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!

Ai no Jidai BEGIN: My, My, This Here Masami Guy; Maybe Seiya Someday Laytah, Now He's Just a Small Fry

Today it's immensely easy for someone to get their start in some sort of storytelling medium by simply making something & sharing it online, whether that be via some form of social media, a personal blog ("Hi!"), or a service that's made for such "amateur" offerings. Over in Japan there have already been numerous examples of a novel author getting their start at a place like Shosetsuka ni Narou, or a mangaka first sharing their work on places like Twitter, Bluesky, or pixiv. However, there are still plenty who continue to do things the old-fashioned way, which in the case of manga would be drawing your own one-shot & visiting a manga publisher, with many of them offering the chance to make an appointment to see an editor who you can show your work off to; some editors even visit conventions like Comiket to offer "first come, first serve" meetings. Said editor can then critique the one-shot & offer advice to the mangaka hopeful, and if things work out well enough they can even decide to publish the one-shot, with the chance of being able to draw other one-shots for future publication before maybe even being given the opportunity at a proper serialization later down the line; this is actually how Akira Toriyama got his start, making one-shots for two years. Many publishers also run contests that act as the same thing, only now with the guarantee that the top one-shots get publication, & the authors being guaranteed serialization spots in the future.

However, while pre-serialization debut one-shots tend to see some sort of collected release if they were officially published previously, most often either as bonuses in volumes of said serialization or put together as a "tanpenshu" (literally "short story collection"), seeing a mangaka's actual amateur work published after the fact is immensely rare... which is what makes this review really neat.

As the final part of the 40th Anniversary of his debut as a professional mangaka, 2015 saw Masami Kurumada draw the manga Ai no Jidai -Ichigo Ichie-/Indigo Period -Once in a Lifetime-; yes, his 40th Anniversary was in 2014, but oh well. Running in Weekly Shonen Champion from Issue #33 to #41, & collected in a single volume, Ai no Jidai was unlike pretty much any other Kurumada manga in that it was a semi-autobiographical story about Masami Higashida, a young man who decides to try his hand at becoming a mangaka after discovering Hiroshi Motomiya's Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho and realizing that even an everyday ex-delinquent like him can enter the industry. As mentioned, Kurumada based Higashida's story on his own real-life one, though naturally fictionalized so as to make for a better, more interesting story, like having Higashida's two best friends go through their own respective personal hardships (life as a yakuza & on death's door due to illness, respectively). I read & reviewed Ai no Jidai back in 2016 & absolutely loved it, and thankfully in more recent time it actually received an English fan translation, so it's never been easier to recommend that people check it out. A neat touch in Ai no Jidai, though, was that Kurumada actually showed the cover pages to some of his initial amateur one-shots in the manga, with them acting as Masami Higashida's own work in the story, marking (to my knowledge) the first time they had ever been publicly shown in some form, since in real life Kurumada didn't win the single contest he submitted a work to, so he never had anything published until he made his debut in 1974 with Sukeban Arashi.

However, two years after Ai no Jidai's serialization, and a little over a year after my review of the manga, something really neat happened. When Akita Shoten published the October 2017 issue of Champion Red there was a bonus book included with the magazine, a rare but not unheard of thing with manga magazines. In this case the bonus book was Ai no Jidai BEGIN, which actually collected all four of Masami Kurumada's amateur manga one-shots in their entireties, with three of them being bookended with the pages of Ai no Jidai that indicated where they technically fit into that manga's story. For all intents & purposes, you could simply insert (three of) these one-shots into Ai no Jidai & they really wouldn't interfere with the overall story. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about Ai no Jidai BEGIN until long after that issue of Champion Red came out, and since it was never given a traditional release the book's kind of become a bit of a white whale for my personal collection of Kurumada's catalog, alongside Sukeban Arashi, Silent Knight Sho, & Akane-Iro no Kaze's individual releases (which are all similarly tough to get a hold of physically today, likely due to low print runs). However, much like how Ai no Jidai has now received an English fan translation, the same is true of Ai no Jidai BEGIN, so I can at least read & review this book. This actually is the very last of Kurumada's manga for me to write about that have absolutely no connection whatsoever to any of his major works, so let's finish (to some extent) things off by going all the way back to the beginning... in fact, it's the genesis beyond the beginning.

The Legend of the "Final" Makyu Manga: Team Astro, 50 Years After Its Final Chapter

In many ways, the modern shonen action "battle manga" that's usually seen as the most popular type of manga around the world is essentially an off-shoot of the good ol' sports story. The drive for the main character to become the "best", encountering various rivals that push them to be better/stronger than before, said rivals possibly becoming allies later on, & the idea where, with the help of things like "friendship" & "effort", something akin to "victory" could be achieved are really the same things seen in sports stories as they are in action-heavy titles, even if the finer points can most-definitely vary wildly between them. By that same token, though there were obviously other influences to them, the idea of named special moves can also be traced all the way back, in some ways, to the simple curveball. Widely credited to Candy Cummings, who pitched the first one in a professional baseball game on October 7, 1867, the curveball is the quintessential type of specialty pitch that to a newbie might initially look like "magic"... and that's exactly what it was called in Japan when Hiroshi Hiraoka, "The Father of Japanese Baseball", brought the pitch back home with him after studying abroad in America: The "Makyu", or "Magic Ball".

