Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1995 (Part 5)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"In terms of where the Jaguar was by the end of November 1995, there's no way to sugarcoat things here: It's a console that's now dead man walking, being supported by a manufacturer which has literally given up at this point, though not admitting it publicly, and while there are still two more games by third-parties set for release before Atari Corporation truly bites the dust, they're still technically co-published by Atari, so third-party support is more or less dead for a while; even the Jaguar CD is already on life-support, despite only being out for a handful of months."

It's now December 1995, a mere three months after the Sony PlayStation finally launched in North America, and the Atari Jaguar is, to put it simply, effectively screwed. Behind the scenes, Atari Corporation has given up, and might actually be considering transitioning from being a hardware manufacturer to being strictly a software company so as to possibly stave off going out of business; this will be important next time. Still, there are games for the 64(?)-bit Panthera of a console ready for release, so release they shall... and there's a new holiday season on the brink, to boot. Likely with hopes of taking advantage of the increased sales this season usually brings about, Atari Corp. decides to lower the price of the Jag once again, the second time in a single year (the last one was in March), now selling the "Core" package for just $100 starting December 16. That date was likely done on purpose, as over the course of the next two days four games would come out for the Jaguar, bringing an end to the console's most "prolific" year, at least when it comes to how many games came out in a 12-month span.

So, does 1995 at least end off with the Jaguar baring its fangs & claws in defiance... or will it be the whimper of a battered wild cat?

The day after the Jag's second price drop, December 17, saw the release of a single new game, I-War. Not to be confused with the 1997 PC game of the same name, which likely got renamed to Independence War in North America because of this Jaguar title existing first, I-War marks the end of a run that started all the way back with the Jag's launch in November 1993. Specifically, this is the final Jaguar game to be developed by Imagitec Design, the UK-based studio that had previously given the console Raiden, Evolution: Dino Dudes, Zool 2, Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, & Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, all of which were ports of other games from other hardware; according to later interviews, internal conflicts ended Imagitec's relationship with Atari Corp. In comparison, I-War is a 100% original creation from Imagitec, though it wasn't actually first made with the Jag in mind. Initially, Imagitec had proposed a racing game to Phillips Interactive Media, i.e. a game for the CD-i, before backing out of the deal & eventually teaming with Atari, with the game initially being named the likes of "Redemption" (which it used when it was first shown earlier in 1995), "Dreadnaught", & "Netwar" before getting its finalized title in time for release at the very end of 1995. Also unlike any of Imagitec's prior Jaguar fare, I-War is 100% polygonal, instead of sprite based. Imagitec would wind up getting purchased & absorbed by Gremlin Interactive in early 1997, so let's see if I-War winds up being a proper final hurrah for one of the Jaguar's most reliable supporters, as Imagitec games literally comprise 12% of the Jag's entire cartridge catalog (6 out of 50).

Dragonball Evolution vs. Knights of the Zodiac: Stop! Stop! He's Already Dead!!

It's a phrase that has brought about terror from almost all anime & manga fans who have heard it spoken: The "Hollywood" Live-Action Adaptation. While there have obviously been good to even great examples of this, for every Alita: Battle Angel, Guyver 2, Crying Freeman, or even Netflix's One Piece there have seemingly been at least two or three examples of a Ghost in the Shell, Fist of the North Star, or Netflix's Cowboy Bebop, if they ever actually make it into proper production (see: Akira, Robotech, or Neon Genesis Evangelion); yes, not all are actually from "Hollywood", but it helps establish the idea. It's arguably one of the prime examples of the old "Roll the Dice" or "Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal" adage, i.e. take a chance & hope for the best, but you know the chance is greater that it'll wind up terrible. The year 2024, in particular, is both one of celebration (on this blog, at least) as well as loss, as while we're in the middle of celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Masami Kurumada's career in manga here at the Land of Obscusion, we've also recently mourned the passing of Akira Toriyama, creator of Dr. Slump & Dragon Ball, someone who was in the trenches with Kurumada over at Shonen Jump, specifically during the 80s & early 90s (i.e. "until Kurumada left").

We'll give Akira Toriyama a much more fitting piece to honor him with later this month, but this is Kurumada's 50th Anniversary year... and it's April Fools' Day.

