Obscusion B-Side: Hydrophobia (Pure & Prophecy): Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Founded in 1998, Blade Interactive was an English development studio formed from the collapse of Mirage Technologies (Multimedia), the studio best known for the legendarily infamous Rise of the Robots, and at first Blade made its name developing billiards & snooker games, most notably the World Championship Snooker series. Aside from the occasional racing game, namely Room Zoom & G-Surfers/HSX: Hypersonic.Xtreme, billiards/snooker was really all that Blade Interactive worked on, but one of its staff (Huw Lloyd) was also working on something interesting: The Hydro Engine. As the name says, the Hydro Engine was all about allowing water to be treated like a realistic & dynamic fluid in a video game environment, including being able to both fill enclosed spaces & drain out of openings in said spaces. Understandably, this sounded like an awesome bit of tech to work with, so it was decided to create a game that could take full advantage of the Hydro Engine, but at the same time Blade Interactive technically didn't want its name associated with this. Instead, this game was developed by a studio called Dark Energy Digital, and while it was never outright stated it looks as though Blade simply outright changed its name to Dark Energy, as according to the Wayback Machine Blade's website more or less stopped existing after 2008, while Dark Energy's website started up in 2009; also, Dark Energy did make at least one snooker game, continuing Blade's legacy.

First revealed at the start of 2007, Hydrophobia would eventually be announced for release in March 2009 as a traditional retail release, but wound up getting hit with various delays before getting changed to a timed exclusive for Xbox 360 that Microsoft Studios even published itself via Xbox Live Arcade on September 29, 2010. Though what was released was actually just the first part of a three-episode series (which was a common way of releasing digital games, at the time), initial critical reception towards Hydrophobia was only mixed at best, and while creative director/designer Pete Jones, who was also part of Dark Energy's PR team & even credited as creating the original story of the game's narrative, admitted that it was difficult to accept the negative reception, he said that everyone at Dark Energy would do everything they could to improve the game; again, this guy was a producer for Rise of the Robots, so he certainly had experience with this kind of reaction. To Dark Energy's credit, three months later the game received an update on December 21, 2010 dubbed Hydrophobia Pure (though it's never stated as such in-game) which featured all manner of fixes & changes, including ones to the controls, physics, mechanics, camera & map systems, & it even removed superfluous dialogue in some cutscenes. Not content with just that, Dark Energy would then release a third version of the game, titled Hydrophobia Prophecy, for PlayStation 3 & Windows (via Steam), which the studio considered a "Version 1.5" that included a bunch of brand new additions & changes that weren't in Pure; the Windows version first saw release on May 9, 2011, while the PS3 version wouldn't come out until November 1, 2011. Unfortunately, all of this hard work wouldn't pay off, as Dark Energy Digital would close its doors on March 19, 2012. While sales numbers were never revealed for any version of Hydrophobia, leaderboards revealed only 24,532 people ever completed the game on 360 by January 2011, just four months after the initial release & roughly one month after the Pure update. Checking the leaderboards nowadays show just over 205,000 people overall on Xbox & just over 100,000 on PS3, but that's after another decade+ of sales; still, those aren't exactly the numbers Dark Energy was hoping for, I imagine.

However, & most interestingly enough, Hydrophobia has managed to not disappear into the ether & become delisted, as the 360 version is not only still available for sale (for $9.99, though it's gone on sale once in a while) but was even added to the backwards compatibility list for Xbox One (& later Xbox Series) on February 26, 2019, meaning that you can play it with improved performance & the like when compared to playing it on the 360. Meanwhile, the Windows version of Prophecy is also still available for sale over on Steam (for just $4.99), though the PS3 version has since been delisted from the PS Store, though I did purchase it long ago. In fact, the leaderboards show that four other people besides me have played the game on PS3 over the past week of me playing this for review... & I only got second place for the entire campaign; curse you, PolarPhantom! The rights to Hydrophobia are now with Cherry Pop Games, a Manchester-based studio (just like Blade & Dark Energy) that has some of the same staff, like Pete Jones; Cherry Pop even makes billiards & snooker games! So let's go over Hydrophobia (Pure) & Hydrophobia Prophecy, see how they differ (& which one is arguably better), & decide if this game is more deservedly unfinished tech demo or if it's actually better than expected.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1995 (Part 4)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"While the chances of this next batch of releases for the Atari Jaguar actually matching up to the sheer quality we had last time were slim, what we got in this third part of 1995 actually wasn't terrible, on the whole... Regardless, Atari Corporation still couldn't really take advantage of the opening that Sega's poor launch of the Saturn had given them, effectively pulling a Shaq or Wilt Chamberlain & throwing bricks when given free throws (fitting metaphor, for this part). Now it's Sony's time to enter the North American video game market as a first-party hardware provider..."

Before we begin, I should give an update. For the past seven parts of this series I had simply relied on Wikipedia for the (loose) order of releases for the Atari Jaguar's official catalog, mainly because there was nothing even remotely close to "official" & "definitive". That all changed on Halloween of this year, when a Twitter user named Pimpeaux unleashed a highly researched & much more accurate release schedule for the Jag's official catalog, not dissimilar to what a place like the Atari Archive has done for pre-NES console catalogs; this is likely as close to "definitive" as we'll ever get. Looking over Pimpeaux's list I was overall not too far off, but as the list went on there were some notable changes in order, but what's done is done; I won't go back & change what I've done already. However, from this point on, I will be relying on Pimpeaux's list, and doing so now means that this series will be changing from 11 parts to 12, as 1996 will now be split into two parts due to some (then-thought) late 1995 games actually coming out the following year. Also, instead of always featuring four or five games, some future parts (like this one) will only feature three; however, to make up for that I'll try to include more general overviews of what was happening around the releases of the included games.

So... where did we leave off? Oh, that's right! U R NOT E

Talk about overshadowing...

On September 9, 1995, Sony Computer Entertainment of America released the PlayStation in North America at an MSRP of $299, a price that head of development Steve Race legendarily announced succinctly at the very first E3 earlier that same year in response to Sega's surprise launch of the Saturn (& to rousing applause). Though the low price point would result in SCEA's President & CEO Olaf Olafsson being forced to resign (as he pushed it through, despite resistance from higher ups in Japan), it also was all SCEA needed to instantly cut Sega of America off at the knees, and the decision to have the console focus primarily on polygonal graphics from the very beginning helped make the PlayStation (I'll mostly use the term "PS1" from here on out, despite it being anachronistic at this point) truly feel like it was the start of a new generation. In just two days the PS1 would sell more consoles than the Saturn was able to muster in five months, nearly selling out of the initial batch of 100,000 units produced. Despite some attempts at making a comeback being planned, Sega of America & the Saturn was already on life support & instantly became a distant second place to the seemingly overnight success of the PS1.

Oh, wait... wasn't this supposed to be about the Atari Jaguar?

