However, even in that first year of "traditional" TV anime programming a different type of time slot was attempted for anime... though it would take 33 years for it to truly see its potential realized, for better or worse.
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| The early late-night anime that crawled so that the "modern" productions for the past 30 years could walk. |
While Tetsuwan Atom debuted on January 1, 1963, later that same year on September 4 (& also on Fuji TV) saw the debut of Sennin Buraku, an anime adaptation of the 4-panel manga by the late Ko Kojima that would run from 1956 to 2014 in Weekly Asahi Geino (a tabloid magazine, not a traditional manga magazine), & this would make history by being the first anime to ever air in a late-night time slot, in this case 23:40-23:55, i.e. just before midnight. Now, to be fair, only the first eight episodes of Sennin Buraku would actually air in late-night, as the remaining 15 episodes were pulled back an hour & ran from 22:30-22:45, i.e. the tail end of Golden Time, but it still introduced the idea of airing a TV anime in a time slot that was very much only going to be watched by adults who stayed up late. However, the idea of "late-night anime" would be only done on rare occasion for the next few decades, as 1969 would see Roppo Yabure-kun (loosely based on Sen Saga's book Introduction to Civil Law: How to Avoid Failure with Money & Women) on Nagoya TV (now branded as Mētele), followed by a 17-year hiatus that would only end in 1986 with Heart Cocktail (based on the "urban love story" manga by Seizo Watase) on Nippon TV (a.k.a. NTV), a series that actually saw an anime revival with 2023's Heart Cocktail Colorful. Late-night anime would become a little more semi-consistent at that point, as 1987 saw Fuji TV air both Slippy Dandy (which only lasted four two-minute episodes) & Lemon Angel (a spin-off of hentai anime pioneer Cream Lemon), 1988 had Dr. Chichibuyama (based on the vulgar 4-panel manga by Keiichi Tanaka) on Fuji TV as part of its live All Night Fuji programming block, & 1989 saw both Yomiuri TV air Seishun no Shokutaku (based on the cooking manga by Miriko Takeda, with animation by Madhouse) as part of its variety show 11 PM & Mainichi Broadcasting System/MBS air Sakyo Komatsu's Anime Theater (which adapted short stories by the titular sci-fi writer, & featured animation by Gainax). Something that remained the same with all of these shows, though, was that none of them were a "full-length" program, i.e. taking up its own 30-minute time slot, but rather were all shorter works, if not part of a larger late-night variety show.
That would start to change, though, as after 1990 saw a late-night re-run of the original Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVA on TV Tokyo 1992 would see the debut of Super Zugan (based on the mahjong manga by Masayuki Katayama) on Fuji TV & Yo-Yo no Neko Tsumami (an original work) on NTV, with Super Zugan being the first "full-length" late-night anime, i.e. its episodes were "standard" length (~24 minutes, minus commercials), followed by 1995 seeing The Ping Pong Club on Tokyo Broadcasting System/TBS, based on the manga by Minoru Furuya. Apparently Furuya did not appreciate the anime self-censoring the more extreme & crude moments seen in his manga, due to the producers hoping to re-run it on more traditional time slots, but that's just how things worked back then. Up to this point it's easy to see what kind of anime was being produced in rare quantities for late-night, as they were all very specifically aimed at adults by focusing on very adult themes, i.e. sex, debauchery, late-night cravings, mahjong, or simply more esoteric subject matter; also, some "traditional" anime were apparently re-run in late-night slots every now & up to this point, likely just to fill time. However, all of that would change in late 1996 due in large part to something that happened a few years prior: The End of Japan's "Bubble Economy".
The economic bubble Japan had in the second half of the 80s & the very start of the 90s would come to a crash in early 1992, and one thing that actually got hurt badly by this was the OVA market for anime, which had gone through a massive boom during that time; in essence, anyone with an idea & money was putting out straight-to-video anime, for better or worse. After the bubble burst OVAs would still see release, but they were mostly relegated to being related to something that was already successful, or a massive franchise like Gundam; original OVAs still happened, but nowhere near as often as before. Beyond that, anime was mostly back to being reliant on either being produced as a movie for theatrical release (which cost a lot) or being appealing to TV networks that aired anime in either a morning or prime time slot, i.e. options were once again highly limited. For example, back in 1992 the anime studio Group TAC had wanted to produce a TV anime adaptation of 70s Shonen Jump baseball manga Team Astro, even creating both a proper pitch document and two drawings made to show what it would look like, but no network was interested in airing it due to the failure of 1989-1990's Miracle Giants Dome-kun, which itself was conceived in an attempt to revitalize children's interest in baseball, which had waned; there wouldn't be a new baseball TV anime until H2 in mid-1995. If the economic bubble hadn't burst then maybe Group TAC could have made Team Astro into an OVA series, but by that point they were reliant on network support; Team Astro wouldn't get a TV adaptation until a live-action series in 2005.
