Demo Disc Vol. 25: Handmaiden Hitwomen

Founded in 1999, ComicsOne hit the ground strong by licensing & releasing a wide variety of not just manga, but also Korean manhwa & even Chinese manhua. Not just that, but ComicsOne was also willing to put out both then-recent titles as well as old classics, so alongside the likes of Ginga Legend Weed, Dark Edge, & Lunar Legend Tsukihime there wsd vintage manga like Wild 7, Wounded Man, Bridge of Deimos, & Karasu Tengu Kabuto. ComicsOne was also (quite possibly) the first English manga publisher to try its hand at the digital market as it offered some titles via Adobe eBooks, & even put out some titles as digital-only releases due to their niche appeal, like Bass Master Ranmaru, Pachinker Atsushi, & Loan Wolf; again, this was in 2000! Therefore, it's no surprise that ComicsOne's eventual fate was to disappear in March of 2005, with its printer DrMaster taking over only a portion of the publisher's catalog (most notably Iron Wok Jan!, which was later revealed to be the sole title keeping either company afloat), though DrMaster itself would fold after 2009 (i.e. after finishing Iron Wok Jan!).  Truly, it's fair to say that ComicsOne was well ahead of its time in the English manga industry, and that possibly is what led to its downfall. However, there's no doubt that the catalog ComicsOne wound up having by the time the company (as per DrMaster's own words) "stopped paying its bills and...disappeared" was actually a rather good one, with some honestly outstanding titles that (sadly) may never be given another chance in today's English manga market, despite their quality... and there's one manga in particular that I've always wanted to check out from ComicsOne that, unfortunately, was left unfinished in English.

Born on December 26, 1949, Masahiro Shibata (not to be confused with the former actor; different kanji for "hiro") would make his debut in the manga industry in 1973, after first getting his start as part of the doujin group Mikazuki-kai & working as an assistant for the late Shinji Wada, of Sukeban Deka fame. Due to how he got his start, Shibata was initially a shojo mangaka (at a time when men became less & less known for making that kind of work) who focused primarily on sci-fi stories, and his first truly notable works were stories published under the collected name of Akai Kiba/Crimson Fang, which he made from 1975 to 1989. The most well known Crimson Fang manga was the series Blue Sonnet, which ran in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume from 1981 to 1987 for 19 volumes & later received a five-episode OVA adaptation that saw international release via Central Park Media (in the US) & Manga Entertainment (in the UK). After Blue Sonnet Shibata's next major work was Tokime Densetsu Karudaruma, which ran from 1990 to 1996 for 18 volumes in Shonen Gahosha's seinen magazine Young King (not to be confused with its sister magazine, Young King OURs, which tends to be more well known outside of Japan) & became known for its heavy usage of sexual themes & highly suggestive scenes; Shibata was also doing all sorts of one-shots & short-run manga during this time, too. After finishing Kardaruma Shibata would then stick with Young King for his next long-running manga, 1998's Sarai. Unlike before, Shibata would focus almost entirely on Sarai exclusively during its serialization, only making two other shorter manga in 2005 & 2006, and during the serialization Shibata actually suffered both a cerebral hemorrhage & then later serious injury via a car accident!

However, Masahiro Shibata was able to recover from both incidents & eventually finished Sarai in 2008, with a total of 19 volumes, of which ComicsOne only managed to released eight of between early 2001 & late 2002 (i.e. this was cancelled long before ComicsOne went under). On March 30, 2008 Masahiro Shibata would announce on his website that with Sarai over, & his doujin work also done with, he'd take up an offer to be a part-time lecturer over at Kyoto Seika University's manga department, and in 2015 it became a full-time job that Shibata continues to do to this very day, alongside the likes of Keiko Takemiya, Akiko Higashimura, Motoka Murakami, & Akihiro Yamada. For all intents & purposes, Masahiro Shibata has long retired from making manga, so good for him. I remember first hearing about Sarai not too long once I started really getting into manga in the mid-00s, especially when I started reading other works from ComicsOne & DrMaster, and alongside Kazan by Gaku Miyao was a manga that (even by then) was hard to find all eight volumes of for a decent price, in particular the last two volumes (but especially Volume 8). However, much like how I eventually managed to get all of Kazan in 2023 (& that manga truly was excellent) I was finally able to get all eight volumes of Sarai from ComicsOne for a good price earlier this year, so as we near the end of Demo Disc let's see if Masahiro Shibata's "final" manga (or at least 42.1% of it) was truly worth keeping my eye out for over 20 years.

