The Land of Obscusion's Twelve Favorite Posts of 2021 & 2022!! Part 2

Well, here we are with the final entry of this blog for 2022. "What to expect in 2023?", you may or may not (but more than likely the latter) ask? Well, I think I should finally focus on ideas that I have had in mind for literally years, but simply always held off on for other stuff, usually simply because I can be a bizarrely lazy person, in some ways. The death of an iconic SF mangaka that was only announced earlier this month has made me decide to finally move forward with one of those writing ideas, and I have another 8-9 of those kinds of ideas (where I literally have had some images ready to go for years!) to continue on with, so I feel it's time to force myself to move forward with them. I also have other ideas in mind that are just concepts on Windows Notepad, so some of those might also get done. However, that's for next year, so what are the other six "posts" that I am most proud of from these past two years?

Hong Kong '97 vs. Hong Kong 97 (April 1, 2022)

On November 26 of this year, Albert Pyun passed away at the age of 69, after having dealt with both multiple sclerosis & later dementia. Even though he literally was able to work as an intern to Takao Saito, a director of photography who was most known for his repeated partnerships with the legendary Akira Kurosawa, Pyun would go to on be considered a modern-day equivalent to Ed Wood, due to his notoriety for directing B-movies, oftentimes very cheesy ones. However, upon news of his death, what came about was more a sense of gratitude towards a director who knew the kinds of films he wanted to make, and the joy many had in watching those films, among which includes the likes of 1989's Cyborg with Jean-Claude van Damme, the 1990 Captain America film, or 1997's Mean Guns with Ice-T & Christopher Lambert, the latter of which would praise Pyun for his passion about filmmaking in a French interview for the film. Coincidentally enough, just seven months prior to his death, I happened to make an April Fools' Day piece where I pitted his 1994 film Hong Kong '97 against the infamous unlicensed Super Famicom game of almost-nearly the same exact title, Hong Kong 97 (the apostrophe is paramount!), and while I'm absolutely sure he never actually came across this piece in those last months of his life, I would imagine he would have found it amusing.

The Land of Obscusion's Twelve Favorite Posts of 2021 & 2022!! Part 1

Happy Boxing Day!

Another two years have passed, and with it the first two years of The Land of Obscusion's second decade of operation! Needless to say, both 2021 & 2022 were... a lot to take in. In the midst of all that happened in the real world these past two years, including the good, the bad, the ugly, & the sad, I can only hope that this little blog has acted as a fun little reprieve for some, a place where one can relax & read about something that you'd normally not see covered in other corners of the internet. After a pandemic-induced attempt at staving off things like lockdown resulted in a more active 2020 than I had initially planned, with me averaging 3-4 writings per month, the following two years returned things to the more relaxed idea I originally had in mind after 2018, with an average of only 2-3 writings per month; it may not seem like much, but one less thing to write can be a lot. I also managed to somehow find myself getting paid twice for writing about stuff, with 2021 seeing the publication of Hardcore Gaming 101 & Bitmap Books' A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games (which I contributed a single page to, covering the Super Robot Wars series), while 2022 saw me do what I thought was impossible & actually get published over on Anime News Network with The Apocrypha of Hareluya II BØY & Why It's Worth Watching.

However, as those two were NOT written for The Land of Obscusion, they are not eligible for this very list I'll be going over. With that in mind, what were the "12 posts" (i.e. it's actually more like "12 subjects" than "12 individual writings") that I was most proud of over the course of 2021 & 2022? Let's get started with the first six...

That last cover has some real "Everything is Fine!!" energy.

Mars 45th Anniversary Retrospective Trilogy (March 9, 16, & 24, 2021)

Pretty much any year can be a notable anniversary for an anime and/or manga, & by that I mean "five & zeroes". 2021 wound up being just that for Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Mars, which celebrated its 45th Anniversary that year, as it originally debuted in the pages of Weekly Shonen Champion magazine back in 1976. Yokoyama was a legend in manga that arguably rivaled the likes of Osamu Tezuka & Shotaro Ishinomori in setting standards when it came to certain genres & the like, but unlike either of those names there has never been an official English release of any Yokoyama manga; his legacy in English-speaking fandom has exclusively been experienced (officially) only via adaptations. However, to showcase just how influential & inspirational Yokoyama was, even some his shorter works have gone on to achieve notoriety, and one of them was Mars, the tale of an amnesiac who discovers that he's actually an alien meant to decide the fate of Earth itself by being able to command a giant robot named Gaia. Despite being able to command Gaia to instantly destroy the planet, because of humanity's history of violence making it a potential threat to the rest of the universe, Mars decides to believe that humanity can learn from its mistakes, despite this decision making him a marked man by his own kind, who have their own giant robots to kill Mars with, as Mars' death will still cause Gaia to destroy the planet.

Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! γ: Deus ex Rota

It's been well over a year since the last installment of Oh Me, Oh My, OVA!, a segment where I cover four different anime released straight to home video in Japan, with the only prerequisite being that it can only be no more than two episodes long, i.e. the "Short-Form OVA". The past two entries have followed what the victor of the initial poll in April of last year decided, "Theme Each Set of Four", though the very first entry also followed the second-place winner, "Go in Chronological Order", but I must admit that there is an appeal in the third option from that poll, "Just Pick at Random". However, going with that idea means that I can't simply pick on my own, as I will have my own inherent biases that would likely keep me from checking out certain titles, and I'd like OM, OM, OVA! to be something that can, on occasion, push me outside of my comfort zone. At the same time, though, while there are websites out there that can randomly pick for you out of a list you make, there's something bland & robotic about letting a website just pick things for you. No, if I'm going to have a quartet of short-form OVAs be picked for me at random, I want it to feel fun for me, even if it's only fleeting in execution.

And then I discovered an Irishman named Sean Seanson.

Not the actual wheel that was used, though the titles are accurate,
but it certainly makes for a good visual, doesn't it?

For those unfamiliar, which is likely a fair amount of people as he has less than 11,000 subscribers as of this piece, Sean Seanson makes videos on YouTube where he covers "retro" video games, with a primary focus on the original Sony PlayStation. While he does also make videos about individual games or games with a shared theme (same franchise, same publisher, etc.), his most interesting videos are from his two series where he covers "Obscure & Forgotten PS1 Games" & "Japan Only PS1 Games", i.e. he's pretty much the video equivalent to me, but with the PS1. In those, he leaves the selection of games for each video up to chance by randomizing which games are up for selection, before having a literal prize wheel make the decision for him; the specific site Sean uses is Wheel of Names, if you're curious. After seeing how Sean does it, I must admit that I was kind of inspired, to put it likely. Therefore, starting now, every third entry of Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! will be a random selection "provided" by the wheel, and this apparently is being done with the approval of Mr. Seanson himself. We have 122 different OVAs on board for this initial selection, so which four has the "God from the Wheel" chosen for me?

While I'm not showing the wheel selections themselves (I'm already copying Sean Seanson enough as it is), I promise that I did indeed use the wheel to decide for me. The only thing I've done is organize them in chronological order, as per OM, OM, OVA! tradition, but that's actually a lie as the wheel literally gave them to be in order already. Up first... (Possibly) Women's Erotica!

Well, that certainly is me being pushed out of my comfort zone, isn't it?

Arcadia of Anime Gaming's Youth: The Original Anime Video Games on Console?

