While Toward the Terra TV is generally considered a great show... it also doesn't seem like something Aniplex of America would feel is worth re-releasing as a special edition boxset, or even as a more-expensive-than-usual standard release. So, with that addressed, let's move on the second half of this Aniplex-focused license rescue list, shall we?
I figured I should just get one overall franchise included this time around, though I do try to avoid doing that now, so let's start off with a bit of an unlikely one: Blood. In the late 90s, Production I.G.'s president Mitsuhisa Ishikawa wanted to produce an original anime, instead of simply doing more adaptations, but had no ideas to go with. However, he knew of the "Oshii Juku", a series of lectures Mamoru Oshii ran to help teach new filmmakers about how to create their own projects, so Ishikawa simply asked Oshii if his students could contribute ideas, and in the end went with a simple one thought up by Kenji Kamiyama & Junichi Fujisaku: "A girl in a sailor suit wielding a samurai sword". The end result would be 2000's Blood: The Last Vampire, a ~45-minute film about a young girl named Saya who heads to Yokota Base in Japan in 1966 to hunt vampire-like creatures named Chiropterans (a.k.a. "Bat People"), and it'd also be Production I.G.'s very first digitally-animated production; helping provide capital for this movie as a producer was SPE Visual Works, the original name for Aniplex. Blood was also a "media mix" project, as alongside the movie was a light novel written by Mamoru Oshii & a PlayStation 2 video game (Sony Computer Entertainment was also a producer), and afterwards came a short manga sequel & two other light novels, the latter of which were written by Junichi Fujisaku, who would take strong ownership of Blood, while Kenji Kamiyama left after helping write the movie. In North America, Manga Entertainment would license Blood: The Last Vampire in 2001 & release it on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, & even UMD(!) up through 2009, while also releasing Yoshihiro Ike's musical score on CD in 2006.
In 2005 it was decided to being Blood back from the dead for anime, though aside from the general concept & having its lead be a schoolgirl named Saya, it had no relation to the movie. The end result was Blood+, a 52-episode TV series that initially aired on MBS' iconic 6 pm Saturday time slot, replacing Gundam Seed Destiny. Directed by Fujisaku himself (& also in charge of "Series Composition", a.k.a. head writer), the show was a bit of the complete opposite of the movie, both in terms of tone & ambition, and Aniplex certainly spared no expense; you don't get Hitomi Takahashi, HYDE, UVERworld, & Angela Aki (among others) to perform the show's 8 total theme songs (4 OPs, & 4 EDs) for cheap. Luckily, the show was generally very well received, and even got to air on Cartoon Network's late-night adult swim block. With all of that, it was decided that Sony itself would handle the home video release in North America, though with Aniplex of America not yet releasing its own titles by the mid-to-late 00s, it was Sony Pictures Home Entertainment that took the reigns. SPHE wasn't new to anime, having released the likes of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, Memories, Paprika, & Metropolis, but a year-long TV series was something beyond their normal abilities, as their prior release of 2001's Cyborg 009 in 2004 was infamously unfinished after only a few episodes. Still, to give them some credit, SPHE did indeed release all of Blood+... as weird as it was handled. You see, alongside a dual-audio DVD boxset that contained the first half of the show, SPHE also released a "Volume 1" single DVD containing the first five episodes. SPHE would continue to release single DVDs up through Volume 4 in early 2009, covering the first 20 episodes, before simply stopping the endeavor prior to catching up to the boxset that was already out. Likely seeing how pointless that secondary release method was, SPHE then eventually released a DVD boxset containing the second half of the show in late 2009. The only real problem with SPHE's release, in terms of the actual content, is that it used "dubtitles" instead of proper subtitles.
