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| A collection of various 00s anime... girls. Hey, I didn't make this image. |
However, it would take a few years for Crunchyroll (& the competition that either managed to survive the 00s anime bubble bursting or rose up from the ashes) to truly get anywhere near simulcasting "every" new show on a seasonal basis, Toei infamously didn't board the simulcasting train fully until around late 2011, & when combined with the deluge of anime that was simply passed over prior to the rise of Crunchyroll & simulcasting that means that there is still quite a lot of TV anime between 2000 & 2009 that have yet to be licensed for official English release (in North America, since that's where this blog is based out of). Sure, companies like Discotek Media, Sentai Filmworks, Media Blasters, & even the modern-day version of AnimEigo have certainly chipped away at that decade's previously ignored/skipped over titles over the past 10+ years, but even then there are still tons of titles that have yet to be given a chance. In fact, I recently collected together a list over on Bluesky that only included the titles that either "I personally enjoyed, titles I know have a good reputation, or are at least interesting (if maybe flawed)"... and I still wound up with 57 titles from the 00s alone; if I had truly just listed everything still never licensed it would likely have gone past 100! Now, to be fair, one could certainly argue that, by & large, the "best" anime of the 00s have in fact already been licensed & released in English at one point or another, though some certainly have long needed a license rescue nowadays, and some of the titles that have yet to be licensed may be stuck in some form of licensing limbo for a variety of reasons. However, I have always refused to believe that "All of the good stuff has already been licensed", so let's go over 12 TV anime from the 00s that, 26 to 17 years later, have yet to have been licensed for official English release (in North America) in any way whatsoever.
Also, if only to remove redundancies & prevent myself from simply repeating myself, I am excluding anime that I've already included in my two "Twelve Anime I Would License" lists from 2011 & 2012, my "10 Most-Wanted Anime Licenses from the Past 100 Months" list from 2019, & even the "Twelve(+2) Anime with 'Missing' Portions Yet to be Licensed for English Release" list from 2024, as those lists all featured unlicensed anime, in some way. Therefore, the following 00s TV anime would be what can be considered Honorable Mentions: Ring ni Kakero 1, GR -Giant Robo-, Government Crime Investigation Agent Zaizen Jotaro, Monkey Turn, Kanon [2002], Platinumhugen Ordian, & xxxHolic: Kei (this was mentioned in passing in the license rescue list from 2025, so I'll count it); that's more than half a 12 anime list already. So let's get started, because... ♪The rest is yet to come, and babe, won't that be fine?♪
We'll be going through these in chronological order, for funsies, so we begin with the year 2000 with a series that's easy to figure out why it has yet to be licensed for English release. As I covered this past June as part of my overview of late-night anime from 1999 & 2000, Tetsuya - Jansei to Yobareta Otoko/Tetsuya - The Man They Called the Mahjong Saint by Fumei Sai (story) & Yasushi Hoshino (art) was a mahjong manga that made its debut in Issue #33 of Weekly Shonen Magazine back in 1997, & was based on various novels written by Takehiro Irokawa, with some characters from the novels making appearances in the manga. The series itself told the tale of Tetsuya Asada (an homage to Irokawa himself, who used the Asada name when writing these novels), a young man who's talented at mahjong but encounters an older man named Boshu, whose talent at cheating makes Tetsuya want to become Boshu's student, which in turn makes Tetsuya into a legendary powerful gambler. One of the big twists with Tetsuya was that there was a focus on not just being a good player, but also a damn good cheater, like being able to discreetly hide important tiles away so as to prevent the opposition from claiming powerful hands. Despite being a literal mahjong manga that ran in a magazine that was (ostensibly) aimed at teenagers the manga ran for 339 chapters across 41 volumes, eventually ending in Combined Issue #2-3 of 2005; again, this ran alongside the likes of Love Hina, School Rumble, Rave, & Air Gear. Anyway, with the success of the manga Toei Animation eventually decided to produce a TV anime adaptation, with the end result being Gambler Densetsu Tetsuya/Gambler Legend Tetsuya, which ran from October of 2000 to March of 2001 for 20 episodes. Tetsuya himself was voiced by Ryotaro Okiayu, in a rare example of him actually playing the lead, since (by his own admission) he tends to voice rivals & villains.
