Can you believe that it's been nearly 10 years since simulcasting anime really started to become a normal thing? While CrunchyRoll was the first to standardize it, FUNimation wasn't too far behind, licensing its own small cadre of anime to exclusively simulcast. One of them was 2010's Rainbow ~Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin/The Seven of Cell 2, Block 6~, the 26-episode TV anime based on the Weekly Young Sunday/Big Comic Spirits manga of the same name by George Abe (story) & Masasumi Kakizaki (art). The story follows six juvenile delinquents & their mentor as they live out their lives at Shonen Special Reform School &, eventually, once they return to normal life. It also doubles slightly as a boxing story, as lead character Rokurouta Sakuragi ends up boxing to some extent. Obviously, the anime by Madhouse doesn't cover the entire manga, but it does reach a little before the halfway point, which isn't bad at all.
When the anime started airing, it quickly found itself a strong cult audience outside of Japan. Directed by Hiroshi Koujina (Neuro, Kiba, Hunter X Hunter [2011]), people loved the intense & rough environment the characters found themselves in, the gritty storytelling, & the outstanding visual style that only Madhouse could really deliver. Unfortunately, it never went beyond appealing to a cult audience, and this was still a few years before FUNimation would start giving sub-only home video releases a try. To be fair, though, FUNi did try to gather interest in a potential home video release, as Rainbow was included in at least one survey that asked fans if they'd be willing to buy certain shows that had been streamed before, and Rainbow was one of those titles. Today, the show has become more or less forgotten with time, never achieving the "let's ask about it every single time!" fandom that The Tatami Galaxy, which simulcasted around the same time, found itself. This is a perfect reminder that even the early days of legal simulcasting has its own unfortunate victims that shouldn't be forgotten.
Even though it only died out a little over a year ago in October 2017, Daisuki was a site that had all of the potential in the world, only to not be able to fulfill it, & it seems like part of that was on itself. The creation of a coalition made up by five Japanese companies, including TMS, Sunrise, & Toei (three of the biggest studios in the business), Daisuki could have been the place for "any & all" of the shows that CrunchyRoll either couldn't get or didn't bother to get. What we wound up with, however, was a site that didn't seem to truly be interested in anything else than half-heartedly trying, simulcasting some new shows every season or two, and occasionally streaming a couple of vintage anime, but only for a limited time. Sure, there was a title or two that did eventually see a home video release, like Gundam ZZ, but most of them were made available with little fanfare & advertising, usually no more than a tweet or two, & effectively left to die on the vine; also, every one of these titles were only coming from Sunrise. Therefore, half of this part's content will be anime that Daisuki had streaming at some point, and have yet to see any sort of second chance. Starting things off will be the mech anime with probably the most cult-like fandom, even in Japan.
Ginga Hyoryu/Galactic Drifter Vifam, known better as Round Vernian Vifam internationally, ran for 46 episodes from 1983 to 1984 & was the creation of Takeyuki Kanda (Metal Armor Dragonar, Armor Hunter Mellowlink). A sci-fi interpretation of Jules Verne's 1888 novel Two Years' Vacation, Vifam told the story of 13 children who become lost & stranded after their space colony got attacked by the alien Astrogaters, with them having to learn how the pilot giant robots called Round Vernians, including the titular VIFAM, as they protect themselves from Astrogater attacks while looking for their various parents. Upon airing in Japan, Vifam may not have become a giant hit like its contemporaries, but it still found itself a loving fanbase that was ready to continue supporting it. Therefore, four OVA side stories were released across 1984 & 1985, & in 1998 a 26-episode midquel titled Round Vernian Vifam 13 aired in late-night. Unfortunately, while Kanda was working on early pre-production of this new TV series, he had a vicious car accident & died in mid-1996, while he was also directing Gundam 08th MS Team. Umanosuke Iida took Kanda's place for the Gundam spin-off, while Toshifumi Kawase wound up directing Vifam 13, which wasn't as well received as the original TV series. Anyway, Daisuki added the original Vifam to its streaming catalog in July 2016, but only offered it for barely a year when it was removed from the site the following June, just months before the site went away for good. I'm sure next to no one actually expected a series like Round Vernian Vifam to ever see any sort of official English release, which makes it all the sadder that it literally only had a year of life over here, and has since returned to being forgotten.
