Back in the second month of this blog's existence, I decided to gather together twelve(-ish) anime that I felt "deserved" getting a new lease on life in North America, i.e. anime I felt were in need of a "license rescue". Ever since then I've done one of these lists almost every single year (2011 had two, while I skipped 2018 in favor of a "streaming purgatory" list), which will make this the 10th license rescue list for the 10th year of the blog. Over the course of the previous nine lists, I've brought up 124 different anime (I got a wee bit overzealous in some lists, but have since toned it back down), and of those 43 have actually been "rescued" & re-released (56% of which by Discotek Media, #NotSponsored). In fact, I must have been precognitive or something with that first list, because it's been the most "successful" of them all by a wide margin, with only three left untouched: Haja Taisei Dangaioh, the Bastard!! OVA, & I'm Gonna Be An Angel!. Seriously, while I understand Bastard!!'s potential licensing hurdle (Shueisha), why hasn't Dangaioh been rescued yet?! So, after a decade of gathering together previously-licensed & released anime that have since been buried by the sands of time, is there truly anything else worth bringing up?
Actually, there are! I've purposefully held off on including some anime mainly because I felt that they were guaranteed shoe-ins for rescuing, but have yet to still happen, even after all this time... So I guess it's time to finally start including some of those! But first, something a little bit different.
In last year's list I bent the rules by including Team Astro, the 2005 live-action adaptation of the 70s Shonen Jump baseball manga that disregarded all the rules (including those of physics themselves) & wound up establishing some of the basic groundwork for modern shonen action manga. As for why I included a non-anime production in a list about anime, it's mainly because Team Astro was so over-the-top & filled with tokusatsu special effects (talk about a redundancy...) that it was effectively a live-action anime, in many ways. Therefore, I might as well get another "live-action anime" adaptation out of the way with Aoi Honou, better known online as Blue Blazes! Kazuhiko Shimamoto is an absolute & devoted follower of old-school, hot-blooded manga storytelling, with his most iconic work being Blazing Transfer Student, a lovingly simultaneous parody & homage of hot-blooded action manga. Shimamoto has also had fun reinterpreting his own career as a mangaka through his Pen Series, consisting of the Burning Pen, Shouting Pen, & New Shouting Pen, totaling 25 volumes(!). A fictionalized account, these manga star Moyuru Honoo (literally "Burning Blaze") & cover his life in the manga industry, but in 2007 Shimamoto changed things up a bit.
You see, Shimamoto also has an interesting pre-mangaka career, as he attended Osaka University of Arts during the early 80s & wound up befriending fellow students Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, & Takami Akai... The three of which would later found the animation studio Gainax. Starting in 2007, Shimamoto debuted Blue Blazes, telling Moyuru Honoo's life as a student & how he became all the more a fan of anime & manga after meeting up with Anno, Yamaga, & Akai. In fact, the manga is still running to this day & currently at 22 volumes, & in the second half of 2014 was adapted into an 11-episode live-action TV series, one that quickly became a cult-classic due to its outstanding cast, excellent use of visual effects to maintain the manga's wild visual style, & dedicated love of anime & manga of the time; the proper seiyuu for specific anime/manga characters were even brought in to reprise their roles, when possible! The website Viki, which relies on crowd-produced subtitles, wound up getting the streaming rights for the series, which they translated as Blue Fire, but it's unknown exactly when it got picked up, as it wasn't really reported on until mid-2017. Unfortunately, while Viki's page for the show still exists, it's not longer streaming it in any way, at least in North America; Viki does the same thing for Team Astro, though that show never had completed subs on the site.
Unfortunately, much like Team Astro, the chances of Blue Blazes ever getting license rescued are pretty small. While there is some overlap between anime fandom & live-action fandom, tokusatsu or J-Drama, the latter is still a rather small niche-within-a-niche, at best; also, there have been indications that licensing can be rather tricky, depending on who's in the show. After all, Shout! Factory had stalled its subtitled Super Sentai DVD boxsets after Hurricanger almost exactly a year ago, Kraken Releasing hasn't released any Garo since October 2018, Discotek's tokusatsu releases are few & far between (though more recent), & while Mill Creek is going full-bore with Ultraman right now, who knows how far that company will actually be able to keep it going. If those show are potentially hard sells, what chance do shows like Team Astro & Blue Blazes have, shows that aren't traditionally considered "toku" to start with, when barely anyone even knew they were legally streaming in the first place???
