Shadow Skill TV: The Power of My Blow Has No Equal... Except for My Drinking Tab

Today almost any kind of genre of anime can be found debuting in late-night TV time slots, but in the early days of the "modern day late-night anime infomercial", & even in the earlier examples predating the "modern" format, there was definitely more of a focus on not simply offering what could be seen on other time slots. In particular, there was almost nothing along the lines of a "standard" action series, i.e. the kind of fighting-focused fare that you'd find in the shonen magazines of the era. There were some action-heavy anime in late-night, sure, but the 90s was also the era where "battle manga" were often seen adapted into anime that would air in prime time, so there really was no reason to produce one for the more limited & restricted audience that late-night would primarily be aimed at. The closest equivalent early on would maybe have been Hareluya II BØY in 1997, but that was also a delinquent series, a genre that really wasn't being made for TV at the time. No, it wouldn't be until the Summer of 1998 that late-night would finally see its first anime adaptation of a "battle manga"... and it adapted a manga with a very interesting (& sometimes confusing) serialization history behind it.

Born on March 15, 1971, Megumu Okada first got his start in manga as a member of Takehiko Ito's staff for the series Future-Retro Hero Story (the manga that Outlaw Star would later be a spin-off of) in the late 80s & early 90s, before making doujinshi. One doujinshi Okada had made would then be repurposed in 1992 to become Shadow Skill, Okada's first ever professional work that was part of the debut issue of Takeshobo's Comic Gamma, a magazine that was meant to appeal to junior & senior high school students, i.e. those who had grown out of shonen magazines but weren't meant to read seinen magazines quite yet. I should make note of a common misconception online that the "full" title of Okada's manga technically includes the word "Eigi", which comes about from the fact that the official Japanese title is "影技 SHADOW SKILL" (or, in some instances, "SHADOW SKILL -影技-"), and that the way to read those kanji is "Eigi". Now, to be fair, the series does indeed use the term "Eigi" when referring to a specific style of combat in the story, but the literal translation of "Eigi" is simply "Shadow Technique", i.e. "Shadow Skill" (which happens to also be the nickname for the main character), so the manga & anime are simply titled Shadow Skill. A-ny-way, Shadow Skill would run for the entire duration of Comic Gamma's existence, which came to an end in May 1996, resulting in a total of 23 chapters across four volumes. At that point Okada put Shadow Skill on hiatus, but a year later the manga would find a new home with now-defunct Kadokawa brand Fujimi Shobo's Monthly Dragon Jr., continuing on from where the Comic Gamma run left off at. This second run wouldn't last long at only about 1.5 years, & totaling 13 additional chapters, before going on hiatus once again, though in this case it wasn't due to the magazine going under; Kadokawa wouldn't collect the newly serialized chapters, but would re-release the first four volumes in 1998.

After yet another year-long hiatus Okada revived Shadow Skill once again, now being published under Kodansha & its Afternoon series of magazines. It first ran in Afternoon Season Zokan from February 2000 to October 2002, before getting moved over to Monthly Afternoon itself in February 2003, where it would run irregularly until March 2014, when Okada finally brought the series to its end. The main reason why Shadow Skill ran irregularly in Afternoon from 2003 on was due to Okada also debuting a new manga over at Akita Shoten's Champion Red in late 2002, namely Saint Seiya Episode.G, a spin-off/prequel to Masami Kurumada's iconic Shonen Jump manga, which itself has become a trilogy of manga that's since become Okada's primary focus to this day. The main confusion regarding Shadow Skill, aside from the silliness with some people being way too literal with its title, mainly comes down to publication history, which sometimes results in people not knowing how many actual volumes there are. In short, the original Comic Gamma run was four volumes, which were then reprinted by Kadokawa during the Dragon Jr. run. In preparation for the Afternoon run, then, Kodansha did a new aizouban set of releases that collected the initial four volumes across two books, while the previously uncollected Dragon Jr. run was now finally released as the first aizouban, & instead of simple numbers these books each had their own subtitle (black howling & black wing for the original Comic Gamma run, & phantom of shade for the Dragon Jr. run). Finally, the Afternoon run itself would be collected across 11 volumes, which means that the full & complete Shadow Skill manga, as released by Kodansha between November 1999 & May 2014, totals 14 volumes. Finally, earlier this very year, Megumu Okada revived his OG action manga in the digital pages of Tokuma Shoten's Comic Ryu Web with Shadow Skill Dawn, which is naturally still running as of this review & hasn't been collected yet.