Simply put, in the mid-90s there were anime-themed radio talk shows, nicknamed "aniraji/anime radio", that were broadcast during late-night hours, which included things like interviews with voice actors, and at that late of a time slot the only people who were really listening were otaku... otaku who were willing to spend money to buy various bits of swag & merchandise, as well as pay the high costs of home video releases for new anime in Japan. Therefore, a light bulb seemed to go off in someone's head somewhere in the anime industry: What if, instead of airing anime in late-night specifically for a "standard" adult audience... they produced anime in that late time slot for the otaku? In essence, the idea was to produce a TV anime whose entire purpose was essentially to act as a promotion for stuff like the original source material, merchandise & swag related to said anime, & even the later home video release. Obviously, those intentions had always been a part of any anime production for decades by then, but now it'd essentially be the entire point, rather than an added bonus. The concept was to essentially treat the anime as a form of infomercial to not just help sales of the source material but also simply to help sell product to otaku. Enforcing the idea that this was really a "late-night anime infomercial" was the way in which the anime would even air in a late-night time slot, as instead of the usual way TV programming works, where the network pays for the right to air the show, this would be done via brokered programming, i.e. the show's producer would pay the network for air time... just like what infomercials do. To help offset the added costs, then, these late-night anime would mostly be made using the seisaku iinkai/production committee method, where multiple companies would come together & share the costs of production, in return getting a share of the royalties & (ideally) profits; a TV network would sometimes be a part of the committee, but not always. A similar concept existed prior to this, where they were sometimes called "Project [Insert Name Here]", but the term "production committee" wouldn't be standardized until 1999. Also, depending on the production, the production committee would only pay for a single 12/13-week block at a time, which is known as a "cour" in Japan, instead of requiring to produce larger sets of episodes right away, thereby helping keep costs (& expectations) in check. Single-cour anime had been attempted in the past, like Metal Fighter Miku & Shinken Legend Tight Road in the second half of 1994, but those were done in a more traditional fashion and on "regular" time slots (& seemingly failed).
Therefore, after finding a network that was willing to sell late-night air time in TV Tokyo, on "October 3, 1996 at 25:45", a.k.a. October 4, 1996 at 1:45 am, the first episode of Those Who Hunt Elves debuted on Japanese TV, replacing the show MENkui & becoming the first "modern" example of a late-night anime, i.e. a late-night anime infomercial made via production committee. The show's success would mark the start of a format of production that, in less than a decade, would start to become an immensely popular way to produce anime & now, 30 years later, has effectively become the de facto way the vast majority of TV anime is generally produced in Japan. Yes, weekend morning & prime time anime still get made, & the highest-rated (for TV) shows in Japan still tend to air in those time slots, but they've long become the exception rather than the rule when you look at the sheer amount of TV anime that gets made on a seasonal (let alone yearly) basis; hell, even titles like Dragon Ball & One Piece have since moved over to late-night for new productions. So, to celebrate(?) the 30th Anniversary of what I love to call the "modern day late-night anime infomercial" that has now become the primary cause of what some would consider the current hellscape that is the modern anime production landscape I'll be spending the majority of 2026 watching & reviewing eight (technically nine) early examples of "modern" late-night anime, specifically dating from 1996 to 1998. However, similar to what I had done way back in 2012 (which focused solely on what TV Tokyo had aired in the first few years), allow me to go over all of the various anime from 1996 & 1997 that debuted in late-night, so as to provide context & showcase the early growth of this format from "mere experiment" to "the way this stuff gets made primarily". Over the year I'll return to this overview to cover more pairs of years, though we'll stop after 2002... because 2003 is truly when things become way too big to go over in detail.
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Naturally, it all begins with the only late-night anime to air in 1996, Those Who Hunt Elves. Based on the Monthly Comic Dengeki Gao! manga by Yu Yagami that ran from 1994 to 2003 for 21 volumes, this was the perfect title to use as test bed for this "late-night anime infomercial" concept simply due to what the manga was about. An absurd take on isekai stories (which, yes, did exist back then), it starred three humans (karateka Junpei, high school girl & military otaku Ritsuko, & actress Airi) & a Type 74 tank who are all teleported to a fantasy world & want nothing more than to get back to Earth (unlike modern isekai stories). With the help of an elf named Celcia they have to travel the world & discover the shards of the magical spell that can send them back home... which happen to have embedded themselves onto the skin of random female elves, like a tattoo. Therefore the only way to find the magic shards is to strip any female elf the "Elf Hunters" come across, and it instantly becomes obvious to see why the only time slot an anime adaptation of TWHE could ever air in was late-night. While the stripping was handled in more of a ridiculous fashion than anything suggestive or sexual, there's absolutely no way any TV network would ever air an anime focused on stripping (elf) women on anything outside of late-night, and the gambit actually paid off. The anime managed to hit an average rating of 2% in 1996 (which today would be considered a "high" rating for the time slot, but even in the late 00s was still considered decent), and sales of both the original manga & even the anime's soundtrack were apparently considered very good. Therefore, after all 12 episodes of TWHE finished up on December 19, 1996, TV Tokyo decided to continue with the idea beyond what was likely only meant to be an experiment at first.
In terms of an English release, ADV Films would license & release Those Who Hunt Elves on both subbed & dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD in the late 90s & 00s (as well as release some of the manga), while Sentai Filmworks would re-release the anime on DVD & later SD-BD in the late 00s & 2010s.