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| Yes, that is Sonny Chiba on the right. This is now "The Forgotten Sonny Chiba Show". |
Okay, yeah, this isn't an anime by any means of the word. Still, when people started lamenting the end of Filmstruck last year, or whenever an anime that people really like is no longer streaming on a site like CrunchyRoll, all those situations reminded me of was how I felt in 2015, when I discovered that Team Astro had been removed form DramaFever. Since I'm 500% sure you're unfamiliar with Team Astro, or Astro Kyudan in Japan, here's the basic gist. One of the more popular manga in Weekly Shonen Jump during the mid-70s (so, yes, this predates even Kochikame), the series detailed the trials & tribulations of the Astro Supermen, baseball players who were all born at 9:09.09 on September 9, 1954 (Showa 29) & gathered together by a Filipino named J. Shuro, who was told of the Supermen's arrival by baseball legend Eiji Sawamura. The manga was, simply put, the baseball equivalent bat**** insanity, with the Supermen being literally capable of superhuman feats, most of which were named after astral phenomena & locations, and the baseball games were so intensely detailed that only three actual games wound up being covered over the course of 20 volumes, before readers seemed to tap out & the manga got cancelled. Seriously, these are baseball games that aren't afraid to literally kill players during the course of play!
In terms of being adapted into another medium, Team Astro never saw an anime adaptation, though one was pitched by Group TAC in 1992, but a lack of interest killed it before it could even get into pre-production. Then, in 2005, Production I.G. was hired to make a short anime intro for TV Asashi's baseball coverage, with Team Astro being used as the motif. This, in turn, led to a 9-episode J-Drama/tokusatsu adaptation that aired on TV Asashi, that obviously wasn't a 1:1 adaptation (only two games were covered) but was extremely accurate to what was covered, and it's this show that wound up getting licensed & streamed by DramaFever back in 2010 or so. I consider it a mix of J-Drama & toku, because each episode was ~45 minutes long, like most J-Dramas, but each episode is just filled with all sorts of special effects, due to the over-the-top nature of the original manga. Anyway, believe you me when I say that I had very little idea what to expect when I saw this show back in 2010, and I was utterly blown away by how awesomely insane it was from the first episode to the last. For years I just felt that this was a show that I knew no one else would bother to check out, but when I finally got a friend to check it out in mid-2015, we then found out that it was no longer streaming.
Yes, DramaFever's license expired, and the site made no effort to let anyone know that the show was no longer available to watch; in fact, the site still had the page for the show, & each episode, up until the site was killed off. This is definitely an obscure entry for this list, but it pains me to know (nay, guarantee) that Team Astro will never be given a second chance here in North America.
Whereas "everyone" has Neon Genesis Evangelion as one of the favorite (mech) anime of all time, it really does nothing for me. I respect its legacy & importance in the history books, and it has some cool-looking monsters, iconic giant robots, & sweet music, but I've never had any attraction to it. I guess part of that is because it's spot in my formative years as an anime fan was taken by one of those "Eva Clones": 2004's Fafner in the Azure. Created by Tow Ubukata, animated by Xebec, & inspired by Wagner's Ring Cycle, Fafner told the story of humanity's battle against the mysterious alien force called the Festum, who plan to effectively assimilate all humans into their ranks, with the focus being put on the residents of Tatsumiya Island, who have hid away from the rest of humanity for years while also secretly creating giant robots known as Fafners, in case the Festum find out about them. While obviously not a direct copy of Evangelion, it is fair to say that Fafner's existence is owed in great part to Gainax & Hideaki Anno's iconic work. Still, where Anno has been notoriously stubborn about actually moving on with finally finishing the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, Ubukata & Xebec have managed to continually make new Fafner anime every now & then, continuing off of where the original TV series, subtitled Dead Aggressor, left off at.