Needless to say, Atari Corporation was more or less boned with the launch of the PlayStation, and in those same initial two days of it being on sale in North America the PS1 had sold more or less the same amount of consoles that the Jaguar had sold in two years! Atari Corp. (kind-of-sort-of) responded to the PS1's North American launch, though, with the long-promised release of the Atari Jaguar CD add-on on September 21, 1995, complete with two pack-in games, Blue Lightning (a remake of the Atari Lynx's pack-in game) & Vid Grid (a port of a year-old music video puzzle game for Windows); the PS1, notably, had no pack-in title. I'll bring up Jag CD games as they release during this series, but they won't get covered here; maybe after I finish this main series (& all CD games become fully playable via the Jaguar Game Drive). Needless to say, though, the Jag CD was literally nothing more than a CD-ROM drive so that the console could play games released on that medium, plus Jeff Minter's cool Virtual Light Machine tech, with absolutely no extra hardware to boost the Jag's capabilities; in short, it was more TurboGrafx-CD than Sega CD. Also, the Jaguar CD literally made the console look like a small black toilet when attached (especially once the Memory Track cartridge was inserted in the back end, for saving), which definitely didn't help matters any. However, games still would come out on cartridge for the Atari Jaguar, and while the PS1 was wowing everyone as the "new hotness", including Europe once it launched over there on September 29, the Jag was eventually paid a visit in mid-October by an old (& "busted"?) friend of its great-grandfather, the 2600.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light: All the Japanese with Their Yen Pay for the Additional Footage

Looking back, it's kind of a miracle that the late Kazuo "Kazuki" Takahashi wound up being not just a successful mangaka, but created one of the most enduring trading card games of all time. His first manga one-shot was published back in 1981, he wouldn't have a serialized manga until he was picked to adapt the TV anime Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman in 1986, and his first few series in Weekly Shonen Jump in the 90s were all (by his own admission) "total flops". In fact, even when Takahashi first debuted Yu-Gi-Oh!/The King of Games! in late 1996 it, too, was also on the verge of cancellation after just over a year in; according to mangaka Yasuaki Kita, it was down to either his Makuhari or Yu-Gi-Oh!, & Makuhari lost. Luckily, there was reader interest in a card game Takahashi had featured on two occasions during this early run, so it was decided that Takahashi would move focus solely to that game for the manga moving forward... and the rest is history. To be fair, Toei Animation's "Season 0" TV anime was also likely already in pre-production by the time the manga was on the verge of cancellation, so that may have played a factor in the manga being given a lifeline, too.

Regardless, Yu-Gi-Oh! would go on to run until early 2004 for 343 chapters across 38 volumes (making it Jump's 20th longest manga of all time), and that card game Takahashi showcased early on (first named Magic & Wizards, later renamed Duel Monsters) would go on to inspire the real life Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game in 1999 (2002 abroad), which in 2009 was named the top selling TCG in the world & is still going strong to this day. In fact, after the finale of the second YGO! anime produced in 2004 (the one that was done by Studio Gallop & did see international release), the franchise has continued on telling original stories, all with the direct intent to promote the TCG & the various new rules, gimmicks, & cards that each new series introduces; currently the franchise is on its seventh such spin-off (& ninth TV anime, overall), 2022's Yu-Gi-Oh! Go Rush!!. Also, it can't be stated just how instantly popular Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters was when 4Kids debuted its localized adaptation on Kids' WB on September 29, 2001, becoming such a smash hit that it was decided to create a theatrical anime... made for North America first.

In July of 2003 Warner Bros. announced that it got distribution rights for a movie based on Yu-Gi-Oh!, to follow up the success the first three Pokémon movies had previously been, & on August 13, 2004 Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie debuted in American theaters, earning over $9.4 million in its first weekend alone (though that only got it 4th place in the box office), before eventually earning a total of ~$29.2 million worldwide; until Dragon Ball Super: Broly in 2018, this was the third-highest grossing anime film in North America (with over $19.7 million). However, the movie allegedly cost ~$20 million to produce, so it was considered a box office bomb, and the critical reception wasn't any better, quickly becoming one of the worst received animated films of all time in North America. Afterwards, the film saw release in Japan, now renamed Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: Hikari no Pyramid/Pyramid of Light (the subtitle is technically in the English version too, but is almost never actually referred to when the title is stated), and though English Wikipedia cites a theatrical release on November 3, 2004, Japanese Wikipedia says that such a screening was done only once via invite. Instead, Pyramid of Light was widely shown in Japan as a TV special on January 2, 2005 (by this point Yu-Gi-Oh! GX was airing in Japan), and to help make the film fit within the two-hour time slot it was given (including commercials) an additional 13 minutes of animation was produced exclusively for the Japanese version, bumping the run time up from 89 minutes to 102. Now, to be fair, this technically wasn't the first Yu-Gi-Oh! movie, as "Season 0" did have a movie in 1999, but that was just a half-hour production shown as part of a triple-feature, alongside the original Digimon Adventure movie & the 10th Dr. Slump movie.

While Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie has since seen a handful of re-releases in its original English form, even getting a two-night remastered theatrical release in March of 2018 by Fathom Events, the longer Pyramid of Light version has remained exclusive to Japan, even though the OG Duel Monsters anime has long since been made officially available with English subtitles via streaming. So, since I'm on a bit of a toy/game-based theatrical anime kick after that Beyblade "Double Feature", let's lay down some monster, spell, & trap cards before ending our turns & check out this now infamous entry in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. While this review will primarily be about its lesser known extended Japanese form, I'll also go over the more widely known original English form to some extent later on, mainly for comparison's sake.

"Ore no Turn! DRAW!!" (Sorry, but I couldn't help myself)

Beyblade the Movie "Double Feature": You Spin Your Top Right Round, Right Round, Till You Go Down, Till You Go Down Down

The concept of the spinning top is one that dates just about as far back as humanity can possibly trace back to, being one of the oldest recognizable toys found in various archaeological sites. In fact, its concept is so ubiquitous that there is no singular place of origin to be determined for it, & it's generally accepted that various cultures conceived of the top independently of each other; it's essentially (& maybe even literally) a universal concept. Naturally, this device eventually found itself being used in games as a toy, both in solitary & in competition, the latter of which lead to the idea of having tops literally combat each other physically, with the goal being to make the opponent's top stop spinning, or at least knock it out of the play field. This idea of combative tops has been seen around the world throughout history, whether it be the old Malay sport of gasing pangkah or more recent commercialized games, like Battling Tops from Ideal Toy Company in the 60s or Spin Fighters from Bandai in the mid-90s. However, for the past 20+ years one version of this idea has reigned supreme over all: Beyblade.

A bey of each era's respective lead character.