However, while the show was initially planned to air in a prime time TV slot it wound up being move to a late-night slot, becoming Toei's first ever late-night anime in the process. Yet even in late-night the network (TV Asahi) still had to put up the occasional on-screen disclaimer due to some of the content seen in the show, like the usage of methamphetamines, due to it being a post-war period piece. I saw a couple episodes of Tetsuya back in my earlier days of anime fandom, since there's a fansub out there, and I found it really interesting & unique from fellow mahjong anime of the 00s (& the one most people would think of first), Akagi. However, it's immensely easy to understand why Tetsuya has yet to be licensed for an official English release, and that's due to its very subject matter. Yes, there have been mahjong anime licensed for official English release before, but those have mainly happened due to them debuting during the modern age of simulcasting (i.e. Saki, Tohai, Pon no Michi, etc.), and while Akagi was also licensed as a catalog addition for Crunchyroll back in 2013 (though it's no longer available) that was more because of its immense cult-classic status as a Nobuyuki Fukumoto work, alongside Kaiji, than anything regarding it being a mahjong anime. Tetsuya, on the other hand, never achieved the notoriety of Akagi, though it's generally well regarded by those who have seen it, and especially since it debuted at the start of the decade it was lost in the shuffle of how anime licensing used to work. I imagine Toei probably pitched it a few times early on, only to be given weird looks by the likes of FUNimation, ADV, Pioneer, AnimEigo, etc.
Today, though, riichi mahjong (the style seen in these various anime) has slowly become more & more popular, though still very niche, enough so that various anime cons will now have literal areas dedicated to teaching & playing mahjong in their gaming areas, and even some mahjong manga has started to see official English release by way of Mahjong Pros. Therefore, while I'm sure something like Akagi or Saki would be given the priority first for licensing due to their cult favorite statuses, there could still be a time when a anime licensing company will be gutsy & give mahjong anime a try on home video, & Tetsuya would certainly be a solid pick. Is it likely to ever happen? Hell no, but it's also no longer an instant "No way in Hell", considering recent moves being made.
Up next is a really interesting case, because this wasn't just skipped over once... but rather was skipped over twice, the second time even for a simulcast! Debuting in Issue #13 of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998, Whistle! was the serialized debut for Daisuke Higuchi (who's female, despite the male sounding name), a soccer manga that would run for 216 chapters & last until Issue #45 of 2002, totaling 24 volumes. The series starred Sho Kazamatsuri, a boy who loves soccer but never gets the chance to play due to his short stature, but when he transfers to Sakura Josui Junior High (& is initially confused as being a former star at his old school, which has a prestigious soccer team) he finds the chance to prove himself on the pitch; later on Sho & his friends get the chance to play for an all-star national team. Despite being a lesser-known Jump manga, Viz did release the entire series in English from 2004 to 2010, followed by a digital re-release in 2013 & 2014 (though it's still not available via subscription in the SJ Vault), so interested readers can still check the series out, as I believe it is well regarded. Higuchi would eventually return with a sequel manga, Whistle! W, that was serialized digitally by Shogakukan between 2016 & 2021 & totaled five volumes; Viz hasn't touched this, however.
What has yet to see official English release, though, is the TV anime adaptation of Whistle! that ran from May 2002 to February 2003 for 39 episodes & was done by Studio Comet, which was founded by employees of Tsuchida Production (the studio that did the OG Captain Tsubasa anime) after that studio went bankrupt. Understandably, it being a sports anime meant that it was easily ignored by all official English outlets back in the 00s, though it was fully fansubbed. However, now with sports anime having slowly (but surely) becoming more & more accepted by English-speaking anime fans you never know what the future might hold for the Whistle! anime... but I can definitively state that the original 2002/2003 version will NEVER see official English release. The reason for that is because in late 2016 the anime got a "voice remake", i.e. the animation was left untouched (though likely remastered, to some extent) but all of the Japanese voice actors were recast & the entire series was redubbed. This was seemingly because of a single person, namely Minako Komukai. At age 17 she had voiced Sho for the anime & also sung the OP & ED themes, but in the 14 years since Whistle! Komukai had become known both for her various legal issues (namely multiple drug arrests)... as well as having entered the adult video market (& becoming rather successful in it). Due to that notoriety the producers for the Whistle! anime apparently didn't want to re-release the show in a way that would make it look like they were promoting an adult video star (who also had a history of drug problems), so the simplest solution was seemingly to just re-dub the entire anime from scratch, recasting not just Komukai but EVERYONE, as I imagine it would have been much harder to only replace Komukai's lines; naturally, the OP & ED themes were also replaced by covers performed by Justice & Yui Makino, respectively. Now, obviously, the official reason as to why this "voice remake" was done was simply to celebrate the anime's 15th Anniversary, but it didn't take long for people to discover Komukai's post-Whistle! career & figure out the (more than likely) real reason why.