This bring us into 1997, as after a three-week hiatus following TWHE the second late-night anime infomercial would debut on January 9 on the same time slot: Eat-Man. Technically, this anime was an adaptation of another Dengeki Gao! manga, this one by Akihito Yoshitomi about the (mostly) episodic adventures of Bolt Crank, the "World's Greatest Mercenary" who has the ability to eat inorganic material (mostly metal) & reproduce it for later use, usually through his right hand. In reality, though, the Eat-Man anime only took what I literally just said about the manga's general concept & told a series of original stories that had no actual connection to the manga whatsoever, with even Bolt himself being notably different in terms of personality at points. Truly, this anime came off more like director Koichi Mashimo (who was also head writer & personally storyboarded, wrote, & even directed a few episodes himself) had a bunch of moody, esoteric, & thought-provoking short stories he had wanted to tell, and simply felt that Bolt Crank was the perfect character to tell these stories through. This apparently did result in outcry from fans of the manga, which itself had only debuted roughly a year prior, but at the same time the fact that there even was an outcry about how wildly different the Eat-Man anime was from Yoshitomi's manga showed that there was actually an audience that was willing to watch anime in a late-night hour. And, to be fair, Yoshitomi himself has always come off as very welcoming of Mashimo's "SF Neo Romantic Action" take on the Eat-Man IP, allowing Mashimo to write a light novel in 1999 (Eat-Man: Koroshi no Idenshi/The Killing Gene) that took place in the world of his anime, & in 2015 Yoshitomi even made a manga short where his Bolt meets Mashimo's Bolt... and they naturally fight, at first.
When it comes to an English release, Bandai Entertainment would release Eat-Man around 2000 on subbed VHS (back when it was AnimeVillage.com), and in the late 2010s Discotek would re-release the show on DVD & later SD-BD.
ADV Films would become a major player in the English anime industry after releasing Neon Genesis Evangelion in the mid-to-late 90s on subbed & dubbed VHS, and it's been re-released numerous times, whether by ADV on DVD during the 00s or by GKids on BD in the early 2020s. Meanwhile, the Death & Rebirth movie was first released in English in the 00s by Manga Entertainment on VHS & DVD (with ADV producing the dub), before getting re-released on BD by GKids, alongside the TV series.
Which brings us it April 1997, which saw Eat-Man (& the Eva re-run) replaced with four new late-night anime, and to accommodate this new days were added to the schedule. First up was on April 2, a Wednesday, which saw not one but two new shows that aired one after the other, creating the first ever late-night anime block (of sorts). At the usual "25:15" was Maze☆The Mega-Burst Space, which adapted the 1993-1998 light novel by Satoru Akahori (story) & Eiji Suganuma (art) & told the Wizard of Oz-inspired tale of Maze, a young girl with amnesia who finds herself in a fantasy world where winds up protecting a princess named Mill as they work with others to get Mill back into the rightful claim of the kingdom she's meant to rule over... oh, and at night Maze turns into a completely different male form that's immensely powerful with magic & is a sexual deviant; prior to this there was a two-episode OVA adaptation in 1996, but the TV anime was a complete redo. Maze would run until September 24 across 25 episodes, and while the later VHS release was the same as what aired on TV, the Laserdisc release was labeled the "Oguretsu-ban/Vulgar Edition", as it removed the self-censorship that was done for the TV airing & showed more skin & boobs. Maze would also receive a 45-minute theatrical film on April 25, 1998, subtitled Tenpen Kyoui no Giant/The Menacing Giant of the Heavens, that unfortunately has never received a home video release of any sort, even in Japan, & might actually have become a true example of lost media, as apparently no one knows where the original film master is located; all that currently exists is a promotional trailer included in the LD release.
Central Park Media would release Maze in English in the late 90s & early 00s on both dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD, though their release was based on the censored TV version, so it didn't feature the "bare" footage from the "Vulgar Edition", nor did it include the bonus 26th "fanservice" episode that was an LD-exclusive.
Airing immediately after Maze at "25:45" was Haunted Junction, yet another Dengeki Gao! adaptation, which was based on the 1996-2001 manga by Nemu Mukudori about the members of Saito High School's Holy Student Council, made up of the Christian (son of a) minister Haruto Hojo, the Buddhist monk Kazumi Ryudo, & the Shinto miko Mutsuki Asahina. These three dealt with all manner of spirits & yokai that haunt the school, all with a heavy focus on comedy & slapstick, which included Asahina being a straight-up shotacon who's obsessed with the school's living Ninomiya Sontoku statue; Haunted Junction may likely be the first TV anime to feature a shotacon in general, let alone in a major role. Of the four late-night anime that debuted in April 1997 this was the only one to run for only a single cour, so we'll take a detour into July to also cover what replaced Haunted Junction while Maze was still airing: Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy. Unlike all of the prior shows, which were adaptations of still-running works at the time, Daisy was actually an adaptation of a long-finished manga, specifically one by Noriko Nagano that ran in Weekly Shonen Captain from 1986-1989 across three volumes, & a year prior was re-released by ASCII in a modified form as Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy For Ever. Debuting on July 2, the anime told the story of Reijiro Tekuno (i.e. "Techno"), a teenager who's lived in a bomb shelter for most of his life, but decides to venture out into the world of the city he lives in when he falls in love at first sight with Hitomi Matsuzawa, a local schoolgirl who Techno calls his "Daisy". The thing with the Daisy anime, though, is that it's aged immensely poorly due to the fact that Techno very blatantly commits continual sexual harassment when it comes to Hitomi. He calls her a nickname that she doesn't agree to, claims ownership of her against her will, repeatedly stares at her, & (as per the episodic nature of the story) puts her into all sorts of wacky & zany danger & peril due to Techno's penchant for science experiments gone wrong. It's a story that, to be fair, was undoubtedly created in its original manga form with good intentions, but even by 1997 had arguably aged poorly. Amusingly enough, Daisy's ED theme ("One More Chance" by Yukie Nakama) would also be used as the ED theme for Rockman X4 in Japan, which came out on PS1 & Saturn just a month after Daisy debuted in late-night. Some places online state that the game got the song due to the anime's poor reception, as a sort of "one more chance" (heh heh), but the timing of it all makes that impossible; it just simply got licensed out to two different productions at around the same time.