First appearing in Japan in July 1999 & produced by Takara (now Takara Tomy), Beyblade is a modernized version of the Japanese beigoma, which is that country's take on combative tops. To help promote the toy, Takara teamed with Shogakukan to produce manga based on the toy that same year, and in 2001 an anime series started up, which in turn helped give Beyblade a lot of promotional popularity when Hasbro got the license to sell the toys in 2002. What gives Beyblade the longevity it continues to have is the simple fact that the toys are re-introduced in new ways every so often, resulting in (as of now) four different eras of the brand, best described by their accompanying manga/anime series: Bakuten Shoot/Explosive Spinning Shot Beyblade (w/ Takao Aoki; 1999-2008), Metal Fight Beyblade (w/ Takafumi Adachi; 2008-2015), Beyblade Burst (w/ Hiro Morita; 2015-2023), & the newly debuted Beyblade X (w/ Homura Kawamoto, Hikaru Muno, & Posuka Demzu; 2023-Present); yes, THAT Posuka Demizu, though she did admittedly start off with children's manga. While North America only ever received the original Beyblade manga in the 00s, all of the anime have continued to see English dubbing & broadcast, whether it was by Nelvana at first or by ADK Emotions NY ever since Beyblade Burst, making it one of the last remaining toy/game-based children's anime to continue seeing official English release the old-fashioned way (i.e. not a subbed simulcast), alongside Pokémon & Yu-Gi-Oh!, with Beyblade X already confirmed for an English debut in 2024.

However, despite the continued (& often resurgent) popularity of Beyblade for over two decades, it's only ever received two theatrical anime adaptations, & only one of them ever saw official English release. So bring your kids to the theater as we enjoy a "Double Feature" of stories revolving around (ha!) kids who love solving all of their problems via top battles.

"3, 2, 1, Let it Rip!"

Obscusion B-Side: A Complete Overview of the PS2's GunCon 2 Rail Shooter Decet

A couple of years ago I went over the four games that comprised Capcom's infamous/notorious (depending on the person) Gun Survivor sub-series for Resident Evil (& Dino Crisis). For those unfamiliar, they were a quartet of games that fused together the style & (sometimes the) sensibilities of arcade light gun rail shooters, but gave players full control over their movement; in short, they were FPS-likes, but were intended to be played as though they were light gun games. Ideally, these games were meant to be played with Namco's GunCon light gun controller, and since three of the Gun Survivor games were released on the PlayStation 2, those specifically used the GunCon 2, an updated take on the PS1's original GunCon. However, while the Gun Survivor series offered an interesting & non-traditional way to use that light gun... what about the games that used the GunCon 2 in the way it was actually intended?

The sixth generation of video game consoles (Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, & Xbox, primarily) was one in which the general idea of arcade-style rail shooters truly became less & less viable/appealing at home. Whereas the PS1 saw 29 games with light gun support (either via the GunCon and/or the Konami Justifer that came before it) & the Saturn saw 13, their respective successors saw a marked decrease in light gun games, with the Dreamcast only seeing seven (one of which was just for a bonus mini game, at that), while the PS2 only saw 16; meanwhile, the Xbox only saw three, while the GameCube saw 0! Of those PS2 games, one of them only supported the original PS1 GunCon (Cocoto Funfair), another used its own device (or the PS2's USB camera) for motion tracking (The Keisatsukan: Police 24/7), one only supported the GunCon 2 as a bonus for co-op play (Starsky & Hutch), and another three were the aforementioned Gun Survivor games, leaving only 10 games in "traditional" arcade rail shooter genre. So, for the 80th entry in Obscusion B-Side (yeah, we're getting closer & close to #100!), let's go over the PS2's "GunCon 2 Rail Shooter Decet" (yes, "decet" is the equivalent of a duo/trio/quartet/etc. for a group of 10) & see how each of these games fare. Just as with with the Gun Survivor overview, I played all of these games on their default settings on a mid-00s Sony WEGA Trinitron CRT with component video, which allowed me to play them with a GunCon 2 with the best video quality possible, as they were meant to be played, so it's time to (for the most part) reload by shooting away from the screen!

Retrospect in Retrograde: Beast Fighter: The Apocalypse

As mentioned in the previous review, Ken Ishikawa's apocalyptic sci-fi manga Majuu Sensen/The Demonic Beast Front only managed to run for a single year between 1975 & 1976 before the magazine it ran in, Futabasha's Weekly Shonen Action, got canned & beyond a three-episode OVA adaptation in late 1990 (which provided its own ending) there wasn't really anything else to be seen from this series for a long time. On August 19, 2002, Akita Shoten debuted Champion RED magazine, an monthly offshoot of its long-running Weekly Shonen Champion that aimed for a "high-teen" audience, & original Editor-in-Chief Takafumi Suwa (who was previously the editor for Keisuke Itagaki's Grappler Baki, & would later become Weekly Champion's 9th Editor-in-Chief from 2005 to 2017) decided to give RED a focus on being the home of various sequels & remakes of old classics, as well as a penchant for violence.

One of the manga to appear in Champion RED's debut October issue (monthly magazine issues tend to be two months ahead of their actual release dates) was Ken Ishikawa's Shinsetsu Majuu Sensen/True Theory Demonic Beast Front, the sequel to his manga from the 70s... that is NOT the subject of this re-review, however!

No eyecatch for this show, but the post-ED
AT-X website promo was kept for each episode!

Still, the subject of this re-review likely wouldn't exist if this sequel manga never happened, so let's just quickly bring it up for a moment. Shinsetsu Majuu Sensen took place an entire decade after where the original manga left off, with the world now devastated by an "Ikusagami/War God" named Eve Adam (again, Ishikawa had no subtlety when it came to the biblical references) & its "13 Apostles" (i.e. Dr. Genzou Kuruma & his buddies), with Shinichi having been revived to deal with them once & for all, as well as a force known only as "Jitenkuu"; like "Jikuu/Spacetime", only with "Ten/Heaven" smushed in between. Ishikawa would serialize this sequel in Champion RED for almost two full years before ending it in the August 2004 issue (a little over two years before his death in 2006) & totaling four volumes, finally bringing a finale to the series he started nearly 30 years prior. However, while the sequel was being serialized it was decided that Majuu Sensen would be also part of something anime-related, something that's been covered once in a while on this blog: The AT-X Famous Writer Series.

In other words... Akira Tsuburaya's Retro-Modern Anime Club Band!

Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! δ: Dog Eat Dog Eat Dog Eat Dog

There are certain words that have a wide variety of interpretations, depending on the usage, context, & intention, & "dog" might just be one of the most varied. In a literal sense it can refer to "Man's Best Friend", the long-trusted Canis familiaris that hunter-gatherers domesticated over 15,000 years ago from the wild wolf. In a metaphorical sense it can refer to people or things that showcase aspects of the dog, whether that be steadfast dedication to another, the stubbornness in not wanting to back down, the wild & bushy physical visage, etc. Naturally, the Japanese language has its own word for "dog", "犬/inu", which means that if the English word itself is used in Japanese via katakana then it's being done in a purely figurative sense, as rare as it is. In fact, from what I can tell, there are literally only four OVAs that feature the word "Dog" in their titles in some form, all of which using the katakana "ドッグ" form specifically; naturally, there are anime out there that use the word "inu" in their titles. That makes for a perfect excuse for Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! to return, so let's check out these four standalone, short-form OVAs in chronological order & see if any of these mangy mutts deserve being rescued from the dog pound, or if we should just make Leopaldon happy & "Kill DOG as a Sacrifice to DOG".