As mentioned at the start, the very first license rescue list from the start of 2011 included Haja Taisei Dangaioh, the subject of the very first review on this blog (look forward to a revisit of that at the end of the year!) & one of the earliest anime ever officially released in North America in its original Japanese, with English subtitles, by way of the company U.S. Renditions. Alongside Dangaioh, though, U.S. Renditions also released the six-episode OVA Gunbuster, an all-time classic from 1988 that truly put Studio Gainax on the map with Japanese otaku, & marked the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno (who, coincidentally, also did some animation for Daigaioh). Telling the story of how Noriko Takaya goes from ditzy but ambitious robot-pilot-in-training to one of the saviors of the entire world from the seemingly never-ending force of "Space Monsters", Gunbuster mixed together mech anime with sports anime, taking direct inspiration from shojo tennis classic Aim for the Ace!, as evidenced by the Japanese title, Aim for the Top!.
U.S. Renditions released Gunbuster on subbed VHS back in 1990, followed by a re-release in 1996 by Manga Entertainment, which had picked up some of Renditions' titles after it went out of business; this is also how Manga put out that terrible dub-only edit of Dangaioh that same year. After that, Gunbuster went out-of-print again, though Kiseki Films did release a UK-only DVD release that had poor video, bad subs, no extras, & censorship. Things changed in 2006, though, when Bandai Visual USA came into being, as its very first release was a remastered DVD boxset, first via an imported, sub-less boxset sold only through Kinokuniya, followed by a standard sub-only English release in 2007 through the Honneamise label. Unfortunately, BV USA's standard release was missing an entire disc of extras, and there were complaints about a piece of music being replaced in Episode 3, due to its similarity to the song "Chariots of Fire" by Vangeluls. Compared to BV USA's later releases, which were commonly torn apart for being nothing more than Japanese DVDs released in North America at extravagantly Japanese prices, Gunbuster's release was more well-received, and today it commands high prices on the secondhand market. Since then, the OVA has been remastered in HD & given a Blu-Ray release in Japan in 2012, while the 2006 theatrical movie edit itself has actually been released three times in North America, first by BV USA as part of a boxset with the sequel Diebuster movie edit, then by Bandai Entertainment as a standalone release following BV USA's dissolution, & then by Maiden Japan by itself in 2016.
Hopefully the original OVA version of Gunbuster will one day be given another release, because it is odd that the movie edit has seen a recent rescue, but not what it originally came from.
[8/2021 UPDATE: At Otakon this year, Discotek Media ended its industry panel by announcing that it would be releasing the original OVA version of Gunbuster on Blu-Ray... complete with a brand new English dub by Sound Cadence Studios!]
Up next is an interesting one, because it's a victim of the weird & bizarre "not really death" of Media Blasters... But, then again, Media Blasters is the cockroach of the North American anime industry, because not even an atom bomb can seemingly kill them. Look, no matter how you feel about the company's practices, you've got to admire its ability to simply refuse dying. Anyway, after the success of Death Note, writer Tsugumi Ohba & artist Takeshi Obata were a hot commodity, & people were anticipating the duo's next collaboration. The end result was 2008's Bakuman., which told the story of an artist & writer who work together to create a hit manga, with the series acting as a bit of a meta look into the machinations of Shonen Jump itself. Though there were some complaints about how women were portrayed, as they were either stereotypically doting or conniving vixens, the series was overall praised for its look into the manga industry, particularly how one of the biggest & most influential magazines in the industry operates. Obviously, with a hit manga, an anime adaptation was inevitable, even if some found the idea of an anime all about making manga to be kind of weird, but that's not here or there, and the Bakuman. anime debuted on NHK (Japan's equivalent of public television) in late 2010.
The following June, Media Blasters announced that it had licensed the Bakuman. anime & would start releasing it on dual-audio DVD later that November, & MB even confirmed that it had also licensed Season 2, which hadn't even debuted yet in Japan; the entire manga would be adapted across 75 episodes over three seasons. Said DVD, which included the first seven episodes with a dub by NYAV Post, did indeed come out, but in February 2012 announced that the next release (featuring Episodes 8-13) was being put on indefinite hold, alongside some other scheduled releases; this was after MB had already laid off 60% of its staff, going from 15 to 5 regular employees. Things would get even more wild when in it was revealed later that May that the State of New York delisted Media Blasters as a company, due to neither filing nor paying its taxes, meaning that Japanese licensors were doing business with what was effectively a non-existent company for about a year or so (at least), from a legal standpoint; today, Media Blasters operates out of New Jersey. We're still not done with Bakuman., though, as the next month it was announced that MB's "Season 1 Part 1" Blu-Ray release for the anime, which was scheduled for June 26, 2012, was also cancelled, and that following September it was confirmed that the UK release, licensed by Viz Europe & distributed by Kaze UK, would be sub-only, since it's almost guaranteed that NYAV Post was never able to finish the English dub. Today, that single DVD release from Media Blasters can still be had for super cheap, & it remains the only way to watch the show with its English dub... But this STILL isn't over yet!
