Showing No Mercy for 35 Years! Monthly Shonen Gangan's Original [United] Era Part 1 (1991-1996)

Originally founded by Yasuhiro Fukushima as a real-estate tabloid publisher called Eidansha Boshu Service Center on September 22, 1975, the company would eventually get renamed to Enix (a portmanteau of ENIAC & phoenix) on August 30, 1982 & shift over to video games, which was a burgeoning market at the time. Enix made an early name for itself via its Enix Game Hobby Program Contest, where people could submit game prototypes & the winners being published as full games, and it was through this that Enix found talent like Yuji Horii, Koichi Nakamura, & Kazuro Morita, which in turn eventually led to the creation of games like The Portopia Serial Murder Case, Door Door, & Morita's Shogi, respectively, which were all early hits for Enix. However, Enix would truly hit pay dirt with 1986's Dragon Quest, which was co-designed by Horii & Nakamura, while Horii used his connections with Kazuhiko Torishima (an editor for Weekly Shonen Jump he had befriended back when he was a freelance writer) to have Dragon Ball's Akira Toriyama do the character designs for the game; combine all of that with music by the venerable (& later controversial) Koichi Sugiyama & you have a hit. By the end of the 80s Enix was a major game publisher/developer, but it wanted to be more than that... so the company decided to re-enter the world it initially got its start in: Book Publishing.

At first Enix started simple by publishing books about Dragon Quest, most notably strategy guides, while also continuing its relationship with Shueisha to launch Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai in late 1989, which was an original series by Riku Sanjo (story) & Koji Inada (art), with Yuji Horii supervising it. However, Enix knew that for it to truly succeed in book publishing it needed to have a manga magazine of its own, & while it did initially publish a series of four-panel manga based on Dragon Quest in 1990 (that'd later become its own, multi-game series of works), it was on March 12, 1991 that Enix truly got into the manga business with the release of the very first (April) issue of Monthly Shonen Gangan; the magazine would always release on the 12th of every month. The name of the magazine was said to be a reference to the command "Gangan Ikouze" first seen in 1990's Dragon Quest IV, which has your party automatically use their most powerful abilities on the enemy, regardless of MP cost; eventually the command would be localized into English as "Show No Mercy!". Over the course of the next 35 years Monthly Shonen Gangan would become a home for a variety of manga, some of which have gone on to become iconic works, others simply the starting points for mangaka who'd become more well known later on, & even a number of manga that were based on various pre-existing IP, whether that be anime, video games, & whatnot.

The history of Shonen Gangan, however, also has its own ups & downs, as a major exodus from within Enix's publishing division in 2001 would result in the creation of rival publishers & magazines, the size of Monthly Gangan itself would notoriously exceed over 1,000 pages at points (with Enix even jokingly advertising not to drop an issue on someone), Enix would later merge with Square to form Square-Enix, and it's a history that admittedly isn't as well known in English, especially when compared to the likes of its most well known rivals, i.e. Jump, Magazine, Sunday, or even Champion. So, to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Monthly Shonen Gangan's debut, I'm dusting off the ol' Ages of Jump format as we go over the history of Shonen Gangan by way of what (I can tell) look to be its most iconic/notable manga. This will be a six-part series comprised of three "eras" that I've (admittedly) determined primarily based on the life of arguably Gangan's most iconic manga around the world, but it still results in a roughly even spread where each "era" takes up ~10-11 years, as this series technically will only cover up to 2022.

So, without further ado, it's time for us to "Show No Mercy" as we start with the first half of Monthly Shonen Gangan's "Original [United] Era". Gangan Ikouze!

Masami Kurumada One-Shot Manga Clean Up: Mikeneko Rock, S't X, & Sei'ya ni Kane wa Naru

In 2024 I celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Masami Kurumada's debut as as mangaka by using the whole year to make my way through all of the major gaps I had left when it came to reviewing Kurumada's catalog of works, & in March of 2025 I finally cleared out reviewing all of his long-running works when I covered Saint Seiya: Next Dimension. At that point I had done write-ups for literally all of Kurumada's long-running manga, all of his standalone short-run manga, & the vast majority of his one-shots (plus a couple of spin-off manga done by other people), but that still left some small gaps remaining. Easily the biggest one would be the last bits & pieces of Saint Seiya one-offs & short run side stories that Kurumada has made (namely 2004's Tenkai-hen ~Overture~ introduction, 2018's Episode Zero, 2019's Origin, & 2020's Destiny), and eventually I'll cover those all together in a single piece; I'll figure out how I'll cover the rest of Saint Seiya Then once Kurumada is truly done with it. There is also 2022-2025's Fuma no Kojirou Gaiden: Asuka Mumyocho (which Kurumada finally finished last year) & even 2017's Ai no Jidai BEGIN (a collection of his pre-1974 amateur one-shots which recently got fan translated), both of which I'll certainly get to sometime later this year.