Finally, following a live-action Hollywood movie adaptation of the original Blood in 2009, the now-franchise would return in 2011 with Blood-C, a 12-episode TV series that once again only utilized the basic concept & main character name, though this time around legendary mangaka collective CLAMP was brought in for the character designs & general plot scenario. Meanwhile, the vampires of old were now replaced with the Lovecraft-inspired Elder Bairns, while the violence level & bloodshed was amped up to suck an extreme that it both had to be censored in Japan & eventually got blacklisted in China! Interestingly enough, the initial simulcast for Blood-C didn't come from any of the usual channels, but instead was part of NicoNico's short-lived attempt to compete with Crunchyroll. FUNimation eventually got the license in 2012, releasing the entire series in a single BD/DVD boxset in early 2013, followed by a re-release under the S.A.V.E. label in 2016. There was also a sequel move, 2012's Blood-C: The Last Dark, which FUNimation also released in 2013 & 2016, much like the TV series. Considering the fact that Blood-C had a rather large production committee behind it, & their logo is nowhere to be seen on the packaging (unlike Blood+), Aniplex may not necessarily have licensing rights to this third entry (especially since Anime Limited re-released the TV series & movie together in the UK just last year), but it is worth noting that FUNimation did actually schedule a second re-release of the TV series for April of 2020 under the Essentials label, only to cancel it. Still, considering it's a part of the Blood franchise as a whole, & is currently not available officially in any way in North America, I felt it was still worth including here.
Up next is a series that, for whatever reason, I swear felt like a bigger deal that it apparently ever was during my early days as an anime fan in the mid-00s. Originally debuting in 1995 in the pages of Kodansha's now-defunct Comic BonBon for children, Dorobo-Oh Jing/Jing: King of Bandits by Yuichi Kumakura told the adventures of Jing, self-proclaimed "King of Bandits", who alongside his talking bird partner Kir would go after various treasures around a bizarre world inspired heavily by the works of Tim Burton. The manga would run for seven volumes until 1998, when the entire thing got moved to the now-defunct Magazine Z, a seinen magazine, where it got (slightly) renamed to King of Bandit Jing (all in English in Japan) & ran for another seven volumes from 1999 to 2005; this time around, Jing usually wound up having to destroy the item he was looking to steal. TokyoPop would license & release both manga series in English between 2003 & 2007, with the second series being retitled Jing: King of Bandits - Twilight Tales; TP caught up to Japan after Volume 6 of Twilight Tales in 2005, so the last volume took ~2 years to come out.
Meanwhile, the manga found enough interest in Japan to warrant an anime adaptation, so the Spring 2002 season saw a 13-episode TV series that aired on NHK's BS2 satellite station, and at Anime Expo 2002 ADV announced that it had licensed the Jing anime for English release, while the show was still airing in Japan. ADV would release the show across four dual-audio DVD singles throughout the second half of 2003, followed by a thinpak complete collection in 2005, & then a second DVD boxset re-release in early 2009; in proper inconsistent fashion, the DVD singles went with "King of Bandit Jing", while the boxsets went with "Jing: King of Bandits". In early 2004 a three-episode OVA, Jing: King of Bandits in Seventh Heaven, would see release in Japan, though ADV wouldn't actually license it until Otakon 2007, followed by a dual-audio DVD later that November; the dub even brought back Joey Hood & Ron Berry to reprise their roles as Jing & Kir, respectively. Unfortunately, much like with 009-1, the Seventh Heaven OVA was licensed during the Sojitz deal, which meant that when Sojitz ditched ADV & teamed with FUNimation, & it was that company that then re-released the OVA in mid-2009, despite not having the TV series; luckily, ADV has re-released the TV series earlier that same year. If you're curious, ADV spent $50,000 to license the Seventh Heaven OVAs.
Despite having been more or less forgotten with time, Jing: King of Bandits was generally well received when it first saw release in English, so it's a bit of a shame that it hasn't been given any sort of re-release in the ~14 years since those last re-releases. I imagine if it did get a new release, it'd spur some old & fond memories from those who saw (or read) it back in the day.
One aspect of mech anime that kind of comes with the territory is the simple fact that this kind of anime features giant robots, the likes of which don't really exist in real life, but the actual perspective of what something like a war being fought with giant robots would look like to regular people is often only showcased in small ways. That's what the legendary Ryosuke Takahashi decided to tackle with 2006's FLAG, a 13-episode anime which initially debuted as a web series on the Bandai Channel before getting aired on proper TV networks over time; so, technically, this would be an Original Net Animation/ONA. The main twist with FLAG is that its story of a UN peacekeeper squad trying to recover a flag that's become a representation of hope in a war-torn country was not told from the perspective of the pilot of the squad's sole mech. Instead, it's from the perspective of Saeko Shirasu, the photo-journalist accompanying them, as she took the photo of the flag that helped give it its meaning. Due to its heavy use of documentary-style first-person POV, as though the viewer is seeing things through the literal lens of Shirasu's camera, FLAG quickly became a cult-classic among mecha fans.