I can't promise that this is the end of the dog puns.

"Inu-hei: Kako no Kage"

Up first is something that could have potentially fit another theme I have in the wings for an eventual OM, OM, OVA!: Infamous OVAs. Originally starting out as an assistant to both Shinji Hiramatsu & Hiroshi Motomiya, Tetsuya Saruwatari got his start in Weekly Shonen Jump with titles like 1982's Umi no Senshi & 1984's Mr. Whitey, but neither really saw any success & it didn't take long for Saruwatari to move over to making seinen manga over in Young Jump. His first truly successful manga would be 1986's Dog Soldier, which eventually got moved over to Business Jump & ran until 1991 across 12 volumes; during this time Saruwatari also made the Riki-Oh manga in the same magazine, earning himself even more notoriety. In late 1989 a 45-minute OVA adaptation, Dog Soldier: Shadows of the Past (the title is 100% English, even in Japan), would see release in Japan, being a co-production between Animate-Film/MOVIC, J.C. Staff, & Sony Music Entertainment... the precursor to Aniplex. Central Park Media would license the Dog Soldier OVA (likely around the same time CPM licensed other Sony Music titles, like Crystal Triangle, Wanna-Be's, & Judge), initially releasing it sub-only on VHS & LD in 1992 or 1993 before re-releasing it dubbed on VHS in 1996; this never saw a DVD release containing both the dub & sub. For a certain generation of English-speaking anime fandom, the Dog Soldier OVA is one that is often ridiculed & derided as absolute dreck, but I came into anime from a (slightly) later generation of fandom, so let me see for myself.

Majuu Sensen (OVA): Who Needs "The Father, The Son, & The Holy Spirit" When You've Got "The Bear, The Lion, & The Eagle"?!

Born on June 28, 1948 in Karasuyama, Nasu, Tochigi (now Nasukarasuyama, since merging with Minaminasu in 2005), Kenichi "Ken" Ishikawa would join Dynamic Pro in 1969 after graduating from high school, becoming an assistant to Go Nagai on manga like Harenchi Gakuen & The Abashiri Family, before making his debut as co-creator alongside Nagai with late 1969's Gakuen Bangaichi. Nagai himself has even stated that he never looked at Ishikawa as an "assistant", instead thinking of him as his greatest friend & ally, and that if Ishikawa had managed to join him prior to Harenchi Gakuen's debut (which marked Nagai's "professional" debut) then the two would have likely become like Fujiko Fujio, i.e. two men working under a shared pen name. Ken Ishikawa would then make his solo debut in 1970 with Sore Ike! Combat-tai & over the course of his career would be the creator of numerous manga, with his most notable being Getter Robo, which Go Nagai helped co-create but the manga interpretation (& its numerous sequels) was 100% Ishikawa's vision. Unfortunately, Ken Ishikawa would pass away on November 15, 2006 at the age of 58 due to acute heart failure, collapsing at a dinner banquet he was attending after playing some golf. However, his legacy of wild action, 200% intensity from his characters, & amazing artwork lives on throughout all of anime & manga, most notably in the works of screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima (Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, Back Arrow), who proudly calls himself "Ken Ishikawa's #1 Fan".

Since the two were such close friends, it's only natural that Ken Ishikawa had some works that felt inspired, in some way, by the works of Go Nagai, and one example of that looks to be Majuu Sensen/The Demonic Beast Front. Debuting in the pages of Futabasha's Weekly Shonen Action in 1975, Majuu Sensen was a manga that dealt with things like "demons", experimentation in an effort to surpass the limits of humanity by fusing with non-human beings, & the literal apocalypse, making it seem like a direct response to Nagai's iconic Devilman from 1972. Both series even ran for only a single year, though Majuu Sensen was compiled into just four volumes, but in Ishikawa's case that was simply because Weekly Shonen Action itself got cancelled, leaving Majuu Sensen unfinished. Regardless, Majuu Sensen is now considered one of Ishikawa's most iconic works (Type-Moon even full-on used the name for its 2019 TV anime Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia), & the design of lead character Shinichi Kuruma has been paid homage to every now & then, most notably in how Ryoma Nagare dresses throughout the OVA series Getter Robo Armageddon in the late 90s; in fact, mangaka Shinichi Kuruma (Majinden/Battle Royal High School) literally names himself after the character! Therefore, it's not surprising that Majuu Sensen would get adapted into anime at some point, in particular twice, one being a direct adaptation of the manga & the other being an alternate universe sequel. Seeing as it's the month of October, let's get a little horror-themed & check out both of these anime adaptations of Majuu Sensen, one of which for the second time.

Naturally, we'll start with the first one, a three-episode OVA (though they were all ~45 minutes long) produced by Animate-Film/MOVIC & J.C. Staff that (interestingly enough) actually came out all at once, first on VHS on October 1, 1990 & then on LD on December 1 later that same year. The OVA was also given a short theatrical run in Theater Ikebukuro from October 13 to 26, 1990, & on February 22, 2002 (that's a lot of 2s) would get re-released on DVD; sadly, though, the OVA has not been re-released since then, & it's not even streaming anywhere in Japan. Nevertheless, let's see how the OVA adaptation of Majuu Sensen holds up over 30 years later & in what ways Ken Ishikawa differed in his take on a "Dynamic Armageddon" from Go Nagai's Devilman.

Obscusion B-Side: The IF Neverland Reportage: Prelude to a New War

Previously on The IF Neverland Reportage:

"Without a doubt, the earliest games in the IF Neverland franchise can be evenly split into two halves that alternate with each successive game we've covered. One half is the more experimental games, with mixed results... Still, where Spectral Force 1, 2, & Lovely Wickedness succeeded was in defining a fantasy world filled with unique & varied characters, all vying for control over one primary continent... but what happens AFTER one side claims victory?"

While Idea Factory started off with a small variety of different IPs, it quickly became obvious that the games taking place in the fantasy world of Neverland were the ones that seemingly got the most attention, even if a mixed critical reception tended to accompany them (or perhaps it was even due to that). This was seen most in the year 1999, which saw IF release six games (a number that wouldn't be topped until 2004, with the introduction of the IFMate brand), all of which were for the PlayStation but only one of which (Oasis Road) had nothing to do with Neverland. Last time we only covered the first two IF Neverland games released in 1999, and this time around we'll be mostly focused on the remainder of that year, as well as the pair of titles released in 2000, one of which brings an end to not just IF Neverland's time on the PS1, but also Idea Factory's time with the console as a whole.

As for the lore of IF Neverland, Idea Factory find themselves in an interesting place, as Spectral Force: Lovely Wickedness brought an end to the Great Neverland War, the major conflict that all of the IF Neverland games up to this point had some relation to, whether it was letting players experience the war themselves or showing the adventures some of the war's players had in the years before it broke out. Where, then, would Idea Factory go from there on out? Well, eventually, they would start to show what was happening in the Main Neverland Continent in the aftermath of the war, one that would act as a prelude to a second continental war, but first we have a couple of retreads to go over...