However, that still leaves two isolated one-shots remaining, and they happen to be Masami Kurumada's first ever professionally published one-shot manga & his latest one (as of this piece, at least). Therefore, seeing as I no longer wish to do individual reviews of one-shots, like I did way back in 2012 & 2013 for Mabudachi Jingi & Shiro-Obi Taisho, let me combine these two unrelated stragglers together into what I generally call a "Special Feature" here on the blog, and while I'm at it I'll also toss in a bonus one-shot parody of one of Kurumada's works by someone else that was actually published alongside said work as it was in serialization.

Since I tend to go in chronological order when it comes to stuff like this, that means we begin with the first manga one-shot Masami Kurumada ever did as a professional mangaka (or "mangaya", as he'd call himself at the time), 1975's Mikeneko Rock, with "mikeneko" purposefully written a bit vaguely in Japanese ("みけ猫") so that it doesn't automatically translate to "Calico Cat", which is "三毛猫" in Japanese; as you can see, the fan translation goes with "Stray Cat". This 30-page one-shot appeared in the December 1975 issue of Monthly Shonen Jump, not long after the (true & final) cancellation of Sukeban Arashi that same year, and it would then get included at the end of Volume 2 of that manga in 1977 as a bonus; Wikipedia Japan says it was first published in 1976, but that's 100% incorrect. Mikeneko Rock looks to stay true to the style of Sukeban Arashi, as it starred a female delinquent with a penchant for getting into fights, a la Rei Kojinyama, so let's see if Kurumada learned some good lessons following Sukeban Arashi's cancellation, though still prior to the debut of Ring ni Kakero.

Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy: Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Ooga... To Be Fair, Techno Acts Like a Primitive When It Comes to Love

The early days of the "modern day late-night anime infomercial" were no doubt a time of experimentation, but for the first six entries they all shared a commonality in that they were adapting something that was still in the midst of serialization. The manga for Those Who Hunt Elves, Eat-Man, & Haunted Junction were all still running in Monthly Comic Dengeki Gao!, the light novel for Maze☆The Mega-Burst Space was still running in The Sneaker, the manga for Hyper Police was still running in Monthly Dragon Magazine, & the manga for Hareluya II BØY was still running in Weekly Shonen Jump when their respective late-night TV anime debuted between October of 1996 & April of 1997. To be fair, this made perfect sense since these anime were being produced with the intention of promoting their respective source material (among other swag), so adapting things that were still actively being made would therefore potentially reap the highest rewards. As 1997 went on, though, production committees & the like started to veer away more from the "safe" option & tried other things. Next Senki Ehrgeiz would be the first 100% original creation to debut in this format. Both Virus Buster Serge & Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid were media mix productions that (loosely) tied into video games... even if Meremanoid's game didn't actually come out until 1999. And while both Berserk & Fortune Quest L were more "traditional" adaptations, Vampire Princess Miyu TV was a complete reimagining of a media mix project that debuted a decade prior.

Prior to all of those "unsafe" ideas, though, was the sole new TV anime to debut in late-night in July of 1997, which replaced Haunted Junction & was the first to not adapt a currently-running manga.

Debuting at the start of 1985, Monthly Shonen Captain was a magazine published by Tokuma Shoten that was the home to manga like Wolf Guy, Guyver, Grey, Space Family Carlvinson, Getter Robo Go, & (easily the most notable of all) the initial run of Trigun. Unfortunately, the magazine would come to an end in early 1997, with titles that were still running at the time either being cancelled or (like Guyver & Trigun) finding new homes elsewhere. One title from Shonen Captain's early days was 1986's Misute♡naide Daisy/Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy by Noriko Nagano, who had debuted as a mangaka just a year prior in order to make money for her family after her husband lost his job shortly after she gave birth to their daughter. There are apparently anecdotes of Nagano literally bringing her baby with her when handing in her manuscripts during this time, though eventually she'd find success with the series God Save the Sugekoma-kun! in the 90s, though that ran in Kodansha's Young Magazine. Today Nagano is one of the executive directors of the Japan Cartoonists Association, alongside the likes of Ken Akamatsu, Ippongi Bang, & George Morikawa, while that daughter of hers would grow up to be Nozomi Nagano, vocalist for (the now defunct) Otaku Kei-pioneering band Little Non, so I think the Nagano family came out pretty well off, all things considered.

