Demo Disc Vol. 15: Jump Juku

Two years ago, I covered some anime pilots that went nowhere for Volume 9 of Demo Disc. Last year, Volume 13 covered what I called "precursors", as they weren't all "pilots", that did see later productions made. So, this year, it's time to check out some of what are probably the most synonymous of them all: The Jump Pilots. Most anime & manga fans are probably at least somewhat familiar with Shueisha's annual end-year Jump Festa, which has been going on ever since 1999, as it's where new anime announcements related to Shonen Jump (& the occasional other Jump magazines) are essentially guaranteed. In the past there was also Jump Super Anime Tour, a travelling road show where anime pilots for popular newer manga got showcased to the public to gauge interest in potentially making them into full-blown anime series; in turn, they usually become available to purchase for a short time at the later Jump Festa. While not a truly annual occurrence, and there hasn't been one since 2013, it has resulted in many pilots to Jump anime that, to this day, have not seen official release outside of Japan, even if their later anime productions have seen some sort of official release. Usually, this is due to licensing complications, as these pilots can have completely different companies involved (& Shueisha is the primary producing company here), and this has even resulted in most of these being without any sort of re-release in Japan.

So let's take a look at four Jump pilots for series that have all seen an official English release at some point, in some form... And where better to start than one of the very first Jump pilots?

Kimagure Orange Road: Shonen Jump Special
About a decade before the Jump Super Anime Tour ever became a thing, Shueisha's first actual road show was the Jump Special Anime Daikoushin/Big March in 1985, which appeared in 22 cities around the country. At this travelling event, Shueisha showed off its first two anime pilots: One for Kochikame, animated by Tatsunoko, & the other for Kimagure Orange Road, animated by Pierrot. While the former wouldn't actually see a TV anime adaptation for a little over a decade, the latter saw its own 48-episode TV anime adaptation in less than two years, debuting in 1987 & even featuring some of the same staff as the pilot, like director Osamu Kobayashi; Pierrot even returned to animate. These two pilots were then re-shown in 1988 as part of the Jump Anime Carnival, alongside an OVA conceived by Akira Toriyama titled Kousuke-sama Rikimaru-sama: Konpei-tou no Ryu, which also offered VHS copies of both pilots as prizes in a contest. Since then, neither pilot has ever been re-released, but while Kochikame's pilot has effectively become a "lost anime", as there isn't even a photo of the cover art anywhere online, Orange Road's pilot has since been discovered, ripped, & even fansubbed. Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, Discotek has so far been unable to license the pilot as part of its recent rescue of the anime franchise, but at least it's out there, somewhere, so might as well see how things started out.

Investigating the "Eva Clone" Part 1: You Can (Not) Take Influence!

On October 4, 1995, Gainax, Tatsunoko, & TV Tokyo introduced Japan to Neon Genesis Evangelion, a mech anime created & directed by Hideaki Anno (Gunbuster, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water) that helped revolutionize not just the mecha genre, but anime in general; even today, its influence can be felt. Now, to be fair, "Eva" (as it's often shortened to) wasn't truly all that original, as Anno is an Übermensch of an otaku that few can truly match, and took influence from everything he loved, like Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds, Eiji Tsuburaya's Ultraman, & Yoshiyuki Tomino's Space Runaway Ideon, while the various Gnostic, Kabbalic, Judaic, & Christian references were primarily put in simply because they sounded the coolest. Still, it was the fusion of all of those elements, alongside Anno's own bouts with depression at the time heavily affecting the writing, that wound up transforming Evangelion from a quirky love-letter to all of Anno's favorite things, plus some personal soul searching, into a generation-defining pop-culture icon; it's even considered the originator of the vague & debatable "sekai-kei" genre. Also, just to clarify, Eva originally aired on TV at 6:30 pm, actually replacing the Japanese dub of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not at late-night, as some online will often state; it'd later re-run during that time, after it had become popular. Late-night anime wasn't even a thing by 1995 (that started mostly in 1997), and Eva wouldn't have become a cultural icon if it had aired in the otaku-focused late-night hours.

Naturally, Eva's success resulted in similar anime being created, many of which came from other notable creators! Over time, anime fans abroad would categorize these alleged imitators with a simple, if not amusingly ironic, phrase: "Eva Clone".

Okay, now one of you Rei's MUST be able to sing as good as Kaye Ballard,
Frank Sinatra, Claire Littley, or Helena Noguerra... Or just don't even bother, like Netflix did.

Now, to be fair, it's not like people immediately chomped at the bit at simply copying Eva wholesale; this wasn't NG Knight Lamune & 40 debuting barely a year after Mashin Hero Wataru finished airing. No, no... They waited a year after 1997's End of Evangelion, the movie finale, debuted in theaters! But, in all seriousness, the term "clone" is a rather harsh one & honestly is only used by those who simply want to belittle or lessen the potential relevance of these anime. After all, mech anime in general is intensely iterative & runs primarily off of whatever becomes the next big thing. Mazinger Z started the super robot boom of the 70s & Mobile Suit Gundam started the real robot boom of the 80s, while Wataru & Matchless Raijin-Oh started the early-to-mid-90s trend of either making the robots more chibi-looking (though not fully Super-Deformed) or having young children (rather than older teenagers) pilot the robots, respectively. Without "clones" from those eras, we wouldn't have series like the Nagahama Robot Romance Trilogy, Fang of the Sun Dougram, Armored Trooper VOTOMS, or the Brave & Eldoran Series, many of which advanced mech anime & became classics, in their own right. Also, while Eva is one of the most popular anime of all time, it is simply true that not everyone has seen it, or at least saw it before seeing any of these "clones"; for them, those later productions are the valuable & influential ones. In fact, I'm one of those heathens who honestly has no major interest in ever watching Neon Genesis Evangelion in full; let them who is without sin cast the first stone (Wait... No one is shamed about sin on the internet!). However, I am still somewhat familiar with Eva's themes, characters, & some of its important scenes, simply due to a mix of cultural osmosis (i.e. I couldn't NOT know something about it), playing a bunch of Super Robot Wars games (which Eva sees inclusion in somewhat often), seeing the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie (which was mostly a recap of the first six episodes, with some differences), & seeing the climax of End of Eva years ago (because how could I NOT have seen it at some point?!).

Therefore, to celebrate Neon Genesis Evangelion's long-awaited return to legal availability in English via Netflix's streaming option (complete with a [controversial] new English translation!), I want to investigate these so-called "Eva Clones", and see what they tried to bring to the table; I will only be seeing the first 5-7 episodes of each, though, as this is merely a basic look at them. Also, as someone who hasn't seen all of Eva before, do these other productions truly showcase their "clone" status? After all, even the greatest in scientific research can result in a copy showing flaws in a way that even the most lay of people can tell at first glance. I'll be covering up to Eva's 10th Anniversary in 2005, because that's around the time the term itself stopped really being used for most newer imitators (it's still used, but nowhere near the frequency it used to be), but that still gives 12 different anime to cover, so I'll be splitting this up across two parts, & we're starting with 1998 to 2001.