And, really, while the first half of the 00s certainly had their notable titles that have yet to be licensed for official English release, it's the second half of the decade where the biggest names truly reside. The first half of the decade was, for the most part, the titles that were simply skipped over by the companies during the apex of the 00s anime bubble. The second half, though, is where we start to get the titles that were skipped over more because the industry was simply going into free fall, and while Crunchyroll certainly wanted to simulcast "everything" ASAP they obviously couldn't do so right away. Therefore, here are six TV anime from the second half of the 00s that remain unlicensed, and in this case most of them are still wanted strongly to this day... but first something that's definitely less talked about & still fits in during the anime bubble days.
Despite being the most widely known manga magazine in the world, one that's still so (relatively) popular in Japan that it only recently hit a physical circulation below 1,000,000 for the first time since 1970 (while all of its competition went sub-million years ago), the actual first 10+ years of Weekly Shonen Jump (i.e. from its debut in 1968 to at least the early 80s) are almost a mystery to most fans, likely even in Japan itself. A big reason for that is due to the fact that only a handful of Jump manga during the late 60s & all of 70s actually received anime adaptations, with only four being made during that time (Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho, The Gusty Frog, Koya no Shonen Isamu, & Samurai Giants), as well as two media mix titles that weren't really adaptations (Judo Boy/Kurenai Sanshiro & Mazinger Z). It wasn't until the near-instant smash success of Dr. Slump Arale-chan on Fuji TV in 1981 that Jump truly embraced anime adaptations (& never looked back), so because of that most of the magazine's earliest hits have either remained manga-only or only saw live-action adaptations, usually via movies (but some TV series, too). In fact, only two Jump manga that date back to the 70s have since seen first time TV anime adaptations post-serialization, as Cobra & Kinnikuman both got anime while they were still running. One is Ring ni Kakero 1 from 2004 to 2011 (which, as mentioned in Part 1, got "Honorable Mention" status for this list due to it being included in a prior list of similar subject matter), while the other is the first entry in the second half of this list, Play Ball.
Running from 1973 to 1978 & totaling 22 volumes, Play Ball was the creation of the late Akio Chiba, the second-youngest brother of the legendary Tetsuya Chiba, & was actually the concurrent sequel to his Monthly Shonen Jump baseball manga Captain, which debuted in 1972. In short, Captain initially starred Takao Taniguchi, who wound up leading his middle school baseball team as "captain" before graduating to high school, thereby ending his time in Captain's story; one of his teammates would become the new captain &, therefore, the next lead. Chiba started Play Ball in order to continue Taniguchi's story as he eventually joined his high school's baseball team, all while also continuing the middle school story of Captain; as each lead for Captain would graduate middle school they would then also move over to Play Ball. While Play Ball was popular in Weekly Jump during its run, Captain was an outright smash hit for Monthly Jump (possibly even the magazine's first hit manga), and after ending in 1979 it would receive an anime adaptation via a TV special in 1980... which was so popular that it got an anime movie in 1981... which was also so popular that in 1983 a 26-episode TV anime adaptation debuted, covering from Taniguchi's time as captain all the way into some of third captain Igarashi's time. Anyway, in 2005 Play Ball finally received its own TV anime adaptation, 32 years after its debut (which I'm pretty sure remains the record for longest wait between manga debut & anime debut for a Jump title), essentially acting as a direct sequel to the Captain anime. It was made by the same studios (Eiken & Magic Bus) & director (Satoshi Dezaki) as Captain, while the OP themes were covers of Captain's iconic OP theme; in fact, this was Satoshi Dezaki's final time directing. The first season ran from July to September 2005, followed by a second season (Play Ball 2nd) from January to March 2006, resulting in a total of 26 episodes.
Unfortunately, much like with Captain, the Play Ball anime has seen next to no real attention by the fansub scene, even back when it was new; with only three episodes ever subbed into English; that's still more than what Captain ever got, which was nothing. To some extent it maybe does feel like one should ideally watch Captain first to truly enjoy Play Ball, but at the same time Taniguchi himself starts anew, in a way, when going to high school (& the manga ran in a different magazine, with likely only so much crossover between readerships), so I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to watch & enjoy Play Ball when taken on its own. That said, in today's world it would just make more sense to license both Captain & Play Ball together from Eiken, so take that as you will. Man, I really should watch & review both shows one day...