Both Haunted Junction & Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy would get released in English in the early 00s via Bandai Entertainment, both on subbed VHS as AnimeVillage.com & later via subbed DVD boxsets as Bandai; neither show has received better than VHS & LD over in Japan.
Returning back to April, the anime that actually took the place of Eat-Man would be Hyper Police, which debuted on April 3. Based on the 1993-2004 manga by Minoru "MEE" Tachikawa that ran in Monthly Dragon Magazine, Hyper Police was a comedic police series about a group of beastpeople who ran a private police company (i.e. they were bounty hunters) who helped keep the peace in a world where traditional humans have become largely replaced with beastpeople. While the characters in Hyper Police were treated mostly as your usual anthropomorphized ilk the animals some were based on tended to be taken from Japanese mythology, like main character catgirl Natsuki being a nekomata, while her partner Sakura was a multi-tailed kitsune. Beyond that, Hyper Police was more or less what one would expect from an episodic police comedy/drama, with the gang either taking on various criminals to protect the innocent (though the anime altered the punishment for repeat offenders from the manga, replacing castration with memory wiping) or getting into misadventures when it came to personal problems with friends & family. To be fair, after the ridiculous elf stripping of Those Who Hunt Elves & the esoteric storytelling of Eat-Man it was probably fair to have something a bit more straightforward & simple with Hyper Police... though, in all honesty, the brokered programming methodology of late-night airing meant that there was almost never any sort of intentional counter or follow-up programming to whatever else was airing.
Hyper Police would see English release in the early 00s via Image Entertainment, one of the rare anime the company licensed & released on its own, via both dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD.
Finally, the last new late-night anime for the month debuted the following Monday on April 8 at "25:15" with Hareluya II BØY, which replaced the show Ganbaru! & was notable be being the first anime adaptation of a Weekly Shonen Jump manga to ever debut in late-night; by early 1997 Jump's "Golden Age" was already over, but it still had some residual cachet remaining. Based on the 1992-1999 manga by Haruto Umezawa, BØY was also notable in that it was arguably the first "true" delinquent anime to actually be adapted into a TV anime, as the series detailed the days of private high school delinquent Hareluya Hibino (who dreams of "World Domination") & the various fights he & his friends get into with other delinquents, gangs, crooks, & various other villains, all usually in order to help someone else out. Prior to this anime adaptations of "pure" delinquent manga (i.e. stories simply about delinquents getting into fights, joining gangs, hopelessly falling in love, etc.) were always either done as OVAs or, in some cases, theatrical movies. This was likely due to no network wanting to risk looking like it was condoning behavior that parents (no doubt) didn't want their kids to duplicate at school by airing it on prime time... for "free", at least, because paying money for a manga magazine, movie ticket, or VHS rental makes it fine, I guess. A late-night time slot, though, had none of that risk (since kids, in theory, wouldn't stay up that late on a school day to watch anime... right? *wink*), so BØY helped open up a potential new place for those type of manga to see anime adaptations on... at least in theory, as "pure" delinquent anime on TV wouldn't really happen again until Tokyo Revengers in 2021. Similarly, outside of a single short-form anime in 1998 that we'll get to next time, Shonen Jump wouldn't truly return to late-night anime until Ring ni Kakero 1 in 2004, and it wouldn't be until Buso Renkin & Death Note in late 2006 that the magazine would really embrace the time slot as a place to regularly air new anime adaptations of its manga.
Unlike all but one other late-night anime from 1997, Hareluya II BØY wouldn't get licensed for English release during the late 90s/early 00s "anime bubble", instead taking 24 years to get licensed in 2021 when Sentai Filmworks released it via streaming on Hidive. Sentai did also state a home video release for BØY but as of this overview it has yet to happen, while in Japan the show has never received anything better than VHS or LD (minus the first episode getting released on DVD in 2012).