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1995 (Part 3)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"With the Jag now having actual major competition on the North America market in the form of the Sega Saturn, even with the console experiencing its own rough (& unintended) start, Atari needs more games like this bunch if it wants any chance at being able to stand next to Sega & Sony (as well as Nintendo, though its next console it still a year away) as a legitimate competitor, even if only to a limited extent."

It's July of 1995, and the North American video game market is in a bit of flux. While the Sega Genesis & Super Nintendo are still strong sellers, with the SNES on the verge of finally surpassing the Genesis in yearly sales come the Holiday season (for a multitude of reasons), Sega of America's early launch of the 32-bit Saturn (a decision forced by Sega of Japan, though it was due to SoA's own financial mistakes costing the entire company dearly) hasn't really managed to make much of any impact because of a slow & staggered roll-out nationwide, alongside a slow trickle of new releases due to the surprise launch screwing over SoA's development & publishing partners' initial plans; meanwhile, the Sony PlayStation is still set for a September launch. This gives the Atari Jaguar a little bit of a theoretical opportunity, but in the two months following our last title covered (Super Burnout) there will only be five games released for the Jag. For comparison, even the 3DO saw nine games during that same time period, nearly twice as many, and that console wasn't doing too much better by mid-1995. Still, the prior five games covered last time were all good games, with some even being great games, so let's see if the Jag can continue that momentum right up until the launch of the PlayStation.

Something that the Jaguar has had a bit of a dearth of are puzzle games, with launch title Evolution: Dino Dudes (a.k.a. The Humans) being the sole example of the genre on the console up to this point, and even then that was more of a puzzle-platformer. In terms of "pure" puzzle games there would only be two released on the Jag, with the first one being FlipOut!, released on July 7, just two days after Super Burnout; it'd also receive an MS-DOS port in 1996, but only in Europe. One of the very first games ever developed by Gorilla Systems, a studio that would be known mainly for developing licensed IP titles (Barbie, Disney, etc.) & porting games to other hardware, FlipOut! is a tile-matching puzzle game that actually saw video game journalist Michael Price from Electronic Gaming Monthly work as a tester on the game, playing prototype builds & giving feedback & suggestions that he felt would help improve the game, which he'd later admit was developed on a low budget. Interestingly enough, Atari didn't actually publicly reveal FlipOut! until E3, just two months prior to release, so one has to wonder if the game was simply developed in secret until it was ready... or if Atari Coporation simply decided to toss it out ASAP just so there'd be two new games for the Jag in July, as the next game wouldn't come out until August. Guess there's only one way to find out...

Obscusion B-Side: It's All About the Ataris, Baby... The Companies, Not the Punk Rock Band

There are only so many words in any language, so it's only natural that people only have so many words to name a company that they start up with, & it's not surprising to come across two different companies with effectively the same name from the same industry, so much so that calling them by a shorthand can lead to confusion. When it comes to video games there are plenty of examples of that. For example, we have Access Games (Deadly Premonition) vs. Access Software (Tex Murphy), Sonic Team (Sonic the Hedgehog) vs. Sonic! Software Planning (Shining Force), Climax Entertainment (Runabout) vs. Climax Studios (Rocket Knight [2010]), Gremlin Graphics/Interactive (Top Gear) vs. Gremlin Industries (Head On), MileStone Inc. (Chaos Field) vs. Milestone s.r.l. (MotoGP), Monolith Productions (Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War) vs. Monolith Soft (Xeno Series), & Piranha Bytes (ELEX) vs. Piranha Games (MechWarrior 5), among many others; hell, this can even apply to a single letter, as seen with Q Entertainment (Lumines) vs. Q-Games (PixelJunk Series)!

In other instances, though, two different companies can have the same name because the trademark itself was sold off. For example, T&E Soft changed its name to D Wonderland Inc. in 2002, only to then sell the "T&E Soft" trademark to another company in 2005, which eventually resulted in a completely different studio called T&E Soft that existed between 2008 & 2013, followed by D4 Enterprise acquiring the rights to both the T&E Soft name & all of its games and IP in 2019, all while D Wonderland Inc. (the "original" T&E Soft, now Daikokuya Global Holding Co., Ltd.) continued to operate & is still around to this very day. However, when it comes to the "same name game" in the video game industry, there's only one undisputed king of confusion: Atari.

The Japanese word "当たり/atari" can be translated into many words, but for our context comes from Go, a Chinese board game dating back to at least sometime in the mid 6th century BCE & wouldn't actually be brought over to Japan until sometime in the 7th century CE. In terms of Go, "atari" is the point where at least one of a player's stones is in risk of being captured by their opponent's next move, similar to a "check" in Chess; however, unlike a check, verbally calling an atari is considered inappropriate for anyone beyond beginners. Still, the word "atari" itself has a nice ring to it and when Nolan Bushnell realized that he couldn't incorporate the word "syzygy" for his company in California while getting the arcade game Pong ready for release, as it was already being used by another company, he went with a term from his favorite board game Go as the name of his company on June 27, 1972. Unbeknownst to Bushnell, though, would be the future that the name "Atari" would have, one in which eight different companies related to gaming or technology in general (nine, if you take Japan's phonetic history with "r" & "l" into consideration) would have the name "Atari" in some way over the course of the next 50+ years, most of which trying to keep the name & legacy of his company alive to some fashion. So let's make sure everything's in "check" as we go over the wild & sometimes confusing history of "Atari".

Obscusion B-Side: Frames, ARKs, Presidents, & HOUNDs: A Look at FromSoftware's Un-Armored Cores

Founded on November 1, 1986 by Naotoshi Zin, Tokyo-based FromSoftware initially made its name as a developer of various business applications for mainframe computers, as well as agricultural applications like managing pig feeding. By the end of the early 90s "FromSoft" decided to transition over to game development, and eventually would "debut" with the release of King's Field for the PS1 on December 16, 1994. After two sequels to King's Field over the next two years (which were the two that saw release outside of Japan, albeit with altered numbering), FromSoftware would debut its fourth video game, Armored Core for the PS1, on July 10, 1997, with a sequel (Project Phantasma) coming out later that December. This would mark the start of FromSoftware's most successful & iconic series for the longest time, so much so that from 1997 to 2006 there was literally at least one Armored Core game released per year, with 2004 even seeing three released! It wouldn't be until Hidetaka Miyazaki truly made his mark with Demon's Souls on PS3 in 2009 that FromSoft had something that would actually surpass Armored Core, resulting in a stretch of time from 2014 to 2022 where the studio would make almost nothing but "Soulsbourne" games, i.e. titles made in the same (or at least very similar) vein as that of Demon's Souls; games of this type not made by FromSoftware are called "Soulslikes". The only exceptions would be a 3DS port of a 2010 Monster Hunter spin-off PSP game in 2015 & a PS VR adventure/horror game in 2018, though Soulsbourne games would still see release those same years.

However, and this is something that has often been lost on people over the past decade, there was so much more to FromSoftware than just Soulsbourne, Armored Core, & even King's Field.

Which one of these got an actual model kit?
Hint: Not the one you're likely thinking of!

