ports of older games. Most of these were ports of 16-bit classics, like Earthworm Jim, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, & the SNES remake of Super Mario Bros. 2/USA, but there was one GBA launch title (for North America & Europe, at least) that dared to go even further & show that the GBA was truly a 32-bit handheld: Rayman Advance.

Obscusion B-Side: Nostradamus (Arcade): Stand Your Ground Till the End, Engage the Enemy, Insert Credit!

Born in December of 1503 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence in the the Kingdom of France, Michel de Nostradame was an astrologer, apothecary, & physician who today is best known more for being an alleged seer who went by the Latinized mononym Nostradamus. While he initially worked shortly in medicine to help deal with outbreaks of the plague, he eventually switched over to the occult & in 1550 published an almanac that sold extremely well for the time. The success of this almanac led to Nostradamus becoming recognized as a "psychic" advisor by the likes of nobility & royalty, even becoming Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to Charles IX, though Nostradamus' ability at this on his own was later found by historians to be rather poor. In fact, Nostradamus was afraid that he'd be persecuted by the Inquisition, but since he never practiced magic he was considered fine. What's most associated with Nostradamus, to this very day, is his 1555 publication Les Prophéties, which contained hundreds of poetic quatrains that, in the centuries since his passing in 1566, have often been looked at as prophesizing future events, with most quatrains detailing disasters of some sort. Many people have, in retrospect, tried to associate Nostradamus' almost purposefully vague, randomly ordered, & multi-language-written "predictions" to various people & historical events, like the French Revolution, the rises of both Napoleon & Hitler, the atomic bomb, & 9/11, among others.

Unsurprisingly, this involves either misreading what Nostradamus actually wrote, ignoring his penchant for simply projecting past events into the future, or not taking into consideration his history as an astrologer. However, this makes Nostradamus a great source for fictional & semi-historical stories, including video games!

Existing roughly from 1988 to 1998, though its last games would continue to come out up through 2001, the Japanese company Face was one of many different publishers in video game history that managed to stick around for a while but never truly became notable throughout its lifetime. If you were to look through Face's catalog you'd find mostly forgotten fare, though the quality of said fare was apparently more decent than you'd think from such a no-name company, and arguably Face became most notable during its last few years when it was a supporter of SNK's Neo Geo arcade hardware. Namely, Face was responsible (in some part) for the games Gururin, ZuPaPa! (which was finished in 1994 but not released until SNK bought the rights to it after Face's dissolution & published it as one of its last games before going bankrupt itself in 2001), & Money Puzzle/Idol Exchanger. That last one has easily become Face's most famous release, having since achieved cult classic status & is still played competitively in Japan to this day, most recently making news when a literal high school girl went to EVO Japan this year & absolutely destroyed all her competition in mirror matches. Ironically, it's rumored that Face's most popular game is what killed the company, due to Data East allegedly suing Face over similarities to the Magical Drop series... and apparently won, with Face suffering financially because of it; to be fair, the two games do play extremely similar, with only slight differences. Today, if Hamster's ACA Neo Geo re-release of Money Puzzle Exchanger is any indication (plus Gururin, too), Face's catalog now belongs to Excel, an "electronic device trading company" that's owned by Kaga Electronics, which itself has a history in video games via its now-defunct Naxat Soft/Kaga Create & Taxan subsidiaries; in fact, Kaga's own modern-day web address even uses the Taxan moniker, which is kind of quaint.

So, what does Face have to do with Nostradamus? Simply put, as you can see from the title screen above, in 1993 Face released an arcade shoot-em-up simply titled Nostradamus. In more detail, Face released a game that used Nostradamus' prophecy that "in 1999 and seven months" a "great and terrifying leader would come out of the sky", and in this game's case Face allegedly went with the standard idea for a shooter to represent the "great leader out of the sky": An alien invasion. Beyond that...Face's game really has no connection with Nostradamus outside of the title screen featuring a portrait of the man himself that looks to be based on the portrait that his son Cesar made in 1614, nearly 50 years after his father's death, only with it flipped & Nostradamus himself looking much, much older on the title screen. Still, just the idea of an arcade sci-fi shooter named Nostradamus has always caught my interest, & one thing I have yet to cover for the yearly Halloween piece is a good-ol' alien invasion; also, Nostradamus' prophecies are sometimes utilized in horror productions. Therefore, I want celebrate Halloween this year by going over what is easily the most bizarre thing to ever be associated with the legendary (not really a) seer.

Yes, even more bizarre that that time in the 2010s Marvel Comics had a seemingly-immortal Sir Isaac Newton keep Nostradamus alive in order for him to prophesize events for the Brotherhood of the Shield; at least that one actually involved the man himself directly!

Obscusion B-Side: Atypical Alchemists Associate, NEC Home Electronics' Last Stand (& UFO Interactive's First)

In June of 1953 electronics company NEC Corporation split off its radio division as its own company & named it Shin NEC, where it'd manufacture & sell things like vacuum tubes, CRTs, tape records, & later on radio receivers & "white goods"; i.e. major home appliances. In 1981 Shin NEC would debut its first ever personal computers, namely the PC-6000 & PC-8800 series, the latter of which eventually becoming the most popular PC line in Japan during that decade. In 1983 Shin NEC would change its name to NEC Home Electronics (or NEC-HE, for short), expanding into products like CD players. In 1987 NEC-HE would enter the video game market with the PC-Engine (alongside Hudson Soft), which would become the closest competitor to Nintendo's Famicom & Super Famicom in Japan during the 16-bit generation & even introduce the idea of games being released on CD; outside of Japan the "TurboGrafx-16" was another story entirely. NEC-HE would continue seeing success into the 90s with the PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² upgrade as well as the later models in the PC-9800 series of computers, but eventually the good times would come to an end.