And that's not even taking into consideration the anime adaptations! As the Comic Gamma run was in its final months a four-episode OVA adaptation of Shadow Skill by Studio Zero-G Room & director Hiroshi Negishi would come out, with the first 45-minute episode (comprising the "First Season") coming out on October 25, 1995, while the following three 30-minute episodes (comprising the "Second Season") actually all came out after Comic Gamma's closure, from September to November of 1996; whoops. This OVA would see official English release via Manga Entertainment in 2001 via dubbed & subbed VHS & dual-audio DVD, with the "Second Season" being treated as a single, 90-minute "Motion Picture". Then on December 12, 2003 a 60-minute OVA titled Shadow Skill ~Kuruda-ryu Kousappo no Himitsu/Secret of the Kuruda-Style Annihilation Technique~ saw release that was in full-CG & utilized cel shading... and looked notably different from anything prior, due to it reflecting the change in Megumu Okada's own art style, as seen in Saint Seiya Episode.G; this OVA has remained Japan-exclusive, though it's considered the "Third Season". In between the two OVA productions, however, came the focus of this review, which is the TV anime adaptation of Shadow Skill that debuted on TV Tokyo on "July 2 at 25:15" & replaced (coincidentally enough) Outlaw Star. Much like the first two OVA "seasons", Shadow Skill TV would eventually see official English release, though this time it was via ADV Films, which initially released the show across six dual-audio DVD singles from late 2005 to mid-2006, before re-releasing it via DVD boxset in both 2007 & 2009. So enough with the preamble, let's see how late-night's first "pure action" anime holds up after all this time.

Reading Through Classic Literature with Manga!: A History of the Manga de Dokuha Series in English

As someone who writes long-form pieces on a regular basis (probably because I might be a little crazy, but that's neither here nor there), I think it's fair to say that I value reading. However, I'll fully admit that reading straight prose or poetry isn't exactly my forte, and while I can certainly do so & enjoy it (I read the first two Lensman books, Triplanetary & Galactic Patrol, for my reviews of the two Lensman anime last year, for example) I will say that I do tend to prefer something a bit more... illustrated. Yes, I'm a filthy heathen who may not necessarily read an iconic novel in its original form but will gladly read a "graphic novel" interpretation of it, even if doing just that removes a good amount of the personal sparking of imagination the original prose was meant to give the reader. However, the comicalization of iconic written works certainly has its place in the world, as it does allow those stories to be enjoyed by people who would other possibly never read them, and they can certainly have their own appeal as works, in & of themselves.

So let's take a look at how one series did just that via manga.

The idea of "manga" adaptations of classic literature is by no means a rare thing, as there have been countless examples of that across the decades, & some English publishers have even taken advantage of manga's popularity to create new "manga" adaptations of their own, most notably Udon Entertainment's Manga Classics line. Before that, though, Japanese publisher East Press had a line of its own that did the same exact thing in Japan. Prior to 2007 East Press was a fairly small name publisher known most for Comic Cue, a yearly magazine (except for 1999 & 2000, where it was published biannually) that ran from 1994 to 2003 & focused primarily on one-shots, with each issue having a shared theme. However, in August 2007 East Press launched a new line of releases titled Manga de Dokuha/Reading Through with Manga, which looked to adapt various works of literature (both from Japan & abroad) into manga form, with the first two books that came out that month being No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai & The Broken Commandment by Toson Shimazaki. Manga de Dokuha was unique amongst manga in that it technically never credited any specific artist, as instead all books in this line were made by a group calling itself Variety Art Works, which would later rename itself to Team Banmikas.

Manga de Dokuha initially came out at a bit of a rapid pace, roughly 2-3 books every two months, & by July 2008 the first 17 books alone had collectively sold over 900,000 copies, with ~200,000 of those copies alone coming from the manga adaptation of The Crab Connery Ship by Takiji Kobayashi from October 2007, the original 1929 version of which had become a sudden half-million+ best-seller in 2008 & benefitted the manga version immensely. East Press would then start releasing two new books every month starting in February 2009, though starting in October 2012 the pace slowed to just one new book per month, before slowing down to one new book every two months a year later, & finally only two new books per year after February 2015; the 139th & final Manga de Dokuha book, Meisaku Koten Rakugo: Shibahama, Shinigami, Jugemu Hoka (a collection of three iconic rakugo stories), came out in August 2017. In December 2020 Team Banmikas terminated its eBook contract with East Press, instead working with Gakken to re-release 62 of the books digitally in April 2021, with some new edits made. The Manga de Dokuha line would wind up adapting titles like Crime & Punishment, War & Peace, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Origin of Species, both the Old & New Testaments of The Bible, the literal Book of the Dead, 1984, the Quran (no, I have no idea how they handled Muhammad), & (most infamously) Mein Kampf; yeah, this entire line seemingly had no limits on what it adapted into manga.

