The Rest is Yet to Come: 12 Unlicensed TV Anime of the 90s Part 1

Every decade of TV anime has kind of had what could be seen as the "big fad", so to speak. For the 60s it was the very concept of "TV manga" itself (though I guess we could say that B&W TV anime could be it, since that died out when the decade itself ended), while the 70s had super robots following the success of Mazinger Z. For the 80s the big fad was real robot anime & scif-fi stories following the growth of Mobile Suit Gundam & Space Battleship Yamato from initial failures to major successes via re-runs. Skipping ahead past a decade, then, the 00s were definitely defined by the true rise of late-night TV anime, but for a "fad" it's easy to answer with both classic revivals and the duo of moe & iyashikei. In that case, the 2010s saw the rise of isekai & light novel adaptations, a fad that actually has managed to continue on into the 2020s, for the most part. So what was the fad of the 90s, then? I'd argue that the 90s were probably best defined by the adaptation, as while there were plenty of those during the 80s they were simply all over the place in the 90s. We had shonen manga adaptations, shojo manga adaptations, some re-adaptations/reinterpretations of classic IP, & also various media mix adaptations, with an especially strong focus on video games.

While the OVA, theatrical film, & TV special were the primary forms used to adapt video games into anime there were also numerous TV anime adaptations, including Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter II V, Monster Rancher, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai (based on a manga, but itself based on a game franchise), Touma Kijinden Oni, Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid (which came out before the game, but was based on the IP), Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective (PC games count, too!), Power Stone, Arc the Lad, Psybuster, Wild Arms: Twilight Venom, & (obviously) Pokémon; hell, there was even Shinken Legend Tight Road, an adaptation of a fighting game that never happened! Meanwhile, over in the United States & Canada, the 90s would be the first decade to truly see a "proper" English anime industry, one that aimed to release anime in its original form (& often wouldn't even see TV airing here), as this was the decade that saw the establishment of ADV Films, FUNimation, Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon), AnimeVillage.com (later Bandai Entertainment), Urban Vision, Central Park Media, Media Blasters, & the US division of Manga Entertainment, among various other companies. This was also the decade where anime fandom transitioned from small little groups into its earliest form of a truly collective "fandom", helped in no part with the rise of anime-focused conventions, like Anime Expo, Otakon, Anime Central, A-Kon, Animazement, Sakura-Con, Katsucon, & Anime North, among many others. The decade also saw a stronger establishment of magazines covering anime, both made by fans & professional, while the eventual mass introduction of the internet resulted in it being even easier for fans to find each other & communicate via forums & message boards (like the legendary rec.arts.anime on Usenet), while anime-focused websites became a thing, with places like Anime News Network, AnimeonDVD, Anime Web Turnpike, & more first going live in the 90s.

And to make a long story short ("Too late!"), while "anime" & "fandom" certainly existed in prior decades in English-speaking regions, it was in the 90s that an actual "industry" became truly established that only helped encourage the growth of that fandom to even greater heights; the modern-day anime industry & fandom that exists is due, in large part, to what was established in the 90s. However, due to how anime had to be released in English during the 90s, i.e. either aired on TV or released on VHS (which would hold anywhere from one to five episodes on a single tape), it was more common for OVAs & movies to be licensed & released by companies that didn't have TV network connections, since they could be released without committing to long-term hurdles; TV series certainly still saw release, but they were definitely less common. Because of that many TV anime of the 90s got skipped over for official English release the first time around, and while many of them would later be given releases after the advent of DVD, the later shift over to straight-to-boxset, & now streaming there are still tons of 90s TV anime that have still been left behind. Therefore, for one last time (at least for the time being), let's take a look at 12 TV anime that remained unlicensed & without an official English release, of some sort, and this time around the Honorable Mentions that I had included in prior lists of a similar nature would be The Violinist of Hameln, Shinken Legend Tight Road, & Nekojiru Gekijou - Jirujiru Original.