That started with the launch of the PC-FX in 1994, the Japan-only successor to the PC-Engine that simply failed to deliver & would sell only around 300,000 units before being discontinued in February 1998 & becoming NEC's final console; still sold better than the Atari Jaguar, at least. Meanwhile, the PC-98 eventually lost momentum to Windows 95 PCs, though NEC did later make PC-98s that supported all the way up to Windows 2000 up through 2003. Still, this resulted in NEC-HE now being a third-party video game company, for all intents & purposes, but by this point that seemed kind of redundant as there was already a video game development & publishing division with NEC Interchannel, itself the successor to the music division NEC Avenue, which had already expanded out into publishing games on non-NEC hardware a couple of years prior. Think of this like how Sony Computer Entertainment Japan & Sony Music Entertainment Japan were both publishing video games between 1994 & 2004, i.e. two separate entities under the same overall corporate umbrella.

However, NEC-HE seemingly still wanted to remain relevant in the video game industry so it would enter the third-party business itself, deciding to work with partner developers to put out titles that would be completely different from Interchannel's output. For those wondering about market confusion, NEC-HE had full rights to use the iconic blue-lettered NEC logo on the covers of its releases, whereas Interchannel had its own unique logo for its releases, so there was no way to confuse which division released which game. Unfortunately, outside of a PS1 port of PC-FX game Wakusei Koukitai Little Cats (which itself was published by FamilySoft, not NEC-HE) in June 1998 & Dead of the Brain 1 & 2 for PC-Engine CD in June 1999 (the final official release for that console), NEC-HE would only release four original games before getting shut down in early 2000, all of which came out on the Sega Dreamcast. However, these four games all booted up showing the above image of something called "Atypical Alchemists Associate", with Sega Retro calling it "an internal development group" within NEC-HE. However, I think this was meant to be more of a collective branding than an actual development studio & that's because, aside from NEC-HE having never really developed a game in-house, these titles share a common central goal that was 100% true to the brand's name: Being anything, & I mean ANYTHING, other than "typical".

Seeing as 2024 marks 25 years since the launch of the Sega Dreamcast in North America, & two of these games did see release outside of Japan, let's go over the quartet of games released under the Atypical Alchemists Associate branding & see how NEC Home Electronics, the division that gave us the legendary PC-88, PC-98, & co-created the PC-Engine, went down swinging as a third-party publisher.

Akane-Iro no Kaze -Shinsengumi Keppu-ki-: This Sword is No Bazooka, & It Doesn't Play MP3s, But I Guess It'll Do

After Japan was forced to open trade with the west in 1854 the Tokugawa shogunate saw more political instability due to rebellion against working with "barbarians". This eventually resulted in the formation of the Roshigumi in late 1862, made up of various ronin commissioned by the bakufu, but when it was discovered that the leader actually planned on working with the imperialists instead of the shogunate, the Roshigumi were disbanded in early 1863. The few who remained loyal to the shogunate were initially reformed as the Mibu Roshigumi, before getting renamed on August 18, 1863 to the Shinsengumi. This group of swordsmen would patrol about then-capital Kyoto & protect bakufu representatives during the final years of the Bakumatsu, before getting involved in the Boshin War as part of the anti-Imperial Ezo Republic. In the end, the Shinsengumi would surrender to Emperor Meiji's forces on June 23, 1869, mere days before the Boshin War ended with the Ezo Republic's surrender. Nearly a century later, from May to December of 1962, author Ryotaro Shiba published 15 short stories about the Shinsengumi in the literary magazine Chuo Koron, which were extremely popular & would be collected into a single book in 1964 titled Shinsengumi Keppuroku/The Shinsengumi's Bloody Wind Records. While the Shinsengumi were initially not looked at fondly for decades after their dissolution, it was through authors like Shiba (& Kan Shimozawa before him, in the 1920s) that the Japanese populace started to look more fondly at the Shinsengumi in retrospect, though that was also in part due to some embellishments & purely fictional stories that showed the group in a positive light, including some by Shiba, seemingly being taken as historical fact.

Regardless, today the Shinsengumi are a common subject for all manner of jidaigeki that take place during the Bakumatsu, not to mention various fictional stories that feature groups plainly inspired by the Shinsengumi, more often than not portraying the group more as heroes than villains.