Dragon Ball was a smash hit, and with it (initially, at least) being focused on martial arts it only made sense that there'd be people who wanted to adapt it into live-action. Over in Korea & Taiwan two unofficial movie adaptations were produced: 1990's Dragon Ball: Fight Son Goku, Win Son Goku (which is known for being the most accurate live-action adaptation) & 1991's Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins (which actually got a licensed release in English by Tai Seng in the 00s). Legendary action star Jackie Chan voiced interest in producing an official live-action adaptation back in 1995 but admitted that it'd require special effects & a budget that was simply untenable at the time. It wouldn't be until 2002 that Shueisha finally sold the live-action rights to Dragon Ball, in this case to 20th Century Fox, and while Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle) was approached to direct (& was a fan of the manga), he declined & simply agreed to help produce, since he only wished the direct stories that he created; he'd later break that vow somewhat when he co-directed 2013's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Eventually James Wong (The One, Final Destination 1 & 3) would get hired to direct, and while Ben Ramsey wrote the initial drafts (& was credited in the final product) it was Wong who wrote the final draft himself. The finished film, Dragonball Evolution (yes, it's a single word for this film), would finally see release in 2009, first in Japan on March 10 & the United States on April 10... and it was utterly trounced. Ben Ramsey himself has gone off on the film numerous times over the years, it's often lambasted by all anime fans (voice actor Kyle Hebert has even done live roastings of the movie at some anime cons; it's how I first saw the film), and while the commonly stated rumor of Akira Toriyama hating it so much that he conceived of 2013's Battle of Gods in response isn't exactly true (Toei had started pre-production on it without Toriyama's involvement), it is reasonable to assume that Toriyama wanted to be more hands-on with the franchise following Evolution's release, if only to prevent something like it from happening again. Really, the only "good" thing to come from this film was the PSP video game adaptation, which was pretty much just DBZ: Shin Budokai, but with a modified cast; it was actually the first time Bulma was playable in a Dragon Ball fighting game.

Meanwhile, Masami Kurumada had wanted to see a live-action adaptation of Saint Seiya more or less since the manga debuted in 1986. There was an attempt at such a thing sometime in the 90s with StarStorm, which never went beyond a proof-of-concept pitch, but for the longest time the closest thing was a pair of musicals based on Saint Seiya, one in 1991 (starring members of the bands SMAP & Tokio) & another in 2011. That all changed in 2016, when Toei Animation announced a trio of Saint Seiya productions, including an anime adaptation of spin-off manga Saintia Sho (which eventually came out in late 2018), a full-on CG anime reboot series (which debuted in 2019 & is still getting made to this day), & a live-action theatrical adaptation, with Stage 6 Films (a division of Sony Pictures) co-producing the last one. Polish animator/illustrator/director Tomek Bagiński (then best known for his intros to CD Projekt Red's The Witcher series of games) was hired to direct. Befitting this being a (mostly) non-Japanese production, the film was titled Knights of the Zodiac (the name Saint Seiya tends to use abroad), though in Japan it eventually got the final title of Saint Seiya: The Beginning. After some delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film finally came out on April 27, 2023 in Latin America (natch), followed by Japanese & US releases over the next few weeks... and it was utterly trounced, even more so than Dragonball Evolution; DBE earned ~$9.36 million in the US ($56.5 million, worldwide), while KotZ only earned ~$6.986 million (with no reported worldwide box office).

In many ways, Dragon Ball & Saint Seiya have always had a bit of a symbiotic coexistence, even if Toriyama & Kurumada themselves respected each other too highly to ever consider each other "rivals", so to continue celebrating Kurumada's 50th Anniversary &, to some extent, celebrate the legacy of Akira Toriyama, let's compare both of these Jump icons at their (apparent) worst & see which film comes out on top!

Majokko Daisakusen -Little witching mischiefs-: Wars May Be Fought with Magic, but They Are Won by Girls

Founded in 1989, Toys for Bob came about via the meeting & collaboration of Paul Reiche III & Fred Ford, two UC Berkley grads (though they didn't actually know each other during that time) who had already worked in the gaming industry for a while beforehand, with Reiche previously working on D&D over at TSR, while Ford come from the now-defunct Magicsoft, which actually developed games for the Japanese market. While it wouldn't get the "Toys for Bob" name until 1993, the studio would make itself known almost instantly with its first game, the action/strategy PC game Star Control in 1990, which was followed up by an all-time cult classic sequel, 1992's Star Control II, but today most people would be familiar with the studio via its later work. Particularly, Toys for Bob would achieve mainstream notoriety with the toys-to-life Skylanders franchise from 2011 to 2016, before helping remake the first three entries for both Crash Bandicoot & Spyro the Dragon, only for eventual owner Activision to put the studio on Call of Duty support duty alongside the occasional Crash Bandicoot title... oh, and then Toys for Bob's physical office closed down earlier this year (& some employees were laid off), resulting in an initial worry that the studio itself was getting shut down. Luckily, this was a planned move by the studio, which will now work fully remote & has even managed to become an independently run studio.