Prior to Soulsbourne games making FromSoftware synonymous with dark fantasy (though the studio had always been known for that, since its very first game), the studio was actually more known as a studio that specialized in giant robots. In fact, FromSoft was so synonymous with mecha that it would also be hired to develop games based on other companies' IPs, namely Sunrise's Gundam Unicorn, Capcom's Steel Battalion (though the less said about that Kinect-only game, the better), & most notably Banpresto's crossover series Another Century's Episode/A.C.E. (though the less said about the PS3 game, the better). All that being said, though, it wasn't just Armored Core games & licensed IP titles that FromSoftware developed when it came to mecha, as there are four standalone games involving giant robots that came out in Japan between mid-1999 & mid-2006, i.e. Demon's Souls was only just barely starting development by the last one. Two of them (later three) would see international release, but most notably all of them came from different staff within FromSoftware, with very little carryover beyond some producers & music/sound staff member Kota Hoshino (who's still with FromSoft to this very day, but hasn't composed music for games since 2013), showing a remarkable amount of variety in style, tone, & execution within a shared overall concept of "giant robots". So, to mark FromSoftware's return to mecha with the release of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, let's take a look at what can be best described as the studio's "Un-Armored Cores".

Television Spectaculars Across the Grand Line! A Look at the Original Four One Piece TV Specials

While they're still done on rare occasion to this day, the concept of the "TV special" has certainly lost the luster it once had. In an age where streaming is king & traditional TV slowly loses more & more relevance with time, the traditional TV special has more or less been replaced by what's now called "event television", which prioritizes being aired live so as to more entice people to tune in, whereas the normal TV special was, more often than not, pre-recorded. Now while "event television" can't really be possible for anime by its very nature, the idea of producing anime TV specials has also become less & less prevalent with time. For example, the Lupin the 3rd franchise was, for the longest time, known primarily for its yearly anime TV specials, as from 1989 to 2013 there was one every single year, but in the decade since 2013 there have only been three, due to TMS deciding to instead return to producing new Lupin TV series "Parts", which works much better with today's focus on weekly simulcasting.

One series that has an interesting history with TV specials, though, would most certainly be the juggernaut known as One Piece, based on the Shonen Jump manga by Eiichiro Oda. What most people might know of is the time from 2012 to 2018, as Toei produced nine One Piece TV specials during that time for Fuji TV's Premium Saturday time slot (literally one or two per year), either acting as recaps of iconic story arcs with brand new animation (Episode of East Blue, Episode of Nami, Episode of Skypeia, etc.), original stories meant to fill in gaps that the manga never covered (3D2Y, Adventure of Nebulandia, Episode of Luffy), or to simply promote an upcoming movie (Heart of Gold). However, these TV specials were actually the second batch for the series after a seven-year hiatus, because from 2000 to 2005 Toei had produced four other One Piece TV specials, and while those later ones from the 2010s mostly got licensed by FUNimation & officially released in English, that original TV special tetralogy has remained exclusive to Japan to this very day, though they were all fansubbed at the time; SP5 to 7 were also never licensed, admittedly. In comparison, even the older One Piece movies that never saw release in North America (i.e. Movies 1-7 & 9) at least eventually saw sub-only DVD releases in the UK in 2014! However, despite never being licensed, these TV specials do have official English titles either via data books released by Viz or simply via Toei Animation itself, and I'll be using those for this overview. The last time I actually covered One Piece here was way back in 2012, when I reviewed the 1998 anime pilot produced by Production I.G., but it can be argued that these first four TV specials are even more obscure & forgotten today than Defeat the Pirate Ganzack! is, especially since that pilot was acknowledged in Japan while promoting 2022's One Piece Film: Red, as both were directed by Goro Taniguchi. Are these old TV specials lost treasures worthy of the future Pirate King, or have they become the One Piece anime's own meta equivalent of the Blank Century for good reason?

Obscusion B-List: 4:3-Only Wii Games That Resisted Widescreen

When it comes to imagery, one of the most important things to consider, from a compositional perspective, is aspect ratio. This determines the height & width of an image & makes all the difference in how something is framed within said image. When it comes to moving pictures, whether that be film, television, or gaming, aspect ratio has played a major role in helping define them. For example, up until 1953 theatrical film used a slightly rectangular 1.375:1 aspect ratio, but once television (& it's ~1.333 aspect ratio, a.k.a. "4:3") started becoming more prominent & popular Hollywood studios decided to start filming in wider aspect ratios, eventually finding 1.85:1 (a "widescreen" aspect ratio) to be the most common standard. This was mainly because it offered an experience that 4:3 TVs couldn't properly replicate without either utilizing letterboxing (so as to offer the full image, though now smaller) or "pan & scan" (which artificially added camera "movement", so as to maintain proper attention). Though first sold as early as 1993, widescreen TVs wouldn't really become more widely available until the mid-to-late 00s, & today the idea of "aspect ratio" is mostly moot, as the standard 16:9 or 16:10 ratios that TVs & monitors come in now are compatible with most widescreen presentations (though there will be some letterboxing for the wilder ratios, like CinemaScope). In fact, watching anything 4:3 on modern screens requires pillarboxing to accommodate things, to some people's dismay (but, please, don't ever stretch the image!).

But how did all of this affect gaming?

While there was the rare game now & then that offered a widescreen option, usually by way of either letterboxing (though some faked this by just cropping the image) or anamorphic widescreen, 4:3 "standard definition" (or 3:4, for "tate mode" games, like many shooters) was the domain of video gaming until the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2005, followed by the launch of the PlayStation 3 in 2006. Both of these consoles were designed to be played in "high definition" (i.e. 720p, 1080i, & 1080p), which by their nature were (generally) 16:9 widescreen resolutions, and while there were some games released on those consoles that offered 4:3 display options (most notably the Halo & Gears of War games, even all the way into 2013!), every single game released on these consoles were developed with 16:9 (or, at least, widescreen) in mind. However, also released in late 2006 was Nintendo's then newest console, the Wii, a console that didn't support HD at all & only topped out at 480p resolution, i.e. 4:3. Despite this, most games released on Wii (&, to no surprise, the Wii itself) did offer anamorphic widescreen support, and there are even some Wii games that are actually widescreen-only & will force letterboxing on a 4:3 display. However, there are also Wii games that, shockingly enough, were designed to only ever display in 4:3, and this was something that most people didn't even realize was a thing until the console's successor, the Wii U. At first the Wii U would simply display all Wii games in widescreen, but an early update regarding "Wii Mode" actually made the console force pillarboxing for 4:3-only games. To be fair, there were some reports about 4:3-only games as early as the Wii's launch in 2006, but the Wii itself actually didn't force pillarboxing (to my knowledge, at least), so most people wound up unknowingly stretching the image if they were using widescreen TVs & didn't adjust the screen manually.