Today, looking for a video game based on an anime or manga property is like shooting fish in a barrel, i.e. you don't even have to look, because they are everywhere! Turn the clock back nearly 40 years, though, and things were very, very different. While there was the rare game based on licensed properties elsewhere during the 70s & early 80s, the idea of making video games based on a popular anime/manga in Japan didn't really become a regular thing until after the Nintendo Famicom & Sega SG-1000 both came out on July 15, 1983 (Epoch's original Cassette Vision from 1981 had no licensed property games), with the only real exception that I could find being an arcade game based on Lupin the 3rd by Taito from 1980, though some believe that the license was only added late into development. However, the Famicom's first "anime video game" looks to be Kinnikuman: Muscle Tag Match from late 1985 (over two years after the console launched), while the SG-1000 had Golgo 13 & Orguss games a year prior in 1984, but none of those are actually the first anime/manga-based video game on console. If you want to be picky, companies like Epoch & Popy had released handheld LCD games (ala the Game & Watch) before any of these, based on properties like Golgo 13, Dr. Slump, & Doraemon, but that's a "Square/Video Game vs. Rectangle/Electronic Game" situation there; sure, all "video games" are "electronic games", but the inverse isn't exactly true. No, for the "true" origins of the anime video game, at least on console, we instead have to go back to just prior to the launch of either Nintendo or Sega's first systems... and on a console that actually originated in the United States, amusingly enough.

Originally released in May of 1982 in North America for $199 (or the equivalent of just over $614 in 2022!), the Emerson Arcadia 2001 was manufactured by NJ-based Emerson Radio, which at one point was one of the largest manufacturers of consumer electronics (but today simply licenses out its branding for other companies to use), in an attempt to enter the competitive console gaming market that defined the second generation of video game consoles, which was ruled over by the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, Emerson joined in just a year before everything started to crash, & would discontinue the Arcadia in 1984, with the console only receiving 51 games around the world & no known sales records; I imagine they weren't good, though. That said, the console was home to then-exclusive ports of some lesser-known arcade games, like Tekhan/Tecmo & Sunsoft's Route 16, Konami's Jungler, & Hoei/Banpresto's Jump Bug. However, the Arcadia did wind up having a notable place in history for its generation, as it was cloned like crazy the world over (with the possibility of most, if not all, of them being officially licensed), with over 30 being known! In France it was both the Advision Home Arcade & Hanimex MPT-03 (yes, some countries had multiple clones), in Spain it was the Tele-Computer Cosmos, in Germany there were eight different Arcadia clones(!), & even the US had a clone in the form of the Tryom Video Game Center; nice job cutting into your own sales, Emerson. Meanwhile, Japan had three different Arcadia 2001 clones, but I want to focus on just one: The Bandai Arcadia, the only clone in the world to actually keep the "Arcadia" name.

Obscusion B-Side: Business Superiority Through... Alphabetry? A Look at the "Children of Atari"

While the concept of "video games" certainly existed prior to the founding of Atari, Inc., the successor to the short-lived Syzygy Engineering, on June 27, 1972, there's no doubt that the company co-founded by Nolan Bushnell & Ted Dabney, and featuring Al Alcorn as the man who'd create Pong, has a relevance to gaming history that cannot be downplayed in any way, form, or fashion. While the Atari that exists today has next to nothing to do with the original company, outside of owning the rights to the wide majority of its classic games & IPs, the end result has been 50 straight years of that brand, which is certainly an accomplishment, no matter how you shake it. One of the biggest things Atari established, even if it wasn't by intention, was the concept of third-party companies in the gaming landscape, i.e. companies that only develop and/or publish video games for other companies' hardware. Originally, literally all companies involved in video games were making their own hardware for their games to be played on, whether it was arcade machines or home console systems. However, the founding of Activision on October 1, 1979, & the release of its first Atari 2600 games in mid-1980, would truly change everything by opening the floodgates for video game development & publishing, for good & bad.

If companies are legally considered "people",
then I guess they're a species capable of asexual reproduction.

However, the amusing thing about this is that there was partly a reason for why Activision, which was founded by ex-Atari programmers, used the name that it did (& still does, to this day): Alphabetic Supremacy. In short, "Activision" would appear before "Atari" when organized in alphabetical order, thereby somehow implying that it was inherently superior to its "father", and when various people from Activision left to form their own respective video game companies throughout the 80s... they did the same exact thing & chose names that would put them before any of their fellow Activision progeny, i.e. Atari's "granchildren". So, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Atari (& because I was inspired by the stellar Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection that recently came out), let's take a general overview of how Atari spawned a rebellious child of its own, and how that child then later gave Atari a trio of grandchildren (& how that last one ruined the entire naming game *side-eyes Acclaim*).

Kinnikuman II-Sei: Ultimate Muscle 1 & 2: "I Believe in Your Love", But Only if You "Trust Yourself"

On September 14, 2022, three days after Episode 36 of Toei's Kinnikuman II-Sei TV anime aired in Japan, 4Kids debuted its English adaptation as part of the launch of the Saturday morning FoxBox programming block. Titled Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy, the show would go on to achieve notable success for its time, airing two episodes at a time every week until December 14, 2002, just two weeks before the anime finished airing in Japan, which covered the first 26 episodes. Following this, the show would go on a two-month hiatus before returning on February 8, 2003 with Episode 27, upon which the show would air just one episode every week on FoxBox. As for why that hiatus came about, I would imagine it was mainly because the show was likely more popular abroad than it was in Japan, but there was a problem: The anime ends on an awkward spot, as a new story arc just gets established, only to then switch over to an anime-only story arc for its finale. With the anime finishing up in Japan, 4Kids likely took this hiatus to contact Toei & work out a deal... One that would result in brand new episodes of Ultimate Muscle that would finish off the story arc that only just got started.

So on October 18, 2003, the week after Episode 51 debuted in English, Ultimate Muscle just kept going on FoxBox with the worldwide debut of "Episode 52", as though these new episodes always existed; more than likely, Toei produced these episodes throughout 2003, shortly after finishing Kinnikuman II-Sei. However, this situation of 4Kids commissioning Toei produce more 26 more episodes of Ultimate Muscle is more like what happened to Beast King Go-Lion when more episodes of Voltron were commissioned in the 80s, instead of what happened to The Big O II earlier in 2003, i.e. these episodes were made specifically for English release first. However, unlike those bonus Voltron episodes, these new episodes of UM would eventually get aired in Japan, with (most of) the original Japanese voice cast returning to reprise their roles, though in this case it would technically be considered a "Japanese dub". So on April 8, 2004, just as UM was seven episodes away from finally ending on FoxBox, the first 13 episodes of these new episodes started airing on TV Tokyo weekly, now under the title Kinnikuman II-Sei: Ultimate Muscle. Then, on January 5, 2006 (yes, nearly two whole years later!), the remaining 13 episodes finally started airing on TV Tokyo under the title Kinnikuman II-Sei: Ultimate Muscle 2. By this point, Yudetamago had moved on to 2004-2011's Kinnikuman II-Sei: Kyukyoku no Chojin Tag-hen/Ultimate Chojin Tag Chapter, which saw the New Generation go back in time & fight against/team with the Legends in the prime & featured a new logo for the franchise, one that UM2 (& the later DVD release for these two "seasons") adopted; I honestly prefer the old logo, but the later one's still good. However, where the original Kinnikuman II-Sei anime aired in prime time, these two new seasons aired in Japan as late-night anime (1:00 AM, in particular, both times around), and since neither got fansubbed back in the day some don't even realize that these even aired in Japan, thinking that the last 26 episodes of Ultimate Muscle were English-exclusive.