OK, now we move onto the stuff that people are still confounded as to why they've never been licensed yet... and we begin with what's easily the biggest name on this list, if not the biggest unlicensed name of them all from the entire decade. Getting his start in the late 80s as a key animator, Masaaki Yuasa would slowly move his way up in the anime industry, also getting to work on storyboards & character designs, then later directing individual episodes before being given his first real chance to show his full talents with the 30-minute OVA Cat Soup in 2001. Officially Yuasa was just a storyboarder, co-writer, & animation producer, but director Tatsuo Sato admitted that he more or less gave Yuasa free rein to do whatever he wanted with the OVA, with the end result being a visual feast that ran the gamut from psychedelic to absurdist to some nice "sasuga sakuga". Yuasa would be given his first full directorial debut with the film Mind Game in 2004, and in 2006 Yuasa finally got the chance to direct an entire TV series with the show Kemonozume/Claw of the Beast, which told the story of Toshihiko Momota, a swordsman in modern-day Japan who carries on the tradition of his Kifuken-style dojo by killing "Shokujinki", human-eating monsters who can disguise themselves as normal humans. However, Toshihiko falls in love with a woman named Yuka Kamitsuki, and despite Yuka being a Shokujinki the love between her & Toshihiko is true, and they will fight off anyone who tries to kill one or the other, whether it's another Kifuken swordsman or another Shokujinki.
With the support of the legendary anime producer Masao Maruyama, who used his clout to encourage WOWOW to take more risks, Yuasa was more or less allowed to make whatever he wanted with Kemonozume, with the end result being just as visually striking, experimentative, & wild as anything he had done before, while the forbidden love story at the heart of the show has been very well received. Not just that, but it was during the production of Kemonozume that Yuasa met a South Korean artist named Eunyoung Choi, who did key animation & episode direction for the show, with the two becoming consistent collaborators on more or less all of Yuasa's titles following this, before they co-founded anime studio Science Saru in 2013. Following Kemonozume Yuasa would make his name more well known by directing 2008's Kaiba, but he'd truly become the legend he is today in 2010 with The Tatami Galaxy, which was then followed by the Kickstarter-funded anime short Kick-Heart in 2013, the TV anime adaptation of Ping Pong in 2014, the 2017 film The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, & finally 2018's Devilman Crybaby, which is where Yuasa became fully introduced to a "mainstream" audience due to it being a Netflix-exclusive. Today Masaaki Yuasa is one of anime's most cherished & beloved directors, a true "auteur" in the industry, with all of his major directorial works (both early & current) being made available officially in English in some form or another... except for Kemonozume, that is (& also his occasional Crayon Shin-chan work, but that's more understandable). Sure, titles like Kaiba & Mind Game took a good while before they finally received official English releases (nine & fourteen years, respectively), but this very month marks Kemonozume's 20th Anniversary (it debuted in Japan on August 5, 2006) & it still has never been licensed for official English release.
Could there be some sort of hold up? Maybe. Could Yuasa's rise in popularity possibly be resulting in the licensor(s) in Japan asking for too much money for a 20-year old show, or some other unreasonable demand? Possibly. Regardless, the fact that Masaaki Yuasa's directorial debut for TV is still without any official English release just doesn't feel right.
If there was one thing that, arguably, best defined the 00s for anime it was the old-school IP revival. Throughout the 00s there were numerous anime put into production that were based on something that had first debuted in the 60s, 70s, or 80s, sometimes as brand new adaptations but other times as just straight up reboots/re-imaginings; hell, I already covered one in this list with Play Ball! This was especially true for mech anime during the decade, as the 00s alone saw new anime productions for Gaiking, Getter Robo (twice!), Mazinger (also twice!), Dancouga, Tetsujin 28 (also also twice!), Mars, Transformers (multiple times over!), Zoids (also multiple times over!), Dangaioh, Patlabor, Machine Robo, Gunbuster, Yoshiyuki Tomino's Byston Well Series, Giant Robo, Reideen, Armored Trooper Votoms, & the origin of our next entry, Koutetsu/Steel Jeeg. Running from 1975 to 1976 for 46 episodes, Koutetsu Jeeg was one of the mech anime Tori Animation produced alongside Go Nagai, and while it didn't quite reach the heights of Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, or UFO Robo Grendizer it was still well remembered, in part due to how the titular giant robot worked. Namely, the main character Hiroshi Shiba was a cyborg who transformed into the head, while the body of Jeeg itself could be interchanged with different parts using super magnetism. The 00s old-school IP revival was especially good for Go Nagai, who had all variety of his works given new anime adaptations (well beyond just the giant robots), so it was kind of inevitable that something would happen with Koutetsu Jeeg, and that finally happened from April to July of 2007 with Koutetsushin/Steel God Jeeg.