However, as you can see from the title, this is NOT an Obscusion B-Side review, so that means that this is related to anime and/or manga! Yes, I am serious!!

In late 1998 Crystal Dynamics & Eidos Interactive released The Unholy War for the PlayStation, a game by Toys for Bob that fused together a turn-based strategy game with a 3D arena fighter; I remember playing a demo for it back in the day, and it was instantly memorable. According to an interview with Matt Barton in 2011, Reiche & Ford regretted not being able to include a proper "Story Mode", so the pair thought this concept would make for a perfect SD Gundam game, as they were fans of the more traditional turned-based strategy RPGs that Banpresto released in Japan at the time. With help from Crystal Dynamics the pair were able to get into contact with Bandai, which had published the altered Japanese version of Toys for Bob's Pandemonium! (titled Magical Hoppers) & actually loved what it had seen of The Unholy War, but felt that it had an "even bigger" license to go with the concept. Reiche & Ford decided to make a deal before knowing what property they'd be working with, so imagine their surprise when they started getting faxes from Bandai... only to see production sketches of magical girls from the 60s & 70s. Yep, Toys for Bob accidentally signed on to produce a combat-focused strategy game/3D arena fighter starring a bunch of Toei Animation's old magical girl anime! The end result is early 1999's Majokko Daisakusen/Operation Magical Girl -Little witching mischiefs-, and since The Unholy War never saw a Japanese release this was effectively that region's equivalent.

Twelve(+2) Anime with "Missing" Portions Yet to be Licensed for English Release Part 2

In theory, licensing an anime is actually an extremely straightforward process, and all one needs to do to get started is contact a licensor, of some sort; actually producing a satisfactory product from said license is the hard part. Anime Midstream admitted that they literally just cold e-mailed various companies when they got started in the late 00s, and eventually Sunrise bit & decided to give them a chance, despite having no prior experience to guarantee that they'll actually release a finished product. Hell, way back when I once sent an e-mail to dentsu USA as a lark, acting like I was looking into starting up a company, and I got a response back from dentsu USA, complete with an entire digital catalog as an attachment! (No, I don't have that digital catalog anymore, sadly) For the large amount of anime out there, licensing is rather simple... until it isn't. Last week we looked at six(+1) examples of anime that can be considered "missing" portions for official English release, whether it was because they were just separate licenses from the "main" portion we did get, they simply didn't exist back when we first got the "main" portion, they were part of a prior production that's since been superseded by a later production that now takes precedence, or they're currently associated with a company that no one really wants to work with, if possible.

However, to start things off for the second half of this list, we have another reason why a portion could go "missing" for English release: It was originally released via video game!

Debuting back in 2001 in the pages of Monthly Shonen Jump, Dragon Drive by Ken-ichi Sakura told the story of kids who are into the titular VR game where they fight alongside mystical dragons... only for the game to actually have a connection to an actual fantasy world, Rikyu, where said dragons come from. The manga itself wound up being split into two halves, with the first starring Reiji Oozora as he & some friends (& enemies) find themselves in Rikyu, while the second starred Takumi, the little brother of Makino (one of Reiji's supporting cast), & sees the Earth ruined when the dragons of Rikyu come to the players' world. Though the manga itself would run until 2006 across 14 volumes (split roughly evenly across both storylines), it was seemingly meant to be a media mix from the start, as the companies Bandai, Chan's, & Org were credited as "In Collaboration With" below Sakura, so it's no surprise that there were video games & even a collectible card game based on Dragon Drive, as well a TV anime adaptation by Madhouse that ran between 2002 & 2003 for 38 episodes. While Viz would eventually release the manga in English from 2007 to 2009, though it never received a digital re-release (so it's not in the SJ Vault today), Bandai Entertainment was actually first to bring the series over via the anime, releasing all 38 episodes across 10 dual-audio DVDs in 2004 & 2005, followed by two boxsets in 2006. I actually included the Dragon Drive anime in the 2016 license rescue list, as some of the DVD singles & boxsets have since gotten rather expensive, especially the second boxset.