Shockingly enough, though, only a comparatively small amount of the Manga de Dokuha books have ever seen English release. The biggest attempt was between November 2011 and November 2012 when the now-defunct digital manga service JManga offered 14 titles for purchase, specifically No Longer Human (not to be confused with either Junji Ito or Usmaru Furuya's respective manga adaptations), Das Kapital, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Night on the Galactic Railroad, The Book of Five Rings (not to be confused with the manga adaptation that Tuttle released in English in 2024), I Am a Cat (not to be confused with the manga adaptation that Tuttle released in English in 2021... though the two manga adaptations actually came out in the same year in Japan), Seton's Wild Animals, Sutta Nipata, One Thousand and One Nights, The Metamorphosis, Journey to the West, In Search of Lost Time, The Art of War, & The Narrow Road to the Deep North; to no surprise, none of these releases are now legally available following JManga's closure in June 2013. However, alongside these digital offerings, there were five Manga de Dokuha books that actually saw physical release in English in 2012, four from One Peace Books under what it called "Manga Classic Readers" (not to be confused with Udon's Manga Classics line), & one from Red Quill Books. One Peace Books did also plan to release Manga de Dokuha's version of The Great Gatsby, even releasing a cover for it, but from what I can tell it never actually came out. As I said before, I'm a dirty heathen who's never read any of the original prose versions of these books, but let's see if the physical English releases of these Manga de Dokuha adaptations still work well on their own.

Obscusion B-List: Bizarrely Late GameCube Ports (& If They Offered Something New, in Return)

The Nintendo GameCube is a video game console that has more or less always had a bit of a reputation ever since it first launched in the last quarter of 2001 (September in Japan, November in North America, & May 2002 for Europe & Australasia), and a decent part of that comes down to what it kind of represented for Nintendo, as a whole. After having an industry dominating presence with the Famicom/NES & then managing to fight off tough competition with the Super Famicom/SNES, the Nintendo 64 suffered a good bit from Nintendo's insistence on sticking with cartridges when everyone else had moved on to optical media, which in turn allowed Sony to take command with the PlayStation. In that sense, the GameCube was Nintendo essentially giving in to peer pressure by finally going with optical media... but, in true Nintendo fashion, the company still showed resistance by going with their own proprietary take on miniDVD. While Nintendo did manage to get third-party support back with the GameCube, including the return of Square(-Enix), the GameCube still wound up being the third-place console of its generation, both in terms of sales (~21.7 million vs. the Xbox's ~24 million) & even game catalog (651 games vs. the Xbox's 989); I won't even bother with the PS2's numbers, because they utterly smoke both competitors.

Thank Evan Amos for such great console images.

However, probably the most bizarre thing about the GameCube is that it also sometimes felt as though the console was treated as a bit of an also ran by the publishers themselves, namely when it came to multi-platform releases. While there were certainly plenty of games where the GameCube port came out more or less at the same time as on the other consoles, maybe no more than a month later, there were seemingly way more examples of games coming out on Nintendo's fourth home video game console literal months after the initial release, if not a year or even more! For some of these releases the same was true for an Xbox or PS2 port, so in those cases it was likely a case of timed exclusivity, which is nothing too shocking. Still, there was a surprising amount of consistency when it came to GameCube ports coming out notably later than almost anything else, which in turn made it feel like Nintendo's console truly was the also ran of the lot, where those who decided to go with the GameCube over the PS2 or Xbox were seemingly punished by having to wait longer for certain games, while their friends who sided elsewhere were rewarded with games first (& more games, overall).

So, in this 25th Anniversary year of the GameCube's launch, let's go over some of these games that wound up coming to the GameCube way, way, waaaaaaay later than other consoles... and see if GameCube owners at least received something special for their patience.

I must admit, some of the entries I came up with are a bit odd &, really, if it weren't for the fact that they were bizarrely late arrivals to the GameCube then some of them wouldn't really be brought up by most nowadays. Case in point is out first entry, 4x4 Evo 2. Originally released for PC & the Sega Dreamcast in October 2000, the first 4x4 Evo(lution) was an off-road racing game developed by a pre-BloodRayne Terminal Reality & could maybe be seen as a spiritual successor to its two Monster Truck Madness games, with the titular monster trucks instead replaced by more standard licensed 4x4 trucks. 4x4 Evo was most notable for being one of the first examples of true cross-platform online play, as owners of the Windows, Mac, & Dreamcast versions could all race against each other, as well as download each others' custom race tracks, & in fact the game's online play is still available to this day, even on Dreamcast. The game would later receive a PS2 port in early 2001, but that version featured no online play whatsoever.