Why is that? Because Bakuman. is technically still legally available in North America via streaming. At some point, Viz licensed the anime & has been offering the complete three-season run as a sub-only stream to this very day, & Tubi TV has also been offering the show ever since 2017, as well. Still, after everything Bakuman. went through with Media Blasters, it more than deserves a complete physical release, alongside the unfinished dub. After all, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is finally getting a second chance via Right Stuf... And Media Blasters never even got a single DVD out for that show!
I try to maintain sticking to strictly twelve individual entires nowadays, but this is one of those exceptions, mainly because it'd be a bit redundant to list them individually across two different lists. These are also somewhat relevant to today's market, due to Netflix offering the latest Baki anime, which adapts the second manga series, with a second series coming soon to adapt the remainder. Therefore, I think it's time for the original anime adaptations of Keisuke Itagaki's iconic MMA-ish manga to be given second chances. First up was a single OVA produced by Knack Productions, now known as ICHI Corporation, which quickly became infamous for its cheaply-produced TV series of the 70s & 80s. However, the studio did improve a little with its 90s OVA output, and this 45-minute OVA from mid-1994, which adapts the beginning of original Grappler Baki manga (namely the fight with Shinogi Kosho), is a solid enough adaptation. Central Park Media licensed it for North America, first releasing it on dubbed VHS only in 1996, followed by a dual-audio DVD release in late 1998, making it one of the earliest anime released on the format in North America; CPM actually did it first with Battle Arena Toshinden in mid-1997. Today, CPM's DVD remains cheap to get a hold of, but a new release would still be nice; even if the masters may not exist anymore for a proper remaster, I'm sure a new release would still look better.
After the OVA, there wouldn't be another adaptation until 2001, when infamous music producer "Dynamite Tommy" & his record label Free Will hired Group TAC to produce a 48-episode TV adaptation of the entire original manga series, all 42 volumes, that ran throughout the entire year across two seasons. FUNimation would license this Grappler Baki anime in 2004, renaming it Baki the Grappler, & released it across 12 dual-audio DVDs from 2005 to 2007. FUNimation would then release "Complete Collections" for both seasons, which in reality were just the single DVDs housed within their respective season artboxes, before releasing a proper box set containing both seasons in late 2008 under the short-lived Viridian Collection label. Today, the individual singles, though not dirt cheap, are still available for reasonable prices on the secondhand market, while all three boxset releases go for hundreds of dollars, depending on the condition. Also, considering the way this series was produced, where it was seemingly animated in "full-frame" 4:3 before simply slapping letterbox black bars on the top & bottom, it would be interesting to see if it could be remastered in a way that lets the anime be seen in its "original" form; if not, then at least it'd be nice for it to be formatted in "proper" widescreen. Also, considering that the newer Baki anime takes place after the events of this original anime, it'd probably just be a good idea to give the Grappler Baki TV anime a re-release, in general. Whether or not that'd even be possible though, considering the man who lead the entire production & even replaced the original two OP themes before it even came out internationally, is another matter entirely.
One thing I pride myself about the license rescue lists over the years is that I don't just rely on what was once popular or "good", but rather I also try to consider if there's "value" in re-releasing something; sure, my own personal opinion can also play a role, but that's only on occasion. After all, something can be considered "less than great" but still have value to it if it's connected to something beloved. Case in point: Nintendo's Fire Emblem. Debuting on the Famicom back in 1990, this series of tactical RPGs by Intelligent Systems would become a big hit in Japan, receiving five follow-ups of all manner (side story, prequel, sequel, etc.) for the Famicom, Super Famicom, & Game Boy Advance up through 2002. However, the series wouldn't receive an international release until 2003, when Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade became the first entry to see release outside of Japan; the subtitle would get dropped for the release abroad, to act like it was the first entry. Prior to this, though, Fire Emblem did see its first appearance outside of Japan via Super Smash Bros. Melee, which featured Marth & Roy, two previous leads, get added to the playable roster; Roy, in particular, was included to hype Japan up for his then-upcoming game, The Binding Blade. To most non-Japanese players, though, these two characters were straight-up mysteries, since neither of them had been seen outside of Japan before.