So, to finish off the 20th Anniversary retrospective of the original 2002 Kinnikuman II-Sei anime, let's jump ahead to 2004 & 2006 by taking a look at the Japanese version of these (4Kids-commissioned) final 26 episodes, and while they were aired separately in Japan, with a two-year gap in between, I'll just cover them together, since they tell a single overall story arc.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1995 (Part 1)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"Regardless of how 1994 panned out, though, 1995 will truly have to be the make-or-break year for the Atari Jaguar, as while it's one thing to compete with the (supposedly) weaker hardware of the Sega Genesis & Super Nintendo, or the fellow also-ran of the 3DO or even the CD-i, it's another thing to compete with brand new 32-bit hardware, namely the upcoming Sony PlayStation & Sega Saturn."

As of New Year's Day 1995, the Atari Jaguar has been on the market for a total of just 14 months, yet only has 17 games to call its own, or just barely over 1 game per month; that's not good, especially when the total official (cartridge) catalog would only hit 50. Also notable in said current catalog is that literally all but one game released on the Jag so far has been published by Atari Corporation, with said exception being Brutal Sports Football by Telegames; Virgin Interactive co-published Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story with Atari. However, 1995 will wind up being the most important year in the entire life of the Atari Jaguar, for a few reasons. First, it's the final year in which Atari Corporation itself actually would continue to actively support its final console, though the truth of that wouldn't be known until later on. Second, 24 games would see release on cartridge in this year alone, so literally 48% of the Jag's entire catalog came out in 1995; because of that, 1995 will take FIVE PARTS to fully cover here! Third, and most relevant to this part of this overarching series, we finally see third-party publishers start to support the Jaguar "en masse"... or, at least, whatever can qualify as that for this console.

In fact, Atari would have absolutely nothing to do with the first five games released on the Jaguar in 1995, making this the only part to not feature an Atari-published game whatsoever... at least, the only part in which "Atari" itself more or less still existed. So, after a bit of a hiatus, let's finally start the Atari Jaguar's most pivotal year with Attack of the Third Parties!

We start off this cavalcade of third parties with Ocean Software, the UK-based developer/publisher that, at one point, was one of the biggest in all of Europe during the 80s & 90s, before eventually getting purchased by Infogrames (which itself would eventually become the Atari that currently exists today) in 1996, followed by being rebranded to Infogrames UK in early 1998. We're still a year out before any of that, though, and in this case we have Ocean publishing a Jaguar port of a PC classic, Syndicate. Originally released on June 6, 1993 for MS-DOS & Amiga computers, Syndicate was the brainchild of Bullfrog Productions, the studio the legendarily infamous Peter Molyneux helped found in 1987 that went in to achieve great success with titles like Populous, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, & (well) Syndicate. Right around the time of this Jaguar port's January 27 release, Bullfrog would be acquired by Electronic Arts (back when "EA" actually stood for something), while Molyneux would leave Bullfrog in 1997 to co-found Lionhead Studios; Bullfrog itself would eventually be merged with EA UK in 2001. Prior to the Jag port, Syndicate had already been ported to console in 1994 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in North America & Europe, as well as a Mega CD version exclusive to Europe, while ports to the SNES, 3DO, & Amiga CD-32 also would see release throughout 1995. Unlike the Sega & Nintendo ports, which had to be scaled down to work for their weaker hardware, Jag Syndicate is apparently more of a direct port, much like the later 3DO version, so while a real-time tactical strategy game isn't really my thing, let me see if the original's quality still shines through on Atari's hardware.

Theory Musing: Why Does Saint Seiya Consistently Fail in "North of Mexico"?

Debuting at the start of 1986 (technically late 1985, but let's not split hairs here) in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, Saint Seiya was the creation of mangaka Masami Kurumada, who had already seen major success twice over the past decade with Ring ni Kakero (his first big hit) from 1977-1981 &, to a lesser extent, Fuma no Kojirou from 1982-1983. He had also seen failure twice, with his debut work Sukeban Arashi from 1974-1975 & Otoko Zaka from 1984-1985 both being cancelled early on in their respective runs; Otoko Zaka would eventually return in 2014, nearly 30 years later. The last, in particular, was conceived by Kurumada as his magnum opus, the manga he had always wanted to make, so when he was told to stop making it (though he defiantly called it "Incomplete" on the last page of the [then] final chapter, proof of his status within Jump at the time) he decided that his next work would be something that he knew the general public would want to read, something that would be undeniably popular. In fact, he could take the things that worked for him a decade prior with RnK & FnK, re-utilizing them in ways that would be brand new for the younger generation of readers who had likely never read his previous hits.

The End Result of Every Attempt to Make
Americans & Canadians Care About Saint Seiya

The end result was a manga that, despite eventually being cancelled in & of itself and needing to have its final chapter published in an issue of V Jump magazine, still ran from 1986-1990 in Weekly Jump for 246 weeks straight (only four longer than RnK), compiled across 28 volumes, with Kurumada never taking a break; it remains his longest individual series in his entire catalog. In fact, Saint Seiya was often neck & neck with the likes of Dragon Ball & even Fist of the North Star (&, to a lesser extent, Captain Tsubasa & Sakigake!! Otokojuku) in terms of sheer popularity, with Saint Seiya apparently even surpassing one or even both at points during 1987 & 1988. Seiya was so instantly popular that a TV anime adaptation by Toei debuted before the manga was even an entire year old & was apparently optioned (alongside a toy deal with Bandai) before the first chapter was even published; truly, Kurumada knew what worked. In fact, while Akira Toriyama & the duo of Buronson and Tetsuo Hara's respective series are often cited as landmark & trendsetting works for shonen action manga, Saint Seiya is also just as much up there in a lot of ways, especially when compared to Dragon Ball, as a lot of what has become so iconic in that series (especially its second half) technically first appeared there AFTER Saint Seiya had done something similar first (Power of Gold vs. Super Saiyan, for example), or Seiya's entire run had simply ended. Regardless, Saint Seiya is a cherished icon of anime & manga, finding itself a massive following that love it to this very day the world over, as it was Kurumada's first work to see release outside of Japan.

That is, unless you live in "North of Mexico", i.e. the United States & Canada, where it has constantly only managed to achieve, at best, apathetic acceptance by most anime/manga fans, regardless of how many times it's been given a push over here; there has been a growing fandom for the series over time, but obviously not enough to ever be considered a "success".

At Discotek's most recent licensing bonanza livestream, I noticed some people in the chat repeatedly ask about Saint Seiya, which only reminded me of how the series had bombed three times for the company already: The 80s movie tetralogy across two DVDs in 2013, TMS' OVA adaptation of spin-off manga The Lost Canvas on DVD in 2015 (this was before the English dub debuted for Netflix, which Discotek had nothing to do with), & the movies being re-released on a single BD in 2021. To see people trying to ask Discotek about Saint Seiya just made me think "Where have you been all this time? Didn't you support the prior releases?", and when I brought this up on Twitter an old subject was brought up in response: "Why can't Saint Seiya ever seem to succeed in the US (& Canada)?". So allow me to ruminate some thoughts as we try to see if we can finally free Athena herself from this captivity without needing to simply bash away at it fruitlessly, like many companies have been doing for decades.