However, back then I had no idea that Bandai Entertainment's releases were technically "missing" something... an entire episode, in fact! That being said, though, it's not like Bandai Entertainment willingly skipped over it, and in fact the people there may not have even known of this episode's existence, since (to my knowledge) it was only ever released once, and as part of a video game release. As I mentioned before, Dragon Drive had some video game adaptations, three to be in fact, but we'll be focusing on the final, GameCube game, Dragon Drive: D-Masters Shot, a 3D aerial combat/rail shooter developed by Treasure! Released on August 8, 2003, D-Masters Shot came out roughly five months after the TV anime had finished airing in Japan, so it was decided that the game would actually include two GameCube mini-discs. The first was the "Game Disc", which contained the game itself, but the second was the "Anime Disc", which contained an episode-length OVA, Shinku no Himitsu/The Secret of Evolution, which was effectively Episode 39 of the TV anime & acted as an epilogue to the show! Now, to be fair, it's not like the TV anime had an unfulfilling finale or anything like that, but when I realized only a few years ago that this (mostly forgotten, despite the developer) GameCube-exclusive video game contained a bonus epilogue episode for Dragon Drive, one of those early anime I watched when I first started getting into the medium in the mid-00s, my mind was absolutely blown away.

Twelve(+2) Anime with "Missing" Portions Yet to be Licensed for English Release Part 1

As simple as we, as fans, might think it is, actually licensing anime can sometimes be a tricky thing. If it's an older production there can be situations like needing to reunite a production committee, figuring out who has the rights if a company is no longer in business (& then seeing if the seeming current owner even has the paperwork to prove it, for legal reasons), and if there are multiple parts to an anime then each of those individual parts could have their own licensing situations. That last one is what I want to focus on, as there have been multiple examples of an anime getting licensed for English release, only for it to not truly be "complete" due to there being other productions related to it in some fashion that weren't also licensed. Sometimes it's simply because said other productions weren't made yet, sometimes it was made by a completely different set of companies (& because of that it might purposefully be made unavailable for licensing, so as to prevent market confusion), sometimes there's just one change in companies that makes it a completely different licensing situation as everything else, and sometimes it's simply a case of "no one really wants to work with that company". Therefore, which anime are "missing" from English release, i.e. we got part of it, but not all of it?

I tried my best to include just 12 for this two-part list, but in the end I wanted to include all of the ones I could come across (though this is not a "complete" list, I'm sure), so I'm cheating & adding in a "(+2)" for this list! What is this, 2012?!

Debuting in early 2000, Kino's Journey -the Beautiful World- by Keiichi Sigsawa (story) & Kouhaku Kuroboshi (art) is a novel series detailing the travels of the titular Kino & her talking motorcycle Hermes as they visit various places in their world, staying no longer than three days so as to not feel like they'll ever "settle down", with the concept of the series being to showcase the different cultures & customs of the world's inhabitants; it's still running to this day & currently totals 23 volumes. In Spring 2003 a 13-episode TV anime adaptation aired on WOWOW, with animation by A.C.G.T. & direction by the late Ryutaro Nakamura (Serial Experiments Lain, Sakura Wars TV [2000]), and in early 2004 ADV Films started releasing it on dual-audio DVD. The reason why the release happened so quickly was because this anime was one of the handful that ADV actually managed to be part of a production committee for, with co-founder John Ledford even being listed in the Japanese credits as a producer. Because of this, ADV essentially has a perpetual license for this 2003 anime (there would later be a 12-episode reboot in 2017 that FUNimation/Crunchyroll currently has), which has resulted in it being both available via streaming over at Hidive & as well as the occasional modern re-release, most recently in 2019. While the 2017 reboot went on to receive a more mixed (though overall still positive) reception, the 2003 series is still considered an all-time classic, though maybe today it's probably more of a cult-classic.

Jitsuroku! Shinwakai: Forget the Greek Pantheon, THIS is the Real Deal!

No one should be too proud of themselves, and by that I mean everyone should be able to poke fun at themselves, to some extent. Ego is a natural thing to have, it's just basic human behavior, but having too much of an ego can make one look pompous & arrogant, to the point where it can be seen as abrasive & uncouth to others. Therefore, I think it's important that people should be able to take the piss out of themselves every once in a while, so as to show humility or (at the very least) give off the image that they don't take themselves too seriously. I bring this up because it can relate to mangaka Masami Kurumada, someone who's generally known for his intense, action-filled manga about "real men" proving themselves to not just their foes, but to the world at large, and while there is sometimes comedy here & there in his works it's all still told in a very serious & dramatic fashion.