Well... That really only applies to Roy, because Marth had technically made his North American debut by the time Melee came out. Barely anyone actually knew of it, though.
In early 1996, likely to help promote the release of Geneology of the Holy War for the Super Famicom, Nintendo teamed with KSS & Studio Fantasia to produce a two-episode OVA based on Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, the previous game in the series that was part-remake/part-sequel to the original Famicom game; it was also the first anime legendary writer Yosuke Kuroda ever headed up the writing for. Coming out on VHS & LD, both episodes came out just before Geneology's release in Japan, and in 1998 ADV Films licensed & released the entire OVA on a single VHS tape, both in dubbed & subbed flavors. This makes the Fire Emblem OVA the first time the franchise ever saw international release, though Marth was named "Mars" in this case, predating Super Smash Bros. Melee by a solid three years! Today, KSS is no longer in operation, having gone out of business in 2005 & selling its assets to Softgarage, while the Fire Emblem OVA has never seen any sort of re-release, even in Japan. After all, Nintendo hasn't really been involved in anime, excluding Pokémon, since F-Zero: Falcon Legend ended in 2004. Fire Emblem, however, has never been hotter, as it's become a multi-million seller worldwide & currently has the third-highest representation in Smash Bros., to some people's annoyance, behind only Super Mario & Pokémon. Therefore, now is the perfect time for a company to try to get the Fire Emblem OVA re-released, even if it's actual quality isn't anything spectacular (though it's apparently nowhere near as bad another early Kuroda-written adaptation, Panzer Dragoon). Of course, even if Softgarage would be up for it, the final decision lies in the hands of Nintendo, so who knows if it will ever happen, even in Japan.
Would be nice, though, as it looks like the franchise's current status is resulting in people overpricing ADV's release now.
So far we've covered Viki, Bandai Visual USA (& U.S Renditions and Manga, technically), Media Blasters (& Viz, technically), CPM, FUNimation, & ADV... So we might as well finish this half of the list with a former Geneon license! After spending the majority of the 90s mostly re-imagining its catalog of old superhero anime from the 70s & 80s, plus a handful of other works, Tatsunoko Productions decided to start creating some new heroes, starting with 1999's Generator Gawl & 2000's Time Bokan 2000: Kaitou Kiramekiman, & in 2001 went for a completely different market with The SoulTaker, which aimed strictly for "adult" audiences; Gawl was a late-night anime, but aimed more towards otaku. An early directorial work for Akiyuki Simbo, this was only his third TV series, it told the story of Kyosuke Date, a young man who starts the series off by being stabbed & killed by his mother, only to then revive, find out he's had a twin-sister he never knew of that has managed to split her soul into other people called "Flickers", and that said sister is being hunted after by both a mysterious organization called Hospital & the larger Kirihara Corporation, which Hospital is but a part of. Oh, & Kyosuke can transform into a mutant form called SoulTaker... So that's helpful.
The SoulTaker is admittedly a love-it-or-hate-it kind of anime, as it's purposefully vague & obtuse with its storytelling, only revealing important information when it wants to & trimming the fat so much that characters kind of just move from one location to another between episodes without much (if any) establishment beforehand. Still, the story it tells is interesting & goes in directions you wouldn't have guessed from the start, while the visual style is completely off-the-rails in all the best ways, with some episodes even being directed by the likes of Kenji Nakamura (Mononoke, Gatchaman Crowds) & the late Yasuhiro Takemoto (Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid, Hyouka), before they became bigger names. Geneon announced that it had licensed The SoulTaker at Anime Expo that same year, only days after it finished airing in Japan, & released it across four dual-audio DVDs in 2002, followed by a TV airing on TechTV's (later G4TV's) Anime Unleashed block. The DVDs were then re-released under the Signature Series label in 2004, and nothing has come about since then; it didn't even receive a boxset release over here. Things aren't much different in Japan, either, as all it ever received there are the original DVDs in 2001, followed by a boxset in 2004. Today, The SoulTaker can still be had for pretty cheap, via either of Geneon's releases, but there is some interesting potential for a re-release: High-definition.