Obscusion B-Side: Spider: The Video Game: Night of the Cybernetic Crawler

Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders, and while only so many people actually have a downright phobia of those eight-legged arachnids (it's apparently only somewhere between 3.5% to 6.1% of the global population), it wouldn't be unfair to say that most people would still react unpleasantly to the sight of one, in general, especially from out of nowhere. Even the word "spider" itself has a bit of an allure to it, which is why there are numerous characters, films, songs, groups, & even a French video game developer named after it. In fact, a commonly held belief in conquering a fear like arachnophobia would be to engage with it directly in a controlled fashion (i.e. exposure therapy)... like maybe through a video game? While some might then think of 2009's Deadly Creatures for the Wii, where you play as both a tarantula & a scorpion, considering that it's Halloween I'm thinking of something a little more "science gone wrong", with a dash of "subtext is for cowards".

Boss Film Studios was a visual effects company founded in 1983 by Industrial Light & Magic alumnus (& VFX legend) Richard Edlund. Boss would go on to become a legendary rival to ILM, having done the VFX for the likes of Ghostbusters, Die Hard, Big Trouble in Little China, Ghost, The Hunt for Red October, Batman Returns, Last Action Hero, & Starship Troopers, to list only a few; to call Boss Film's output "impressive" would be putting it very lightly. In 1994 the company founded an offshoot, Boss Game Studios, that would develop video games, though it wouldn't actually make its public debut until February of 1997 with the focus of this review: Spider: The Video Game. Released exclusively for the PS1 by BMG Interactive, the video game division of the now-defunct Bertelsmann Music Group, Spider would actually wind up being the only title from Boss Game Studios to ever see release while Boss Film Studios was still around, as Boss Film would close up shop on August 26, 1997, citing difficulties in being an independently run studio in such a competitive market. Boss Game would then switch over to exclusively developing Nintendo 64 games (plus one Windows PC port), mostly of the racing variety (even renaming to Boss Racing), before disbanding on June 14, 2002, outliving its parent company by close to five years; Boss' final game, 2000's Stunt Racer 64, is now highly coveted & uber-expensive, due to rarity. Meanwhile, BMG Interactive would eventually be sold to Take-Two Interactive in 1998, just months after publishing a little game called Grand Theft Auto in Europe for the PC & PS1... Ouch; BMG itself would also eventually get purchased by Sony in 2008.

So, for a title originally handled by a bunch of companies that no longer exist in any form, is Spider: The Video Game more like 1990's Arachnophobia, or it is more akin to 2002's Eight Legged Freaks?

Kinnikuman II-Sei Part 2: Go! (Go!) Go! (Go!)... FIGHT!

Previously on the Kinnikuman II-Sei Review:

"The first half of the TV anime adaptation of Kinnikuman II-Sei does admittedly have a bit of a slow start to it, but recovers well with the last 10 episodes covered here, at least in terms of pacing...While the animation isn't anything amazing, which I'll bring up in more detail next time, the voice work & music definitely more than make up for things so far, but there's still another 25 episodes left to watch for this original 2002 run..."

As mentioned at the start of the prior review, the 2002 TV anime adaptation of the next-gen sequel to Shonen Jump classic Kinnikuman would only run for 51 episodes on TV Tokyo, before being replaced the following year. I've generally heard that it was likely due to slumping ratings in the latter half of the year, and to be fair it does have some realistic logic behind it, as it really wouldn't have been due to catching up to the manga; that said, there could have been other factors. Regardless, by the time the anime debuted on TV, the Kinnikuman II-Sei manga was about to start entering the final match of one of its longest story arcs, which would end right around where we are in this two-part review. Therefore, the anime could have easily continued on for a bit longer beyond what was done in 2002, and luckily that would indeed happen once the anime saw success abroad. However, we aren't quite at the point just yet, so let's return to the original TV anime & see how things play out in the second half. This time around I'll be relying on Japanese DVD rips, as this half never received any English subtitle translation, even via bootlegs (so far, at least).

Also, just a few days before this review, Discotek Media announced that it would be releasing Ultimate Muscle on SD-BD sometime in 2023. However, this is only for the 4Kids dub at the moment, a release for Kinnikuman II-Sei will depend on how well UM performs, so this news affects nothing for me here, as I'm covering the original Japanese version.

It was either Terry the Kid or Seiuchin for the eyecatch,
and though Seiuchin is cool I can't disrespect the Terry Family.

Mantaro Kinniku has just defeated Clioneman in his semi-final match of the New Generation Replacement Tournament between his "Team AHO" & the "Generation Ex" team made up of the Hercules Factory's second year graduating class. Now all Mantaro can do is wait & see who from Generation Ex he'll face in the final match: The noble Jade or the ruthless & still somewhat mysterious Scarface, a.k.a. Mars. Even after all of that, though, Mantaro's battles are nowhere near over, as he'll have to take on a trio of vile convicts known as "No Respect" in order to fully attain an inner strength he's only tapped into subconsciously in the past, before seeing if he can qualify for the Chojin World Grand Prix (Chojin Crown), the revival of the legendary tournaments that the Legends had competed in decades prior... and that's only if a sextet of Evil Chojin don't ruin things by a sudden intrusion.

Obscusion B-List: Wait... Capcom Published WHAT!?!

Originally established back on May 30, 1979 as I.R.M. Corporation, the Capcom that we know today (named after a clipped compound of subsidiary Capsule Computers Co., Ltd.) came about in 1983 & ever since then has become one of the biggest names in third-party video game development & publishing, with many iconic franchises in its catalog. That being said, though, Capcom has had its name attached to some games that would make you react like Drew Scanlon did that one time on Giant Bomb & think "Wait... WHAT!?!", and while this can apply to numerous other video game companies (hmmm, maybe a potential recurring concept?) I think Capcom is probably the most interesting/amusing to actually think about, in this regard.

Admittedly, though, this primarily applies to Capcom USA, though Capcom Japan certainly has its own share of "Wait... WHAT!?!" releases (maybe for another time), so let's take a look at some games that Capcom's logo was attached to that you'd normally never expect to see happen.

The idea of Capcom making a game based on Star Wars sounds like a slam dunk idea, yet it never actually came to be. Instead, the closest is supposedly the Star Gladiator duology during the second half of the 90s, with the first game allegedly being pitched originally as a Star Wars fighting game, only for Lucasfilm to steal the idea & poorly attempt making a fighting game of their own politely decline the proposition. However, that doesn't mean that Capcom has never had its name appear on any games based on the iconic space opera franchise, because Capcom USA did manage to get a hold of Star Wars for two games released on the venerable Game Boy... at least for a time, that is.

Kinnikuman II-Sei Part 1: Let the Generation "Get You"!