The next big additions to the modern late-night anime infomercial wouldn't come until October, so in July decided TV Tokyo to re-run Neon Genesis Evangelion yet again in late-night, but this time it was done a little differently. You see, on July 19 the film The End of Evangelion finally debuted in theaters, where it was naturally a massive hit & would win multiple awards come the end of the year. Taking advantage of the film's debut, TV Tokyo re-ran all 26 episodes of Eva TV starting five days after the premier, but instead of the weekly episode batches that happened in February this time it was done as a four-day stretch of late-night airings. July 24 (Thursday) aired Eps 1-6 starting at "25:55" (after Ep 16 of Hyper Police had aired, which I'm sure made for some interesting viewing that night), July 25 (Friday) aired Eps 7-15 starting at "26:00", July 26 (Saturday) aired Eps 16-21 starting at "26:10", & finally July 27 (Sunday) aired Eps 22-26 starting at "25:25". There are reports of Eva's 1997 late-night run hitting 5%-6% in the ratings, but I have no idea if that applies to the prior February run, this July run, or if both runs actually hit those numbers.
End of Evangelion wouldn't see release in English until the early 00s, when Manga Entertainment released it on subbed/dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD, more or less alongside Death & Rebirth, with ADV brought on to produce the English dub. End of Eva would later get re-released by GKids as part of the re-release of Eva TV.
After that came September, which saw something that was simultaneously a re-run but also a debut, & all on a different network. Yes, after nearly an entire year of TV Tokyo being the sole home of new late-night anime, Tokyo Broadcasting System returned to the concept on September 29 with the debut of Wonderful, a late-night variety show that would also air anime... and was brought about due to an old controversy rearing its head over at TBS. Back on October 26, 1989 the staff of the talk show 3-ji ni Aimashou showed an interview with lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto to members of the cult Aum Shinrikyo prior to it being aired on the program... all without letting Sakamoto himself know of this preview screening in advance, especially since Sakamoto was in the middle of a class-action lawsuit against the cult. Aside from TBS breaking confidentiality with Sakamoto, members of Aum Shinrikyo then went to Sakamoto's home on November 3 & killed both Sakamoto & his family. The cult was suspected of the murder, but it wasn't until 1995 (following later incidents of violence committed by the cult, like the subway sarin gas attack) that investigations brought TBS' secret interview screening to light, and though TBS initially denied it happening the network eventually admitted to it in March of 1996. Over the next year-plus the "Social Information Bureau" that was involved in this secret screening was shut down in response, and this resulted in TBS' late-night news slot now becoming empty, so it was decided that a variety show would go in its place, resulting in the creation of Wonderful. Naturally, considering that Wonderful was kind of created as a bit of a last-minute emergency replacement, it only made sense that the first anime to air on this program was a re-run of The Ping Pong Club, the show that had been TBS' first foray into late-night anime back in 1995. Come 1998 Wonderful would become a haven for brand new (mostly) short-form late-night anime, but we'll get to that next time... still, what an origin story, right?
Central Park Media would release The Ping Pong Club in English during the early 00s, both via dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD.
And so we finally reach the last batch of modern day late-night anime infomercials that debuted in 1997 with everything that debuted in October... and it's here where we truly see this concept first catch fire, as another three networks would join in. However, let's first go over TV Tokyo's new shows, and we'll start with what replaced Maze on October 1, Next Senki Ehrgeiz. An original concept credited to an entity known only as "et" (possibly as in "et al"?), this anime predates the more well known 3D fighting game from DreamFactory, Namco, & Square (also called Ehrgeiz) by about half a year & has absolutely no relation to it whatsoever. Instead, this was technically the first late-night mech anime (Maze did feature a robot that the lead would pilot, but it only appeared occasionally & wasn't a main selling point) & took place during a war between the forces of Earth & the renegade Next Colonies. Rather than focus on the war itself, though, the anime detailed how a runaway AI-piloted "Metal Vehicle" codenamed S.A.C. would eventually bring three sides into conflict with each other: Captain Akane Aoi of Next, who's been given the task to retrieve S.A.C. by any means necessary; Hal of the Earth resistance group Terra, who thinks that the "Great Power" behind S.A.C. can help him achieve his goal of a unified humanity; & the outlaw denizens of the war-ravaged & abandoned Next 7 colony, who simply wish to live a carefree life outside of the horrors of the war. In some ways Ehrgeiz felt like an example of a story that was maybe originally conceived of as a shorter OVA series & was instead stretched out into a 12-episode weekly TV series, as the early episodes of the show do arguably move by a little too slowly & without much in the way of plot development, though they do at least establish the cast so that when the main plot truly begins the viewer is good to go. Also, despite being a mech anime it never received any of the usual tie-ins expected of the genre, like plastic models & figures; in fact, the MVs themselves don't even have unique names, despite coming in a variety of designs. To most Next Senki Ehrgeiz may be considered "rightfully forgotten" with time, but in this writer's opinion the show is actually worth a watch & remains a personal favorite; a slow burner at first, yes, but once it gets going it has a good story to tell.
Meanwhile, also debuting on October 1 right after Ehrgeiz, & replacing Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy, was Those Who Hunt Elves II, the return of the OG modern day late-night anime informercial (& almost one year to the very day the first episode of "First Impression", as it's now called in Japan, debuted). Understandably, this was simply more of the same elf-stripping antics based on the manga by Yu Yagami, and with the first season's success creating the burgeoning late-night anime scene that was already coming about it only made sense for a second season to be put into production. From what I can tell the only real change up was with the director, as Hiroshi Fukutomi (Galactic Patrol Lensman, Suzuka) was now in charge in place of Season 1's Kazuyoshi Katayama (Argento Soma, The Big O). Next Senki Ehrgeiz would get released in English in the early 00s via Bandai Entertainment, first via subbed VHS as AnimeVillage.com, followed by a dubbed VHS for the first two episodes as Bandai. Meanwhile, ADV Films would release Those Who Hunt Elves II via dual-audio DVD in the 00s, followed by Sentai Filmworks later re-releasing it alongside the first series on DVD & SD-BD in the late 00s & 2010s.