Supposedly, aside from being Tatsunoko's first all-digital production, The SoulTaker was the very first TV anime to ever be made in HD, airing on WOWOW in Hi-Vision, which is Japan's HDTV standard. While this might sound ridiculous to most people, high-definition broadcasts had already been around in Japan since 1994 (1989, if you include the original test broadcasts), though they were obviously not widespread, & even before that NHK had taped the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA with a Hi-Vision camera. Therefore, it's believable that The SoulTaker was indeed produced in HD, and that no one's been able to watch the show as originally intended, outside of the scant few who had a Hi-Vision-compatible TV back in 2001 & saw the show when it first aired on WOWOW. Personally, I'd love to see a Blu-Ray release of The SoulTaker, and it technically wouldn't even have to be a remaster.
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This brings an end to Part 1 of the 10th license rescue list. Check back next time for another ex-streaming title that you may not know isn't as easily available anymore, a couple of unfinished releases, and older anime that's since been essentially replaced by a more recent reboot... And an anime that I seriously can't believe has yet to have been rescued.
Up next is an interesting one, because it's a victim of the weird & bizarre "not really death" of Media Blasters... But, then again, Media Blasters is the cockroach of the North American anime industry, because not even an atom bomb can seemingly kill them. Look, no matter how you feel about the company's practices, you've got to admire its ability to simply refuse dying. Anyway, after the success of Death Note, writer Tsugumi Ohba & artist Takeshi Obata were a hot commodity, & people were anticipating the duo's next collaboration. The end result was 2008's Bakuman., which told the story of an artist & writer who work together to create a hit manga, with the series acting as a bit of a meta look into the machinations of Shonen Jump itself. Though there were some complaints about how women were portrayed, as they were either stereotypically doting or conniving vixens, the series was overall praised for its look into the manga industry, particularly how one of the biggest & most influential magazines in the industry operates. Obviously, with a hit manga, an anime adaptation was inevitable, even if some found the idea of an anime all about making manga to be kind of weird, but that's not here or there, and the Bakuman. anime debuted on NHK (Japan's equivalent of public television) in late 2010.
The following June, Media Blasters announced that it had licensed the Bakuman. anime & would start releasing it on dual-audio DVD later that November, & MB even confirmed that it had also licensed Season 2, which hadn't even debuted yet in Japan; the entire manga would be adapted across 75 episodes over three seasons. Said DVD, which included the first seven episodes with a dub by NYAV Post, did indeed come out, but in February 2012 announced that the next release (featuring Episodes 8-13) was being put on indefinite hold, alongside some other scheduled releases; this was after MB had already laid off 60% of its staff, going from 15 to 5 regular employees. Things would get even more wild when in it was revealed later that May that the State of New York delisted Media Blasters as a company, due to neither filing nor paying its taxes, meaning that Japanese licensors were doing business with what was effectively a non-existent company for about a year or so (at least), from a legal standpoint; today, Media Blasters operates out of New Jersey. We're still not done with Bakuman., though, as the next month it was announced that MB's "Season 1 Part 1" Blu-Ray release for the anime, which was scheduled for June 26, 2012, was also cancelled, and that following September it was confirmed that the UK release, licensed by Viz Europe & distributed by Kaze UK, would be sub-only, since it's almost guaranteed that NYAV Post was never able to finish the English dub. Today, that single DVD release from Media Blasters can still be had for super cheap, & it remains the only way to watch the show with its English dub... But this STILL isn't over yet!
Why is that? Because Bakuman. is technically still legally available in North America via streaming. At some point, Viz licensed the anime & has been offering the complete three-season run as a sub-only stream to this very day, & Tubi TV has also been offering the show ever since 2017, as well. Still, after everything Bakuman. went through with Media Blasters, it more than deserves a complete physical release, alongside the unfinished dub. After all, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is finally getting a second chance via Right Stuf... And Media Blasters never even got a single DVD out for that show!