Thirty years after Ryotaro Shiba's short stories, after Silent Knight Sho got cancelled in late 1992, Masami Kurumada decided that he was done with Shonen Jump & wanted nothing more to do with the magazine. Likely in an attempt to prevent him from going to another publisher, Shueisha seemingly managed to convince Kurumada to move over to (the now defunct) seinen magazine Super Jump, a move previously seen with the likes of Buichi Terasawa, Shinji Hiramatsu, Tatsuya Egawa, Izumi Matsumoto, Kurumada's idol Hiroshi Motomiya, & even Kurumada's former assistant Jun Tomizawa. While not exclusively so, especially after some editorial shake-ups that moved a lot of mangaka to Business Jump & Young Jump, Super Jump was generally treated as the magazine Shonen Jump's readers would "grow up" into. The end result was Akane-Iro no Kaze -Shinsengumi Keppu-ki-/Crimson Wind -The Shinsengumi's Bloody Wind Chronicles-, a manga about the early days of the Shinsengumi which debuted in mid-1993 & whose subtitle definitely looks to be a direct reference to Ryotaro Shiba's stories, only replacing the kanji "録/roku" for "記/ki", i.e. a "chronicle" instead of a "record"; in other words, this wasn't a direct adaptation. In fact, many Japanese sources online, including Wikipedia, erroneously state that the subtitle in Japanese ends with "記録/kiroku", or "written record" (as in sports or official events, like a trial), combing the two kanji... despite the literal manga, in all of its printings, only using "記/ki" in its title & logo. Even the copyright section at the end of my physical copy has furigana that read "Keppu-ki"; technically it's "Keppuu-ki", but I'm using only one "u" purely for visual convenience, a la "shonen" or "shojo".

However, despite being given a new home, Kurumada never made Akane-Iro no Kaze on a consistent basis, only appearing in Issues 17 & 24 of 1993, followed by Issues 5, 9, 21, & 22 of 1994, totaling just six chapters. Since Super Jump was biweekly (i.e. only 26 issues/year) that meant that the last chapter was published right as Kurumada was about to debut B't X for Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Shonen Ace... or possibly even being published AFTER B't X had already debuted, since exact dates can be tricky with manga magazines; regardless, it was damn close. Yeah, it's easy to see that Kurumada wasn't pleased with simply being shuffled over to Super Jump, at least at this point, so he eventually took Kadokawa's offer & left his Shinsengumi manga unfinished, possibly even taking some of the hiatuses between chapters to plan out his departure from Shueisha. A compiled released of Akane-Iro no Kaze listed as "Volume 1", despite there being no plans to continue it, was released by Shueisha on January 16, 1995, and on December 12, 2001 (after Kurumada had fully returned to Shueisha, & Super Jump, with Ring ni Kakero 2) two bunkoban books were released titled Never End Heroes, indicating works that Kurumada seemingly had no plans of ever returning to. Never End Heroes 1 contained Raimei no Zaji (which Kurumada did eventually return to in 2014, if only for a handful of pages) & Aoi Tori no Shinwa, while Never End Heroes 2 contained Akane-Iro no Kaze & Evil Crusher Maya. I've previously reviewed the other three manga that were re-released via the Never End Heroes books years ago, so as part of this blog's year-long celebration of Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary it's time to finally cover Kurumada's first ever seinen manga, & his final manga from his original 20-year run with Shueisha, Akane-Iro no Kaze.

Saint Seiya: Saintia Sho (Manga): Even All Young Ladies Can Be Tomorrow's Braves... Ooh Yeah!

Oftentimes a series can become so big, so utterly popular & iconic, that people simply want more of it in a way that the original creators themselves aren't able to fulfill that demand on their own. When it comes to anime & manga that often results in spin-off works being produced that, at the very least, are signed off & approved by the original creator (& they get credited in some way for that) but otherwise are done by completely different people. Think of any major Japanese franchise & you can easily find spin-offs, especially when it comes to manga, and the same is true of Masami Kurumada, but specifically Saint Seiya. When Kurumada returned to Shueisha with Ring ni Kakero 2 in 2000 it also gave new life to Kurumada's most successful work. It started off slow, with 2002 seeing the release of Saint Seiya: Gigantomachia, a two-volume novel written by Tatsuya Hamazaki (best known for his One Piece & .hack novelizations) that detailed the Bronze Saints' (& as well as some novel-only new characters) battle against the Gigas of Greek myth that wish to revive their king, Typhon. This was then followed up with Saint Seiya Hades Sanctuary, the first of three OVA series that would eventually adapt the Hades Chapter of the original manga that the TV anime never got to do. After those, though, the floodgates would truly open up & the Seiya spin-offs would start to come out in full force.

The first was 2003's Saint Seiya: Episode.G by Megumu Okada, of Shadow Skill fame, which was a prequel starring Leo Aiolia & has since become a massive franchise of its own, with two sequels (Assassin & Requiem) totaling 43 volumes across all three parts (as of this review, at least) & even a couple of drama CDs. Then in 2006 came Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas by Shiori Teshirogi, a former assistant for Kozue Amano during Aria's serialization, which detailed an alternate universe version of the Holy War between Athena & Hades' forces in the 1700s (due to Saint Seiya: Next Dimension telling its own story in that same time period that supersedes LC) & would become the most recognizable of the Seiya spin-offs, running until 2011 for 25 volumes before immediately getting a side-story Gaiden series of its own that'd run until 2016 for another 16 volumes (41, in total), & from 2009 to 2011 would even get a 24-episode OVA adaptation by TMS that adapted up to just shy of the halfway point. There was also a short-lived manga version of Saint Seiya Omega by Bau in 2013 that only made it to one volume before the magazine it ran in (Kerokero Ace) got canned. Then there's 2020's Saint Seiya: Dark Wing by Kenji Saito (writer) & Shinsu Ueda (artist), which is an isekai story where a high school student & his classmates & teachers get reincarnated as the forces of Athena & Hades in a completely original plot from the OG series. Most recent of them all is the 2022 duo of Saint Seiya: Rerise of Poseidon by Tsunakan Suda, a midquel taking place during the Hades Chapter's latter half & sees Poseidon & his revived Mariners needing to protect the world from the forces of Nemesis, & Saint Seiya: Time Odyssey by Jérôme Alquié (writer/artist) & Arnaud Dollen (co-writer), which sees the OG cast take on the forces of Chronos. However, there's one spin-off manga that I didn't mention here, and that's because it's the only one to have received a complete official English release (since Ablaze is still currently releasing Time Odyssey, which itself it still ongoing).