In mid-1998, following a 5-part "Legendary Prologue" from mid-1997 to the start of 1998, the mangaka duo called Yudetamago debuted Kinnikuman II-Sei (a.k.a. "Nisei/Second Generation") in the pages of Shueisha's Weekly Playboy magazine for adults. Despite becoming a notable hit for its specific age range, other companies obviously felt that there was potential for this next generation sequel to be marketable to younger audiences, much like the original Kinnikuman had been during the late 70s & the majority of the 80s. Naturally, this resulted in the anime studio behind the prior Kinnikuman anime productions, Toei Animation, getting involved to adapt this new manga, and after a mid-2001 theatrical short to help get people ready, the Kinnikuman franchise returned to Japanese TV screens in early 2002, roughly 10 years since Kinnikuman: Kinniku-sei Oui Sodatsu-hen/Scramble for the Throne finished airing back in late 1992.

However, unlike all of the prior anime productions for this beloved franchise, this new one would get an official English release...

Debuting on January 9, 2002 on TV Tokyo at 18:00 (a.k.a. 6:00 PM), the Kinnikuman II-Sei TV anime would replace s-CRY-ed (yes, that show was actually family programming in Japan!) & run for pretty much all of 2002, ending after 51 episodes on Christmas Day that same year; it would then be replaced with Shutsugeki! Machine Robo Rescue. Unlike the original Kinnikuman though, which only ever saw localization in North America by way of the Kinkeshi collectible mini-figures under the name M.U.S.C.L.E. (& a sole NES game to tie in with that), the Kinnikuman II-Sei anime did catch the interest of English localizers, specifically those at 4Kids Entertainment, then known most for its edited dubs of Pokémon & Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters that aired in North America as Saturday morning cartoons on Kids' WB. 4Kids would quickly license Kinnikuman II-Sei & debut it on September 14, 2002 (while the original Japanese version was still airing!) as part of the launch line-up for the new FoxBox block that replaced Fox Kids, alongside Fighting Foodons, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, & a dubbed version of Ultraman Tiga. Now renamed Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy, this dub would go on to be a surprise hit for 4Kids, so much so that the company even commissioned Toei to produce another 26 episodes, bringing the total up to 77, so that the story arc that the original TV series had just barely started before ending could actually be fully adapted. We'll get to those bonus 26 episodes in a later review to finish out this 20th Anniversary retrospective, and I should point out that I will NOT be covering Ultimate Muscle in any of these reviews in any real detail, because in some ways it's kind of its own show. That said, I will reference characters' UM names when I first mention them from here on out, for clarity, & there will be a minor comparison here & there, for effect.

Instead, we'll be starting with the first 26 episodes of the original Japanese version of the Kinnikuman II-Sei TV anime, which were the only episodes that actually did see release unofficially via bootleg DVD boxsets one could find in various Chinatown districts (like the one in New York City, for me). Shockingly enough, the English subtitles for these bootlegs are actually pretty good, all things considered (though they still have tons of the usual awkward translation, as expected), and the bootleg DVDs for Kinnikuman II-Sei are the only ones left that I still own & have not used to review an anime on this blog. So are you ready to "Do the Muscle"?

Obscusion B-Side: Cybernetic Empire: Wolf Team's Last Stand with Telenet

Founded in October of 1983, Telenet Japan was a Japanese video game developer that got its start on Japanese PCs of the time, but would become most well known from the late 80s up through the mid-90s, when it released a wide variety of games from its various subsidiaries, like Reno (which would be the namesake of its North American division, Renovation Products), its successor Riot, & Shin Nihon Laser Soft. This resulted in games like the Cosmic Fantasy Series, Last/Red Alert, the XZR/Exile Series, & the cult classic Gaiares, as well as ports of other companies' titles, like Ys III (Genesis version), the Xak Series (PC-Engine CD version), & even Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (PC version). Easily the most iconic subsidiary of Telenet, though, was the "Game Creative Staff" at Wolf Team, which was founded in 1986 before going independent in 1987 under Masahiro Akishino's leadership, only to then become a Telenet subsidiary again in 1990 after disputes with Akishino lead to him leaving & founding J-Force (which is its own story altogether). In 1993 Telenet merged all of its subsidiaries together into Wolf Team, which itself lead to staff leaving & founding Media.Vision (Wild Arms) & the now-defunct Neverland Company (Lufia & Rune Factory) and Media Entertainment (Strahl). While Wolf Team's games weren't always the most polished, much like most of Telenet's output, they were still filled with tons of personality & charm, not to mention excelleny music, which has allowed the likes of El Viento, Earnest Evans, Granada, Arcus Odyssey, & the Final Zone & Valis Series (which were both started by Wolf Team) to remain in people's minds to this very day.

However, things would change in late 1995 with a Super Famicom RPG called Tales of Phantasia...

Based on an unpublished novel titled Tale Phantasia that was written by Wolf Team's Yoshiharu Gotanda, the studio had grand ambitions with this RPG, so much so that the studio felt that Telenet itself wasn't the right choice for publisher, due to a mix of already rough relations with the company & the fact that Telenet wasn't the same, financially, by this point. In fact, following Tokyo Twilight Busters for the PC-98 earlier in mid-1995, Telenet would almost exclusively publish pachinko, pachislot, & mahjong games until the early 00s, when it'd then publish two golf games for GameCube & PS2, and then sully the Valis & Arcus names with porn spin-offs, before dying in 2007. Wolf Team would eventually find a publisher for its Super Famicom RPG in Namco, though conflicts both internally & with Namco would result in a bunch of staff, including Gotanda himself, leaving to found tri-Ace after Tales of Phantasia's release, leading to the creation of Star Ocean. Afterwards, Wolf Team would live out the rest of its life developing Tales games, before Namco would become majority owner of the studio in early 2003, renaming it Namco Tales Studio (which itself died in 2012, after merging with Bandai Namco Studios), with the last game to ever bear the Wolf Team name being Tales of Destiny 2 for the PS2 (i.e. the real ToD2, not Tales of Eternia) in late 2002. However, there is one non-gambling title from Telenet Japan from the late 90s... and it's also Wolf Team's last non-Tales video game.

On August 5, 1999, in between the releases of the PS1 remake of Tales of Phantasia in 1998 & Tales of Eternia (i.e. "Tales of Destiny II") in 2000, Wolf Team & Telenet teamed up one last time for Cybernetic Empire, a "3D Action Adventure" game for the PlayStation that featured character designs by Akihito Yoshitomi, who at the time was serializing the manga Eat-Man; Telenet often hired mangaka to do character designs for its games, like Nobuteru Yuki & Kazutoshi Yamane. Ironically, two months earlier, Konami's Gungage came out on PS1 in Japan, which also featured Yoshitomi designs, though Yoshitomi actually shares the copyright with Telenet's release. Cybernetic Empire would be the last game to feature the Wolf Team logo on the cover & during start-up, though modified from its original design, but is almost never brought up when the studio is discussed, with most talk of Wolf Team being split between its early 90s output & its pre-buyout Tales games. Is Cybernetic Empire any good, and is it truly representative, in any way, of the old Wolf Team/Telenet days of yore during a post-Tales time? Let's find out.