I try to maintain sticking to strictly twelve individual entires nowadays, but this is one of those exceptions, mainly because it'd be a bit redundant to list them individually across two different lists. These are also somewhat relevant to today's market, due to Netflix offering the latest Baki anime, which adapts the second manga series, with a second series coming soon to adapt the remainder. Therefore, I think it's time for the original anime adaptations of Keisuke Itagaki's iconic MMA-ish manga to be given second chances. First up was a single OVA produced by Knack Productions, now known as ICHI Corporation, which quickly became infamous for its cheaply-produced TV series of the 70s & 80s. However, the studio did improve a little with its 90s OVA output, and this 45-minute OVA from mid-1994, which adapts the beginning of original Grappler Baki manga (namely the fight with Shinogi Kosho), is a solid enough adaptation. Central Park Media licensed it for North America, first releasing it on dubbed VHS only in 1996, followed by a dual-audio DVD release in late 1998, making it one of the earliest anime released on the format in North America; CPM actually did it first with Battle Arena Toshinden in mid-1997. Today, CPM's DVD remains cheap to get a hold of, but a new release would still be nice; even if the masters may not exist anymore for a proper remaster, I'm sure a new release would still look better.
After the OVA, there wouldn't be another adaptation until 2001, when infamous music producer "Dynamite Tommy" & his record label Free Will hired Group TAC to produce a 48-episode TV adaptation of the entire original manga series, all 42 volumes, that ran throughout the entire year across two seasons. FUNimation would license this Grappler Baki anime in 2004, renaming it Baki the Grappler, & released it across 12 dual-audio DVDs from 2005 to 2007. FUNimation would then release "Complete Collections" for both seasons, which in reality were just the single DVDs housed within their respective season artboxes, before releasing a proper box set containing both seasons in late 2008 under the short-lived Viridian Collection label. Today, the individual singles, though not dirt cheap, are still available for reasonable prices on the secondhand market, while all three boxset releases go for hundreds of dollars, depending on the condition. Also, considering the way this series was produced, where it was seemingly animated in "full-frame" 4:3 before simply slapping letterbox black bars on the top & bottom, it would be interesting to see if it could be remastered in a way that lets the anime be seen in its "original" form; if not, then at least it'd be nice for it to be formatted in "proper" widescreen. Also, considering that the newer Baki anime takes place after the events of this original anime, it'd probably just be a good idea to give the Grappler Baki TV anime a re-release, in general. Whether or not that'd even be possible though, considering the man who lead the entire production & even replaced the original two OP themes before it even came out internationally, is another matter entirely.
One thing I pride myself about the license rescue lists over the years is that I don't just rely on what was once popular or "good", but rather I also try to consider if there's "value" in re-releasing something; sure, my own personal opinion can also play a role, but that's only on occasion. After all, something can be considered "less than great" but still have value to it if it's connected to something beloved. Case in point: Nintendo's Fire Emblem. Debuting on the Famicom back in 1990, this series of tactical RPGs by Intelligent Systems would become a big hit in Japan, receiving five follow-ups of all manner (side story, prequel, sequel, etc.) for the Famicom, Super Famicom, & Game Boy Advance up through 2002. However, the series wouldn't receive an international release until 2003, when Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade became the first entry to see release outside of Japan; the subtitle would get dropped for the release abroad, to act like it was the first entry. Prior to this, though, Fire Emblem did see its first appearance outside of Japan via Super Smash Bros. Melee, which featured Marth & Roy, two previous leads, get added to the playable roster; Roy, in particular, was included to hype Japan up for his then-upcoming game, The Binding Blade. To most non-Japanese players, though, these two characters were straight-up mysteries, since neither of them had been seen outside of Japan before.
Well... That really only applies to Roy, because Marth had technically made his North American debut by the time Melee came out. Barely anyone actually knew of it, though.
In early 1996, likely to help promote the release of Geneology of the Holy War for the Super Famicom, Nintendo teamed with KSS & Studio Fantasia to produce a two-episode OVA based on Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, the previous game in the series that was part-remake/part-sequel to the original Famicom game; it was also the first anime legendary writer Yosuke Kuroda ever headed up the writing for. Coming out on VHS & LD, both episodes came out just before Geneology's release in Japan, and in 1998 ADV Films licensed & released the entire OVA on a single VHS tape, both in dubbed & subbed flavors. This makes the Fire Emblem OVA the first time the franchise ever saw international release, though Marth was named "Mars" in this case, predating Super Smash Bros. Melee by a solid three years! Today, KSS is no longer in operation, having gone out of business in 2005 & selling its assets to Softgarage, while the Fire Emblem OVA has never seen any sort of re-release, even in Japan. After all, Nintendo hasn't really been involved in anime, excluding Pokémon, since F-Zero: Falcon Legend ended in 2004. Fire Emblem, however, has never been hotter, as it's become a multi-million seller worldwide & currently has the third-highest representation in Smash Bros., to some people's annoyance, behind only Super Mario & Pokémon. Therefore, now is the perfect time for a company to try to get the Fire Emblem OVA re-released, even if it's actual quality isn't anything spectacular (though it's apparently nowhere near as bad another early Kuroda-written adaptation, Panzer Dragoon). Of course, even if Softgarage would be up for it, the final decision lies in the hands of Nintendo, so who knows if it will ever happen, even in Japan.