Debuting in the pages of Akita Shoten's Champion Red magazine in mid-2013 (specifically two issues after Episode.G had ended), Saint Seiya: Saintia Sho was done by Chimaki Kuori, who at the time was known primarily for being the illustrator for a variety of light novels (Parsley Legend, Rumble Fish, Ambition Waltz, Mobile Suit Gundam: High Streamer, etc.) & for making the manga Gundam Seed Destiny: The Edge, which retold the events of the 2004 anime from the perspective of Athrun Zala. Not just that, but Saintia Sho itself was notably different from other Seiya spin-off manga of the time because it actively took place during the main plot of the original manga, instead of taking place either before the OG manga or in its own separate timeline; again, Rerise of Poseidon & Time Odyssey came later on. Not just that, but this was also a female-focused series, introducing the concept of Saintia, which acted as Athena's personal guard of handmaidens. Finally, though admittedly the most minor of all, the title itself (& the name of the main character) was a direct reference to Silent Knight Sho (right down the literal kanji for "翔/Sho"), the short-lived failure of a 1992 manga Kurumada made after Saint Seiya. Saintia Sho would run until mid-2021 & total 16 volumes (as well as receive a 10-episode ONA adaptation in late 2018 that was generally not liked by fans), but in 2017 Seven Seas announced that it had licensed the manga, the first time a manga with Masami Kurumada's name on it would receive an official English release since Viz & TokyoPop both finished their releases of Saint Seiya & B't X, respectively, in 2010.

Unfortunately, despite trying to initially market it to fans of Sailor Moon, Seven Seas' release of Saintia Sho seemed to bomb just as hard as Viz & TokyoPop's attempts at releasing Kurumada manga in English did back in the 00s. While there are no sales numbers to reflect this, it is telling that Seven Seas stopped printing the opening splash pages in color after Volume 9's release (i.e. it was no longer worth the extra cost to do that, though these pages were actually B&W in the original Japanese tankouban), the release schedule was admittedly never all that consistent to begin with (even when there was no worry about catching up to Japan early on), and Volume 15's physical release kept getting delayed after its digital release that once it finally came out the final volume would come out literally just a week later(!); also Seven Seas doesn't even bother to sell it on their own webstore, which I think says it all. Regardless, Seven Seas still managed to release all of Saint Seiya: Saintia Sho, releasing the final volume in January of 2023 (five years, faster than Viz or TokyoPop!), so as part of this blog's year-long celebration of Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary let's see if this spin-off was truly the right one to release in English for newcomers and if it's a good series, in & of itself.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1996 (Part 2)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"When you look at everything surrounding these four games released on the Atari Jaguar in the first three months of 1996 it's really only natural to wind up thinking negatively... Luckily, the titles that Atari Corp. were putting out in these final days are honestly really good to solid games...for as much flak that the Atari Jaguar has gotten in the decades since its release back in late 1993 the actual official catalog of games that came out on it has surprisingly veered more on the side of 'good-to-great' than being absolute crud, and even this late into the console's short life (officially) this remains true."

We finally made it, people. No, this isn't the final part of Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog (though this 11th entry was originally intended to be the end, before a much better release order was discovered), but we have made it to a true milestone when it comes to the life of the Jag itself: The End of Atari Corporation. As mentioned last time, barely a month after making an appearance at Winter CES in January of 1996 Atari Corp. announced that it would be entering a reverse merger with JT Storage, effectively resulting in the death of one of the two companies formed by the splitting of the original Atari, Inc. back in 1984. While we're not quite at that point juuuuuuust yet, we will be hitting it during this penultimate part of the series. Before we get there, though, we have April 1996 to go over, because in this month two things happen regarding the "Atari" brand. First, ironically enough, was the revival of Atari Games after Time Warner sold off its entire video game business to WMS Industries, which at the time owned Bally, Williams, & Midway's arcade games & brands; this was after Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell had put in an unsuccessful bid to buy Atari Games.

Meanwhile, right as Atari Games was coming back from the dead, Atari Corp. would release its final video game... one that simply added fuel to the ironic blaze with its very title.