Nessa no Haoh Gandalla: The OTHER Music-Themed Big West Anime (Live via Satellite!)

In 1973 a former member of Yomiuri Advertising's sales department named Yoshimasa Ohnishi decided to start up his own company, Big West, named (in part) as a reference to his last name ("Ohnishi"="Big West"). In 1977 Big West started getting involved with anime production, with its first work being Chogattai Majutsu Robo Ginguiser, a mech anime that was co-produced by Nippon Animation & Ashi Productions, before also helping produce a number of shows for Sunrise during its early days, most notably Zambot 3, Daitarn 3, Daiohja, Trider G7, & even the original Mobile Suit Gundam. However, it'd be in 1982 that Big West truly hit pay dirt when it teamed with Studio Nue & Tatsunoko to create Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, a mech anime that featured a heavy focus on the kind of pop music that was the style at the time & surpassed all expectations, being extended past its original length & getting two spiritual successors (Southern Cross & Orguss) that together would be deemed the Super Dimensional Series. Macross' success would lead to Big West making its theatrical debut with 1984's Macross: Do You Remember Love?, which was also a smash hit, and going into the 90s Big West would continue to co-produce various anime, like the Apocalypse Zero OVA, Jushin Liger, Getter Robo Go, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, etc. Big West would also return to Macross with 1992's Macross II (which it produced without Studio Nue's involvement, & is now considered non-canon), followed by two new (canon) productions in 1994, the OVA series Macross Plus & the TV series Macross 7. There is the whole mess regarding Tatsunoko, Harmony Gold, & Robotech, but I'm not opening that can of worms here.

However, the Macross franchise isn't the only music-themed TV anime that Big West would produce, and while today it's become immensely forgotten & obscure this OTHER music-themed anime actually has some historical relevance... but, first, we need to go over a certain satellite television network.

Originally founded on December 25, 1984 as Japan Satellite Broadcasting Co., Ltd., JSB would eventually change its nickname in November 1989 to WOWOW, going from a simple united broadcast licensing application company to a full-on satellite TV service that aired its first broadcast (a 24-hour test titled A Japan-US Two-Way Call-in Show: Space TV Will Change the World) on November 29, 1990. The following February WOWOW started offering "scrambled" broadcasts, i.e. you needed to pay a subscription fee to watch it, & later that April traditional "unscrambled" analog broadcasts started airing, eventually resulting in WOWOW getting 800,000 subscribers by 1992. At first a good chunk of WOWOW's offerings (~40%) came from outside of Japan, & the network even got Harrison Ford to act as the spokesperson for a bit, with its first real "hit" being the Japanese broadcast of the late David Lynch's cult-classic TV series Twin Peaks. However, WOWOW was also known initially for re-running animation, both Disney classics & Japanese series that were primarily meant for kids, but eventually WOWOW seemingly realized that if it wanted to remain competitive in the market, especially when other satellite networks started popping up, then it would need to start directly getting involved in the production of new anime... and, coincidentally enough, right around that time the concept of the "modern day late-night anime infomercial" was gaining traction.