However, when it comes to portraying himself & his assistants... Kurumada loves taking the Mick, for those who speak the Queen's English.

While I'm not sure when exactly it came about, though I imagine it was in part due to the ongoing success of Ring ni Kakero, Masami Kurumada eventually hired on a group of assistants, comprised of some combination of Jun Tomizawa, Toukichi Ishiyama, Tokumi Kawajiri, Takashi Urakawa, Masayuki Fujimoto, Chuutaro Numoto, Masashi Yamaguchi, & Ken Shiratori over the years. Kurumada would name this group "Shinwakai/The Gathering of Gods", and even listed Shinwakai alongside him for new chapters as they originally ran in Weekly Shonen Jump (as seen via the Ultimate Final Edition of Fuma no Kojirou); at the very least, he did this for both Ring ni Kakero & Fuma no Kojirou. While the concept of assistants that help a main mangaka out getting a collective name can arguably date back to Tokiwa-sou, the Tokyo apartment building that in the 1950s housed Osamu Tezuka & other legendary mangaka (some of which even initially worked as assistants to Tezuka, introducing the very concept), Shinwakai can be seen as the precursor to arguably the most well-known named group of assistants in Jump history: The Watsuki-gumi from the 90s who assisted Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin, which was comprised of Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Hiroyuki Takei (Shaman King), Shin'ya Suzuki (Mr. Fullswing), the late Gin Shinga (who passed away in 2002 at only age 29), & Mikio Itou (who's probably most known for cameoing in his fellow Watsuki-gumi's works, like One Piece, as a travelling merchant).

However, as legendary/notorious as the Watsuki-gumi were back then, & (some) still are now, they never got to star in their own manga!

30 Years of Neo Mechanical Romance: Why B't X Might Be Masami Kurumada's Strongest Overall Narrative

Even as someone who proclaims Masami Kurumada as his all-time favorite mangaka, there's no denying one thing: The man isn't always the strongest storyteller. From an overall perspective his best works are powerful, both in the force of the blows dealt between combatants in his various action manga as well as the strong, Romantic-styled themes & plot progression. It's also easy to consider the various story arcs seen in many of his manga & think of how damn good they each can be, overall. However, there's no doubt that, when you dig into the weeds, you can easily find some notable & undeniable flaws, from a storytelling perspective, and even some story arcs might not be as good as others. Not just that, but I don't think it's unfair to say that most of Kurumada's longer works tend to have slow starts, and while that's not inherently a bad thing (slow burn storytelling can be outstanding, after all) it does mean that titles like Ring ni Kakero, Fuma no Kojirou, & Saint Seiya (especially if you're watching the Seiya TV anime) can also be described with a line that can make some shirk at the thought of starting them: "Just stick with it; it gets better!"

B't X, in my opinion, doesn't suffer from most of these situations. In fact, it might just be Masami Kurumada's strongest overall narrative.

This remains one of the coolest logos I've ever seen.

Running from (roughly) late 1994 to early 2000 for 16 volumes, B't X (pronounced "Beat X") was the first manga Masami Kurumada ever made outside of Shueisha, after more or less getting tired with the harsh & competitive grind of making manga for Weekly Shonen Jump; it also (just barely) managed to count as Masami Kurumada's 20th Anniversary work. Instead, B't X ran in the then-brand new Monthly Shonen Ace by Kadokawa Shoten (it even got the cover for the very first issue), a magazine focused more on serializing manga based on anime & video games, like Gundam, Macross, The King of Fighters, Martian Successor Nadesico, Record of Lodoss War, & Neon Genesis Evangelion, though there has also been the occasional original property throughout its history (MPD Psycho, Sgt. Frog, Eden's Bowy, Nyankees, Guyver, etc.). While Ring ni Kakero & Saint Seiya more or less defined Masami Kurumada during the (late) 70s & 80s, respectively, B't X was what defined him during the 90s, receiving a TV anime adaptation by TMS in 1996, followed by an OVA continuation titled B't X Neo in 1997, & altogether the anime adapted the first half of the manga before heading into its own original ending, as the manga was still running; that said, Neo & the manga both feature similar final acts, in numerous ways. It's a series that I have reviewed in the past, both in its original manga form as well as for both halves of the anime. However, I feel specific focus should be given to the narrative of B't X itself, both in its overall structure as well as specific details, because when compared to his other works I do feel that it succeeds in ways that none of the others do and, because of that, it actually might be a far better starting point for newcomers to Kurumada than the more obvious (& overwhelming) Saint Seiya.