The Houston Astros posted their first winning record in 1972.
Coincidence? Yeah, definitely.

Over time the term "makyu" would slowly go out of fashion, especially when other such "breaking balls" would be invented, and by the 1950s the term "henkakyu/changing ball" would instead be used for such pitches. However, right around that same time manga truly started to blow up & change from the rental-only market it initially was known as to more readily available serializations by way of proper manga magazines. Alongside that was a shift in focus in baseball manga from starring a batter to instead focusing on the pitcher, and this shift allowed the idea of the makyu to truly flourish. Throughout the 60s & 70s there were numerous baseball manga that would see their main characters throw wild & fantastical pitches, usually (but not always) with some sort of logic behind their execution but often portrayed in ways that were simply impossible in real life. Rintaro Tsubaki from 1963's Kuroi Himitsu Heiki was a literal descendant of the Iga ninja clan, utilizing his ninja skills to help pitch makyu for the Yomiuri Giants. Hyuma Hoshi from 1966's Star of the Giants had the Dai League Ball, which was iterated on numerous times as the opposition found ways to beat prior versions of it. Ban Banba from 1971's Samurai Giants was drafted to the Yomiuri Giants as a teenager because his makyu pitching prowess was so absurdly strong... so much so that Ban literally died on the mound in the final chapter, due to the strain pitching continual makyu put on his body. Rintaro & Hyuma were both also physically hurt by their continual makyu pitching, resulting in each of them eventually leaving the sport, so it's clear to see that gradual escalation was most certainly a thing when it came to makyu-focused baseball manga of the era. However, one manga took the makyu to its ultimate escalatory limit... and then continued to escalate things even further, in turn laying the initial foundation for what would become the modern "battle manga".

Issue #39 of Weekly Shonen Jump back in 1972 saw the debut of a brand new baseball manga titled Astro Kyudan/Astro Baseball Team, i.e. Team Astro, which came from the duo of writer Shiro Tozaki, a former freelance editor-turned-writer at Jump (the story of which is wild enough on its own), & artist Norihiro Nakajima, a relative newbie who only had two very short series under his name by that point. The manga was about a group of nine baseball players who were all born at the same exact time (9:09:09 on September 9, 1954, a.k.a. Showa 29/9/9) & had a baseball-shaped mark somewhere on their bodies. This was predicted by Eiji Sawamura, a legendary young pitching prodigy who once struck out Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx in succession during a Japan/US exhibition game in 1934 at just the age of 17; this is actual, real-life history. Sawamura told this prophecy he had to a young boy named J. Shuro he met while stationed in the Philippines during World War II before dying in battle during the war; this is actual, real-life BS. Shuro, now a pearl magnate, has made it his goal to gather all nine of these prophesized players, the "Astro Supermen", so that he can help achieve the dream Sawamura had, one where Japan & the US fought each other not on the battlefield, but on the baseball field.

To put it simply... Team Astro is pure & unadulterated mad insanity of a manga, featuring characters (both fictional & real life, but mostly fictional) performing baseball-related feats that literally break every law of physics & common sense possible, all executed in a fashion that makes you continually wonder if what you're reading (or watching, if you were to see the sole TV adaptation of it) should even be taken seriously as a baseball story in the first place. The Astro Supermen's motto is "Isshiai Kanzen Nenshou/One Game, Full Throttle", i.e. play every game like it's the last damn thing you'll ever do in your life, & the end result is a manga where literally everything is treated as though it's life or death... and, for some characters, it actually is just that; there may not be any crying in baseball, but there is indeed dying in this manga! Team Astro would take the concept of the makyu in a direction where, quite simply, nothing could possibly follow it up, and after its 183rd chapter appeared in Issue #26 of 1976 it all came to an end, currently making it the 81st longest manga in Jump history, slotting in right between Black Cat & The Promised Neverland; it's also Jump's fifth longest baseball manga of all time. Now, roughly 50 years after that final chapter was first serialized, it's time we honor & pay our respects to the series that may have killed the makyu manga entirely (not really... but kind of, sort of) but, in doing so, opened the field for so much more.

WARNING!! This goes into spoilers regarding various part of the story of Team Astro... but, to be fair, the chances of this manga ever getting translated, official or otherwise, are the same as a professional baseball game ever surpassing 33 innings, i.e. nil. PLAY BALL!!!

Legend of Basara: Don't Change the Channel, Don't Touch That Dial, We Got It All on UHF!