The end result, then, was that on "April 10, 1998 at 25:00", i.e. April 11 at 1:00 am, WOWOW debuted the first episode of Nessa no Haoh Gandalla, or (as the end of the OP sequence states) Gandalla, The King of the Burning Desert, the first ever anime that was 100% original & exclusive to WOWOW; this was aired unscrambled, so anyone could watch it if they received the signal. This was a Big West joint, in this case a co-pro between them & Ashi Pro, and in fact was conceived by Yoshimasa Ohnishi, the head of honcho of Big West himself, in what would be his sole creative credit (for anime, at least). However, to be fair, Ohnishi was only credited for "Original Story" & "Creative Supervisor", so it's not as though he himself wrote any of the literal scripts. While Gandalla would be the first late-night anime (if not possibly the first anime, in general) to debut first on a satellite network it wouldn't be the anime that made people take true notice of the concept. Instead, it'd be the follow up that WOWOW debuted the week after Gandalla's 26th & final episode aired on October 16, 1998 that actually made people take note of WOWOW as a real potential contender (& prove the viability of satellite TV as an alternate option to debut anime via)... a "complete" airing of some show that had previously only partially aired on TV Tokyo earlier in 1998 as a last-minute prime time replacement called Cowboy Bebop. Yeah, the WOWOW run of Cowboy Bebop would steal whatever attention Gandalla had as "the first", and after the VHS & LD release finished up in 1999 you pretty much never heard anything about Gandalla ever again. The only exception so far was on July 1, 2015, when character designer Junichi Hayama paid his respects to director Hidehito Ueda, following his passing, by sharing a new Gandalla drawing on Twitter. Even then, Big West & Ashi Pro have never re-released the anime in any form since the VHS & LD release, not even via streaming, and with Big West now able to handle international licensing of anything Macross without Harmony Gold interfereing with things (minus the original SDF, which Harmony Gold still has international control over) there's really no reason for them to ever think about Gandalla again. Hell, even G-on Riders has since been re-released via Blu-Ray & streaming in Japan; what's up with that, Big West?!

However, is Gandalla really an anime that deserves to be forgotten under the sands of time & left to dry out in the vast anime desert? My year-long celebration(?) of the 30th Anniversary of the modern-day late-night anime infomercial continues with a review of "that OTHER music-themed Big West anime", and a true obscurity, Nessa no Haoh Gandalla!

Showing No Mercy for 35 Years! Monthly Shonen Gangan's Rebirth Era Part 2 (2006-2010)

As mentioned last time, for whatever reason after the debuts of both Ou-sama no Mimi wa Okonomimi & Corpse Princess in May 2005 there wouldn't be another new manga debuting in Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine until the following year, hence why I chose to split this "Rebirth Era" up at that spot, despite there being more notable manga to cover in this half than there were in the first half. However, again, the whole timeline of this "Rebirth Era" of Shonen Gangan is being defined somewhat arbitrarily by the serialization of a single work, Fullmetal Alchemist, so it's not like there's some scientific calculation being done to determine where my stopping points are, anyway. Still, the second half of Gangan's time during the 2000s is an interesting one, as while Square-Enix itself is doing (more or less) just fine as an overall company at this point, no more "family disputes" or merger considerations to worry about anymore, their flagship magazine does experience some interesting comings & goings, in regards to the mangaka it plays home to. As mentioned, the only remaining connections to the very first "Original [United] Era", Ami Shibata's Papuwa & Renjuro Kindaichi HaréGuu, will both be over by the end of this part of the overview, and in this very part we'll see the returns of numerous mangaka from the past, some of which will be making their final appearances here, in turn.

But, without further ado, let's get to the notable manga that debuted during the second half of the 00s (& a couple from 2010) in Monthly Shonen Gangan, as we begin with (shockingly enough) what looks to be the first truly notable baseball manga in Shonen Gangan history!

Yeah, despite its position as (possibly) Japan's all-time favorite sport in the time since it was introduced to the nation in the late 1800s, Shonen Gangan never really had a notable baseball manga until April 2006, which is when Hajimete no Koshien/My First Koshien by Masaki Himura debuted. Himura first made her mark as the 11th winner of the "Can You Tell a Gag in 2 Pages?" project that Shonen Gangan would challenge readers with, followed by a 2nd place showing in the later expanded competition version of the project, losing to Kiichi Hotta's initial one-shot version of You & Me.. Then in 2004 Himura was a runner-up at the 4th Square-Enix Manga Awards (as well as winning the Special Jury Prize, this one chosen by Michiaki Watanabe), and after a couple more one-shots she finally made her serialized debut with Hajimete no Koshien, an expanded take on a one-shot she got published earlier that January. The manga starred Kyuto Niya, the sole student at Doi Nakano High School in Aichi who continues to play baseball as the team's captain, even if it's only by himself. However, one day Doi Nakano's principal declares that the school's team will make it to Koshien, and so Kyuto starts scouting for new teammates (& students), with the goal of eventually forming a team that can make it all the way to Koshien. Much like her gag shorts early on, Himura apparently put a bit of her own upbringing into Hajimete no Koshien, namely the idea of a poor "family" setting & finding a way to rise up from it into something greater, in this case Kuyto finding a real team to play baseball with, with the goal of making it to the apex of Japanese high school baseball, one of the legendary Koshien tournament finals.