Truly, it's only fitting that the final game Atari Corporation ever released on the Jaguar (& the company's final game, in general) would be titled Fight for Life, released on April 19. Like some other games for the console, this 3D fighter originally started development back in May 1994 & was designed & directed by Francois Yves Bertrand, who most notably was one of the first two non-Japanese employees for Sega's iconic AM2 team, with Bertrand handling the camera & collision system for the original Virtua Fighter. Bertrand eventually moved to the US, which is where he got hired by Atari to make Fight for Life, & he even got a friend of his, Silvio Porretta, a job at Atari to handle the texture artwork for the game. Unfortunately, Fight for Life's very development was its own "fight for life", as while Bertrand's actual development was going by fine it had a rotation of various people acting as producer, with one of them even making the higher ups believe that it'd redefine the entire genre! Later, when Atari sent preview copies out to video game magazines it accidentally labeled the cartridges as "For Review Only", which resulted in some mags actually reviewing the unfinished build as though it was complete!! Finally, while Bertrand had finished the overall development of Fight for Life by December 1995, he still felt that it needed more time for some extra polish. However, by this point Atari Corp. was already starting talks with JT Storage about the merger, which had resulted in Bertrand even getting fired from Atari, so Bertrand actually tried to hold off on giving Atari his final build for as long as he could, so as to give the game those last little touches. In the end, Bertrand would later admit that the version of Fight for Life that saw release was "in an almost finished state", and though there are rumors of a 100% finished build there's been no evidence of such a thing existing. Still, Bertrand enjoyed his time developing on the Jag, calling it an interesting piece of hardware, & felt that owners at the time respected the effort he put in, especially since it would be Atari's final hurrah for the console. However, does that really mean anything when it comes to how good or bad the actual final release is?

Twelve Short-Lived Musical Acts That Hit Hard with Their Only Anime Part 2

In music there's the concept of the "one-hit wonder", which is a musical act that is known primarily for only one song that wound up becoming a big hit in a major region (usually North America), but it's a concept that really is purely regional. Many "one-hit wonders" are, in fact, simply acts that were big in the region they came from (mostly Europe, in these examples) & remained relatively popular there, but only had that one fleeting moment of being a true worldwide smash. In the cases of these "one-hit anime wonders", as I called them at the end of Part 1, I wanted to make sure I avoided that technicality, as there are Japanese musical acts that have been around for a long time but only ever had their music officially matched to an anime a single time, or maybe they only had one anime for a long time but eventually wound up getting a second one. Examples of the latter would be Masatoshi Ono & Diamond Yukai, both of which had songs attached to the Rokudenashi Blues movies Toei made back in the early 90s, only to never get another anime attached to their name until the 2010s, namely with the Hunter x Hunter anime reboot & Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II, respectively; Ono would later perform other anime theme songs. Even if they only had one anime to their respective names, though, I still wouldn't consider either Ono or Yukai for this list due to their longevity.

No, this is a list about those musical acts that truly had short lives, and only one anime to their respective names, so let's see what examples from the first decade of the 21st Century I could find.

When it comes to something like the music industry, it's sometimes just as important to have a memorable name as it is to produce memorable music, and it's arguably even more so when it's not a solo act. Group names are imperative, and there have been some especially unique & memorable ones throughout history. I bring this up because we start off with a duo who went with a name whose readability depends on how good someone is at reading phonetics. Formed in 1999, the duo of vocalist Kyou Kodama & guitarist/producer Rei Kimura decided to name their group "Exceed"... but not in that simplistic fashion. Sure, in Japanese the group's name is written in katakana (イクシード), but officially the proper spelling was [iksí:d], which is technically the way the word is written phonetically... maybe. According to the Cambridge dictionary the phonetic spelling for the word "exceed" is "/ɪkˈsiːd/", but at this point I think that'd be splitting hairs, so let's get to the actual musical duo.

Twelve Short-Lived Musical Acts That Hit Hard with Their Only Anime Part 1

Prior to the mid-80s, theme songs for anime were what were known as "anison", which was shorthand for "anime song". In other words, they were songs made precisely for the anime they were associated with & mostly performed by singers who essentially made their careers via performing anison. However, with anime becoming more & more prevalent in Japan, eventually music labels wanted to play larger roles in anime production, and an easy way to do so was to use a new anime, especially one that would air weekly on TV, to help promote a new music act. It's often cited that the City Hunter TV anime that debuted in 1987 is what popularized the concept, as it was the first anime where both of its initial OP & ED themes would enter the Oricon Top 10, but it was by no means the first TV anime to also act as blatant (& somewhat unrelated) music promotion. In fact, while I can't verify if it was the first one either, 1985's Blue Comet SPT Layzner was another show that did the same thing with its OP theme, "Melos no You ni -Lonely Way-" by Airmail from Nagasaki, & it's two ED themes by Seiko Tomizawa... only in Layzner's case neither of its promoted musical acts went on to achieve the continued success that both Kahoru Kohiruimaki & TM Network would go on to see via & after City Hunter, and both acts would break up or leave the music industry after only a handful of years of activity.

However, I would still argue that while Airmail from Nagasaki would break up shortly after Layzner finished airing, "Melos no You ni -Lonely Way-" is a stellar song, so while the band itself was only around for a handful of years they still hit hard. So I gathered together 12 other examples of musical acts that were only officially around for no more than five to seven years & only have a literal single anime to their names... but they all more than made up for that lack of physical longevity as a musical act by truly hitting hard with the one anime opportunity they each had.

