The 80s was also the decade that truly began Shonen Jump's dominance when it came to TV anime adaptations of its various manga, as the massive success of Dr. Slump Arale-chan in 1981 led to the near-guaranteed assurance of other adaptations from that point on, including Space Adventure Cobra, Kinnikuman, Cat's Eye, Fist of the North Star, Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball, Kimagure Orange Road, City Hunter, & too many others to name in just the 80s alone.
This was also the decade where the Japanese anime industry truly started to make an impact abroad, so much so that international companies were not only simply licensing like before but were now making entire co-productions with major anime studios. While Star Blazers (the English adaptation of Space Battleship Yamato) technically debuted in September 1979 it ran primarily during the 80s, and it was followed by things like Voltron (which used both Beast King GoLion & Armored Fleet Dairugger XV), Saber Rider & the Star Sherriffs (i.e. Space Musketeer Bismarck), Macron 1 (which combined GoShogun with Aku Daisakusen Srungle) & Robotech (the fusion of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada). Meanwhile, many animated productions of the 80s that would normally be seen as "Western" were actually either co-produced by a Japanese studio or simply had a Japanese studio provide some (or even much) of the animation itself, as seen with titles like Ulysses 31, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Rainbow Brite, & Thundercats. The (end of the) 80s was also when we started seeing the very first companies forming with the distinct intention to bring over anime in its original, uncut, & Japanese form with English subtitles, namely U.S. Renditions, AnimEigo, & Right Stuf... though their actual first releases wouldn't come out until (depending on the region) the literal tail end of 1989, if not the start of 1990; the very first official English manga releases happened in the 80s, too. Without a doubt, while the 60s & 70s were an important first step in TV anime finding their way into international homes, it was during the 80s that "anime" first truly started making waves, so much so that the very idea of an anime "fandom" truly started becoming a thing during this decade.
Because of that notoriety & general push a lot of the biggest names when it comes to TV anime of the 80s have already seen an official English release, in one way or another... though there are still tons of gaps left to fill in, and that's where this list comes in. Just as with prior lists of this type in prior months I do have to exclude some titles & simply mention them here as Honorable Mentions, with Metal Armor Dragonar being the sole exclusion due to it being in an older list I made of a similar enough concept, while titles like Fang of the Sun Dougram, Touch, Mister Ajikko, & Captain Tsubasa are being excluded simply due to their massive lengths of anywhere between 75 to 128 episodes. So, once again, let's tune up the band & see what's left of the 80s to potentially mine out for official English release, because... ♪The rest is yet to come, and babe, won't that be fine?♪
Today is a bit of an unprecedented time when it comes to both classic/vintage manga & sports manga, because I still remember back when both of those were considered outright radioactive for official English releases. I say that because both are now (somewhat) more widely accepted, enough so that two of the most iconic boxing manga of all time, Ashita no Joe & Hajime no Ippo, now have official English releases for both their original manga & their respective anime adaptations, with Kodansha USA not only nearing the end of releasing all of Joe's manga physically (six our of eight omnibuses out, so far) but earlier this year announced physical omnibuses for the Ippo manga. Of course, for anyone who's familiar with me I always go to bat for a third iconic boxing manga in Ring ni Kakero, but there's also a fourth iconic manga that actually predates RnK by a year & comes from a magazine so far not represented by Joe, Ippo, or RnK: Yu Koyama's Ganbare/Go For It, Genki, which ran from 1976 to 1981 in Weekly Shonen Sunday. The manga told the story of Genki Horiguchi, the son of a traveling boxer named Hideki "Shark" Horiguchi who decides to re-enter the professional world... but, after achieving a winning streak, Hideki dies after a match against the immensely talented Kenji Seki. The now-orphaned Genki is raised by his maternal grandparents in a perfectly comfortable life, but secretly Genki decides to train to become a boxer himself, all so that he can defeat Seki himself (who winds up becoming the undefeated "forever" Featherweight Champion) & accomplish the dream his father never could. The manga also showed Genki grow up from a child all the way to him going pro after graduating from junior high.
Koyama made his boxing manga to be the direct opposite of Ashita no Joe, as Genki's father never wanted his son to take up his mantle, while Genki himself wasn't some dirty little orphan boy who had to scrap a life for himself on the streets, a la Joe Yabuki & his coach Danpei Tange. The manga would go on to be an iconic classic for Shonen Sunday during its run, & from July 1980 to April 1981 Toei Animation produced a TV anime adaptation of Ganbare Genki, one made by some of the same staff as the first Galaxy Express 999 movie, including Rintaro being the director. However, despite initially being planned to be a long-runner, there wound up being disagreements with the sponsors that resulted in the story shifting over to Genki's junior high days sooner than originally expected, and the show would end after only 35 episodes, right as Genki headed over to Tokyo to begin his path towards going pro. Still, a lot of the major staff (minus Rintaro) would move right over to Toei's next TV anime, the one that would take over Ganbare Genki's time slot... Dr. Slump Arale-chan. Yeah, Ganbare Genki would actually be the start of a 21-year run Toei Animation had on Fuji TV's "Wednesday at 7:00 pm" time slot, one that featured both Dr. Slump anime, all of Dragon Ball, DBZ, & GT, & even the first 63 episodes of One Piece.