Showing No Mercy for 35 Years! Monthly Shonen Gangan's Rebirth Era Part 1 (2001-2005)

On March 12, 2001 Monthly Shonen Gangan celebrated its 10th Anniversary with the release of the April 2001 issue of the magazine, and from a public point of view everything within publisher Enix looks to be doing just fine... but, in reality, tensions within the editorial department were hitting a boiling point. As mentioned last time, in the mid-90s decisions were made by higher-ups at Enix in an effort to change the focus & direction of what exactly Shonen Gangan (& its sister magazines) was by debuting more manga adaptations of video games, alongside an increased presence of things like video game reviews; after all, Enix was, first & foremost, a video game company. However, this didn't match the vision of Yoshihiro Hosaka, the first Editor-in-Chief of Shonen Gangan who come 2001 had become Enix's Director of Publishing Business. In the end, Hosaka would leave Enix & on June 5, 2001 founded Mag Garden, a brand new publishing company, while at around the same time G Fantasy's Editor-in-Chief Yosuke Sugino did the same exact thing & would found Issaisha that December; Issaisha would later merge with Studio DNA to form Ichijinsha. This resulted in a major schism within Enix, with many editors & mangaka deciding to leave & move over to either Mag Garden or Ichijinsha, which also resulted in many series also moving over to their new homes, usually with some new or altered title, to maintain copyright; a similar thing happened back in 1992, when a mass exodus left Kadokawa Shoten to form Media Works.

This would go on to be called the Enix O-Ie Soudou, or the Enix Family Dispute, in reference to numerous samurai & aristocratic disputes that happened in Japan during the Edo period.

A new manga? Bah, let's give the cover
to something that'll ditch us in half a year!

The damage this did to Enix's publishing division was massive. While Shonen Gangan was still notably hit with the departures of Sakura Kinoshita (Mythical Detective Loki), Nanae Chrono (Shinsengumi Imon Peace Maker), & Mayumi Azuma (Star Ocean: The Second Story), as well as other mangaka who had previously been serialized in the magazine (like Minene Sakurano & Natsuki Matsuzawa), it wreaked havoc elsewhere. Gangan Wing was where the majority of the mangaka had departed from, resulting in ~80% of its active serializations coming to an end, while Monthly Stencil was hit so hard that it had to move over to an "every two months" publishing pace, before eventually being outright cancelled in September 2003; Gangan Wing would manage to revitalize & continue publishing until May 2009, when it was replaced by Gangan Joker. Second (& then-current) Editor-in-Chief Yoshihiro Iida would launch a new initiative dubbed the "New Age Comic Campaign" in an effort to keep things going, but in September 2001 would also leave Enix & move over to Mag Garden, eventually becoming President of the company in 2018.

Meanwhile, Enix itself was also suffering some rough times, in general, as its video game division wasn't doing much better due to various delays, & some releases simply didn't perform as well as hoped. Sure Dragon Quest games continued to generally sell very well, but the same couldn't necessarily be said for smaller releases like Planet Laika, Suzuki Bakuhatsu, Ø Story, Endonesia, Super Galdelic Hour, or The Fear; also, game development costs were only increasing with new consoles coming out. Things were getting so bad that Enix expressed interest in merging with either Namco or even (its RPG rival) Square, and while initial merger talks would start with Square they wound up getting put on hold when the all-CG movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within tanked in the box office. Still, while Enix was certainly experiencing some "hard times" come mid-2001 that only meant that there was an opportunity for a rebirth, of sorts, and when it came to Shonen Gangan all that magazine needed was a fresh new face that could lead the way into a new era. Sure, the Enix Family Dispute took a lot from the company... but that simply meant that what was lost could be replaced with something else of equal value (if not more).

I believe that's called "The Law of Equivalent Exchange"?