While I am in the middle of a year-long celebration of Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary in manga, this starting the list is entirely coincidental, since I decided to simply organize this in chronological order, based on when each musical act was originally founded. Therefore, we start off with arguably one of the most iconic short-lived musical acts in anime theme song history: Make-Up. Originally founded in 1983, Make-Up was a rock band that, technically, was an off-shoot of iconic J-metal band Loudness. Originally, the name "Make-Up" was used for a band featuring Loudness' guitarist Akira Takasaki & drummer Munetaka Higuchi, before an old high school classmate of theirs named Hiroaki Matsuzawa took over, after Matsuzawa played guitar for Higuchi's 1983 solo album, Destruction ~Hakai Gaisenroku~. Also contributing to Higuchi's solo album was singer Nobuo "NoB" Yamada, who later joined Matsuzawa to be the vocalist for this new version of Make-Up, alongside keyboardist Yougo Kouno, bassist Yausyoshi Ikeda, & drummer Yoshihiro Toyokawa. With Higuchi acting as producer, Make-Up would finally make its official debut on April 4, 1984 with the album Howling Will, followed by three more albums (& three singles) up through mid-1986. Roughly a month after their third single, though, the TV anime adaptation of Masami Kurumada's newest manga Saint Seiya debuted... and with it was a duo of songs that would define Make-Up forevermore.

Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! ζ: Deus ex Rota II (Summer Lovin')

We've reached another third entry of this series where I look at a quarter of short OVA productions (i.e. no more than two episodes long), so just as we did in late 2022 with the third volume of OM, OM, OVA! this sixth volume has once again been chosen by a randomized virtual prize wheel! Last time this happened the results were a quartet that had no real shared theme between them (a toned-down adaptation of female erotica, a seemingly "impossible" anime sequel to a cult classic manga, a two-episode OVA solely meant to promote a fantasy manga, & Tatsunoko's 50th Anniversary production), and that's more or less what I kind of expect out of these prize wheel-determined volumes of OM, OM, OVA! that I plan on doing every third time around; a fun little grab bag that comes with no expectations beforehand. However, sometimes even random chance can have an overall theme to it, and that's the case here as The Almighty Wheel has chosen four OVAs that actually DO share an overall theme: Romance!

Specifically, The Wheel has picked two romantic comedies & two romantic dramas, so let's see how these OVAs fare for a guy who has had absolutely ZERO personal experience with romance! Still, the dog days of summer have already passed us by, so before I believe in a sign of zeta (or hope that better days are coming) I think I should have a blast, even if it happened so fast... Well-a well-a well-a huh!

"Tell me more, tell me more; did you get very far?" "Tell me more, tell me more; like does he have a car?"

We start off with a one-off that's actually a bit of an old cult-classic in English-speaking anime fandom, and also has a slightly more complex history behind it than you'd think: Outlanders. Released in late 1986, this ~45-minute OVA is based on the 1985-1987 manga of the same name by Johji Manabe than ran in Hakusensha's Monthly ComiComi for eight volumes & was actually Manabe's first serialized manga. Out of the four titles in this volume this is the least "romantic" of them all, as the manga is primarily a space opera, but there's still a focus on romantic comedy to be found, especially due in part to Manabe's love of drawing tough-yet-beautiful women; to no surprise, Manabe has made roughly as much adult manga & doujin as he's made other manga. As for Outlanders' history in English, it was actually one of the very first manga Dark Horse ever brought over (by way of the late Toren Smith & Studio Proteus), after being unable to license Akira, and while it certainly took a while all eight volumes would eventually see release in English between 1989 & 2000. As for the OVA, U.S. Renditions first licensed & released it via the Dark Image label in 1993 solely via dubbed VHS, with it being notable for featuring the only time legendary translator Trish Ledoux ever voiced a major character in a dub. In the mid-00s, though, Central Park Media would license rescue the OVA for a dual-audio DVD release (one of the company's final releases, in general), deciding to make a brand new dub in place of including the original one & even putting the casting of the four major roles to a fan poll; the OG dub was done by Animaze, while TripWire Productions handled the CPM dub. However, I'll just be going off of the original Japanese in this case, but let's see if Outlanders is still good enough to maintain that cult-favorite status.

Earth is suddenly invaded by an alien warship, and the military is more or less helpless against it. Japanese photographer Tetsuya Wakatsuki finds himself in the middle of an utterly one-sided fight with a humanoid woman wielding a sword, and when she goes for him he manages to parry her with his camera, before holding her back against a wall. Impressed, the woman kisses Tetsuya & knocks him out during his confusion. Tetsuya awakens inside the warship & finds out that the woman, Kahm, is the princess of the Evascurazen Empire, which feels that humanity has invaded their "sacred planet" & must be destroyed. Kahm, however, has become smitten with Tetsuya & wants to marry him, partially to save Earth & partially because she doesn't want her Emperor father to decide who she will marry, since her eventual child would be the heir of the Empire itself. Upon their arrival at the Evascurazen home planet, though, the Emperor instantly declares that Tetsuya must be executed, so it's up to Kahm & two friends, catgirl Battia & her wolfman boyfriend Geobaldy, to rescue Tetsuya & escape from the Empire so that they can elope.

Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle: "Seiya May Cry"? "Saint Gaiden"? How About "Sanctuary Musou"?