As for what replaced Hyper Police on October 2 in the OG Thursday time slot, that wound up being Virus Buster Serge, the first TV anime ever directed by the legendary (or notorious, depending on preference) animator Masami Obari, who had previously only directed OVAs & a single film up to this point. On the surface the anime had a rather straightforward concept where the titular main character Serge Train decides to join the organization STAND, & its power armored warriors that take on the mysterious "Virus" that corrupts & takes over machinery, in the hopes that it might help him remember his past, but in reality Virus Buster Serge was actually part of a larger media mix project. Released a little over a month prior to this was the "Hybrid Adventure" video game Virus for the Sega Saturn, a joint production between Hudson, Sega, & Avex where Serge Shaddix would join STAND to figure out what exactly happened to his friends & brother who, after an encounter with a virus in the virtual world that can infect humans & turn them into monsters, were all simply left unconscious in the real world. Yeah, as you can easily tell, Virus Buster Serge was a wholly different beast from the video game it was technically based on (amusingly enough, the anime would get its own video game adaptation in 1999... but only for the PS1), and it's to no surprise that one can watch the anime without knowing anything about the game beforehand.
Manga Entertainment would release Virus Buster Serge on dual-audio DVD in the early 00s, and it'd remain a constant presence in Manga's catalog all the way until the very end, even getting broadcast on US & Canadian TV in 2007 & 2008, respectively. In fact, it's the only one of this entire batch of 1996/1997 late-night anime to get TV air time in English on a widely available network that wasn't run by the licensor themselves, a la ADV's The Anime Network.
The last new offering TV Tokyo had at late-night for 1997 was Hareluya II BØY's replacement on Mondays, Vampire Princess Miyu. This was a complete reimagining of the media mix property that director Toshihiro "Toshiki" Hirano & animator/mangaka Naurmi Kakinouchi first created back in 1988 (& got married during the production of) & was best known via the four-episode OVA from 1988 & 1989; in fact, Hirano & Kakinouchi are still producing new Miyu manga to this very day. Much like the OVA, Miyu TV starred the titular Miyu, a vampire who knows little of who or what she truly is outside of the fact that it is her duty to find evil spirits known as Shinma that have made their way to the human realm & banish them back to "The Dark", though Miyu can never return to The Dark herself. Where the prior OVA version was known for its more fantastical atmosphere, Miyu TV instead took influence from the likes of GeGeGe no Kitaro, various tokusatsu shows, & Japanese film by putting more focus on the tragedy of humanity that allows people to be possessed & influenced by things like Shinma, as well as Miyu interacting more directly with beings like gods. Interestingly enough, Miyu TV also looks to have been an early example of a "modern" late-night anime aiming beyond simply the otaku crowd, as Hirano & Kakinouchi apparently were aiming this show more towards women in their 20s, plus girls in both junior & high school, as well as fans of the prior OVA.
It's also worth noting that Miyu TV looks to be the first late-night anime to experience a last-minute change of plans, as Episode 2 (as it was originally intended) wound up being skipped over for broadcast, and while an official reason was never given, Yuji Hayami (who wrote said episode) would later state on his blog that it was scrapped for being "too gory", possibly due to regulations being changed after the Kobe child murders earlier that same year. However, Episode 2 was still an important part of the story, as it introduced Miyu to the show's recurring cast, so Episode 3 had to get re-edited so that the important parts of the first half of Episode 2 could still be included; also, some later episodes had some blood & violence censored. The later home video release, which included all 26 episodes uncut & unedited, would get titled "Vampire Princess Miyu Integral" in Japan, while a later re-run on AT-X would include the original & unaltered Episodes 2 & 3.
While AnimEigo had released the original OVAs in English, it would be TokyoPop that'd release Vampire Princess Miyu TV in English in the early 00s via dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD. Maiden Japan would then re-release Miyu TV via DVD boxset in the 2010s.
We end things off for 1997 with the batch of new late-night anime coming from the three new networks, each coming with a single show to end off the year. First up was TV Asahi on "October 1 at 25:10" (which put it in direct competition with Next Senki Ehrgeiz) with Shinkai Densetsu/Deep Sea Legend Meremanoid, which replaced car show Car Graphic TV; that show simply moved over one day. This is a curious one, as it seems to generally be considered "based" on the RPG Meremanoid that came out on the PS1 by XING... but the game didn't come out until August 5, 1999, nearly two whole years after the anime debuted. However, XING is credited in the anime as co-creator alongside writer Kenji Terada, who also wrote the scenario for the RPG, so if I had to make a guess it would simply be that the original plan was for the game to see release some time in 1997, only for it to suffer a major delay of some sort, resulting in the anime no longer being the promotional tool it was likely intended to be... though just by looking at the cast lists for both it's plain to see that the two Meremanoid productions were wholly different stories with their own unique characters (though apparently character roles have analogues between the two).