Trust me, my first Kurumada series ever was the B't X anime.

[Note: This will naturally go into spoilers to explain some details, and I fully recommend that you read either review for B't X, manga or anime, as linked above first, as I will not be giving a traditional introduction for the series this time around.]

Obscusion B-Side: Takara's Legacy of "Fierce Fighting" on Game Boy: The Nettou "Deadheat Fighters" Series, 30 Years Later

Today, "handheld gaming" more or less means "console (or even PC) hardware, but on the go", and that was also true to some extent back in the 2010s & even 2000s. However, back in the 90s handheld gaming was mostly defined by the likes of Nintendo's Game Boy or Sega's Game Gear; there was also the Atari Lynx, but that was a distant third. Because of that the kinds of experiences that people would come to expect on handhelds were ones that made the most sense for the hardware, i.e. puzzle games, RPGs, platformers, etc. One genre that tended to feel a bit awkward for handhelds was fighting games, and by that I mean "post-Street Fighter II" (i.e. what some would call a "tournament fighter"), because they had that extra depth that made them work from a competitive point of view. However, handhelds at the time had literally just two face buttons (not including Start and/or Select), so proper fighting games weren't really what these devices were designed around. That sure didn't stop companies from trying though, as handheld ports of games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Hiryu no Ken, Virtua Fighter, Pit-Fighter, & even Rise of the Robots were attempted throughout the decade, while original titles like Konami's Raging Fighter & Toei's Fist of the North Star: 10 Big Brawls for the King of Universe tried to make experiences more tailor made for the hardware; general reception towards these ranged from "a decent attempt was at least made" to "kill it with fire". Eventually very good handheld fighting games started becoming more & more common, especially once the Game Boy Color & (especially) SNK's Neo Geo Pocket [Color] hit the scene, but throughout the mid-90s one publisher in Japan seemingly made it a mission to deliver good (if not great) fighting game experiences on the lowly Game Boy... and it was a toy company, of all places.

Each game has its own unique Nettou/Deadheat Fighters logo,
so I just went with the one with the least relation to its game.

While founded solely as a toy company in 1955, come the mid-90s Takara had also found footing in the video game industry as a publisher of various titles, mostly (but not all) that were either adapting a licensed IP (like an anime) or were a home port of an arcade title. In particular, Takara managed to ink a deal with SNK that resulted in Takara hiring various for-hire development studios to produce console versions of Neo Geo games, starting with Fatal Fury in 1992 & 1993, which was a success. With the fighting game genre seeing a massive surge in popularity during that time, Takara seemingly decided to take full advantage of that momentum by releasing portable versions of various fighting games on the Game Boy, all of which would also take advantage of the then-incoming Super Game Boy, a peripheral by Nintendo that allowed people to play GB games on a Super Famicom/SNES, by allowing two players to fight each other via the console & a single cartridge (though, naturally, traditional link cable play was also an option), and Takara managed to leverage its relationship with SNK by having all but one of these releases be based on Neo Geo games.

Tying all of these releases together would be a shared start to their titles: "熱闘/Nettou", or "Fierce Fighting", though Takara would offer its own English name on the covers, "Deadheat Fighters"; ironically enough, that English name would never appear on any of these games outside of Japan. From mid-1994 to early 1998 Takara would release eight Nettou "Deadheat Fighters" games on the Game Boy, though only five would see release outside of Japan (one of which was only in Europe), and today they are generally considered some of the absolute best fighting games ever released on the handheld. With 2024 marking the 30th Anniversary of this series of Game Boy fighting games, let's go over each one in chronological order, see the evolution of the Nettou Series, and figure out which one still reigns supreme over them all.

Demo Disc Vol. 23: Yester Yardsticks

While I had initially conceived of Demo Disc to be a way for me to cover anime that I normally wouldn't be able to properly review in full, one idea wound up being a decent alternate definition of this column: Pilots. Starting with Volume 9 in 2017, I've occasionally returned to the idea of using Demo Disc to cover initial pilot versions of various anime, namely Volume 13 in 2018, Volume 15 in 2019, & Volume 19 in 2021. While not exactly making anywhere near a majority (or even a plurality), with this fifth pilot-focused volume of Demo Disc that you're now reading, that now means that a little over 1/5 of Demo Disc has been dedicated to this subject and once things finish up with Volume 27 (whenever that happens...) it'll only be slightly less than that fraction. Now, sure, there are technically other pilots I could one day return to, but I think five sets of anime pilots, totaling 20 different pilots, is more than enough of these to have covered for Demo Disc.