In 2010, a theatrical film titled Fafner: Heaven & Earth came out in Japan, which acted as an epilogue to the TV series, and in 2015 came Fafner: Exodus, a 25-episode sequel series that continued off of where the movie stopped at. Now, this May, the third series in the franchise, Fafner: The Beyond, will debut as a set of theatrical features before being released as a proper TV series, ala the new Space Battleship Yamato productions. What gets ignored, however is the very first post-TV production, Fafner: Right of Left ~Single Program~, a 50-minute TV special prequel to the original TV series from 2005 that told the story of the very first experimental pilots of the Fafner units one year prior. Naturally, being a TV special, it likely holds different licensing contracts than the original TV series, so it was never released in English via Geneon's original DVDs for the TV series, nor did FUNimation include it in its license rescue of the TV series, which happened alongside the license of Heaven & Earth. Even CrunchyRoll didn't bother getting Right of Left when it started simulcasting Exodus, but one site did actually give the special an official English release: Daisuki. Unfortunately, Fafner: Right of Left's addition to the site was extremely low-key, even for Daisuki, so there's effectively no news whatsoever of when exactly it was made available, but by using the Wayback Machine it looks like the special was added sometime in August of 2016, and it managed to continue being available until Daisuki's death in October of 2017. For a short year-ish, one could actually watch all of Fafner legally in some way or another, and you know the only chance this special has at being given a home video release now is if a third company was to give the original TV series, plus Heaven & Earth, another license rescue. Unfortunately, considering that Fafner: Exodus has yet to receive a home video release in general, despite its excellent quality, the chances for Right of Left are truly as slim as actually surviving a Festum attack by responding to its question of "Are you there?" with "I'm right here!"...
If you saw Fafner, you'd get the joke.
Honestly, you've got to give credit where it's due to CrunchyRoll, because the company not only seems to try to keep the shows it streams available for as long as possible, from a financial perspective, but when things just can't keep going, it actually lets its viewers know how much longer a show will have before it's gone from the site. That being said, though, this wasn't always the case, and even today isn't always followed; see the loss of Saint Seiya TV (& the Hades OVAs in English) & Beast Player Erin. This is especially true for some of CrunchyRoll's earliest simulcasts, and a perfect example is Super Robot Wars OG: The Inspector from late 2010. While SRW is most well known for its crossover appeal via the main series involving various licensed properties, the franchise has also created so many original characters that Banpresto eventually just decided to make its own series of games featuring the "Original Generation"; this sub-series is still running to this day, in fact. The success of the SRW OG games then resulted in Super Robot Wars OG: Divine Wars, a TV anime adaptation of the first game from 2006 & 2007, which itself came after an original two-episode OVA sequel to the second game. Then, a few years later, it was decided to make a second TV anime, The Inspector, which was an adaptation of the second game & remains to this day the last TV series ever directed by mech anime legend Masami Obari.
While the original OVA & Divine Wars saw English release the old-fashioned way, i.e. DVD releases, via Bandai Visual USA & later Media Blasters, The Inspector only saw availability via streaming over at CrunchyRoll. The saddest thing is that this second season was generally considered excellent, replacing the CG robots of Divine Wars with old-school traditional animation, and Obari's iconic style permeates all throughout, giving the show a much more kinetic & exciting execution compared to the more standard feel of the first season. While Media Blasters' license rescue of the original two productions saw release in 2014, followed by a combined re-release in 2015, neither must have sold particularly well, because the company never followed up by giving The Inspector a home video release, and in 2014 CrunchyRoll quietly removed its streams for the show, though the original page still exists & can be visited to this day. Today, SRW OG: The Inspector has seemingly become nothing more than a footnote in the early days of legal simulcasting for CrunchyRoll, similar to that of Rainbow for FUNimation. In comparison, Skip Beat! was another example of an early simulcast expiring & becoming a footnote, but that was not long ago rescued by Pied Piper & given a brand new release, complete with a (contractually obligated) dub. While I don't exactly wish for the same exact treatment for The Inspector, I do hope it doesn't simply become forgotten, especially since Super Robot Wars has since entered a new age of localization due to the Asian English releases of SRW OG: The Moon Dwellers, V, X, & the upcoming T.