An Overview the Early Years of the "Modern Day Late-Night Anime Infomercial": 1999 & 2000

When we last left off this series of general overviews of the "modern day late-night anime infomercial" back in March we went over 1998, which had literally more than double the amount of brand new shows that debuted in late night than the year prior. In that case, then one would think that the following year would see even more new late-night anime than the year prior... but, as you can tell from the title of this piece, we're covering two years this time around in 1999 & 2000. That's because the two years following 1998 actually saw a decrease in the number of new late-night anime that debuted, with 1999 only seeing 15 new standard-length shows, plus 11 (mostly) short-form anime via TBS' Wonderful program (the last time Wonderful would air new anime, in fact), while 2000 literally only saw nine new late-night anime, period. As for why there was such a downturn for two years straight, with 2000 having fewer new late-night anime than even 1997, there really doesn't look to be any real answer to that, though I guess some can be surmised. First, it's entirely possible that production times for shows were starting to become longer, especially since this was the point where digital animation slowly started to become more widely used, before eventually replacing traditional cel animation entirely; new tech could result in slower production, due to staff needing to acclimate. Second, I believe there were some other late-night re-runs of older shows happening, similar to Evangelion in 1997, which would have taken up some time slots here & there; I won't be covering those, however. Third, as I'll bring up over a couple of times in this piece, there were some moments where a late-night slot that had been used for anime for a bit would instead be used for a non-anime program, so it's entirely possible that some networks were taking precautions, in case this really wound up being more of a fad than anything long term. However, things would certainly pick back up starting in 2001, proving that late-night anime was not a fad, in any way.

Regardless of all of that, though, 1999 & 2000 are still notable when it comes to late-night anime for a few reasons. 1999 was (possibly) the first year to feature what's now known as a "split-cour" anime, as 2000 was home to the first true long-form anime to air in late-night. Also, while not as inundated as 1998, there were still some iconic classics that debuted in late-night during these two years, so let's see what 1999 & 2000 offered in their (comparatively) meager individual years.

We begin 1999 with WOWOW, the satellite network that first entered the late-night anime business in 1998 with Nessa no Haoh Gandalla &, more importantly, the first full run of Cowboy Bebop. In fact, by the start of 1999 Bebop was still running, with Episode 11 even airing on New Year's Day(... sort of), so WOWOW clearly wanted to continue that momentum by having a second late-night anime airing semi-alongside Bebop. So the very next night, "January 2 at 24:30", saw the debut of Crest of the Stars, a 13-episode TV anime adaptation of the 1996 space opera light novel series by Hiroyuki Morioka (story) & Toshihiro Ono (art) from Hayakawa Publishing. The series starred Lin Shu Rock Yalulug Dril Hydal Jinto, the son of ex-president of the Hyde Star System who had surrendered to the Abh Empire that had invaded. This resulted in Jinto's family becoming nobility, with Jinto being sent to military school where he meets Abriel Nei Debrusc Borl Paryun Lafiel, a pilot trainee who (unbeknowst to Jinto) is actually an Abh princess. However, the two become quick friends that balance each other out, Jinto being familiar with terrestrial things & Lafiel being familiar with space travel, before war eventually breaks out between the Abh Empire & the Four Nations Alliance of Humankind. In true space opera fashion Crest of the Stars did not tell the entire story of the war, instead only acting as the opening act, & its success (which was unexpected, as space operas were seen as mostly dead in Japan at the time) led to a sequel novel series shortly after in late 1996... but we'll get to that in the next overview. From what I can tell, the Crest of the Stars TV anime by Sunrise looks to adapt the entire three-book series across 13 episodes, & on April 7, 2000 a "Special Edition" film edit of the series came out, more than likely to help promote the TV anime adaptation of the sequel novels... which initially debuted in prime time but, again, we'll get to the sequel series next time.

TokyoPop actually released the Crest of the Stars novels in English back in the mid-00s, while J-Novel Club would re-release them together in hardcover omnibus form in 2020. As for the Crest of the Stars anime, Bandai Entertainment first released it in English in the first half of the 00s, both via dual-audio DVD singles & later DVD boxsets, while FUNimation would later re-release the anime via DVD boxset in 2018, alongside its anime sequel productions.