Obscusion B-List: Video Game Ports That Shouldn't Have Been Possible... But Actually Happened... Yet Again

It's been a couple of years since the last time we looked at six "impossible" ports of video games, and while I have a proper video game review in the works for Obscusion B-Side, I figure it's always good to have something light & fun in between all of the various reviews & overviews that I've been doing for a good while; in fact, there hasn't been an Obscusion B-List in over a year! While today we do still get that feeling of "this shouldn't be possible on this hardware" with the Nintendo Switch & some of its ports (The Witcher 3, Doom Eternal, etc.), it still can't quite hit the same exact feeling that prior generations had. It was a time when certain arcade machines were capable of things that consoles wouldn't be able to match for nearly an entire decade, when PCs were undoubtedly superior to their TV-based counterparts (this is still generally true today, but the gap is nowhere near as wide now), and yet publishers still wanted to bring those experiences to console, because they were hot. Some developers had to find ways to simply offer a similar general experience, but still noticeably different in execution, while others went crazy & decided to be as close to the original as possible... even when it felt like that shouldn't have been possible (&, sometimes, was in fact just that).

In that regard, I don't think there's any better place to start this third foray than with the console port of one of the most infamous PC games ever made.

Getting his first game published in the Apple II-focused inCider Magazine back in 1984, John Romero would find his most iconic & influential time as a game designer & programmer after co-founding id Software in 1991 alongside Adrian Carmack, John Carmack (no relation), & Tom Hall. Romero would be a massive part of the development of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom I & II, and the original Quake, before leaving id in 1996 to co-found Ion Storm with Tom Hall, after having various creative differences with his fellow co-founders, especially John Carmack. As part of the public unveiling of this new game studio in 1997, a game was announced: John Romero's Daikatana. An ambitious first-person shooter that took influence after games like Chrono Trigger & The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, in particular the idea of travelling through different time periods & having sidekicks to fight alongside you, Daikatana was originally made with the Quake engine in mind, but after seeing id's new engine for Quake II get shown off, Romero decided to switch engines... not realizing that the two engines were more or less incompatible, resulting in the game essentially needing to be started over from scratch & necessitating numerous delays; it's entirely possible that Carmack made the engines so different so as to screw over Romero. Anyway, after so many delays (& an infamous piece of advertising, based on Romero's penchant for trash talk during multiplayer games, that Romero has since regretted approving), the game finally saw release for Windows PC on May 22, 2000, where it was understandably trounced by all; that being said, though, it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

Kinnikuman II-Sei "Double Feature": A Beef Bowl for All Ages

Meeting for the first time in 4th grade, Takashi Shimada & Yoshinori Nakai became fast friends and after finishing up middle school they started working together on manga, which then led to them submitting one-shots for awards after graduating high school. Eventually, a one-shot named Kinnikuman/Muscle Man (which starred a character Shimada had first thought up way back in 5th grade) won the 9th Akatsuka Award in 1978 & this led to Kinnikuman becoming a serialized manga that debuted in Weekly Shonen Jump in early 1979. By this point, the duo had started using the pen name Yudetamago (literally "Boiled Egg"), which came from either a lunch they were eating while thinking of a pen name or the smell of a fart one of them let out, depending on who you ask; Shimada's the writer, while Nakai draws. Needless to say, Kinnikuman went on to become a smash success for Jump, transitioning from a gag manga that parodied Ultraman to a slapstick superpowered wrestling action manga (after seeing the success their friend Masami Kurumada was having with Ring ni Kakero) & running all the way until 1987, totaling 391 weekly chapters across 36 volumes, second only to Kochikame at the time for longest Jump manga; obviously, it's since been bested by plenty of other series. This success would also lead to an anime adaptation by Toei Animation that aired from 1983 to 1986 for 137 episodes (& 8 theatrical movies), a second (46-episode) anime from 1991 to 1992 that adapted the final story arc, & even a 12-volume spin-off manga (Tatakae!! Ramenman) that ran from 1982 to 1989 in Fresh Jump (essentially the entire magazine's run, minus a year-long gap in the middle) & even had its own TV anime adaptation (plus a movie) in 1988!

After that kind of massive success, it's only understandable that Yudetamago were seemingly never able to follow it up with another hit manga, though not for a lack of trying... until a decade later.

Following the end of Gourmand-kun in Kadokawa Shoten's Weekly Shonen Ace, which ran from 1994 to 1996 for just four volumes, Yudetamago made a 60-page one-shot called Muscle Returns that appeared in Fighting Ace magazine. This was actually a sequel to Kinnikuman, and astonishingly enough Shueisha simply allowed Kadokawa Shoten to publish it, apparently not caring about any potential royalties, as it had published the wideban edition of the original series back in 1994; times were different, people. Kadokawa would publish the one-shot with some new bonus Kinnikuman stories as its own book, & it might actually also be included in Volume 37 of Kinnikuman itself, which was the first new volume released by Shueisha when the manga returned to serialization in 2010/2011; it's currently now at 79 volumes, literally 2.19x the length it originally was in 1987! However, Muscle Returns still had a great response to it, so in 1997 Shueisha allowed Yudetamago to create another sequel one-shot in adult magazine Weekly Playboy (no relation to America's Playboy; that was the now-defunct Monthly Playboy), a solid decade after Kinnikuman had originally ended. This second one-shot, Kinnikuman II-Sei (as in "Nisei/Second Generation"), introduced a new generation of "Chojin/Superhumen" & was the first of a five-part "Legendary Prologue" that would then lead to a proper serialized run in Weekly Playboy from mid-1998 to mid-2004, totaling 29 volumes. The success of Kinnikuman II-Sei also resulted in a "Revival Manga Boom", where old classics were brought back with "next generation" sequels, like Akatsuki!! Otokojuku, Ginga Legend Weed, & Ring ni Kakero 2. Despite being made precisely for adults who more than likely read the original Kinnikuman as children back in the day, there was definitely an appeal to Kinnikuman II-Sei that could be marketed to younger audiences as well, & this included Toei, which obviously would be all for recapturing the success that the original manga's anime had.

So, to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the 2002 TV anime adaptation of Kinnikuman II-Sei, better known abroad as Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy, let's start a four-part series of anime reviews with a theatrical "Double Feature"!

Demo Disc Vol. 21: Valiant Varsity

We're coming down to the last stretch of letters remaining for Demo Disc, as my goal has long been to do one for each letter of the English alphabet (& I doubled up on S early on, so this will wind up totaling 27). Not just that, but I have mentioned before that the gimmick with this "column", from a naming standpoint, has become trickier to continue with ever since I started it back in 2014, due to the fact that many of the titles that I had planned to cover in this format have since been given some sort of complete English translation now, making them ineligible. Because of that, I now have to find a way to not only figure out what titles I can cover via Demo Disc, but also figure out a way to match them with the remaining letters I have left.

For example, I have a trio of sports-related (even if only slightly) titles in mind, & the word "varsity" has a sports-related definition to it, so let's get "V" out of the way, even if it only really relates directly to one of them!

I swear, there is some sports-related stuff in this Volume!

A Giant Desperate Turnabout in One Shot!

While something like Gatchaman or Speed Racer may be Tatsunoko's most iconic franchise the world over, over in Japan I imagine that there's a good argument to be made for the Time Bokan Series, which ran on a weekly basis from 1975 to 1983 across seven different entries, plus an celebratory two-episode OVA in 1993/1994, an eighth installment in 2000, & re-imaginings of the first two entries from 2008-2009 & 2015-2018. While I have covered the original Time Bokan & both the original Yatterman & its late-00s reboot way back in 2015, those were not via Demo Disc, so this is actually the first time this iconic franchise appears here. And since Demo Disc always goes in chronological order, that means that we start this Volume with Gyakuten/Turnabout Ippatsuman, the sixth Time Bokan anime (& the penultimate of the original continual run), which originally ran from 1982 to 1983 for 58 episodes, making it the third-longest entry; the titular hero also appeared as a playable character in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom on the Wii in all regions.