Being an iconic manga to come from Weekly Shonen Jump's "Golden Age", it's only natural that Saint Seiya has seen its fair share of video game adaptations, & when it comes to Masami Kurumada all but one video game adapted from his works is based on Saint Seiya; that outlier would be the Ring ni Kakero game for the Super Famicom, which I covered back in 2011. When it comes to Seiya, though, there actually isn't too much variety between the various video game adaptations. The very first would be 1987 & 1988's Saint Seiya: Ougon Densetsu/Golden Legend, a two-part Famicom RPG/action-platformer that together adapt the entire Sanctuary Chapter, & in 2003 the two games would be fused together & remade on the WonderSwan Color as Saint Seiya: Ougon Densetsu-hen Perfect Edition; these games are also generally considered quite trash. After a card battler RPG for the Game Boy in 1992 & a typing game for PC in 2002, the majority of the remaining Seiya video games that have been made all fit a single genre: Fighting games. In fact, even if you include the various mobile games based on Saint Seiya made in the past decade, you'd still get almost nothing but card games, RPGs, & fighting games, plus the single requisite slot machine & pachinko title. Out of the entire catalog of Saint Seiya video games, there's only one of them that released on a home console that is neither an RPG, card battler, nor fighting game.

Well, OK, it does involve fighting, but it's instead more of a beat-em-up or "character action" game.

Founded in 2000 by the legendary Takashi Nishiyama (creator of Moon Patrol, Kung-Fu Master, Street Fighter, & Fatal Fury), Dimps Corporation is an Osaka-based game studio that, true to its founder, quickly became known for its prowess in making fighting games; that said, Dimps does also develop in other genres, too. In particular, Dimps would become especially reliable for making fighting games based on various anime & manga, like Digimon, Shaman King, InuYasha, One Piece, Dragon Ball, etc., so it's only natural that Dimps would eventually be handed the job of making a Saint Seiya fighting game. That would come about in 2005 with Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary for the PlayStation 2, a 2.5D fighter (with sidestepping) based on the Sanctuary Chapter, specifically the battles with the Gold Saints, and in 2007 a sequel would be released on the PS2 titled Saint Seiya: The Hades, which obviously was a similar fighter based on the Hades Chapter, specifically the first portion taking place in Sanctuary; seeing as the series is super popular in Europe these two games did see English release in PAL regions. This duo of games was essentially the basis for two full 3D arena fighters later developed by Dimps, 2013's Saint Seiya: Brave Soldiers & 2015's Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul, which both came out for the PS3 (as well as PS4 & PC for the latter) & opened up the roster to the entirety of the manga/anime's plot; also, since digital-only releases were now more of a thing, these two games did in fact see release in North America. However, in between these two pairs of fighting games (& taking aside the Saint Seiya Omega PSP fighting game & Saint Seiya Online, neither of which came from Dimps), there's one more Dimps-developed Seiya game to bring up... and it's the aforementioned "character action" game.

Released in Japan on November 23, 2011, Saint Seiya Senki/Record of Saint Seiya War was the first Saint Seiya video game released for an HD-compatible console, specifically the PlayStation 3. Unlike its prior two efforts, Dimps did NOT make a fighter & instead developed a stage-based 3D action game, with the game split up between stages where players took on large swaths of foes at once, a la the Musou Series, & stages where players took on a single powerful boss. That being said, though, this game was still only adapting the Sanctuary Chapter, specifically the battles with the Gold Saints; iconography & all, you know? Just as with the prior two games on the PS2, though, Saint Seiya's popularity in certain other regions did result in the game getting an English translation & release in Europe (& even South America, this time!) in 2012, now under the title Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle. In fact, Europe even received two different special edition releases of Sanctuary Battle, one that came with a Myth Coth figure & one that came with a life-size plastic replica of the Gold Sagittarius Cloth's headpiece(!), complete with a stand to display it. Compared to the two arena fighters that came before it, Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle was generally received a little bit more warmly than its precursors, though the reception was still mixed overall. However, I remember playing the game back in the day & enjoying it, and since this year is (mostly) about celebrating Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary in manga I think it's time I give Sanctuary Battle another go & see how it holds up, especially as in the ~13 years since its original release it remains a true outlier amongst Saint Seiya video game adaptations.

Masami Kurumada 50th Anniversary Trivia Track: Six Neat, Important, or Interesting Factoids

On "August 12, 1974" (or thereabouts) Issue #33 of Weekly Shonen Jump for that year saw the appearance of a one-shot manga in the third-to-last spot. This one-shot was titled Sukeban Arashi/Delinquent Storm & was made by a 19-year old newbie named Masami Kurumada, a resident of Tsukushima, Chuo, Tokyo (the alleged birthplace of monjayaki) who had previously worked as an assistant for artist Ko Inoue for the baseball manga Samurai Giants, which itself would end just nine issues later. It is now exactly 50 years since that date, and over the course of those five decades Masami Kurumada went from a simple delinquent-turned-"mangaya" to an iconic & influential mangaka who focuses primarily on making action-packed manga for male readers, but with a goal of also attracting a female readership by way of his art style, which by his own words (though the website that had it has unfortunately gone away) tries to "find a way to simultaneously express the dynamics & power of shonen manga with the elegance & fantasy of shojo manga".

"My characters will kick ass & bleed buckets,
but they'll also look utterly FABULOUS while doing so!"