Would be nice, though, as it looks like the franchise's current status is resulting in people overpricing ADV's release now.
So far we've covered Viki, Bandai Visual USA (& U.S Renditions and Manga, technically), Media Blasters (& Viz, technically), CPM, FUNimation, & ADV... So we might as well finish this half of the list with a former Geneon license! After spending the majority of the 90s mostly re-imagining its catalog of old superhero anime from the 70s & 80s, plus a handful of other works, Tatsunoko Productions decided to start creating some new heroes, starting with 1999's Generator Gawl & 2000's Time Bokan 2000: Kaitou Kiramekiman, & in 2001 went for a completely different market with The SoulTaker, which aimed strictly for "adult" audiences; Gawl was a late-night anime, but aimed more towards otaku. An early directorial work for Akiyuki Simbo, this was only his third TV series, it told the story of Kyosuke Date, a young man who starts the series off by being stabbed & killed by his mother, only to then revive, find out he's had a twin-sister he never knew of that has managed to split her soul into other people called "Flickers", and that said sister is being hunted after by both a mysterious organization called Hospital & the larger Kirihara Corporation, which Hospital is but a part of. Oh, & Kyosuke can transform into a mutant form called SoulTaker... So that's helpful.
The SoulTaker is admittedly a love-it-or-hate-it kind of anime, as it's purposefully vague & obtuse with its storytelling, only revealing important information when it wants to & trimming the fat so much that characters kind of just move from one location to another between episodes without much (if any) establishment beforehand. Still, the story it tells is interesting & goes in directions you wouldn't have guessed from the start, while the visual style is completely off-the-rails in all the best ways, with some episodes even being directed by the likes of Kenji Nakamura (Mononoke, Gatchaman Crowds) & the late Yasuhiro Takemoto (Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid, Hyouka), before they became bigger names. Geneon announced that it had licensed The SoulTaker at Anime Expo that same year, only days after it finished airing in Japan, & released it across four dual-audio DVDs in 2002, followed by a TV airing on TechTV's (later G4TV's) Anime Unleashed block. The DVDs were then re-released under the Signature Series label in 2004, and nothing has come about since then; it didn't even receive a boxset release over here. Things aren't much different in Japan, either, as all it ever received there are the original DVDs in 2001, followed by a boxset in 2004. Today, The SoulTaker can still be had for pretty cheap, via either of Geneon's releases, but there is some interesting potential for a re-release: High-definition.
Supposedly, aside from being Tatsunoko's first all-digital production, The SoulTaker was the very first TV anime to ever be made in HD, airing on WOWOW in Hi-Vision, which is Japan's HDTV standard. While this might sound ridiculous to most people, high-definition broadcasts had already been around in Japan since 1994 (1989, if you include the original test broadcasts), though they were obviously not widespread, & even before that NHK had taped the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA with a Hi-Vision camera. Therefore, it's believable that The SoulTaker was indeed produced in HD, and that no one's been able to watch the show as originally intended, outside of the scant few who had a Hi-Vision-compatible TV back in 2001 & saw the show when it first aired on WOWOW. Personally, I'd love to see a Blu-Ray release of The SoulTaker, and it technically wouldn't even have to be a remaster.
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This brings an end to Part 1 of the 10th license rescue list. Check back next time for another ex-streaming title that you may not know isn't as easily available anymore, a couple of unfinished releases, and older anime that's since been essentially replaced by a more recent reboot... And an anime that I seriously can't believe has yet to have been rescued.
Blue Blazes © Kazuhiko Shimamoto・Shogakukan/"Aoi Honoo" Film Partners
Gunbuster © Bandai Visual・Flying Dog・Gainax
Bakuman. © 2010 Tsugumi Ohba・Takeshi Obata・Shueisha/NHK・NEP・ShoPro
Grappler Baki © Keisuke Itagaki・FREE-WILL
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem © 1996 Nintendo/KSS
The SoulTaker © Tatsunoko Pro・The SoulTaker Production Committee
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