After Japan was forced to open trade with the west in 1854 the Tokugawa shogunate saw more political instability due to rebellion against working with "barbarians". This eventually resulted in the formation of the Roshigumi in late 1862, made up of various ronin commissioned by the bakufu, but when it was discovered that the leader actually planned on working with the imperialists instead of the shogunate, the Roshigumi were disbanded in early 1863. The few who remained loyal to the shogunate were initially reformed as the Mibu Roshigumi, before getting renamed on August 18, 1863 to the Shinsengumi. This group of swordsmen would patrol about then-capital Kyoto & protect bakufu representatives during the final years of the Bakumatsu, before getting involved in the Boshin War as part of the anti-Imperial Ezo Republic. In the end, the Shinsengumi would surrender to Emperor Meiji's forces on June 23, 1869, mere days before the Boshin War ended with the Ezo Republic's surrender. Nearly a century later, from May to December of 1962, author Ryotaro Shiba published 15 short stories about the Shinsengumi in the literary magazine Chuo Koron, which were extremely popular & would be collected into a single book in 1964 titled Shinsengumi Keppuroku/The Shinsengumi's Bloody Wind Records. While the Shinsengumi were initially not looked at fondly for decades after their dissolution, it was through authors like Shiba (& Kan Shimozawa before him, in the 1920s) that the Japanese populace started to look more fondly at the Shinsengumi in retrospect, though that was also in part due to some embellishments & purely fictional stories that showed the group in a positive light, including some by Shiba, seemingly being taken as historical fact.
Regardless, today the Shinsengumi are a common subject for all manner of jidaigeki that take place during the Bakumatsu, not to mention various fictional stories that feature groups plainly inspired by the Shinsengumi, more often than not portraying the group more as heroes than villains.
Thirty years after Ryotaro Shiba's short stories, after Silent Knight Sho got cancelled in late 1992, Masami Kurumada decided that he was done with Shonen Jump & wanted nothing more to do with the magazine. Likely in an attempt to prevent him from going to another publisher, Shueisha seemingly managed to convince Kurumada to move over to (the now defunct) seinen magazine Super Jump, a move previously seen with the likes of Buichi Terasawa, Shinji Hiramatsu, Tatsuya Egawa, Izumi Matsumoto, Kurumada's idol Hiroshi Motomiya, & even Kurumada's former assistant Jun Tomizawa. While not exclusively so, especially after some editorial shake-ups that moved a lot of mangaka to Business Jump & Young Jump, Super Jump was generally treated as the magazine Shonen Jump's readers would "grow up" into. The end result was Akane-Iro no Kaze -Shinsengumi Keppu-ki-/Crimson Wind -The Shinsengumi's Bloody Wind Chronicles-, a manga about the early days of the Shinsengumi which debuted in mid-1993 & whose subtitle definitely looks to be a direct reference to Ryotaro Shiba's stories, only replacing the kanji "録/roku" for "記/ki", i.e. a "chronicle" instead of a "record"; in other words, this wasn't a direct adaptation. In fact, many Japanese sources online, including Wikipedia, erroneously state that the subtitle in Japanese ends with "記録/kiroku", or "written record" (as in sports or official events, like a trial), combing the two kanji... despite the literal manga, in all of its printings, only using "記/ki" in its title & logo. Even the copyright section at the end of my physical copy has furigana that read "Keppu-ki"; technically it's "Keppuu-ki", but I'm using only one "u" purely for visual convenience, a la "shonen" or "shojo".
However, despite being given a new home, Kurumada never made Akane-Iro no Kaze on a consistent basis, only appearing in Issues 17 & 24 of 1993, followed by Issues 5, 9, 21, & 22 of 1994, totaling just six chapters. Since Super Jump was biweekly (i.e. only 26 issues/year) that meant that the last chapter was published right as Kurumada was about to debut B't X for Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Shonen Ace... or possibly even being published AFTER B't X had already debuted, since exact dates can be tricky with manga magazines; regardless, it was damn close. Yeah, it's easy to see that Kurumada wasn't pleased with simply being shuffled over to Super Jump, at least at this point, so he eventually took Kadokawa's offer & left his Shinsengumi manga unfinished, possibly even taking some of the hiatuses between chapters to plan out his departure from Shueisha. A compiled released of Akane-Iro no Kaze listed as "Volume 1", despite there being no plans to continue it, was released by Shueisha on January 16, 1995, and on December 12, 2001 (after Kurumada had fully returned to Shueisha, & Super Jump, with Ring ni Kakero 2) two bunkoban books were released titled Never End Heroes, indicating works that Kurumada seemingly had no plans of ever returning to. Never End Heroes 1 contained Raimei no Zaji (which Kurumada did eventually return to in 2014, if only for a handful of pages) & Aoi Tori no Shinwa, while Never End Heroes 2 contained Akane-Iro no Kaze & Evil Crusher Maya. I've previously reviewed the other three manga that were re-released via the Never End Heroes books years ago, so as part of this blog's year-long celebration of Masami Kurumada's 50th Anniversary it's time to finally cover Kurumada's first ever seinen manga, & his final manga from his original 20-year run with Shueisha, Akane-Iro no Kaze.