What does this series have to do with sports? Honestly, not much beyond Ippatsuman himself having a slight baseball theme to him (his base of operations is literally called "Home Base"), & his real name (Go Sokkyu) being a pun on the Japanese word for a "blazing fastball", but I'll take what I can get, at this point. So let's see how the first episode of this anime, the only one ever fansubbed, fares when it stands up to the plate.

Ragnarök the Animation: Humanity Can be Divided Into Madmen & Cowards... And the Same is True of Fantasy Worlds

During the serialization of Ragnarök in South Korea, manhwaga Lee Myung-Jin was approached by a video game company called Gravity, which itself had only been founded back in April of 2000. Gravity wanted to take Ragnarök & create a massively multiplayer online RPG based on the world of Midgard that Lee had created and, after initial beta testing starting on November 1, 2001, Ragnarök Online saw official release for Windows PCs in South Korea on August 31, 2002. Over the next few years it'd then see release the world over, including Japan in late 2002, China & North America in 2003, other Asian regions between late 2003 & early 2005, & finally European & South American regions in 2006 & 2007. Though there was a major update called "Renewal" in 2010, RO's "2D character sprites on 3D backgrounds" gameplay has stayed the same, and outside of most of Europe's servers shutting down in 2018, followed by the Malaysia, Singapore, & Philippines server shutting down in 2021, the game is still played to this very day, though its userbase has obviously dwindled since its heyday. If you want a full-3D polyognal experience, you can play the sequel, 2012's Ragnarök Online 2: Legend of the Second, which is also still available to play, minus those same specific regions as RO1. That said, while either game is now technically free-to-play, playing on any of the official servers today is apparently a massive "pay-to-win" scheme, so it's generally recommended to join one of the various unofficial fan servers, if you want to see what it's about today.

Needless to say, Ragnarök Online became a smash hit around the world, and due to its simpler visual style it didn't have the same kind of higher technical specification requirements that games like EverQuest or even World of Warcraft had at the time, which in turn made it easier for more people to install & play. It became enough of a hit, then, that it was decided to create an anime adaptation of Ragnarök... the MMORPG. Yes, instead of adapting the original manhwa (which technically is canon to the world of RO, but was at various points either a prequel and/or a sequel), it was decided to create a completely original story that simply utilized the various elements of the game, such as the world (now called Rune-Midgard), character classes, monsters, etc., though the title of the anime itself makes it sound like an adaptation of the manhwa. While not the first anime based on an online game in general (that would be 2003's Tank Knights Fortress), 2004's Ragnarök the Animation is the first ever anime adaptation of an MMORPG, and was be a co-production between Gonzo Digimation & South Korean anime studio G&G Entertainment, with the two studios already having worked together before to create 2003 cult-classic Kaleido Star; that said, there's no shared staff between Ragnarök the Animation & 2009's Arad Senki: Slap-Up Party. It took a few years, but in 2007 FUNimation announced that it had licensed Ragnarök the Animation & would release it across three dual-disc DVD singles, a one-off experiment between the old single DVD releases that were once commonplace & the half-season boxsets that are now mostly standard. Naturally, each release also included ads for RO itself, while the first DVD features a promotional video for Ragnarök Online 2: The Gate of the World, the original attempt at a sequel that only ever existed via closed & open beta testing forms between 2006 & 2010, before getting cancelled; the only thing to carry over to the actual RO2 was Yoko Kanno composing some music.

Personally, this was actually one of the very first anime I ever watched via fansub as it came out when I started entering the fandom itself in 2004. I remember really enjoying it at the time, especially since I felt that it did go down some paths that you wouldn't expect, namely in tone & mood. In the 18 years since it first aired, though, Ragnarök the Animation has essentially become a strong "Love It or Hate It" series, with some finding it absolutely abhorrent, unoriginal, & nothing more than a cheap & lazy promotion for the video game. Guess it's time to see if my memories truly are off, or if me & my friends truly saw elements that others never did.

Obscusion B-Side: The Histor-Ys of Adol Christin's First Adventure on Consoles

On June 21, 1987, Nihon Falcom released an action RPG called Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished for NEC's PC-88 line of home computers, followed throughout the year by ports to the Sharp X1, NEC's PC-98, Fujitsu FM-7, & the MSX2. Designed, programmed, & directed by Masaya Hashimoto (who would later co-found Quintet in 1989 with writer Tomoyoshi Miyazaki), Ys was advertised with the motto of "Now, the RPG is Entering an Age of Kindness." This was in reference to how notoriously difficult these types of games were at the time (like T&E Soft's Hydlide, Bullet-Proof Software's The Black Onyx, & Falcom's own Dragon Slayer & Xanadu), with the game being much easier & simpler to just get straight into & play, possibly even taking some influence from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda on Famicom one year prior. Combined with excellent music composed by the duo of Mieko Ishikawa (who today is the managing director of Falcom's entire sound division) & some 19-year old part-timer named Yuzo Koshiro (plus his 16-year old sister Ayano doing some designs), Ys (pronounced like the world "ease") would be a sales success for Falcom, and while it may not be the company's biggest franchise 35 years later, it is by far their longest-running one, as The Legend of Heroes discarded its initial Dragon Slayer connection way back in 1994.

It's no surprise, then, that when Falcom started getting its games ported to home consoles the same year, with Dragon Slayer Jr.: Romancia on the Famicom, that Ys would be a perfect title for that market.

In terms of the plot to the original Ys, it's understandably basic. A young man with red hair named Adol Christin hears of monsters roaming about on the island of Esteria, home of a silver metal called Cleria, and a mysterious "Stormwall" surrounding the island that makes actually entering it nigh-impossible. Being the adventurous type, Adol decides to test that claim by entering Esteria by boat, only to wind up shipwrecked... Luckily, though, he still managed to enter Esteria, & eventually finds his way to the town of Minea. From there Adol finds out about the six Books of Ys, which tell of an ancient land that once was a part of Esteria, and he'll head to the nearby village of Zepik, Solomon Shrine (or "Salmon", in some Japanese romanizations), the Rastin Mine, & finally Darm Tower to recover the Books of Ys & figure out what happened to both Esteria & Ys itself. In the 35 years since Ys' original release on the PC-88, there have been seven different ports to video game consoles & handhelds, so let's take a look at all of them in chronological order & see what each one brought to the table. Three of them were simply Ys released on its own, three of them were double-packs with its sequel, 1988's Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter (which finishes the story & sees Adol head to Ys itself), and one of them is both individually sold & as part of a double-pack, at least in Japan. In the case of these double-packs, I'll be focusing primarily on Ys I, as the appeal of this game is in how enjoyably short it is (no more than 3-7 hours, depending on how much you know in advance), which makes comparing these ports easier to handle.

Ragnarök: Into the Abyss: Everybody is After Chaos... It's Not a Hope or a Dream; It's Like a Hunger, a Thirst...