Anyway, while Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy wasn't quite the title that put Noriko Nagano on the map, running until 1989 across three volumes, it did get a second chance in 1996 when ASCII re-released it under the name Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy For Ever, which collected everything into two books & featured some revisions by Nagano herself. There was also a drama CD by Datam Polystar in 1995, while in 1998 ASCII would publish a one-off light novel titled Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy: The Black Hole of Love that was written by Ryota Yamaguchi. In between all of this, though, would be a 12-episode late-night TV anime adaptation of Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy that debuted on "July 2, 1997 at 25:45" on TV Tokyo, running alongside the second half of Maze TV as an hour-long block. While it wasn't the very first late-night anime adaptation of an already completed manga (Super Zugan did it first in 1992) it was the first for this then still-new format that would eventually become the standard for anime production. The Daisy anime would then get licensed & released in English by AnimeVillage.com across six subbed VHS tapes in 1999, and when they were renamed Bandai Entertainment it would then get re-released via sub-only DVD boxset in 2000; meanwhile, the anime has never received better than VHS & LD over in Japan. So my year-long celebration(?) of the 30th Anniversary of the modern-day late-night anime infomercial continues with a review of the TV anime adaptation of Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy... and how poorly its subject matter has aged in the 40 years since Noriko Nagano first debuted it in 1986.

Obscusion B-Side: PC (& Arcade) Classics in Your Pocket! The Game Boy's Japan-Only Ports of 1984 Gaming Icons

In terms of the history of video games, the year 1984 is a rather notable one & could possibly be one of the most important years, in some regards. While the North American market was still in the midst of the video game crash, there were still some true console classics in the form of titles like Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns, & H.E.R.O., while over in Japan 1984 was the first full calendar year for both Nintendo's Famicom & Sega's SG-1000. However the real scenes of note for gaming in 1984 were over in the arcades & on PCs, as this year saw the debut of titles like Punch-Out!!, Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, 1942, Kung-Fu Master, Cobra Command/Thunder Storm, Marble Madness, & Pac-Land in arcades, while over on computer saw the likes of Boulder Dash, Jet Set Willy, Hydlide, King's Quest, Impossible Mission, & Spy vs. Spy. 1984 was the year that established the building blocks of genres like fighting games, beat-em-ups, platformers, action RPGs, & (at least from a "modern" perspective) graphic adventure games. In essence, 1984 was the year in which a lot of what people tend to associate "video games" with to varying extents, & in the way we tend to think of & see them, were arguably first showcased, as iconic & influential franchises like Street Fighter, Double Dragon, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., & countless others wouldn't really exist as we know them today without the influence of the games that first appeared in 1984.

Examples of 1984 gaming classics that were ported to the Game Boy...
However, none of these will be covered in this B-Side.

On April 21, 1989 Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan, and while it was by no means the first handheld gaming console with swappable game cartridges it was arguably the first truly successful one. It was also more or less a success from the very start, selling around 720,000 units & 1.9 million games by that August, despite there only being seven games out by then in Japan, & only five in North America, where it had launched in July; Europe wouldn't get the Game Boy until September 1990. Simply put, game publishers wanted in on the Game Boy's instant success & that meant putting whatever they could on the handheld... including ports of iconic games of the past. And this is where the year 1984 would rear its head again, as over the course of the life of the Game Boy (& its initial successor, the Game Boy Color) there would be various ports of iconic classics from 1984 to Nintendo's handheld console, a number of which saw release internationally. Games like Yie Ar Kung Fu, 1942, Marble Madness, Boulder Dash, & Spy vs. Spy would all see Game Boy (Color) ports that saw release both in Japan & abroad (or, at least, Europe), while other games like Kung Fu Master at least saw unique entries on the hardware, allowing people to experience these influential classics in some way on the go; hell, Marble Madness got two different ports! However, there were also some Game Boy ports of 1984 icons that stayed exclusive to Japan, and for this entry of Obscusion B-Side I want to go over four of them, plus a fifth game that's technically its own unique entry but is related to one of said 1984 icons. Did these games transition over well to Game Boy, & did we miss out on something really good, or was Gunpei Yokoi's purposefully underpowered handheld unable to keep up with games released on hardware that (even for 1984) were well beyond its capabilities?