Anyway, the Meremanoid anime took place on the planet Meremanoia, & deep within its oceans live merpeople called Meremanoids (who can also change into a more human form with traditional legs, if need be), with the story being about two "Magic Spirit Warriors" named Misty Jo & Oz teaming with Leon, Prince of the Moslem Principality, to take on the evil Dark Reef over control of Meremanoia itself... or, at least, that's the best I can surmise from what little info there is about this show online, because outside of its connection to the later PS1 game there's next to nothing to find about it beyond vague synopses; MAL has a description listed in English, but some details look to conflict with info I found in Japanese. While Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid would wind up being TV Asahi's first ever late-night anime the network wouldn't really stick with the concept, as after this show finished up in early 1998 TV Asahi wouldn't air another late-night anime until 1999, and while it would air one or two per year from then out it wouldn't really embrace the concept until 2004, when it went all in. Similar to Hareluya II BØY, Meremanoid has never received anything better than VHS & LD when it comes to home video, even in Japan, though unlike BØY it's not even currently streaming anywhere. The Meremanoid PS1 game, though, did get re-released digitally on PS3 as part of the PSOne Archives in 2017, as game studio Mebius now owns the rights to the IP (alongside some other XING titles).
As of this overview, Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid remains the sole late-night anime from 1997 to never get licensed for English release, in any fashion... and that may continue to be "never", due to its main producer being Kitty Film, the catalog of which has notoriously been stuck in legal licensing hell since the late 00s (minus specific exceptions, like the original Ranma 1/2 & Urusei Yatsura anime productions). Sony Music Entertainment Visual Works handled the VHS & LD releases in Japan, but otherwise are not included in the actual anime credits in any way (same with Samsung, which is also only listed in the copyright), so it's possible that the show isn't also stuck behind "Aniplex Jail". But even if Mebius also wound up with the rights to the anime, they're a video game company... what would they necessarily know about licensing out a TV anime?
Meanwhile, NTV (which last aired a late-night anime in 1992) seemingly decided to not try to compete in any way whatsoever, instead airing its new late-night anime on a day neither TV Tokyo, TBS, nor TV Asahi were trying out: "Tuesday at 25:45". Without a doubt, this would be the most iconic late-night anime from 1997, as on October 8 Kenpu Denki/Sword Style Romance Berserk debuted on NTV. Based on the Young Animal manga by the late Kentaro Miura (that is still continuing on past his death, via his team at Studio Gaga & fellow mangaka Kouji Mori), the original Berserk anime focused mainly on a single story arc from the manga, that being the "Golden Age Arc" that told the backstory of main character Guts, a powerful swordsman who joins the mercenary group the Band of the Hawk after being defeated by its leader, Griffith. What would follow is still cited to this day as one of the greatest anime of all time, telling a story filled with action, love, drama, blood (lots of blood)... and a truly unforgettable finale that absolutely pushed the limits of what could be shown on late-night TV when it came to violence, gore, & sexuality; even then, though, it was still toned down from the manga. Back in April 1997 Maze debuted & had to self-censor so as to not get in trouble with TV Tokyo, even at a late-night hour, but just a year later the final episode of "Berserk 1997" (as it's called now, due to there being later Berserk anime productions) & NTV essentially laughed in the face such a concept. The show was seemingly such a (surprise?) success for NTV that the network simply decided to re-air the show in full from April to September of 1998, before finally debuting a new late-night anime.
Media Blasters would truly hit it big when it released Berserk 1997 in English in the early 00s via dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD (though the franchise's English debut actually was the Sega Dreamcast side story game in 2000 via Eidos Intertactive), & in the 2020s Discotek Media would re-release it via BD.
Finally, we have the last new late-night anime of 1997, which aired over at Mainichi Broadcasting System, it's first one since 1989. MBS took a similar idea as NTV by airing its new show on an unopposed time slot ("Saturday at 25:35"), so on October 18 the first episode of Fortune Quest L debuted. The fantasy light novel series Fortune Quest by Mishio Fukazawa (story) & Natsumi Mukai (art) would officially launch in late 1989 via Kadokawa Shoten's Sneaker Bunko imprint & over the next 31 years would run for a total of 47 books, including 39 main books (split between three runs: FQ [8 books], New FQ [20 books], & New FQ II [11 books]), three FQ Gaiden books, two FQ Part-Time books, & three New FQ Limited books, before finally coming to an official end in mid-2020. The story of poet/mapper Pastel G. King & her friends as they traverse the world & go on RPG-style adventures (complete with things like experience points & levels) has since been regarded highly over in Japan for its focus on the daily life of its cast, rather than rely on the usual fantasy tropes of saving the world & defeating evil. There was also a manga adaptation drawn by Mukai in the early 90s, two video games (for Super Famicom & PS1), a tabletop RPG adaptation, & the like, but there were also two anime adaptations. First there was a four-episode OVA from 1993-1994 titled Fortune Quest: The Happiest Adventurers in the World, and then there was the late-night TV anime adaptation that aired on MBS, Fortune Quest L. Despite the title, FQL doesn't seem to be based on the New Fortune Quest Limited books (of which only one was published before the show debuted, anyway), instead being a mix of New FQ novel adaptation & anime-original plot, due to there being a large amount of anime-only characters listed, and there was seemingly no real carryover from the OVA, though the staff for FQL did involve numerous people who had previously worked on Slayers; it was effectively the anime the team made between Slayers Try & sci-fi series Lost Universe.