Most of these 00s mech anime revivals were either direct sequels to what came before or were outright full reboots that had no direct connection to older works, but Koutetsushin Jeeg kind of played both sides of the coin. Taking place 50 years after the final battle between Hiroshi Shiba/Jeeg & Queen Himika of the Jamatai Kingdom resulted in both sides disappearing completely, the series starred Kenji Kusanagi, a normal 17-year old who becomes the pilot for a new Steel Jeeg (this time his motorcycle turns into the Jeeg head) as part of a new version of Build Base, the organization that helped Hiroshi Shiba out in the OG series, after Himika & Jamatai return; the titular "Steel God Jeeg" wouldn't appear until the show's climax. However, this new anime wasn't actually a sequel to either the OG anime or even Go Nagai's manga take from around the same time, as events from the original battle referenced in the new anime didn't always match up completely with either OG interpretation. Therefore, Koutetsushin Jeeg was really more of a standalone series (that took place in its own, bespoke, timeline), and the general response from fans of the genre was that it was a very fun & wild 13-episode series, another feather in the cap of director Jun Kawagoe, who by this point was essentially the de facto director for most of these Go Nagai mecha revivals; the OP theme even had the late Ichiro Mizuki (who sang the OG Jeeg theme) return to JAM Project for one last song.
Unfortunately, while the vast majority of these old-school mech anime revivals of the 00s would see official English release at some point or another, Koutetsushin Jeeg has remained one of the few holdouts, alongside Shin Seiki Den Mars, Machine Robo Rescue, GR -Giant Robo-, & Dancouga Nova. It's honestly a rather bizarre case, especially since all of the other Go Nagai anime revivals of that same decade have seen official English releases (some multiple times over, even!), so it's a little confusing as to why this one has been left in the dust bin.
As we can see already, the second half of the 00s remains filled with titles that, had the English anime bubble not burst like it did, likely would have been licensed for home video, at the very least... but this next one is a series that I still wholeheartedly believe should have been aired on Adult Swim back in the early 2010s. Earlier this year I did a massive, six-part series covering (most of) the most notable manga that have been serialized in Monthly Shonen Gangan over the past 35 years, and in the very first part one of the manga I covered was 1996-2000's Go Go! Purin Teikoku, the debut serialization for Makoto Kubota that was a parody of tokusatsu by having the titular "evil" alien empire of the title that wanted to conquer Earth actually be rather incompetent, if not downright polite. After ending Purin Teikoku Kubota would make manga for other publishers for roughly four years, before returning to Square-Enix in late 2004 with a new series, this time in Young Gangan. This series would be an even bigger hit for Kubota, running for a solid decade before ending in late 2014 after 20 volumes, and during that time it received two seasons of TV anime, with the first season running from October 2008 to March 2009 & the second season from October 2009 to March 2010, totaling 52 (15-minute) episodes. That manga & anime would be Tentai Senshi/Astro Fighter Sunred.
Similar to Purin Teikoku, Sunred was also a parody of tokusatsu (&, in fact, both series were eventually revealed to take place in the same world), only now the story focused on the eternal battle between the heroic ally of justice Sunred & the evil world conquering organization Florshiem (their Kawasaki branch, specifically)... oh, wait, my bad. I accidentally mixed things up, because while Sunred is technically the hero he's also an utter & absolute jackass who often cares little about actually being a superhero, even going as far as almost never wearing his full outfit when fighting the forces of Florshiem. However, he's always wearing his helmet at all times, & somehow is able to both smoke & eat while wearing it. Meanwhile, everyone in Florsheim is either actually a rather polite & an upstanding citizen, despite them wanting to take over the world, or they're pretty damn pathetic & have bizarre powers, like the idiot wolfman Taiza turning into a genius pretty boy human during a new moon, i.e. when the Moon's barely even visible at all. It gets so bad that, more often than not, Sunred simply verbally abuses Florsheim's members for being so absolutely hapless, rather than actually fight them... to the point where everyday citizens sometimes wind up feeling sorry for the villains. Yeah, you can see why I said that Astro Fighter Sunred should have been airing on Adult Swim in the early 2010s, because the kind of upended & ridiculous humor seen in this anime would have fit that block perfectly, and the fact that all 52 episodes collectively total about the length of a 26-episode series meant that it still could have aired on American TV just fine, two episodes at a time.