Whistle!'s "voice remake" was essentially a brand new show for the Winter 2017 season, with new episodes coming out on a weekly basis via streaming in Japan... and yet no one bothered to license it for simulcast internationally, which is why I said that it was skipped over twice at the start. But, yeah, if the Whistle! anime was to ever see an official English release at this point it would most certainly be the 2016/2017 "voice remake", with the OG version from 2002/2003 featuring Minako Komukai being something that you can only check out today either via fansubs or buying the old Japanese DVDs.
While today the idea of an anime featuring music performed by big name Western musical acts has become a bit more normalized, it's a concept that's been around since at least the 80s & actually saw a notable resurgence in the 00s. Paradise Kiss used a Franz Ferdinand song for its ED, Speed Grapher had Duran Duran for its OP, Ergo Proxy used Radiohead for its ED, Hellsing had Mr. Big for its ED, & Eden of the East used the song that would be Oasis' last (new) single for its OP, among other examples; hell, the Metropolis movie used Ray Charles during its big climax! The same is true for Hanada Shonen-shi/The Chronicles of Young Hanada, the 25-episode TV anime adaptation of Makoto Isshiki's 1993-1995 manga that aired on NTV between October 2002 & March 2003. The anime, like the manga, told the adventures of a third-grade boy named Ichiro Hanada who lives in rural Japan during the 1970s & winds up with a big scar on the back of his head after surviving a car accident. However, the accident also gave Hanada the ability to see ghosts who have regrets & are unable to move on to the afterlife, so Hanada helps these ghosts move past their regrets (even if sometimes a ghost more or less forces him to do so). Both the manga & anime won awards during their respective runs, and the anime does tend to be held in pretty good regard (it was directed by Masayuki Kojima, of Master Keaton, Black Butler, & Made in Abyss fame), so why has it never been licensed for English release? Well, as mentioned, the Hanada Shonen-shi anime used a Western musical act for its OP & ED themes.
Who? THE BACKSTREET BOYS
Yes, you read that right. The Hanada Shonen-shi anime had The (freakin') Backstreet Boys for its theme songs, specifically "The One" for the OP & "Drowning" for the ED. Honestly, watching either sequence for the first time almost feels like a gag, a mini AMV of sorts... but then you see the literal credit for each song, complete with Jive Records listed, and you realize that they're the real McCoy. The prior examples I listed at the start of this entry all had some sort of asterisk you could put down (older song, from an act that was no longer a big deal, was more of a cult favorite, etc.), but not for Hanada Shonen-shi. Sure, by the time the anime debuted The Backstreet Boys were actually in a short hiatus & were dealing with some issues (both personal & business related), but "Drowning" was still a big hit in 2002, while "The One" was one of the songs featured in 1999's Millennium, easily the biggest & most iconic album in the group's entire history; this was the album that had "I Want It That Way", after all. When it came to anime with Western musical acts from the 00s some wound up keeping their songs fully for official English release (Paradise Kiss, Ergo Proxy, Hellsing), while others either only kept them partially (Eden of the East) or replaced them entirely (Speed Grapher), so who knows what the licensing situation was for Hanada Shonen-shi & The Backstreet Boys. However, I think it's easy to hazard a guess & say that having one of the biggest boy bands in the world for its OP & ED, during what was still a relative height of their popularity, is what kept it from being licensed back in the day, & is likely what continues to prevent it from being licensed now.
"Tell Me Why"? Nick Carter, I think I you why just fine.