Bandai Enterainment would license FLAG in early 2007, before releasing it later that year & into the first half of 2008 across four dual-audio DVDs. The artbox was also unique, with a flip open lid & looking like a tall box camera, complete with a faux lens on one of the sides. Unfortunately, that's all that ever came out for FLAG in North America, as a complete collection boxset under the Anime Legends label was planned for mid-2009 but wound up getting cancelled, and this was still a few years out from Bandai Entertainment's eventual demise in 2012; the Bandai DVDs almost immediately jumped in price, as well. Not just that, but there was also a compilation movie, FLAG: Director's Edition: Issen-man no Kufura Kiroku/The Record of 10,000,000 Kufura, that came out on DVD & Blu-Ray in mid-2007 in Japan which never got licensed for English release, so there's a little more content out there that would help make FLAG something that's actually worth re-releasing in English. While The Answer Studio, which did the animation, actually does co-own the rights to this anime, it was still Aniplex that handled the actual physical release of the show (& it's their logo that's all over the packaging), so this is yet another show that is likely under Aniplex's lock & key.
Last time, we looked at a TV anime based on an PlayStation RPG series owned by Sony Computer Entertainment, so we might as well include another one in this second half. Released in Japan on June 30, 1995 for the PS1, Arc the Lad would be the first major RPG released on the console by SCE Japan, but due to a lack of interest in the genre at the time from SCE America & Europe, so much so that SCEA even denied Working Designs from bringing it over at first, it wouldn't see release abroad until Arc the Lad Collection in 2002 (& only in North America), which collected the entire PS1 trilogy that had been made up to that point. In Japan, though, the Arc the Lad series would become a notable hit, with the second game in particular sometimes being cited as one of the best RPGs on the PS1. So, in 1999, a 26-episode TV anime adaptation of Arc the Lad II (or, at least, a portion of it before going down its own original plot) aired on WOWOW, though the anime itself dropped the number from the title. While they didn't share every major member of the staff, both the Arc the Lad anime & Wild Arms: Twilight Venom (which debuted on WOWOW after the former finished up) were animated by Bee Train, saw Itsuro Kawasaki as director, & were co-produced by Sony Computer Entertainment & SPE Visual Works
ADV would then license the Arc the Lad anime almost immediately after it finished airing in Japan in late 1999, though it wouldn't be until the second half of 2001 that the company actually started releasing it on both dubbed VHS & dual-audio DVD, which it did across 6 volumes; the dub was also made outside of ADV's in-house studios, a rarity for the company, instead being done at Bang Zoom!. It is possible that ADV had hoped to take advantage of Working Designs' PS1 video game collection, which had gone through a number of delays due to the sheer size of it all, but wound up releasing the anime before the games came out in English. At the very least, a complete collection released in the old "brick" style did come out in late 2003 (which did sport the Aniplex logo on the back, one of the earliest appearances it made outside of Japan), which did help sell the show to those who played the games... like myself; I go into more detail about this in my review of the anime from 2019. After that there was nothing else from ADV for the Arc the Lad anime, beyond getting aired on TV as part of the The Anime Network during the first half of the 00s & a cancelled re-release of the first DVD volume originally meant for early 2005. Just as with Wild Arms TV, the Arc the Lad anime isn't exactly a title that would be at near the top of anyone's wishes for a license rescue from Aniplex's catalog, though I did feel that the anime still held up decently well when I watched it again all those years later for review. Still, it would make for a good addition for a company that simply wanted to put it back out in print, and maybe even offer it via streaming on a service like Retro Crush, or even Tubi.