Anime Grindhouse: The First Three Pokémon Movies (In Japanese with Official English Subs!... Sort Of)

On February 27, 1996 Nintendo released a pair of new games for its aging Game Boy portable console, which had long stopped feeling like the revelatory handheld gaming product that it once was looked at as. That pair would be "Red" & "Green" variants of a game titled Pocket Monsters, or simply "Pokémon" for short. Created by Game Freak co-founder Satoshi Tajiri, who took inspiration by his childhood days of discovering & capturing insects, Pokémon tasked players with capturing the titular Pokémon via battle with their own group of Pokémon, with the ultimate goal of both capturing at least one of every Pokémon in the game (which, at the time, totaled only a meager 151) & defeating the gym leaders spread throughout the game's world to become a "Pokémon Master". The paired release was done so that it was literally impossible to get all 151 Pokémon on your own, since each version had its own exclusive Pokémon, so by using the Game Boy's link cable players could both battle each other as well as trade Pokémon with each other.

Needless to say, Pokémon Red & Green were a massive success in Japan, revitalizing the life of the Game Boy single-handedly, & when it saw international release over two years later in 1998 (where Green was replaced with an updated Blue variant) the same happened around the world. Today, Pokémon is one of the biggest media franchises in the world, and one part of why the franchise became such an instant hit was because of the anime that followed, which debuted in Japan on April 1, 1997... and the movies that came later. Time to re-open the grindhouse!

Really, there's no need to go over the history of the Pokémon TV anime, which is still running to this very day with nearly 1,400 episodes in total across multiple series/seasons & is still beloved by many, both young kids of today as well as adults who first saw it as kids over the decades. Instead, I want to focus on the various theatrical films, which saw a yearly run of new productions between 1998 & 2020, as well as a Hollywood-produced live-action film spin-off. One thing about the Pokémon anime productions is that, as anime fans have gotten older, there has always been the occasional wish that the anime would one day see something beyond the dub-only releases they get outside of Japan. It's something that makes sense, as anime fandom has only grown over the decades since the first English-dubbed episode debuted on Kids' WB back on September 8, 1998, and other children's anime of the past have since received subbed and/or dual-audio releases, like Digimon, Monster Rancher/Farm, Mon Colle Knights, Medabots/Medarot, etc. Unfortunately, The Pokémon Company has been very staunch about never offering any sort of dual-audio release when it comes to Pokémon, even if only for the movies... except for that single year when they actually DID allow dual-audio releases of some Pokémon movies, even if only in Japan.

Yes, on June 23, 2000 Kadokawa Media Factory & Shogakukan teamed up to release the first Pokémon movie on DVD over in Japan, with the cover promoting that it included both the original Japanese audio & the English dub. However, instead of simply offering both versions as their own separate videos it instead only offered the original Japanese video, creating a true-blue dual-audio DVD release of the film where the dub was synced to Japanese footage. Then a few months later, on November 22, 2000, the two companies did the same exact thing for the second Pokémon movie, creating a second true-blue dual-audio DVD for a Pokémon movie. Finally, on July 7, 2001, Kadokawa Media Factory & Shogakukan performed a hat trick by giving the third Pokémon movie a true-blue dual-audio DVD release, though unfortunately this would be the last dual-audio DVD release ever for Pokémon, as all home video releases of later Pokémon movies in Japan wouldn't include the English dub. However, the most interesting thing about these three dual-audio DVD releases is that they not only include Japanese & English audio... but also Japanese & English subtitles... well, sort of. The way the DVDs are encoded mean that the subs are locked to their respective audio language when played on any standard DVD (or BD) player, i.e. you can't actually have English subs with the Japanese audio. Because of this the English "subs" aren't actually a translation of the original Japanese script, but rather are simply the English dub script in written form; they are proper subs, though, so they don't include closed captioning. However, one can bypass the "sub language must match audio language" restriction by playing these DVDs on a computer, using a program like VLC to force which subtitles are being used, which technically does mean that one can officially watch the first three Pokémon movies in Japanese with English subtitles, even if the subs themselves don't exactly match 100% to the Japanese audio; and, yes, this also means that you can watch the English dub with Japanese subs.

I've managed to get my hands on these three dual-audio DVDs, so let's begin a new April Fools' Day tradition by having me tackle something that's indisputably popular & iconic by covering the first three Pokémon movies in their original Japanese versions... but with (sort of) official English subs!