Despite being a notable success for MBS at the time, achieving a 4.5% rating, Fortune Quest L has seemingly been mostly forgotten with time, though it did get a digitally remastered DVD boxset re-release in Japan in 2015. However, unlike Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid & even Hareluya II BØY, FQL did manage to receive an official English release in the early 00s... though only barely. As part of a then-working relationship with Enoki Films, Media Blasters released Fortune Quest L on both dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD in North America, but after only a single release containing the first five episodes in late 2001 dropped the show entirely; this predates MB eventually ditching Enoki, too, so who knows what happened there. Still, it had some sort of English release back then.
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And that's what the modern day late-night anime infomercial scene looked like in its earliest days, from the initial experiment that was Those Who Hunt Elves in 1996 all the way through its first full year in 1997. As we can see, while the initial early attempts at late-night anime from 1963 to 1995 were very scattered & aimed precisely at an "adult" audience, the kind of titles that came about from the shift into what essentially amounted to anime infomercials made possible via brokered programming were, in essence, a bit more varied. While I personally don't really put much stock into the "intended" age range of titles, at least not as much as other people do, it is notable that of the 14 brand new anime that debuted in late-night during this timeframe (i.e. excluding re-runs like Evangelion & The Ping Pong Club) six of them originated from "shonen" magazines (seven if you include Hyper Police, but I can't find definitive word on what age its magazine was "intended" for), or nearly half. However, the types of titles chosen from the likes of Dengeki Gao! & Shonen Jump to air in these late-night time slots were ones that featured content that, for the most part, simply wouldn't have been allowed on the more "traditional" time slots, like Those Who Hunt Elves I & II's continual usage of stripping women of their clothes, Hareluya II BØY's delinquent focus (plus some of the subject matter in certain episodes), or Haunted Junction featuring an utterly blatant shotacon as one of its main characters. Not just that, but consider how quickly this format of anime production caught fire, as in 1997 alone the amount of brand new anime that debuted in late-night (13) had already surpassed the total amount of brand new late-night anime that had debuted in the 34 years before it (12, which includes Those Who Hunt Elves in 1996)!
After this initial year-plus of content, both the TV networks & anime industry players were already starting to get a feel for what the potential was when it came to debuting anime in this late-night infomercial format, and others still were already starting to notice the potential problems that could come from it. For example, in a short interview included in the final LD release for Next Senki Ehrgeiz, director Toshifumi Kawase was already calling out the risk of this format resulting in there being simply too much anime being put into production... something that's long been a recurring complaint from both fans & those in the industry. Kawase's concern was not without reason back then, too, as 1998 would go on to be a bit of a breakthrough year for the modern day late-night anime informercial, both when it came to iconic & celebrated anime making their debuts, as well as the introduction of new means & ways for anime to find first-run homes. So come back in March as we cover the years 1998 & 1999, which will see the debut of beloved classics (Outlaw Star, Trigun, Serial Experiments Lain, Initial D, etc.), the revival of past successes (Eat-Man '98, Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, El-Hazard: The Alternative World, etc.), the origins of UHF anime & satellite networks entering the scene... and a whole lot of different anime via Wonderful. See you then!
Those Who Hunt Elves © Yu Yagami/ASCII Media Works/Showgate/Sotsu
Eat-Man © Akihito Yoshitomi・MediaWorks/Bandai Visual
Maze: The Mega-Burst Space © 1997 Satoru Akahori・Eiji Suganuma/Kadokawa Shoten・JVC (now FlyingDog)・J.C. Staff
Haunted Junction © Nemu Mukudori/MediaWorks・Project HJ
Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy © Nagano Noriko・ASCII/Project Daisy
Hareluya II BØY © S・E/Shueisha・BØY Production Committee・TV Tokyo
Next Senki Ehrgeiz © 1997 et・BeSTACK/Project Ehrgeiz
Those Who Hunt Elves II © Yu Yagami/ASCII Media Works/Project E2
Virus Buster Serge © 1997 Virus Project
Vampire Princess Miyu [TV] © 1998 Hirano Office/JVC (now FlyingDog)・AMG・Soeishinsha Inc.
Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid © 1997 Kenji Terada/XING (now Mebius?)・TV Asahi・Kitty (now defunct?)・SME (now Aniplex)・Samsung
Berserk [1997] © Kentaro Miura/Hakusensha・NTV・VAP
Fortune Quest L © Mishio Fukazawa/Natsumi Mukai・Kadokawa Shoten・Media Works・Fortune Quest Production Committee
Back when I was getting started back in the Nineties, I noticed that some 'tape traders" had anime-related talk shows as part of their offerings. I guess these were also part of that late-night broadcast environment in Japan. I never got to see any of that myself, but I also can imagine why these programs didn't get so widely distributed in the West.
ReplyDeleteMy sempai was a huge Miyu fan (well, he loved just about anything from Hirano/Kakinouchi!).