Also, fittingly enough, while the majority of the pilots covered for Demo Disc originated from shonen manga, this time around they're mostly originated from shojo manga!

The Vengeful Sorceress

Running from 1993 to 1996 in Kodansha's Nakayoshi magazine for six volumes, Magic Knight Rayearth is often cited as one of the most iconic creations of the mangaka collective known as CLAMP, alongside the likes of X & Cardcaptor Sakura. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to not just one anime adaptation, but two. The first was a TV anime that ran for 49 episodes (split into two seasons) from 1994 to 1995, while in the second half of 1997 a three-episode OVA reimagining was made, both of which were animated by TMS & directed by Toshihiro "Toshiki" Hirano. TMS felt that the TV anime had tons of potential outside of Japan, so some time in the 90s (1995 seems to come up the most often) the studio teamed with The Ocean Group in Canada to produce an English dub test pilot for Magic Knight Rayearth, with apparently hopes of getting it aired on Fox Kids. This dub pilot wouldn't go anywhere, and a second attempt with Summit Media Group had an ambiguous result (there's word that 13 episodes were dubbed this time around, but no proof of the dub itself seems to exist anymore), but eventually Rayearth would finally receive a complete English dub via Media Blasters' release of the series, this time being dubbed by Bang Zoom! Entertainment; technically, there's a fourth dub for this version of Rayearth, but that was solely for Working Designs' release of the Sega Saturn video game. For the longest time it was thought that both of the old dubs for Magic Knight Rayearth TV were lost with time, but when Discotek Media license rescued the series for release on DVD & Blu-Ray in early 2017 it actually managed to find a copy of TMS & Ocean's original dub pilot & included it as an extra, so let's see how the earliest attempt to dub this iconic CLAMP series holds up, just in time for the anime's 20th Anniversary this year.

Ring ni Kakero, in Masami Kurumada & Others' Words: The Author's Notes & Afterwords (feat. shumpulations) Part 1: Volumes 1-9

As part of this overall celebration of Masami Kurumada for his 50th Anniversary I figured that I'd try to include as many of his biggest hits in some way or another, but that brought about a problem: I've long covered more or less everything I really can when it comes to Ring ni Kakero. As it's my favorite manga from Kurumada I kind of exhausted every real aspect of it that I can think of, whether it's reviewing the manga, reviewing the anime (twice, in full, at that!), reviewing the video game, reviewing the next-gen sequel, reviewing the Manga DVD, reviewing the image album (primarily composed by a pre-Nausicaä Joe Hisaishi!), creating a fun little "trivia track", covering what I felt were the "best bouts", covering my personal favorite superblows, doing a four-part recap of the early portion of the manga that the anime (mostly) skipped over, & even buying the original tankouban version of the manga so that I could see what exactly the "Deluxe Edition" re-release in 2001 & 2002 changed up. However, seeing as I still own those 25 tankouban (yes, it's technically "tankoubon/standalone book" in Japanese, but it's not as though "standalone edition" is exactly wrong, either), there is one last aspect of Ring ni Kakero that I can cover, & truly bring an end to my ability to cover this series that I absolute love: The Author's Notes & Afterwords.

I got nothing better to use for an intro image, so here's the
rarely seen English logo from Déclic Images' old DVD release of Season 1.

If you've read a manga before, especially those from Shonen Jump, then you know what these two things are, especially the first. At the start of each volume of a manga there's usually a short paragraph (at most) from the mangaka, either discussing some aspect of the content seen in that volume of the story or simply bringing up whatever random thought came to mind at that moment. Meanwhile, sometimes at the end of a volume there can be a message from the mangaka in regards to the series itself, though this is usually most often seen at the end of the final volume, where the mangaka can reminisce on the creation & serialization of the manga & what the advancement of that time meant to them. These would be the author's note & afterword, respectively, and while the original 25-volume tankouban release of Ring ni Kakero naturally has the former, it also has the latter... in each & every volume. You see, when Shueisha started releasing the RnK tankouban it decided to have a guest write a two-page afterword at the end of each volume, and while professional boxers initially handled the honors, since it's technically a boxing manga, as the series went into a more spectacle-focused execution & became a massive hit Shueisha decided to change focus & have other mangaka then working for Jump write the afterwords, & they focused more on Masami Kurumada himself & what he meant to them. Of these there is one that is actually a little well known now online, Akira Toriyama's afterword in Volume 23, but there are 24 other volumes of RnK & I was curious to see what these all said. However, while I can do a little minor translation for myself when in a pinch, the amount of work needed for these are well beyond my abilities.