Dr. Dezaki is Out: Looking at (Most of) the OTHER Black Jack Anime Productions

Out of the enormous catalog of manga & characters that the "God(father) of Manga" Osamu Tezuka brought to the world, one of the most iconic is easily Black Jack. First debuting in Weekly Shonen Champion back in late 1973, the Black Jack manga ran until late 1983 & totaled 25 volumes detailing the medical adventures of the titular Black Jack, an unlicensed doctor with two-toned hair & face who charges exorbitant fees but is also likely the best surgeon in the world; in some instances he'll even do it for free, if it's for the truly needy. Alongside him at all times is Pinoko, his loyal assistant/adoptive daughter, though she prefers to say that she's his "wife"; really, the truth behind Pinoko is something you should learn about on your own, as its pretty wild. Tezuka was able to tell compelling, detailed (enough), & dramatic medical stories due to his own real-life medical doctorate, & he even passed the national examination in 1952, over 20 years prior to Black Jack's debut. Over the past 53 years Black Jack himself has appeared in numerous titles, both manga & anime, and has had numerous cameos in other works & spin-offs detailing things like his younger days as a proper licensed doctor.

Naturally, as mentioned, there have also been anime adaptations of Black Jack... and more than you'd normally think.

If you were to ask most anime/manga fans about anime adaptations of Black Jack you'd probably get two responses instantly. First would be the iconic 10-episode Black Jack OVA that was directed by the late, great Osamu Dezaki, which came out intermittently between 1993 & 2000, & then following Dezaki's passing in early 2011 it was decided to dust off work on two more unfinished episodes & properly complete them, which came out at the end of that same year as Black Jack Final. The second would be the 1996 theatrical film Black Jack: The Movie, which was also directed by Osamu Dezaki & told a complete original story. Both the OVA & movie have seen English release multiple times over the decades, with the movie last seeing release on DVD & Blu-Ray by Discotek Media in 2016, while the OVA just saw re-release this past December on Blu-Ray by AnimEigo, which included the two "Final" episodes for the first time in English, officially. If you were to then press those same fans about any other anime adaptations of Black Jack then some of them would likely be able to point out the two TV anime series that were produced, namely 2004 to 2006's Black Jack TV that lasted 62 episodes, which was immediately followed up by 2006's Black Jack 21, which lasted 17 episodes. The former was mostly a straight, episodic adaptation of stories from the manga, though with some other Tezuka characters added in as recurring supporting cast (like Sharaku from The Three-Eyed One being one of Pinoko's friends), while the latter was a serialized storyline where "B.J." is on the run from a mysterious organization that wants him dead; that said, it still also technically adapted stories from the manga. The anime adaptation of Akihito Yoshitomi's manga Ray, which unofficially featured some Black Jack cameos, aired the same season as Black Jack 21, & Tezuka Pro allowed "B.J." to appear in the first & last episodes of Ray the Animation as an official cameo, seemingly connecting the two shows together. Both Black Jack TV (or, at least, Episodes 1-52) & Black Jack 21 are currently streaming dub-only over on Tubi as of this piece, alongside the OVA & movie, while the first 25 episodes of Black Jack TV saw a crowdfunded sub-only DVD release back in 2014 via Anime Sols; this predated the English dub's production.

However, there are still OTHER Black Jack anime out there, and I think it's time that someone gave those oft-forgotten & ignored productions some time in the limelight, especially since it's entirely likely that some, if not all, of them may never see official English release for one reason or another. Now, to be fair, I actually won't be covering all of these OTHER Black Jack anime myself here, and that's mainly because there is one that I simply cannot cover in any way. Between 2001 & 2002 Tezuka Productions made a 12-episode Black Jack ONA that was only available via subscription service download through the now long-defunct TezukaOsamu@Cinema; it is streaming on some Japanese services today, though. This "internet" anime adaptation utilized Flash for its animation & featured a unique gimmick in that each episode included both a "Zapping system" & "Action system", with Zapping allowing the viewer to change the camera viewpoint at certain parts of each episode, while Action was more or less just a comedic gag that changed certain items around. However, these were still half-to-full-length anime episodes, so even if I could experience the Black Jack ONA it would be long enough to cover as its own piece; Tezuka Pro has a short snippet of the ONA on YouTube, if you're curious. However, even without that I still have four anime productions to go over, so let's see how these OTHER Black Jack anime fare.

The Doctor is In!