While Sukeban Arashi wound up not becoming a hit by any means, Kurumada would go on to find great success with some of his later manga, namely Ring ni Kakero (1976-1981), Fuma no Kojirou (1982-1983), Saint Seiya (1986-1990), & B't X (1994-2000), becoming a mangaka who would later inspire others to become managka themselves, like Takehiko Inoue, CLAMP, Yun Kouga, & Tite Kubo, or influence his contemporaries to follow in his lead, like Yudetamago, Yoichi Takahashi, Tetsuo Hara, & Akira Toriyama. A ton of what makes shonen action manga such a popular & beloved genre around the world is owed, in part, to Masami Kurumada setting so much of it in stone with Ring ni Kakero, so much so that in 2014 Shueisha even promoted it for its digital re-release as the "Hot-Blooded Fighting Manga Bible", despite it technically being a boxing manga. Throughout this entire year I've been writing reviews & other pieces related to Kurumada's various manga to celebrate his 50th Anniversary year. However, for the literal day of the 50th Anniversary itself, let's take a look at six bits of fun and/or cool trivia I've managed to dig up regarding the man himself.

Otoko Zaka (The Shonen Jump+ Run): 未完 No More

Previously on the Otoko Zaka Review:

"Masami Kurumada has so far taken his second chance at making Otoko Zaka, and given it the love & care he always planned for...After roughly 24 years, Masami Kurumada has finally returned home..."

'He's coming home, he's coming home; tell the world he's coming home.

Let the rain wash away all the pain of cancelling.

He knows Shonen Jump awaits, & he's forgiven their mistakes.

He's coming home, he's coming home; tell the world he's coming...home.'

On "November 16, 1992" (or thereabouts) the final weekly chapter of Silent Knight Sho was serialized in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, & with it marked the end of Masami Kurumada's 18-year run with the magazine. Aside from an irregular run in Super Jump for Akane-Iro no Kaze through 1993 & 1994, Kurumada wouldn't publish another new manga with Shueisha until 2000 with Ring ni Kakero 2, also through Super Jump. While he still allowed Shueisha to re-publish his old works throughout all this it seemed as though Kurumada was done with Shonen Jump & its "Jump Comics" label... until 2014. As part of his 40th Anniversary celebration Masami Kurumada decide to revive Otoko Zaka, the 1984 manga he intended to be his magnum opus but wound up seeing cancellation in 1985 after 30 weekly chapters, infamously using the kanji "未完/mikan", or "Incomplete", on the final page to emphasize his dissatisfaction at the time. While this revival would be serialized in the digital pages of Weekly PlayNews, the new physical tankouban for Otoko Zaka would still be published under the "Jump Comics" label, to maintain continuity with the initial three volumes that collected the original Shonen Jump run; similar treatment had previously been given to Bastard!!, Ninku, & JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

However, the revival of Otoko Zaka would only be serialized through Weekly PlayNews from 2014 to 2016 across three chunks, which made up Volumes 4 to 6. That's because shortly after Otoko Zaka's return Shueisha debuted a new digital manga platform, and eventually it was seemingly decided that since Otoko Zaka debuted in "Shonen Jump" then it should end in "Shonen Jump".

Yeah, it's weird to make the literal final page the opening image...
But for a manga with history like this, it's only fitting.

Launched on September 22, 2014, Shonen Jump+ was created to replace Jump LIVE, a short-lived digital manga platform from Shueisha, and not only offered a digital version of each new issue of Weekly Shonen Jump for a fee but would also be the home of various manga serializations that were exclusive to Jump+, ones that would be allowed more relaxed restrictions than over at the magazine itself, similar to titles that run in Jump's monthly magazine counterpart, Jump Square. This is where titles like Spy x Family, Astra Lost in Space, Summer Time Rendering, Kaiju No. 8, Kindergarten Wars, Fire Punch, & the current run of Chainsaw Man all come from, and in 2023 Shueisha promised to simulpublish almost every new manga that debuts in Shonen Jump+ in English via its Manga Plus app; the only exceptions are manga based on licensed IP & ones labeled "Indies". Eventually it was decided that the revival of Otoko Zaka would get moved over to Shonen Jump+, and on July 14, 2017 the first chapter of what would later become Volume 7 of Otoko Zaka was published digitally on Jump+, marking the first time in roughly 25 years that a "new" Masami Kurumada manga was being serialized in "Shonen Jump"; however, all future volumes would continue to use the "Jump Comics" brand, instead of the "Jump Comics+" brand Jump+-exclusives use. After all this time, it felt as though Masami Kurumada had truly returned "home".

Masami Kurumada would publish Otoko Zaka via Shonen Jump+ across six chunks (in 2017, 2018, twice in 2020, & twice in 2023), and on November 11, 2023 the true final chapter of Otoko Zaka, fittingly titled Farewell, Jingi, was published on Jump+, bringing a definitive end to a manga Kurumada had first started back in July of 1984. It took Kurumada nearly 40 years, but the story of Jingi Kikukawa had finally come to an end, totaling 72 chapters (90, if you go off the original run's weekly chapter count) across 11 volumes, 60 of which came from the revival's eight new volumes of content between 2014 & 2023. I first reviewed Otoko Zaka back in 2015, where I covered "The Original Run", & then returned to it in 2018, where I covered "The Weekly PlayNews Run", so now it's finally time that I do like Kurumada & finish what I started. As part of this blog's year-long celebration of Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary in manga, let's go over Volumes 7 to 11 of Otoko Zaka, i.e. "The Shonen Jump+ Run".