However, for whatever reason, no English anime company has yet bothered to give Astro Fighter Sunred a go officially in English, and that seriously confuses me. I remember absolutely adoring the few episodes I did see of it back in the day, & Season 1's OP theme remains an all-timer, so while its time as a potential American TV airing has long passed I still can't figure out why it hasn't been released over here yet, in general, especially since tokusatsu has only grown in popularity.
For the penultimate entry in this second half we have an anime that, quite frankly, got screwed over big time & should have been licensed for English streaming as a catalog addition the same time as two other titles did... but was just left in the dugout, seemingly because it wasn't from the same original creator as the other two. As of this piece Madhouse's TV anime adaptation of Shinobu Kaitani's 2005-2015 Young Jump manga Liar Game is still running over in Japan, with Yuzo Sato acting the "Chief Director" for it. However, just as with the original manga, there was a Madhouse-animated & Sato-directed TV anime adaptation of a Kaitani manga prior to Lair Game... but before that we have to go even further back. Back in 2005 Madhouse & Sato debuted a TV anime adaptation of Nobuyuki Fukumoto's iconic mahjong manga Akagi, with the help of VAP & NTV, and it did so well that Madhouse, Sato, VAP, & NTV followed it up with a TV anime adaptation of Fukumoto's Kaiji in 2007, which itself did so well that a second season came out in 2011. However, in between those two seasons of Kaiji was a third entry in what I like to call "Madhouse's Gambling Trilogy", and here's where Shinobu Kaitani comes in. Prior to Liar Game, Kaitani was serializing a baseball manga over in Business Jump from 1998 to 2006, one where the focus was more on psychological gamesmanship than pure athletic ability, and that made it a perfect title to follow up the first season of Kaiji. So from October 2008 to April 2009 Madhouse, Sato, VAP, & NTV (plus D.N. Dream Partners, which helped produce Kaiji) made a 25-episode TV anime adaptation of the first half of One Outs.
Despite coming from an entirely different creator than Akagi & Kaiji, One Outs (subtitled Nobody wins, but I!) very much felt like a proper successor, telling the story of Toa Tokuchi, a talented pitcher who loves gambling in what he calls "One Outs", a 1-on-1 game between a pitcher & a batter with money on the line. Toa winds up getting recruited to pitch for the Saitama Lycaons, the weakest team in the Japanese league, but agrees to do so only under a "One Outs contract", where he gets ¥5,000,000 yen for every out he pitches, but loses ¥50,000,000 for every run he gives up. However, the reality of the Japanese league in One Outs is that almost all of the other teams play dirty, in one way or another, resulting in Toa needing to play just as dirty (if not even more so) in order to bring the Lycaons out from the gutter, not to mention earn big money from his contract. With the exception of Akihiko Matsumoto replacing Hideki Taniuchi for the music, giving the show a much more jazzy & upbeat feel, One Outs was very much a return for most of the staff from Akagi & Kaiji, right down to having Masato Hagiwara voicing Toa, like he had done for both Akagi & Kaiji beforehand. The end result was another simply outstanding anime that really does feel like a true follow up to what came before, so when Crunchyroll announced in 2013 that it would be streaming Kaiji & (later) Akagi it was only natural to think that One Outs would also be announced later on, maybe in 2014... only for One Outs to never get announced for official English streaming. Yes, despite being the literal follow-up to Akagi & Kaiji, right down to having most of the same major staff & even the same exact lead voice actor, One Outs was never made available alongside its gambling anime brethren, and the only explanation I can possibly think of is simply because it wasn't based on a Nobuyuki Fukumoto manga. You can't even argue that baseball anime was simply still too niche back then, because Akagi's all about mahjong! In that sense it makes the Liar Game anime, which is for all intents & purposes a reunion-of-sorts for some of the people that made Akagi, Kaiji, & One Outs (though no Masato Hagiwara in the voice cast, at least not yet), feel all the more like the odd one out because its older sibling anime has still never been licensed for official English release.
Seriously, One Outs is one of the most unique & intriguing sports anime ever created, and the fact that it's still never been given a chance officially in English is, in my opinion, one of the most notable gaps in English anime licensing history, especially when its fellow "Madhouse Gambling Trilogy" siblings have both been given opportunities, with Kaiji even going so far as getting a (rather damn good) English dub for its first season in more recent years.