After all... ♪The rest is yet to come, and babe, won't that be fine?♪

The Greatest Manga Family of All Time(?): A Look at the Chiba Brothers' Careers

Last week it was announced that Tetsuya Chiba had passed away on October 22, 2026 due to a myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow-related form of cancer that affects the blood cells. Chiba had recently taken a break from his autobiographical manga Hinemosu Notari Nikki to address his health, and sadly it's entirely possible that Chiba's own story about his life will remain unfinished. However, the manga career of Tetsuya Chiba is one that dates back 70 years... and his is not the only career of a Chiba in manga. Despite being the oldest of four siblings Tetsuya Chiba is the third to pass away, and with it ends an entire family legacy of manga that, arguably, will go down as "The Greatest Manga Family of All Time". So, to not only honor the life & career of Tetsuya Chiba but also his mangaka brothers who left this world before him, let's take a look at some of the many manga left behind by Tetsuya, Akio, & Shigeyuki Chiba, a legacy that will continue to be carried on by their brother Kensuke & their respective families moving forward.

Pictured from left to right: Tetsuya Chiba, Akio Chiba, & Shigeyuki Chiba/Taro Nami

Tetsuya Chiba was the oldest son of the family, being born on January 11, 1939 in what is now the Chuo ward of Tokyo, Japan. After him came Kensuke Chiba, who has maintained a rather private life so there doesn't look to be any readily available information regarding his birth. All we can be sure of is that Kensuke was born sometime between 1939 & 1943, as on January 29, 1943 Akio Chiba was born as the third son in Fengtai, Manchukuo (what's now Shenyang, China), as the Chiba Family had left Japan via the Korean Peninsula in January 1941 & settled in Manchukuo during World War II. Finally, on October 23, 1944, Shigeyuki Chiba was born in Fengtai, & after WWII ended in 1945 the Chiba Family would later move to Huludao in 1946, where they'd eventually be repatriated back to Japan as part of the 1,000,000+ Japanese citizens who returned to the country. In the interim between the war's end & their repatriation, the family was helped by Xu Jichuan, a Chinese coworker of the Chiba patriarch who would hide the family in his attic from those who looked to harm Japanese people still living in China, with Tetsuya latering remarking that his common use of "Jo/Joe" in his manga was likely a subconscious homage to Xu's selfless assistance, since the kanji for Xu's name ("徐") could be read as "Jo" in Japanese.

It'd be Tetsuya that'd put he & his brothers on the path of manga, as a random chance encounter with a manga adaptation of 1,001 Nights by Shigeru Sugiura housed within a miniature book he found on the road made him interested in the medium, especially since he already like drawing, despite his parents not wanting their kids to be reading manga. Tetsuya was encouraged by an elementary school classmate of his named Gyouou Kiuchi (who'd later become a well respected Tiantai Buddhist monk), especially once Kiuchi created an early doujin group called Manga Club in 1950. At 16 Tetsuya saw an ad for a children's manga artist & applied to rental manga publisher Nisshokan Shoten, which was run by Kunimatsu Ishibashi, who showed Tetsuya how to use professional tools & asked him to draw something as a test. Tetsuya would hand in 20-30 pages of manga every month for three months, always being told to submit more, and after 128 pages that told a complete story Tetsuya was paid 12,351 yen for his work, which at the time was more than the starting salary of a college grad. That "test" would get published in June 1956 as Fukushu no Semushi Otoko/The Hunchback of Vengeance, marking Tetsuya Chiba's debut as a mangaka... at only the age of 17. Tetsuya would make some more rental manga & shojo one-shots before making his serialized debut with in 1958 with Odette-jou no Niji/The Rainbow at Odettte Castle over in Shueisha's Shojo Book & Mama's Violin over in Kodansha's Shojo Club, neither of which lasted long... especially Odette Castle, as Shojo Book deciding to alter the publication of that only two months in led to Chiba leaving the manga (it'd be finished by another artist) & signing a deal with Kodansha.

And this is where the legacy of the Chiba Brothers would truly begin.

Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! κ: News of the Twilight Judge's Psychosis

This was not really by intention, but this is the first new installment of Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! in a literal year, as the prior one was last year's Halloween piece. However, at the same time I won't be complaining (though I really should do OM, OM, OVA! more often, as it's generally fun to do), because last year's Halloween-themed installment wasn't really horror-focused, as it instead indulged in the tradition of "Trick or Treat" via The Almighty Wheel. However, there is already an established idea of OM, OM, OVA! being perfect for Halloween, as the second ever entry back in 2021 was also a Halloween piece, with that one being focused specifically on "monsters", of some sort. So for this third Halloween installment of OM, OM, OVA! let's instead focus on something more than monsters, in particular, though I'm sure the quartet of short-form OVAs featured this time around will still feature a few. Rather, I wanted to instead watch & cover four OVAs that all feature some element of "horror" to them, whether that be via the supernatural, the psychological, the creepy, the eerie, or (in the case of this installment's first pick)... the judicial.

We begin with an OVA based on a manga that, in some way, reminds me of Samurai Gold, which I had covered in 2025 for a "samurai"-themed installment of OM, OM, OVA! & also featured a story based around a judicially-themed character. Debuting back in late 1987, Judge by Fujihiko Hosono (Bio Hunter, Dokkiri Doctor, Gallery Fake) ran in Futabasha's Action Brother & (later) Comic Action Character magazines until early 1991, totaling 21 chapters (plus a bonus parody) across two volumes. The manga focused on Hoichiro Ohma, who by day is nothing more than a simple salaryman but in reality is a descendant of the Ohma Clan of spirit mediums, & by night he acts as a "Magistrate of Darkness" (more literally "Officer of the Dark Court", but that doesn't sound as cool) who takes on cases brought to him by the dead against those who they feel wronged them. Hoichiro determines guilt or innocence, as well as punishment, via the "Six Codes of Darkness", a book bound in human skin. Hosono originally had the manga focus on stories where good directly triumphed over evil, but over time focused more on the flow of cause & effect via supernatural means. On August 1, 1991 a 48-minute OVA based on the manga, titled Yami no Shihokan/Magistrate of Darkness: Judge, came out in Japan & was one of a large variety of OVAs co-produced by Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) & Movic/Animate-Film, i.e. it's with Aniplex now, with Hiroshi Negishi (Tekkaman Blade, Bounty Dog) heading things up as director; like some other OVAs, it also got a short theatrical run later that same year. Central Park Media would license & release the Judge OVA in English via both dubbed & subbed VHS in 1996, & even got the subbed version to air on IFC once in 1997(!), before re-releasing it on dual-audio DVD in 1999; that DVD would then later get bundled with Cybernetics Guardian in 2002 as the "Judgment Day Pack". Man, I was able to connect this to three prior OM, OM, OVA! entries (Samurai Gold, Bio Hunter, & even Bounty Dog) so I guess the Judge OVA is a perfect way to begin this installment. Therefore, let's see if it fits the Halloween mood appropriately.

CCC & Roboco: A (Bizarrely Inconsistent) History of Weekly Shonen Jump "Celebrating" 300th Chapters

When a comic gets serialized it automatically gets something that can never be taken away from it, and that's a number. Specifically, it's a number that accumulates the number of times it's been serialized, and while outside of manga that's usually numbered in individual "issues" when it comes to Japanese comics that tends to be numbered in "chapters"... and when it comes to Weekly Shonen Jump there's a simple truth in that it's hard to accumulate a high number of chapters, due to cutthroat nature of the magazine. I covered it back in 2023, when I statistically looked at Jump's history of early cancellations, but a simple truth is that (as of this piece) out of the ~800 or so manga that have been serialized in Weekly Jump's pages so far only 204 of them have ever made it to 50 chapters, i.e. ~3/4 of all Jump manga end within a year. Of those 204 manga, only 138 made it to 100 chapters, 106 made it to 150 chapters, 71 have made it to 200 chapters, & only 44 have made it to 250 chapters. Simply put, making it to triple digits alone (or a little over two years of weekly serialization) is hard enough, and not even 10% make it to 200 (or over four years). However, the biggest accomplishment one can do in Jump is to make entry into what is a bit of an exclusive club, so to speak, which is to reach 300 weekly chapters, or over six years of serialization; a "300 Club", if you will.

Technically this cover was for celebrating
Jump hitting 300 issues... but close enough.