Eventually, a Github user named Gingerbeardman created a complete database of every single Wii game (both physical & digital) that only displayed in 4:3 using the Dolphin emulator & vWii, and after removing things like duplicate listings, Virtual Console, & auto-generated INI files, I collected the list into an easier to read Excel format for myself. In the end, the Wii wound up with a total of around 513 games that are 4:3-only (or ~31.28% of the entire catalog), 399 released physically & 114 released digitally via WiiWare. To be fair, I don't think the list is 100% accurate, as there are a handful of games I know aren't 4:3-only but are on this list, but I think that's within the margin of error, considering where the info was sourced from. What's most surprising, though, is that games of this ilk continued to be made all the way until the Wii U's launch in 2012, a good number of years after widescreen TVs had become standardized & 4:3 was already a bygone relic. So let's take a look at what I feel are the most notable, interesting, or simply weird instances of Wii games that are 4:3-only and see how Nintendo's surprisingly mainstream success of a console was also the last holdout for standard definition gaming.

The Ages of Jump Encore Part 2: Going Out Fighting, Allegro con Fuoco

55 years ago, Shueisha launched Shonen Jump, a biweekly magazine meant to act as a sister publication to Shonen Book, a monthly magazine launched 11 years prior that itself would eventually transmogrify into Bessatsu Shonen Jump, then Monthly Shonen Jump, & finally into the Jump Square that currently exists. In those 5.5 decades of life, Shonen Jump rose from a mere competitor to the likes of Shonen Sunday & Shonen Magazine to the industry-defining standard bearer that, to many, it still is to this day, and the name of "Jump" itself is known the world over. Over the course of over half a century, just shy of 750 different serialized manga have appeared in its pages, but only so many of them would actually achieve something even remotely close to a "legacy" or, at the very least, "recognition", whether that's via renown, notoriety, or simply cult fandom. Over the course of what will now be an 11-part series, The Ages of Jump will have covered only 178 of those manga, or roughly just 24% of Jump's entire catalog; yeah, not even a full quarter of it.

But, really, when all is said & done, one question will remain: "Why go through all of this, and why come back to it twice?"

Because I have always felt that history matters just as much when it comes to entertainment as it does to real life events... and not enough of it is easily available in English when it comes to a subject like manga, even for a topic as popular as Shonen Jump. Over in Japan you can find both manga & even written memoirs from the people who lived through it all, whether it was Shinji Hiramatsu going from assistant to his serialized debut in the 70s, Koji Maki having to deal with cancellation in the 80s, 3rd Editor-in-Chief Shigeo Nishimura recalling his time with Jump from his perspective, or 4th EiC Hiroki Goto looking back on some of the Golden Age's most iconic works. Some of these were even published by Shueisha, but you know Viz more than likely wouldn't be interested in any of this stuff, simply because, for most manga fans, it's history & that isn't what they're interesting in reading about; that's not a slight towards most manga readers or Viz, by the way, but it is a simple fact. I did the original Ages of Jump in 2016 simply because I wanted to (even if only for my own curiosity), I did the Ages of Jump Redux in 2018 because I wanted to do it again for Jump's 50th Anniversary, and the same is true of the Ages of Jump Encore in 2023 for Jump's 55th. If others out there found something cool to learn from all of this, then I am sincerely grateful for that, because it does give the feeling, even if only fleeting, that it did matter. Thank you to anyone who came across this series, & thank you to everyone who felt that it was worth sharing, even if most of it does come off as rather "Wall of Text"-like; that's just how it came out in 2016, & I'm trying to keep consistency across this entire series.

And with that out of the way, let's bring it all to an end with a coda as we re-enter the Golden Age's second half.

The Ages of Jump Encore Part 1: "Play 'Freebird'!"

Close to eight years ago, a.k.a. sometime in late 2015, I came up with the "brilliant" idea of using Wikipedia's list of every single manga that had run in Weekly Shonen Jump up to that point, making note of as many notable titles as I could from that list (either because of length, notoriety, infamy, or simply getting an anime adaptation), and giving a basic & general overview of every single one that I made note of, all in an attempt at maybe providing some context to the evolution of what is, to many, the most iconic & famous manga magazine of all time. To help organize things I relied on the concept of Hesiod's Five Ages of Man (ignoring the idea that each successive age is mostly a worse one than the last), mainly because Jump already had an officially recognized "Golden Age", so I thought it'd be neat to define what came before that point as a "Bronze Age" (Get it? Because it's essentially "third place", in overall importance? Ha ha...) & what came a little bit after as a "Silver Age", while the short period between the Golden & Silver Ages would be a "Dark Age", though later I'd retcon it as also worthy of being called a "Heroic Age", if only to maintain the Hesiod terminology. The end result of that was The Ages of Jump, a seven-part series that took up all of January & February of 2016 (because I was still mad enough to do that much writing & research in that short a period of time, & I've since aged enough to know better) in which I went over 123 different Jump manga, covering from 1968's Chichi no Tamashii to 2014's My Hero Academia. In the end, the series actually did much better than I ever expected, so much so that if you search "Ages of Jump" on Google, the top result is literally a featured snippet listing the four ages that I covered; that makes them all but official, essentially!

With a very positive overall reception, I decided to revisit this concept two years later in August of 2018, to celebrate Jump's 50th Anniversary, as well as fill in some notable gaps that the original series had not covered, but I felt really should have. The end result of that was The Ages of Jump Redux, a two-part series that covered an additional 25 different Jump manga, which also included six series that had debuted after My Hero Academia, starting with Black Clover, and since there was one more Age of Man left from Hesiod that I hadn't used I decided to call this current era of Jump that those six manga came from the "Iron Age". While I don't think The Ages of Jump Redux received anywhere near the same reception that the original Ages did, I was pretty pleased with the end result, which now totaled 148 different Jump manga that debuted between 1968 & 2017; for proper context, though, that's just 19.89% of all Jump manga that have existed, as of mid-2023. Since then, a new resource has come about for looking through Jump's entire history, & that is Jajanken: Weekly Shonen Jump Lab, a literal comprehensive database of every single regular issue of Jump that's ever been made, complete with every single serialized manga that's ever appeared in the magazine's history. Then there's also Weekly Shonen Jump Exhibition Volumes 1-3, a trio of large books that were part art book, part mangaka interviews made for Jump's 50th Anniversary in 2018 that go over a great deal of series that Shueisha itself felt were important to the history of the magazine.

Having gone through the trouble of looking over all 744+ series that have been serialized in Jump (so far) for the sake of figuring out the magazine's history of early cancellations, I came across some last little stragglers that I missed out on over the past nine parts of The Ages of Jump. Some were 100+-chapter series that I really should have included, if only because I feel every series that hit triple digits, in general, should be acknowledged & celebrated, while others were certainly shorter but still had something important worth making note of, especially in light of other pieces I've written (or even made a video of) since doing the Redux. However, I only focused on the original four ages this time around, as while it was fun to take a short peek into the Iron Age in 2018, it's still nowhere near close to ending & should be given time to fully define itself.

So, to celebrate Jump's 55th Anniversary, here's the first of two final (for real, this time!) parts of The Ages of Jump, totaling 30 more Jump manga, with this being the first 15. The concert is over but there's always time for an "Encore", so let's look back at Jump's history once again & (for the last time) see "How Far We've Come".