OK, so this one is maybe a slight cheat, as it not only did receive an official English release but it also technically saw a North American release... but both of those have big asterisks next to them, which I'll get to. Debuting on February 2, 2003, Ashita no Nadja/Tomorrow's Nadja was an interesting series from Toei, conceptually, as it was replacing the iconic & popular magical girl series Magical Doremi, but in turn was pretty much nothing like it. Instead of another magical girl series this was kind of a throwback to shows from the 70s like Candy Candy & Haikara-San: Here Comes Miss Modern, telling the story of Nadja Applefield, an orphan girl who on her 13th birthday receives gifts that reveal that her mother is actually alive, so Nadja heads off on a cross-continent trip throughout Europe in search of her mother, meeting friends along the way. Unfortunately, Ashita no Nadja wound up being a ratings bomb from the very start, as many of the children who watched Doremi as it aired didn't stick around for Nadja, and while ratings improved slightly over the 50 episodes it wound up running for they were still (at the time) record low ratings... of numbers like 5.2% & 6.8%, which today would make something the #2 or #3 most-watched anime in Japan; ratings, as a whole, have simply dropped. It also didn't help things that the show that replaced Ashita no Nadja would be Futari wa Pretty Cure... and that's all I need to say about that.
Regardless of ratings, though, Ashita no Nadja has become a cult favorite by those who have seen it, citing it as an extremely strong series with a memorable lead in Nadja herself, and the throwback style likely helps keep it feeling fresh, ironically enough; it even received a sequel in 2017 in the form of a novel that took place three years later. Now I did mention that Ashita no Nadja did in fact receive both an official English release & a North American release, but neither is what you'd normally expect. For the "official English release" that came in the form of two English dubbed compilation films in 2009 that were produced by William Winckler Productions, alongside similar film series made for Gaiking, Danguard Ace, Captain Harlock, Fist of the North Star, Starzinger, Lun Lun the Flower Girl, & the 90s version of GeGeGe no Kitaro. However, all of these compilation films were technically produced for Japan first, essentially for foreign visitors to digitally rent & watch, though Shout! Factory did release the ones for Gaiking, Danguard Ace, & Starzinger in North America; I even reviewed the Gaiking films back in 2013. As for the "North American release", Ashita no Nadja did indeed receive one in 2008... but it was only in French & aimed exclusively at the Canadian market, i.e. primarily Quebec. Therefore, it is 100% fair & accurate to say that Ashita no Nadja has still never been licensed for official English release in North America, and therefore it's still eligible for this list.
That being said, even today titles like Ashita no Nadja have remained a tough sell for English-speaking American anime fans, so who knows if anyone will actually be brave enough to finally give it a chance.
Up next is a series that, in some way, I actually am still kind of astonished hasn't been licensed yet by a company like Discotek, the modern-day AnimEigo, or even Sentai Filmworks, because even in my early days of anime fandom in the mid-00s I quickly heard nothing but praise for this series. Debuting on NHK on October 16, 2003, Mujin Wakusei Survive/Uninhabited Planet Survive is an original series that ran for 52 episodes with an interesting pedigree behind it. The story about seven students finding themselves stranded on a seemingly uninhabited planet is inspired on Jules Verne's iconic novel Two Years' Vacation, a seemingly rather popular novel in Japan since it was also the basis for a variety of other anime & manga, including Round Vernian Vifam, Astra Lost in Space, & Infinite Ryvius (that last one also being inspired by Lord of the Flies). The show was also directed by Yuichiro Yano, who would later go on to direct Blue Box, Lupin the 3rd Parts IV & V, & Moyashimon, and the writing team was headed up by Shoji Yonemura, who'd later do the same with Parasyte -the maxim-, Shaman King [2021] & Flowers, Guin Saga, Smile Pretty Cure!, & is the current head writer for Toei's One Piece. Finally, the character designs were initially done by mangaka Hisashi Eguchi, of Stop!! Hibari-kun! fame, before being adapted for the anime by Teiichi Takiguchi (Cybersix, Tide-Line Blue).