Television, much like radio, is broadcast "over the air" by way of radio frequencies that are otherwise invisible & inaudible to human eyes & ears. As early as 1938 TV "channels" are really nothing more than different frequencies that something like an antenna would be able pick up & attune itself to, depending on the current setting of the TV, i.e. "changing the dial" on a set or "changing the channel" on a remote. Initially TV broadcasts were assigned to "VHF/very high frequency" channels, with the North American standard of Channels 2 to 13 being established in 1948. Right around the start of World War II, though, advancements in technology (namely better vacuum tubes & color TV) led to early experiments in utilizing the next category up from VHF, "UHF/ultra high frequency", & by the early 50s all TVs sold on the consumer level had the ability to pick up UHF signals. However, UHF had the draw back of having less clear signals than VHF, which meant that they didn't really reach as far out as VHF signals would, so over time UHF often became known as the signal for more regional broadcasts from networks that were much smaller than the big name networks that could pay for the more prized, cherished, & longer-reaching VHF signals.

So buckle up & allow me to explain how UHF created today's modern anime hellscape!

Over in Japan the major networks (TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Fuji TV, TBS, NHK, NTV, etc.) are all based either out of Tokyo or Osaka and are essentially the entirety of VHF broadcasting over there. Because of that the smaller independent networks all broadcast using UHF, and for the longest time they more or less relied on the major networks for programming, and that was especially true for anime. For decades the UHF networks simply acted as regional broadcasters for TV anime that was first aired on one of the major networks, and this was also true when it came to the early days of the "modern day late-night anime infomercial". However, that would all change on "April 2, 1998 at 24:30", i.e. April 3, 1998 at 12:30 am, when the first episode of Legend of Basara debuted not on any of the major networks, but rather on UHF network Chiba TV, with Hyogo prefecture's Sun TV airing it five minutes after Chiba TV that same night, while TV Hokkaido did so 30 minutes after Chiba TV's broadcast ended. This 13-episode anime produced by the now-defunct KSS was an adaptation of the 1990-1998 shojo manga epic Basara by Yumi Tamura that was mere months from ending in Shogakukan's Bessatsu Shojo Comic (now known as Betsucomi) when the anime debuted & had already won the Shogakukan Manga Award for shojo in 1993. Basara turned Tamura into a manga legend in Japan, and she'd continue her celebrated status by winning another two Shogakukan Manga Awards, first in 2007 for 7Seeds & then in 2021 for Don't Call it Mystery; she even won a Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award for Fine Arts in 2024.

However, today the Legend of Basara anime is known best as being the very first "UHF anime" ever produced, the first time an anime in general (let alone one made for late-night) ever debuted on a smaller, regional network instead of one of the major ones. The broadcast looked to be a notable success, as UHF stations would immediately follow up Legend of Basara's final episode with TV airings of the Dokyusei 2 & élf Version Kakyusei: Anatadake wo Mitsumete... OVAs, with Dokyusei 2 in particular becoming the first anime adaptation of an "adult" game to ever air on terrestrial TV (with some censorship, obviously); clearly, UHF stations were hungry for new content that they could be the first-run networks of. Now, to be fair, the next two years would be really slow for UHF anime, as 1999 only saw two titles & 2000 saw nothing, but the year 2001 would change everything. While only five shows debuted via UHF that year, the anime adaptation of Comic Party is often considered to be the first UHF anime that truly "broke containment", so to speak. Though 2002 only saw four new UHF anime (out of a total 22 new late-night anime that year), 2003 saw 19 (out of a total 49), followed by 2004 seeing 25 (out of a total 65), 2005 seeing 27 (out of a total 70)... & 2006 saw 46 (out of a total 110) brand new late-night anime debuting via UHF, or ~42%! Ever since the advent of the "modern day late-night anime infomercial" there had been worries that the concept could potentially result in there simply being too much TV anime being put into production on a yearly basis (remember, this isn't even including the TV anime that's debuting in more "traditional" time slots!), but at least when it was left contained to just the major networks the number could potentially be kept in check. However, once the idea of regional UHF networks getting first dibs really caught on in the early 00s the dam had well & truly burst, unable to ever be repaired & closed back up, and while the major networks certainly didn't help things by opening up more late-night time slots for new anime over time I think it's fair to say that it was done (in some part) to combat the rise of UHF anime; you really think the major networks were going to let the regional networks take over?

Yes, today's utter deluge of new seasonal anime, where a single season/cour today will have just as many new late-night anime as an entire year did in the early 00s (if not more!), is the direct result of the creation of UHF anime back in 1998. While Legend of Basara itself isn't necessarily the direct cause of UHF anime's proliferation, it is the first anime of that kind & therefore should shoulder some of the blame. Therefore, my year-long celebration(?) of the 30th Anniversary of the modern-day late-night anime infomercial continues with a review of the very first UHF anime ever produced, Legend of Basara!