Following the end of Blood+ in late 2006, Aniplex held onto that MBS 6pm Saturday time slot by moving straight into its next anime, Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi/Strange Tale of the Tenpo Era: The Weird & Eccentric Ones, an original series done by Bones & conceived of by experienced (or infamous, depending on the work) screenwriter Noboru "Sho" Aikawa (Fullmetal Alchemist [2003], Martian Successor Nadisco); "Ayakashi Ayashi" is a bit of old-school wordplay steeped in ateji, so excuse the rough translation I gave it. The series takes place in 1843, during the twilight of the Tenpo Era & a decade prior to the arrival of Commordore Perry & his Black Ships in Japan, with Edo being under attack by mysterious creatures from the underworld called the Yoi. To combat them, a organization called Bansha Aratamesho forms a group called the Ayashi comprised of people who have the ability to banish the Yoi back from whence they came. Unfortunately, Ayakashi Ayashi was unable to continue to momentum of all the prior shows this time slot aired on, resulting in it being cut short after only 25 episodes at the end of March of 2007, leaving the story unresolved. Luckily, a five-episode OVA, Ayashi Shinkyoku/Ayashi Divine Comedy (Inferno is also used in some places), would come out in mid-2007 to finish the story. It is more than likely that Toward the Terra TV debuted much earlier than originally intended because of Ayashi's failure, and while Gundam 00 did replace that show after it finished, that would mark the end of this time slot's relevance for anime.
Bandai Entertainment would announce that it had licensed the show at Otakon 2007, alongside the likes of Code Geass & Toward the Terra, & in April of the following year announced that it had also licensed the two-volume manga adaptation, as well; for simplicity's sake, Bandai would rename the show Ghost Slayers Ayashi. Unfortunately, due to a variety of delays, while the manga did see release throughout 2008, the anime wouldn't actually see a home video release on dual-audio DVD until early 2009, though Bandai did manage to get the Ayashi anime to start airing on imaginAsian TV in mid-2008. When the DVD release finally happened, Bandai did not pull what it had done with Toward the Terra, instead only offering a trio of DVD single twin-packs, though there was a really neat looking artbox that literally housed the DVDs inside of a... house, and Volume 1 of the manga was even included with "Part 1" & the artbox; luckily, Bandai's release included both the TV series & OVAs, simply treating it as a single, 30-episode show. After the entire anime came out throughout 2009, Bandai would then re-release Ghost Slayers Ayashi as a boxset under the Anime Legends label in mid-2010, and then that was it for this not-actually-a-prequel to Clockwork Fighters: Hiwou's War, Bones' first lead production which was also conceived of by Aikawa (& not owned by Aniplex in any way). Yeah, aside from both being created by Sho Aikawa, there was a short multi-episode story in Ayashi that featured Hiwou's father, Masurao, with Aikawa being coy on whether or not the two shows took place in the same universe.
Well, OK, Ghost Slayers Ayashi was also available in English via streaming through some outlets (Crunchyroll, Aniplex Channel, Crackle, & even Anime News Network), but all of those are no longer available, to my knowledge.
Finally, we end this list with a show that legit got a good amount of momentum & fans back when it first came out, which makes it all the more surprising that it's not available in any way today in English (beyond hunting down the old releases). Debuting in 1985 in the pages of Shonen Sunday Zokan (later Shonen Sunday Super, now Shonen Sunday S), Birdy the Mighty by Masami Yuki originally ran for just six chapters before going on hiatus, followed by a short return between 1987 & 1988 that finished the story at 10 chapters, collected in a single volume, though there were also a quartet of one-shots made between 1986 & 1996; in between those two main runs, Yuki would serialize Kyukyoku Chojin R. The manga would find itself adapted into a four-episode OVA by Madhouse that came out in Japan between mid-1996 & early 1997, which would then get licensed for English release by Central Park Media & become a bit of a cult-classic; that's a potential license rescue for another list, though, as SPE Visual Works had nothing to do with it. As for the basic concept, it follows a high school boy who winds up having to share a body with an interstellar agent after she accidentally gets him killed while hunting after a criminal; the two each reside in their own respective bodies, but only one can physically be around at a time.
