Twelve Older Anime That Deserve License Rescues XIV: What Once Was New is Now in Need of a Rescue Part 1

Time is never ending, always moving, and we are helpless against it. When it comes to anime fandom it means that those who stick with the medium for the long haul will only get older over time, while new & younger fans get created & discover things for themselves. Simultaneously that also means that what was once a brand new release will, inevitably, become old, outdated, & even go out of print, possibly never to be seen again once it sees release (or even re-release). I bring this up because at the end of this year The Land of Obscusion will turn 15 years old, i.e. this place (like myself) is oooooooooooooooooooooold... at least in terms of fandom, because I'm not even 40 yet. However, that also means that there are now anime releases that while I was writing stuff for the blog in its earliest years were "new" are now long out of print... which means that they're now eligible for the license rescue list! Therefore, let's look at 12(-ish) anime that were last released in North America between 2010 & 2015, i.e. the first five years of the blog's life, that are now out of print (& on the more expensive side to get, if not absurdly so), could benefit from a new release in some way beyond simply being easily available & affordable again (new content to be offered, upgraded video quality, etc.), and (aside from three) aren't even available via streaming right now.

Do any anime fans 15 years or younger even read this blog? Maybe, maybe not, but it's time I make the majority of the people who actually do read my ramblings feel old!

The mangaka collective known as CLAMP is one of the most beloved groups in all of manga, and while the members of CLAMP have changed throughout the decades the quality of their work has (for the most part) remained relatively high. They truly made their name throughout the 90s with titles like RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon, Magic Knight Rayearth, X, & Angelic Layer, so by the early 00s they were already essentially legends when they debuted ×××HOLiC in the pages of Weekly Young Magazine in early 2003. Pronounced simply as "Holic", as the x's are meant to represent the various "holics"/addictions that people can be found as having, the manga follows Kimihiro Watanuki, a high school student who can see various spirits & the like, something he finds very intrusive in his life. After finding a mysterious shop run by Yuko Ichihara, a seeming witch who can grant wishes, Watanuki asks Yuko to grant his wish of removing his ability to see spirits. Yuko accepts, but only if he works for her as her assistant, which in turn results in Watanuki being sent on various jobs involving the supernatural. ×××HOLiC is also strongly connected to another manga CLAMP debuted in 2004, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, mainly by way of the latter's deuteragonist, Syaoran. The ×××HOLiC manga technically ended in 2011, after 19 volumes, but in 2013 CLAMP debuted ×××HOLiC Rei, a sequel that hasn't gotten anything new since Volume 4's release in 2016, though CLAMP seemingly still considers ×××HOLiC Rei as simply being on hiatus, not outright halted; both manga series have been fully released in English, initially by Del Rey Manga, & later by Kodansha Comics.