The Tangerine Terminator: A Look at Shonen Jump's History of Early Cancellations, By the Numbers

In the 55 years since the original launch of Shonen Jump as a biweekly magazine in July of 1968, the magazine has become the iconic origin for too many classic & influential manga to count, out of a total (as of this piece) 744 different series (not including one-shots) that have run in its pages. However, in strong relation to that history of legendary manga that have come from that magazine is also a rather infamous notoriety of early cancellations. It's something that has existed for a long time, but the advent of simulpublishing in English literally every new manga that debuts in the magazine via Viz Media's Shonen Jump subscription service, along with the proliferation of social media making it easier than ever for fans to lament the losses of seemingly promising series, has made this phenomenon more & more known in recent years. It's very easy to come across people today online bemoaning how a new favorite series of theirs has been cut from the Jump roster too soon, and that Jump is way too cutthroat for its own good nowadays; some even argue that Jump was never this harsh with new series back in the day.

But how true is this sentiment, really? Is Shonen Jump truly more cutthroat than ever, or has Jump always been one of the more stringent manga magazines out there, all in an effort to make sure that the ones that manage to stick around for a long time are indeed the strongest titles? Since 2023 marks the 55th Anniversary of Shonen Jump, I think it's time we take a look at Jump's history of early cancellations, but to make sure things are as "objective" (i.e. empirical) as possible we need some hard data...

I made this image.
It is dumb & stupid & I love it.

Before we start, though, we need to lay some ground rules. First, just as with the history of Jump giving final chapters special treatment I went over back in 2021, the information I'll be giving is sourced from Jajanken: Weekly Shonen Jump Lab, which catalogs literally every single issue of Jump from its first issue in 1968 to the most current issue that's out there. This site lists every single manga that appears in each issue & even what the title of each chapter is (& if there's an official English release there's a good chance Jajanken has them in English!), the only exception being various old one-shots; without Jajanken, it'd be nigh-impossible to get anything remotely close to true "hard data". Second, after going over literally every single manga cataloged over at Jajanken & compiling them into an Excel spreadsheet (because what's more "shonen" than collating, right?), I have categorized them across eight different stretches of length: Less Than 10 Chapters (this is mainly to sift out manga that were always intended to be short runs, as it's pretty rare for manga to get outright canceled this early on), 10 to 26 Chapters (this is the range of time most synonymous with early cancellations), 27 to 52 Chapters (i.e. up to a solid year of serialization), 53 to 99 Chapters (i.e. lasting more than one year, but not hitting triple digits), 100 to 199 Chapters, 200 to 299 Chapters, & finally 300 to 399 Chapters & 400+ Chapters (the last two of which only 25 Jump manga have ever achieved so far, so that's a good stopping point). For the purposes of what we're looking for, we will focus primarily on manga that ran somewhere between 10 & 99 chapters, i.e. roughly two to ten volumes long (or just shy of two whole years, at best), though I'll still separate them when bringing up raw numbers. With all of that out of the way, let's finally dig in deep & take a look at Shonen Jump's actual history of early cancellations!

Samurai Deeper Kyo (GBA): Not Quite First to Arrive, But Definitely Last to Leave

Launching in Japan on March 21, 2001, with a worldwide release a few months later throughout June, the Game Boy Advance has an interesting & kind of contradictory history behind it. It was the long awaited "true" follow up to the long-lived Game Boy, which first launched all the way back in 1989 (the Game Boy Color in 1998 was more of a color-supporting stopgap update), yet the GBA itself would only really be seen as Nintendo's main handheld for a scant few years before the release of the Nintendo DS in 2004/2005 (depending on the region), which almost instantly overtook the GBA as the handheld of choice, especially since the DS could also play GBA games. While the GBA would continue to see releases alongside the DS for a few years, it didn't take long for the GBA (& the Game Boy name itself) to be relegated to mostly just licensed tie-in games for movies, TV shows, & the like, with only the rare outlier, like an Yggdra Union or Summon Night: Swordcraft Story. That "relegation" does technically apply to the subject of this review, as we'll be looking at a tie-in to a TV anime, but depending on where it came out it's either one of the GBA's earlier releases... or one of its very last.

Japanese title screen, but all that's different
is the copyright & the logo being slightly smaller.

Debuting in the pages of Weekly Shonen Magazine in mid-1999, Samurai Deeper Kyo by Akimine Kamijyo was a little different from the usual Magazine fare by being more focused on wild & over-the-top action, something you'd expect more from a Jump or Champion manga than Magazine. Still, the tale of the wanderer Mibu Kyoshiro, the feared samurai Demon Eyes Kyo that co-inhabits the same body as Kyoshiro, & the mysterious Mibu Clan (and rumored Crimson King) that seemingly runs all of Edo-Era Japan in secret found itself an audience, resulting in a 38-volume run that ended in mid-2006, during which a 26-episode TV anime adaptation by Studio Deen would air in Japan throughout the second half of 2002. Said anime, though, was wildly different from the manga, with all of the normally human (if still super-powered) villains now being revealed to be demonic creatures called Kenyo that came to Earth via a meteorite that crash landed during the Battle of Sekigahara; it's easily one of the most wildly different anime adaptations of a manga ever made. However, it's this anime interpretation that would define Samurai Deeper Kyo outside of Japan for the most part, as while TokyoPop did release the manga in English during the 00s (with Del Rey Manga finishing things up in 2010 after Kodansha pulled all of its licenses from TP), it was Media Blasters' DVD release of the anime throughout 2003 & 2004 that easily became more well known.

Media Blasters would keep the anime in print with a boxset re-release in 2005, but the next re-release was the most interesting one of all. In an effort to expand out to other mediums, MB eventually decided to also license the Game Boy Advance game based on the Kyo anime, one that had come out in Japan back in December 2002, more or less alongside a 2D fighting game for the PS1 that would remain Japan-exclusive. Media Blasters would do the localization work for the game itself under the Anime Works Game Shop name, but since it wasn't a video game publisher it had to find a partner to handle that, eventually finding one in the form of Destineer (via its Bold Games label), a company that actually had prior anime game experience after releasing two Fullmetal Alchemist games for the DS in North America. Media Blasters would release the GBA game as a bonus with the anime boxset re-re-release, while it's not really known if Destineer ever actually released the game as a standalone product, though today it's readily sold as such online (good luck getting it for cheap today, though!). However, the most interesting thing about this whole endeavor is that, while the game originally came out in Japan in late 2002, the English release in North America wouldn't happen until February 2008(!), making it the last individual release for the Game Boy Advance anywhere in the world; Europe would receive a handful of double-packs later in 2008, but those were all re-releases. So, while my expectations aren't exactly high, let's see how this experimental endeavor for Media Blasters worked out (MB would only ever release one more game, though that was digital-only), and judge whether Samurai Deeper Kyo for the Game Boy Advance is a good "final game" for the console... and, let's face it, that's not exactly a high bar to pass, considering some other "final games" for other consoles.