In late 2002, Masami Yuki returned to this series, rebooting it in the pages of Weekly Young Sunday as Birdy the Mighty: Decode, this time turning it into a long-running series, one that'd run until late 2008 for 20 volumes, switching over to Weekly Big Comic Spirits near the end, before starting up a sequel series just a couple of weeks later, Birdy the Mighty: Evolution, which would run until mid-2012 for another 13 volumes. As the first reboot series was nearing its end in 2008, it got adapted into a TV anime, though this was after two years of production hell, as it was first announced in 2006 under the name "Birdy the Movement". A split-cour production, the first half of the Birdy the Mighty: Decode anime ran through the Summer 2008 season, with the second half, Birdy the Mighty: Decode 02, running during the Winter 2009 season. While Aniplex actually did promote the show as it was debuting during Anime Expo 2008, the license wound up going to FUNimation in late 2009, with both seasons actually being released in their own dual-audio DVD boxsets on the same day, November 20, 2010. When Decode first debuted, I do remember it having a lot of momentum on the fansub circuit, as simulcasting was not yet really established by that point, though I believe it still had some decent momentum by the time it finally saw official release in English over two years later. FUNimation would re-release both seasons together as a single collection in late 2011, followed by a S.A.V.E.-branded re-re-release in mid-2013, and (in a very rare move) FUNimation formally announced that its license for the show would expire in October 2016, or after roughly 7 years, i.e. the standard length of most anime licenses.
While the show is still fondly remembered to this day for just how good it was, even if it wasn't anything more than an action series with some bits of comedy from its gender/body swapping gimmick, Aniplex of America hasn't done anything to either keep it in print, or at least continue to offer it via streaming.
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Again, I must stress that these two parts are not intended to be taken as me "calling out" Aniplex, especially since the company certainly won't care about any of this, to start with. I simply felt that it was worth focusing on Aniplex for this year's list because of how long it's been since this company's shows have not been more available in English than they currently are; the fact that 2023 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Aniplex name itself was just a wild coincidence. This also does technically hit me on a nostalgic level, too, as Fullmetal Alchemist [2003] was the anime that truly got me to enter anime fandom in general way back in 2004, but today it's nowhere to be found officially in English, instead being fully supplanted by FMA: Brotherhood. That being said, the Conqueror of Shamballa movie IS streaming, but makes absolutely no sense without watching FMA [2003] first, and that really showcases the problem with Aniplex; there's sometimes no real consistency to what they're offering. I can understand being protective of your properties, I really do, but then either offer it in a way that makes complete sense or don't offer it at all; seemingly confusing a standalone movie based on an anime reboot with the movie finale to the OG anime makes you look a wee bit incompetent.
And let's not forget all of the anime that's never been licensed before, or have simply never been given a home video release in North America, that's seemingly off limits because Aniplex (likely) owns them. Titles like Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman, Devilman Crybaby, Gallery Fake, Samurai Flamenco (though that one may be stuck in legal limbo due to manglobe shutting down in 2015), the Fuma no Kojirou OVAs, Natsuiro Kiseki, Banana Fish, the 1998 PoPoLoCrois TV anime, Mushishi: The Next Chapter, the Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou OVAs, & Angel Heart are but a portion of anime that feature CBS/Sony Group, Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), SPE Visual Works, SME Visual Works, or Aniplex in their copyrights somewhere, or it was at least a part of a production committee. While that doesn't automatically mean that Aniplex now has the licensing rights to all of them, the fact that absolutely none of them have received a physical English release at all I think does say something, especially since a few of those would more than likely be considered worth the effort by various English anime companies; I'm looking at you, Devilman Crybaby, Banana Fish, & Mushishi.
So, once again, I simply plead to Aniplex to "Tear Down This Wall!" & allow other companies to license your works again.
Blood: The Last Vampire © 2000 Production I.G/ANX・SCEI・IPA
Blood+ © 2005 Production I.G・Aniplex・MBS・HAKUHODO
Blood-C © 2011 Production I.G., CLAMP/Project BLOOD-C TV/MBS
Blood-C: The Last Dark © 2012 Production I.G, CLAMP/Project BLOOD-C Movie
Jing: King of Bandits TV & OVA © Yuichi Kumakura/Kodansha・Aniplex
FLAG © TEAM FLAG/Aniplex・The Answerstudio
Arc the Lad TV © 1999 Sony Computer Entertainment
Ghost Slayers Ayashi © Noboru Aikawa・BONES/MBS・Aniplex・Dentsu
Birdy the Mighty: Decode © Masami Yuuki・Shogakukan/PROJECT BIRDY
I’ve been literally dying for Blood+ to be rereleased in some form. I have a Frankenstein’d set comprised of volume 1 with replacement discs for Part 1 and then Part 2 itself and the quality is very dated. Blood+ was on Tubi for a bit but it’s gone now.
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