Therefore, I wound up hiring shmupulations, the "repository of Japanese game developer translations", to translate each author's note & afterword found in all 25 volumes of Ring ni Kakero's original tankouban release, as they've never been included in any other release of the manga (bunkoban, wideban, or the RnK1 Deluxe Edition), & let's see for our own eyes what Masami Kurumada & others had to say about RnK (& Kurumada) as the manga itself was coming out back in the late 70s & early 80s. Since this is a lot of content this will be spread out across three parts throughout the year, & let's start with Volumes 1 to 9.

50 Years of Masami Kurumada's (Mostly) Hot-Blooded Manga: A Career Overview

[Please Note: This is a piece that will continually be updated as I gradually cover more titles on the blog & fill in gaps. If anything, this likely won't truly be considered "complete" until Masami Kurumada truly retires from making manga or passes away.]

"That manga drawer on that day, even now, continues to run down the unmarked road"

- Masami Kurumada 23th Anniversary Illustrated Collection: Burning Blood, Page 5

Born on December 6, 1953 in Tsukishima, Chuo, Tokyo to a family of tobishoku (a Japanese variant to a steeplejack, but not quite a 1:1 equivalent), Masami Kurumada has always been someone who's been attracted to fighting. As a child he was a bit of a delinquent, often getting into fights, and while he was naturally a fan of reading manga he always felt that such an occupation was beyond him, as he was under the impression that only those with notable accomplishments could enter that career, like Osamu Tezuka having an actual medical doctorate. However, that all changed when he first read Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, a manga about a delinquent who becomes the leader of a gang of delinquents & heads to Tokyo to tackle societal issues, usually by beating people up, if need be. While Kurumada loved the manga itself, he was also enthralled by its creator, a young man named Hiroshi Motomiya... who himself was a relatively normal guy who had a history of delinquency & getting into fights as a child, just like Kurumada. Now with the assurance that you didn't need to be someone special to get into manga, Kurumada started practicing & honing his skills as an artist, and during his third year of high school submitted a one-shot to Shonen Jump, with hopes of winning the Young Jump Award for newcomers (now currently known as the Jump New World Manga Award). He didn't win the Award, nor was he even selected for an honorable mention, but instead of simply accepting defeat Kurumada did something a bit brazen: He went to publisher Shueisha's offices in Tokyo (since it was local), found the Shonen Jump Editorial Department, & straight up asked why he wasn't selected.

Masami Kurumada in the 70s vs. 2023,
via photos on his own website.

Seemingly impressed with the gumption he showed in doing this, Kurumada was offered the chance to work as an assistant to Ko Inoue, who at the time was drawing the baseball manga Samurai Giants for Weekly Shonen Jump, which was written by the legendary Ikki Kajiwara, author of instant classics like Star of the Giants & Ashita no Joe, two of Kurumada's favorites. There's also mention online of Kurumada working as an assistant for Hiroshi Motomiya & even Yoshihiro Takahashi at one point or another, but there's never been anything proving (or even disproving, to be fair) that either actually happened.  With newfound experience working under Inoue, Kurumada would eventually make his professional debut in mid-1974 in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump with Sukeban Arashi, and 2024 marks the 50th Anniversary of Masami Kurumada's debut as a professional mangaka. If you've been reading this blog for the past 13+ years (or at least look at the Master List section) you'll see that I've covered Masami Kurumada's works a decent amount, and that's simply because he is my favorite mangaka of all time. Therefore, to celebrate Kurumada's Golden Anniversary in manga, I have decided to make all of 2024 dedicated to the man's works, primarily his manga. Every month this year will feature at least one piece about Masami Kurumada, and while the majority of those will be manga reviews (to fill in as many gaps in his catalog that I haven't previously reviewed) there will also be non-review pieces dedicated to Kurumada's career & works, and of course the year will include various pieces (reviews, B-Sides/Lists, etc.) that won't be about Kurumada at all.

Starting things off, then, will be this overview of Masami Kurumada's career & the various manga that he himself has drawn (i.e. spin-offs by other artists will be acknowledged, but not focused on), so that those who maybe have only heard of the name but aren't all that familiar with his catalog can at least get a general idea of what Kurumada brought to manga, why he's so important to the industry as a whole, & why I feel he's worth dedicating an entire year to for his Golden Anniversary. So let's get started, shall we? Trust me, there's A LOT to go over...