Born in April 12, 1974, Lee Myung-Jin got his start in South Korean manhwa in mid-1992 with the series It's Going to Be a Wonderful Night (a.k.a. Lights Out), which would run for nine volumes until early 1995, when Lee had to serve his mandatory two years as part of the South Korean military. After returning to civilian life in late 1997, Lee founded his own studio, Dive to Dream Sea, & debuted a new series in Daiwon C.I.'s bi-weekly Comic Champ magazine, Ragnarök: Into the Abyss (it's also sometimes written as "In To The Abyss", so yay for no consistency!), at the start of 1998. This manhwa would go on to become a notable hit in South Korea, though Lee never actually finished it, stopping after just 10 volumes in 2001. As admitted in an interview included in Volume 3, Lee had grand plans for the series, hoping to go 40-50 volumes in total & comprised of seven story arcs, with Into the Abyss technically being the second of three main arcs, while the other four were to be shorter side stories. The reason for the cancellation, however, is because Ragnarök would achieve much greater success outside of manhwa, as a Korean game developer named Gravity wanted to adapt the manhwa into an online RPG, but that's a subject for another time...

Meanwhile, at San Diego Comic Con 2001, manga publisher TokyoPop announced that it had licensed Ragnarök for English release, with it being only the second manhwa ever licensed by the company. However, alongside later license Priest, Ragnarök would go on to become a bit of a tentpole manhwa release for TokyoPop, as it would continue to sell for a number of years while that form of comic was still being pushed heavily by publishers throughout the 00s, despite the fact that TP would quickly release all 10 volumes over the course of just two years, from mid-2002 to mid-2004; TP would then fully release Lights Out to maintain some sort of momentum. Not just that, but TokyoPop also hired fantasy novelist Richard A. Knaak (who also wrote novels for Blizzard's Diablo & Warcraft franchises) to adapt Lauren Na's English translation of Ragnarök (who isn't even credited in Volumes 2-4; nice work, TokyoPop...) into something more like his own style, with Knaak even getting credited alongside Lee Myung-Jin on the spine of each volume, as though he was co-creator of the series; I'm all for localization staff being credited, but this felt a bit much. So, after all this time & even despite the manhwa not actually having a proper ending to it, does Ragnarök still hold up as (seemingly) one of the greatest Korean manhwa to ever see English release?

The realm of Midgard has been under the watch of Valhalla's Urd, Verdandi, & Skuld, the Goddess of the Past, Present, & Future, a.k.a. the Norns. However, a great change is about to happen to Midgard, one that will leave the Norns unable to keep watch, and it all began two years ago when a woman named Fenris Fenrir suddenly started remembering bits & pieces of her past life from 1,000 years ago. Specifically, Fenris has been looking for a man named Balder, the son of Odin & Frigg, who has also apparently been reincarnated, and just now Fenris managed to get a hold of Sentinel Breeze, Balder's old sword, in order to help her find her old ally, even if doing so puts in in direct conflict with the 12 Valkyries, like Zenobia Sabi Freile, Freya, & Sara Irine. After managing to escape a fight with Sara, Fenris eventually encounters a swordsman named Chaos & his partner, a magic user named Iris Irine, & a "treasure hunter" named Lidia who wants to abscond with Iris' legendary sword (one of three from her family), all of whom are heading over Fayon, where Chaos & Iris are from. However, Chaos can't seem to remember anything of note regarding his life prior to two years ago...

Ragnarök is coming to Midgard, and Chaos, Fenris, Iris, Lidia, & even master assassin Loki might be the only ones who can prevent it from happening.

Arad Senki: Slap-Up Party: Ain't No Party Like a DFO Party, 'Cuz a DFO Party Don't... Stop!

Debuting back in August of 2005 by South Korean developer Neople (a subsidiary of Japanese publisher Nexon), Dungeon & Fighter is a mix of old-school 2D beat 'em up & action RPG for Windows-compatible PCs that focuses primarily on players going online to tackle stages with others via network play, leveling up their respective character classes & unlocking new skills along the way. "DNF", as it's often shortened to in Asia, would then see release in Japan in 2006 under the title Arad Senki/Record of Arad War, before seeing release in China in 2007, and both Taiwan & North America in 2010 (where it'd receive a third title, Dungeon Fighter Online, in the latter region), before finally getting a proper worldwide release in 2015. As of the end of 2021, DNF/DFO (depending on the region) has become one of the most-played & highest-grossing video games (& entertainment media IPs, in general) of all time, with (to quote Wikipedia) "over 850 million players worldwide and over $18 billion in lifetime revenue". While I have never played the game myself, as I'm not really big on online-focused gaming, there's no denying the game's success, and with that success comes other sorts of productions to help promote it.

Therefore, in a blatant attempt to take advantage of any possible momentum from the release of the newest spin-off, Arc System Works' 2.5D fighting game DNF Duel, let's take a look at the anime adaptation of this South Korean/Japanese phenomenon... The first one, at least, as I don't think 2020's Arad Senki: Gyakuten no Gear has an English translation of any sort, astonishingly enough.

At the Hangame 2008 Summer Festival, it was announced that Dungeon & Fighter would be receiving an anime adaptation by Gonzo & its Korean subsidiary GK Entertainment, titled Arad Senki: Slap-Up Party, or Dungeon & Fighter: Slap-Up Party in South Korea. Loosely based on the characters seen in the official webcomic at the time, Arad no Hourou Party/The Wandering Party of Arad, the anime would debut first in Japan on April 3, 2009 & last 26 episodes... right as Gonzo was going through some notorious financial troubles. This culminated in Gonzo's parent company GDH absorbing the studio completely (creating the Gonzo that exists today) & being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on July 30, 2009, right in the middle of Slap-Up Party's run on TV Tokyo (as well as Saki & Shangri-La's runs on their respective networks). However, unlike its fellow Gonzo anime from 2009, Arad Senki: Slap-Up Party has never been licensed for English release yet, not even streaming, though it did at least eventually get fansubbed back in the day. So did the English anime market miss out on something worth watching at the time, or was Slap-Up Party rightfully overlooked, especially since Dungeon Fighter Online wouldn't even exist until another year after this anime debuted?

(That being said, I'll be using the official English terminology, as defined by the official DFO website, where possible)

On the Arad Continent in the year 981, a party lead by a warrior named Aganzo embarked on a quest to kill the monster Sirocco that was causing a series of demonizations amongst the populace, including that of a dark elf Slayer named Roxy within the party itself. The party succeeded, but only after Roxy allowed herself to turn into a full demon, and the resulting kill wound up spreading the phenomenon, now called "Kazan Syndrome" across all of Arad. It's now 994, and Baron Abel is a Slayer roaming the land in search of a cure for Kazan Syndrome, as his affliction resulted in him being cast away from his own village as a child. Inhabiting the great sword he wields, the same one that killed Sirocco 13 years ago, is the spirit of Roxy herself. Soon enough, Baron creates a party of his own with Capensis, a Gunner who claims to be from the "Heavenly Realm" of Empyrean; Ryunmei Ranka, a female Fighter who primarily wants to continue training & fight stronger foes; Ixia Jun, a young elven Mage who had previously been kicked out of a prior party due to her inexperience; & on occasion Jedah Lucsuppa, a burly warrior of a Priest who has a strong fascination with Baron. Along the way, "The Party" also find themselves going up against the Slayer forces of the human De Los Empire, led by Irbek, a member of Roxy & Aganzo's old party who has his own reasons for figuring out the truth behind Kazan Syndrome, and if it can truly be cured.