Founded in 1999, ComicsOne hit the ground strong by licensing & releasing a wide variety of not just manga, but also Korean manhwa & even Chinese manhua. Not just that, but ComicsOne was also willing to put out both then-recent titles as well as old classics, so alongside the likes of Ginga Legend Weed, Dark Edge, & Lunar Legend Tsukihime there wsd vintage manga like Wild 7, Wounded Man, Bridge of Deimos, & Karasu Tengu Kabuto. ComicsOne was also (quite possibly) the first English manga publisher to try its hand at the digital market as it offered some titles via Adobe eBooks, & even put out some titles as digital-only releases due to their niche appeal, like Bass Master Ranmaru, Pachinker Atsushi, & Loan Wolf; again, this was in 2000! Therefore, it's no surprise that ComicsOne's eventual fate was to disappear in March of 2005, with its printer DrMaster taking over only a portion of the publisher's catalog (most notably Iron Wok Jan!, which was later revealed to be the sole title keeping either company afloat), though DrMaster itself would fold after 2009 (i.e. after finishing Iron Wok Jan!). Truly, it's fair to say that ComicsOne was well ahead of its time in the English manga industry, and that possibly is what led to its downfall. However, there's no doubt that the catalog ComicsOne wound up having by the time the company (as per DrMaster's own words) "stopped paying its bills and...disappeared" was actually a rather good one, with some honestly outstanding titles that (sadly) may never be given another chance in today's English manga market, despite their quality... and there's one manga in particular that I've always wanted to check out from ComicsOne that, unfortunately, was left unfinished in English.
Born on December 26, 1949, Masahiro Shibata (not to be confused with the former actor; different kanji for "hiro") would make his debut in the manga industry in 1973, after first getting his start as part of the doujin group Mikazuki-kai & working as an assistant for the late Shinji Wada, of Sukeban Deka fame. Due to how he got his start, Shibata was initially a shojo mangaka (at a time when men became less & less known for making that kind of work) who focused primarily on sci-fi stories, and his first truly notable works were stories published under the collected name of Akai Kiba/Crimson Fang, which he made from 1975 to 1989. The most well known Crimson Fang manga was the series Blue Sonnet, which ran in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume from 1981 to 1987 for 19 volumes & later received a five-episode OVA adaptation that saw international release via Central Park Media (in the US) & Manga Entertainment (in the UK). After Blue Sonnet Shibata's next major work was Tokime Densetsu Karudaruma, which ran from 1990 to 1996 for 18 volumes in Shonen Gahosha's seinen magazine Young King (not to be confused with its sister magazine, Young King OURs, which tends to be more well known outside of Japan) & became known for its heavy usage of sexual themes & highly suggestive scenes; Shibata was also doing all sorts of one-shots & short-run manga during this time, too. After finishing Kardaruma Shibata would then stick with Young King for his next long-running manga, 1998's Sarai. Unlike before, Shibata would focus almost entirely on Sarai exclusively during its serialization, only making two other shorter manga in 2005 & 2006, and during the serialization Shibata actually suffered both a cerebral hemorrhage & then later serious injury via a car accident!
However, Masahiro Shibata was able to recover from both incidents & eventually finished Sarai in 2008, with a total of 19 volumes, of which ComicsOne only managed to released eight of between early 2001 & late 2002 (i.e. this was cancelled long before ComicsOne went under). On March 30, 2008 Masahiro Shibata would announce on his website that with Sarai over, & his doujin work also done with, he'd take up an offer to be a part-time lecturer over at Kyoto Seika University's manga department, and in 2015 it became a full-time job that Shibata continues to do to this very day, alongside the likes of Keiko Takemiya, Akiko Higashimura, Motoka Murakami, & Akihiro Yamada. For all intents & purposes, Masahiro Shibata has long retired from making manga, so good for him. I remember first hearing about Sarai not too long once I started really getting into manga in the mid-00s, especially when I started reading other works from ComicsOne & DrMaster, and alongside Kazan by Gaku Miyao was a manga that (even by then) was hard to find all eight volumes of for a decent price, in particular the last two volumes (but especially Volume 8). However, much like how I eventually managed to get all of Kazan in 2023 (& that manga truly was excellent) I was finally able to get all eight volumes of Sarai from ComicsOne for a good price earlier this year, so as we near the end of Demo Disc let's see if Masahiro Shibata's "final" manga (or at least 42.1% of it) was truly worth keeping my eye out for over 20 years.