Since I just covered a Madhouse/VAP/NTV/D.N. Dream Partners collab, I figure we should end this entire list of unlicensed TV anime from the 00s with another one, though in this case it's neither a gambling nor sports anime; that being said, this was the show that directly replaced One Outs on NTV. Last year I watched & reviewed a lot of anime adaptations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the iconic & highly romanticized retelling of the actual historical era of civil war China went through between 189 & 280 AD/CE. Easily the most interesting anime I watched from that batch was Souten Kouro/Beyond the Heavens, the 26-episode adaptation of the 1994-2005 manga by King Gonta & the late Hagin Yi that put the focus on Cao Cao, the man who laid the foundation for what would later become Cao Wei & is generally portrayed as the most "antagonistic" character in Romance & its various adaptations; the manga actually only recently started receiving an official English release, though it's via the AI-supported emaqi. The Souten Kouro anime is also notable for being the last anime directed by the legendary & highly respected animator/designer Toyoo Ashida, who was best known for directing the original Fist of the North Star anime, the Vampire Hunter D OVA, & even World of Narue, before his passing in 2011.
The concept for the Souten Kouro manga was to essentially interpret the story of Romance as though it was a Broadway musical, but while doing his initial research King Gonta found Romance too uninteresting for him. So instead Gonta read all of Records of the Three Kingdoms, the original historical account, while deciding to create his own embellishments to help give Souten Kouro its own unique flair when compared to other Romance adaptations. When it comes to the TV anime adaptation the end result is a very cool take on this era of Chinese history, focused on an immensely charismatic man who's often one or two steps ahead of everyone else, and in the rare moment where he is caught off guard is also just enough of a "magnificent bastard" to escape with his life. The "Broadway musical" concept is also very obvious, as while characters aren't singing their lines (except for Lü Bu, whose battle cries are just a tad melodic) there is a very embellished & "extra" feel to it all, which when combined with an excellently orchestral musical score (with a little rock here & there) creates a similar enough vibe to that of an intense musical. However, it's also easy to see why no one's really bothered to license & release Souten Kouro officially in English, and that's simply because it's a Romance of the Three Kingdoms adaptation. These kinds of anime have almost never seen official English release, in general, with the only exceptions being the first film in Shinano Kikaku's trilogy & an "If an anime is licensed for a service that barely anyone really uses, then was it ever really licensed?" run for Koutetesu Sangokushi over on Viki that's long expired.
Also, to be fair, the Souten Kouro anime really isn't a good starting point for Romance newcomers, as it's so laser focused on Cao Cao (&, to a lesser extent, Liu Bei) that a lot of the other players get little to no attention, including most of Cao Cao's most important generals. Still, for those who have played a decent chunk of at least one Dynasty Warriors game, the Souten Kouro anime is a very cool & interesting take on the early part of the Romance story to check out, and maybe one day it can be given that chance officially in English, instead of just via fansubs.
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And with that we've reached the end of this list of 12 TV anime from the 00s that remain unlicensed for official English release to this very day. Naturally, there are many possible reasons as to why these anime have never been licensed. Some simply don't have any notoriety to them outside of Japan (if people haven't even heard of it before, & it's not new, then they're likely to just not care), others are simply way too niche (this is still a business, after all, so companies want to make their money back, at the very least), and others still may just not be available to license (there are numerous anime over the decades known to be stuck in international licensing limbo today, & likely way more that fans simply don't know of). Any of those reasons (plus more, I'm sure) could be why these 00s anime have never been licensed for English release, but we as fans tend to never be privy to that kind of information, so all we can do is (for the most part) just hope that, one day, titles like these (& many others) may potentially be given a chance in the future.
And, like I said at the start of Part 1, that initial list of 00s TV anime I gathered together was close to 60 titles, so I can most certainly return to this list concept one day in the future. However, before that, I should probably first see what's been left unlicensed from decades prior to the 00s... and I think I have a new multi-month project that'll get me through most of the rest of this year (& won't be an insane endeavor to embark on this time!).
Play Ball © Akio Chiba/Eiken・Play Ball Production Committee
Kemonozume © Masaaki Yuasa/Madhouse・Kemonozume Production Committee
Koutetsushin Jeeg © Go Nagai/Dynamic Planning・Build Base (Pony Canyon, Dynamic Planning, Kyoraku Sangyo Co. Ltd., Bandai, Actas, Lantis, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, WOWOW)
Astro Fighter Sunred © Makoto Kubota/Square-Enix・FlyingDog
One Outs © Shinobu Kaitani/Shueisha・One Outs Production Committee (NTV, D.N. Dream Partners, VAP, Madhouse)
Souten Kouro © King Gonta・Hagin Yi/Kodansha・VAP・NTV・D.N. Dream Partners
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