As mentioned previously, some of the mech anime that did stream on Daisuki did eventually see home video releases, whether they were for the first time (Gundam ZZ) or were re-releases (Aura Battler Dunbine). Of them all, though, probably the most well known, at least in comparison to some of the other titles offered, that received its first ever English release via Daisuki that has yet to be given a home video release would be 1984's Heavy Metal L-Gaim. Though created by the legendary Yoshiyuki Tomino, character & mech designer Mamoru Nagano was infamously very involved in the actual story of Daba Myroad & his battle to free the Pentagona System from the rule of Oldna Poseidal. According to some (unsubstantiated) stories, it was Nagano's constant interference that kept Tomino from turning L-Gaim into a "Kill-em-All", which Tomino was known for doing during the 80s, and Nagano has admitted that he started his legendary manga Five Star Stories in 1986 in part due to his disappointment with L-Gaim's final product. While it certainly didn't wind up becoming a massive success, the anime is still looked at as a classic of the 80s mecha boom, and Nagano's visual style does help make it unique, even to this day.
Daisuki wound up adding all 54 episodes of Heavy Metal L-Gaim in February of 2017, alongside Aura Battler Dunbine, though the three-episode OVA was never streamed. Since the site wound up dead later that October, it's easy to see that this anime wasn't even legally available in English for an entire year, but the worst part of it all is that L-Gaim didn't even make it to the end of the site, as it was part of the catalog that got removed that June, alongside Vifam.
Yes, Heavy Metal L-Gaim was literally only available legally in English... For a whole four months!
That is just absurd in a way that not even Yoshiyuki Tomino could come up with in the likes of Overman King Gainer, Blue Gale Xabungle, or Gundam: Reconguista in G. Without a doubt, this is the most extreme of examples, but L-Gaim only being available legally for, effectively, the Spring of 2017 before being removed is a perfect example of how restrictive streaming can be as a way to watch anime. Unlike home video, which can outlast licenses & allow one to watch an anime at their own pace & whenever they feel like (as long as the physical medium is taken care of, naturally), streaming requires one to watch something on the providers' schedule, and while most of the time you're given a few years to get to actually watching it, you never know when a catastrophic situation can come about & royally screw over a product's availability. Luckily, we have seen the likes of Dunbine & Armored Trooper VOTOMS rescued, and Xabungle & Space Runaway Ideon are now given their times to shine on home video, so there could always be hope for Heavy Metal L-Gaim. One can always hope for the best, but it does sting that we actually had an anime only be legally available for a single calendar season.
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As always, I am not demeaning streaming in any way with this second half of the license rescue list. I love that American fans like myself (plus fans around the world) have access to so much anime, plus some live-action productions, at any time. Still, I'm not going to blind myself to the problems that are exclusive to streaming, and these six titles are proof positive that the method is not conducive to actually giving anime fans the constant ability to truly celebrate the titles that they wind up enjoying. While I know that there are other examples of this phenomena happening, I hope that I can keep from making a second version of "The Discs & the Streams" for a good while.
Rainbow ~Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin~ © 2010 George Abe・Masasumi Kakizaki/Shogakukan・VAP
Round Vernian Vifam © Sunrise
Team Astro © 1972-2005 Shiro Tozaki・Norihiro Nakajima/Astro Kyudan Production Committee
Fafner - Single Program - Right of Left- © XEBEC・Plan L
Super Robot Wars OG: The Inspector © SRWOG PROJECT
Heavy Metal L-Gaim © Sotsu・Sunrise
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