Obscusion B-Side: Super Pitfall (PC-88): Reject Cartridges, Embrace 5.25" Floppy Disks!

The concept of a certain intellectual property from one country (& culture) being reinterpreted by another country has been around for centuries, if not millennia, and the same is true when it comes to video games. When it comes to the execution, however, the results can be very much mixed & also often dependent on which direction the interpretation is going to & from. For example, there have been good & enjoyable examples of Japanese IPs being interpreted by American or European developers, but for every Splatterhouse 2010 (I liked it, at least) or Silent Hill 2 remake there is seemingly always an Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, Warriors: Legends of Troy, or DmC: Devil May Cry that sours the field a bit... but that's not to say that the other way around is perfect either, though. There have been plenty of examples where a Japanese developer just didn't really "get" the appeal or style of a Western gaming IP, with the end result being more than a bit disappointing, if not outright terrible. One of the most infamous examples released on the NES actually turns 40 years old in 2026, but nowhere near as well known is a version of the game that was only released in Japan, on hardware that (outside of an early, failed, attempt) was never really sold abroad.

Twelve years after its founding in 1966, Japanese media company Pony Canyon decided to enter the video game business in 1982, and for the first few years it exclusively released PC games for the main computers of the era, i.e. the NEC PC-88, the Fujitsu FM-7, the Sharp X1, & the MSX line. Though it had its own original titles, Pony Canyon's main focus came in two forms: Licensed IP & Western games. For the former the company's earlier releases included games based on properties like Spy Daisakusen (the Japanese name for Mission: Impossible), The Cannonball Run II, Genma Taisen (a.k.a. Harmageddon), Xabungle, Golgo 13, Locke the Superman, & Back to the Future; over time they'd focus less on this, however. In comparison, the latter is what would truly define Pony Canyon as a game developer/publisher as in 1984 they started releasing MSX ports of various games from Activision, while in later years they'd also release ports of games from series like Ultima, The Bard's Tale, Test Drive, Ballblazer, & Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The Activision partnership was especially notable, in particular, as while Pony Canyon more or less stopped making ports after 1988 (Space Shuttle for the MSX looks to be the last one) they would still occasionally act as the Japanese publisher for Activision games all the way through the 90s, mostly notably for entries in the iconic Pitfall series... and that's where one of those infamous NES games I brought up comes into play.

In 1984 Pony Canyon released an MSX port of Pitfall! & in 1985 this was followed up with an MSX port of Pitfall II: Lost Caverns. Now, to be fair, some of these MSX ports also saw release outside of Japan (the line did see some success in Europe & South America), so those ports may not have originated in Japan, but for Pony Canyon's next Pitfall release there was no doubt that it was 100% a Japanese interpretation of a Western IP. Released on September 5, 1986 for the Nintendo Famicom, Super Pitfall was a brand new entry in Activision's platformer-defining franchise, and was the first entry to have not been designed & developed by creator David Crane. Instead, Pony Canyon hired Micronics to develop the game... and the end result was a mess, with even Family Computer Magazine (a.k.a. Famimaga, not to be confused with Famicom Tsushin, i.e. Famitsu) scoring it a mere 17.06/40. Activision would later release Super Pitfall for the NES in North America in November of 1987, where it would gain even more infamy for its poor quality.... well, everything. The visuals were glitchy, the hit detection was inconsistent, the music was repetitive, and the gameplay was simultaneously buggy & way too cryptic for its own good. There would later be a port of the game to the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 3 by Steve & Monique Bjork of SRB Software in 1988 which, despite a lower frame rate & a reduced gameplay window, looks to be the superior version in all ways. There was also the fan made Super Pitfall': 30th Anniversary Edition by Mário "nesrocks" Azevedo in 2016 that's just a straight-up, massively improved remake. Activision had even planned on releasing Sunsoft's Atlantis no Nazo internationally as "Super Pitfall II", though the release was cancelled; a prototype ROM for Super Pitfall II would surface in 2010.

But there's one final version of Super Pitfall out there that never left Japan. In November of 1986, only two months after the original Famicom release in Japan, Pony Canyon released Super Pitfall for the PC-88mkII SR. While it's similar in concept to what Micronics made for Nintendo's hardware, the PC-88 game is a wholly unique version, one seemingly developed in-house at Pony Canyon & designed by Makoto Ichinoseki, so let's see if this Japan-only take might possibly be capable of redeeming the name "Super Pitfall" in any way.