Like I said, when I first started really getting into anime in 2004 & 2005 it didn't take long for me to see the occasional person bring up Uninhabited Planet Survive as a (then) modern day classic, with an excellent story, memorable characters, & simply just a great series overall. At the time I could see why this show wasn't picked up for English release during the 00s, since it really wasn't like most of what was getting released from the then-new titles that would come out within a year or two of their initial airings in Japan, and during the 2010s there was so much of a focus on simulcasting that catalog additions tended to be less of a focus, outside of a certain company. Still, over 20 years later, I am kind of surprised that Uninhabited Planet Survive has yet to be licensed by a company like Discotek Media (which had released numerous previously-unlicensed anime of the 00s over the past 10-15 years) or even Sentai Filmworks (which, at least early on, also put out a bunch of previously skipped over 00s anime), but I guess maybe there could also be the argument that enough time has passed that it's mostly been forgotten by most people. Again, when I first heard of the praise for it it was still relatively new (& even then it was still much more of a cult favorite), but with so much anime being made on a seasonal basis for the past 20+ years it's completely understandable that even series that were once praised could become forgotten with time if they never get licensed for official release. I guess maybe it being an NHK IP could also be a potential licensing hurdle, but it's not like NHK anime never gets licensed, either.
Regardless, when it came to making this list Uninhabited Planet Survive was one of the first ones that came to mind, so here it is.
Finally, we end the first half of this list of never licensed anime from the 00s with one that, even to this day, still results in the occasional bit of bewilderment, i.e. "Wait, they made an anime out of this?!". So, to get the simple question out of the way, there is indeed a TV anime based on the works of mystery writing icon Agatha Christie. Specifically, airing on NHK from July 2004 to May 2005 for 39 episodes, Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple/Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple adapted 20 of Christie's various short stories & novels starring two of her most iconic characters, Hercule Poirot & "Miss" Jane Marple. Now Christie herself didn't seem to ever have Poirot & Marple crossover in her works, though it was seemingly done every now & then in some film adaptations, so this TV anime featured an original character to allow Poirot & Marple to appear together. Namely, we now have Mable West, a teenage girl who wishes to become a great detective & wants to become Poirot's assistant. Mable's father, mystery writer Raymond West, eventually agrees but only on the condition that she also spend time with her great-aunt, Miss Marple. This is what allows Poirot & Marple to crossover for the anime adaptation of these Agatha Christie stories, with short stories usually being adapted in one or two episodes, while a longer novel story is done in four.
To be perfectly honest, I didn't learn about this anime until maybe only the past decade, if even that. Fansubs have long existed for the entire show, so people certainly knew of it, but I guess the novelty of there being a long-form Agatha Christie anime series just didn't interest people in my early days as an anime fan; plus, you know, mystery anime has always been a tough sell, even via fansub. And, to be fair, the fact that this is technically a licensed IP, & one of the most iconic mystery IPs in the entire world (probably second only to Sherlock Holmes), is likely what has kept Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple from ever being licensed for official English release. It's a mystery series (Strike 1) based on an IP that no doubt is likely still expensive to get the license to (Strike 2), and like the previous entry there could potentially be some snags regarding NHK (Strike 3, possibly). Still, there's no way I was going to make this list & not include Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, because it's something that anime fans should (at the very least) know the existence of.
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And that's six anime from the 00s that have yet to be licensed for official English release, and while some have remained like that for pretty understandable reasons others are maybe a little less so. Still, much like how classic manga have started becoming more & more licensed due to manga fandom now having an older base that can appreciate older works when compared to 20 years ago, the same could still be true for anime from 20+ years ago as well. Come back next week for Part 2, where we cover unlicensed anime that came out during the second half of the 21st Century's first decade... and were more or less victims of the English anime industry's massive downsizing & Crunchyroll's initial slow roll out of simulcasting.
Gambler Densetsu Tetsuya © Fumei Sai・Yasushi Hoshino/Kodansha・Tetsuya Production Committee (TV Asahi, Toei Agency, Toei Animation, Toei Video)
Whistle! © Daisuke Higuchi/Shueisha・Marvelous
Hanada Shonen-shi © Makoto Isshiki/Kodansha・VAP・NTV
Ashita no Nadja © Toei Animation
Uninhabited Planet Survive © Hisashi Eguchi・NHK・NEP
Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple © 2004 NHK, artwork © NHK, NEP21, OLM 2004, character © Agatha Christie Ltd. 2004
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