Over the past 58 years of Weekly Shonen Jump's entire history, only 25 manga had ever managed to surpass 300 chapters in a single run, though two were literally only about a month or so away from reaching it before ending. There were three others that technically also reached 300 chapters, but they were done cumulatively across two series, not in a single run; they count, but not "fully". Earlier this month, though, Me & Roboco become the 26th Jump manga to ever reach 300 chapters in a single run... and yet the magazine itself seemingly thought nothing of it, treating it as though it was simply just another manga, despite it accomplishing something that only a little over 3% of all Jump manga have ever done. In fact, the very idea of a manga hitting 300 chapters hasn't been seen as something truly special by Jump in over 32 years, & it's been nearly 20 years since Jump last acknowledged a series reaching 300 chapters, as only a small handful of titles have actually been celebrated for reaching something special that, for all intents & purposes, is nigh-impossible to accomplish. In fact, only six Jump manga have ever gotten the cover specifically to celebrate reaching 300 chapters, only about about 25%. Now, to be fair, there are some reasonable & logical explanations for this lack of celebration of the vast majority of 300th chapters in Weekly Jump's history, and we'll go over those in due time. So, to celebrate Me & Roboco hitting Chapter 300 earlier this month, let's take a chronological look at Jump's history of 300th chapters... and maybe see why the magazine itself hasn't celebrated them as much as you'd think.

The Rest is Yet to Come: 12 Unlicensed TV Anime of the 80s Part 2

Without a doubt, the 80s was a decade filled with truly iconic TV anime, and a lot of them have seen official English release, whether that be back in the 80s, 90s, & 00s during the original rise & (near-)fall of the English anime industry, or in the more recent "modern" era that is mostly defined by streaming. Titles like Dragon Quest: Abel Yusha Densetsu, Samurai Troopers, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ninja Robots Tobikage, Galactic Patrol Lensman, & Sherlock Hound all had some sort of English TV broadcast during the next three decades, even if some never got fully aired, while titles like Zillion & Super Dimension Century Orguss were some of the earliest TV anime released straight to home video dubbed, without airing on TV first (though, again, weren't necessarily fully released at the time). Meanwhile, titles like Patlabor, Armored Trooper VOTOMS, Maison Ikkoku, Dancouga, & Machine Robo all first saw official English release during either the 90s or 00s, while the likes of the Japanese Transformers trilogy of The Headmasters, Super God Masterforce, & Victory, as well as Mecha-Doc, Gold Lightan, Urashiman, Giant Gorg, Video Warrior Laserion, Psycho Armor Govarian, & Xabungle all eventually saw official English release in North America during either the 2010s or this current decade, even if some might only be via streaming.

As time goes on I imagine TV anime from the 80s will continue to get mined from for official English release every now & then... so what other titles are still waiting for their chance?

At the start of Part 1 of this 80s-themed list I put a number of titles down as "Honorary Mentions", citing their sheer lengths of "between 75 to 128 episodes" as the reason... and yet we begin Part 2 with a TV anime that, in total, is 72 episodes. However, aside from technically being fewer episodes than the titles I listed as being "honorary", there is also another reason for me deciding to include this one that we'll get to. Anyway, after a stint as an assistant to (a pre-Team Astro) Norihiro Nakajima, Motoka Murakami made his debut as a mangaka over in Shonen Jump in 1972, the issue following Team Astro's debut in fact, & that was magazine he stuck with up through 1977. After four short-lived manga, though, Murakami decided to move to a magazine that better matched the kind of manga he wanted to make, which wound up being Shonen Sunday. After finally having a small hit with 1977-1979's F1-focused Akai Pegasus, Murakami truly became a major name in manga with the series Musashi no Ken/Musashi's Sword, which ran from 1981 to 1985 for 25 volumes. The story initially focused on the childhood life of Musashi Natsuki, the son of two talented kendoka who swears to defeat Kunihiko Todo, his father's rival after Kunihiko accidentally killed Musashi's father with a thrust. However, Kunihiko himself retires from kendo in shame after the accident, so Musashi instead decides to surpass Shura, Kunihiko's son. However, halfway through the manga the story time skipped a few years & followed a now 15-year old Musashi as he continues improving his skills.