In comparison to its boxing peers outside of Japan, Ganbare Genki might seem like a bit of an also-ran next to Ashita no Joe or Hajime no Ippo, but its influence & iconicity in Japan is nothing to underestimate, and even decades later it still inspires people, most recently at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. At that event female flyweight boxer Tsukimi Namiki won the bronze medal, and later cited reading Ganbare Genki as what made her want to take up boxing... despite her being born in 1998, 17 years after the manga had ended. If a boxing manga can continue to inspire future Olympic medal-winning athletes decades after the fact, then I imagine the TV anime adaptation would also be worth a watch.
Up next is a shojo classic among old-school fans, but since shojo anime has always demonstrably been a tough sell in English (even AnimEigo's admitted that its release of Looking for the Full Moon had underperformed, despite a strong enough start & a literally unreleased dub for the second half being included) it's understandable why no one's bothered to try this title, even in today's market. Born on April 16, 1959, Koi Ikeno is a mangaka probably known best (both in Japan & abroad) for two series. The second would be Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, a magical girl series that is known more for its anime interpretation, which is often cited as an early example of a "dark" magical girl series due to the limitations in Ririka's magic powers & what that implies in her battle against evil. However, the first would be easily Ikeno's most iconic work, and that'd be Tokimeki/Heart-Pounding Tonight, which originally ran in Shueisha's Ribon magazine from 1982 to 1994 & totaled 30 volumes. The manga detailed the life of Ranze Eto, the daughter of a werewolf mother & vampire father who so far hasn't showcased any signs of having supernatural powers herself... until she discovers that her power is to turn into a carbon copy of anything she bites, while sneezing turns her back to normal. Needless to say, this discovery throws a giant wrench into Ranze's life, which is seeing her entering junior high & fall for a boy named Shun Makabe. However, her parents don't want Ranze dating a seemingly normal human, while a fellow student named Yoko Kamiya (who's the daughter of a yakuza boss) becomes her love rival when it comes to Shun. Even after ending in 1994 Ikeno has continued to return to her most iconic work with a variety of sequels & spin-offs, with the most recent one (Tokimeki Twilight: Sorekara) debuting in 2021 in Cookie magazine & is still running, where it's currently at six volumes.
With such a popular manga from Ikeno it's only natural that a TV anime adaptation would come about, and that came to pass on October 7, 1982 at 7:00 pm when the Tokimeki Tonight anime debuted on NTV, becoming the first anime to air in that time slot since Tiger Mask finished airing 11 years prior in 1971. Amusingly enough, that same day saw Fuji TV debut the Space Adventure Cobra TV anime in the same exact time slot, creating quite an interesting piece of competition. This series was produced by (the now defunct) Group TAC & Toho, while the legendary Hiroshi Sasagawa (of Tatsunoko Pro fame) directed. Despite only totaling 34 episodes, though, the Tokimeki Tonight anime took nearly an entire year to actually air on NTV, due to it constantly being pre-empted by professional baseball games, resulting in April 1983 only airing one episode, May & July only airing two, June only airing three, & the entire month of August going by without airing a single episode, before the final episode eventually aired on September 22... nearly two months after the penultimate episode first aired. Regardless, the Tokimeki Tonight anime has gone on to be seen as an all-time classic by shojo fans, mixing together the usual childhood romance story with supernatural hijinks & a variety of classic horror monsters for flavor. It may not be a first pick when it comes to classic shojo worth licensing for English release, but you never know when someone might be willing to give it a chance.
As for Nurse Angel Ririka SOS... let's hold off on that until next month, OK?
Up next we have a trio of Shonen Jump adaptations, because (as mentioned) the 80s was the decade where Shueisha finally stopped being so stingy about TV anime adaptations of its hit manga (brought about, in part, due to the Mazinger Z manga being serialized in more than just Jump; yeah, super petty), and we begin with a series that I've actually already brought up in a prior list. While the now-defunct Monthly Shonen Jump kind of seemed like an also-ran sister magazine to Weekly Shonen Jump there were a number of hit manga that ran in its pages, and even after shuttering in 2007 its legacy is carried on with its successor, Jump Square. This is the magazine that housed the likes of Angel Densetsu & Claymore, Gag Manga Biyori, Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, Beet the Vandel Buster, Rosario + Vampire, Dragon Drive, Kishin Douji Zenki, Kekko Kamen, Mr. Clice, & one of its earliest hits, Akio Chiba's Captain. Running from 1972 to 1979 & totaling 26 volumes, Captain went against the grain of what was common to baseball manga of the era in two ways. First, it featured none of the superpowered "makyu" pitches that had become popular, instead focusing on a more realistic & down-to-Earth portrayal of baseball. Second, Chiba (who was one of the legendary Tetsuya Chiba's younger brothers) technically put the focus on the titular "Captain" of the Sumitani Junior High School baseball team... and that meant that the position changed hands over time. While Captain started off starring Takao Taniguchi he eventually graduated to high school, and when that happened the main character of Captain switched over to his teammate Marui, who became the new "Captain", and this would happen two more times over the course of the manga, with Igarashi & Shigekazu Kondo becoming the third & fourth/final "Captains" of the manga. Meanwhile, Taniguchi's story in high school would continue in the Weekly Jump manga Play Ball, which ran from 1973 to 1978 for 22 volumes, & I had included Play Ball's TV anime adaptation from the mid-00s in the second half of the 00s equivalent of this list back in August.
After both Captain & Play Ball ended, due to Akio Chiba simply pushing himself too hard & risking his health, anime studio Eiken & director Satoshi Dezaki (the younger brother of Osamu Dezaki) produced an anime TV special for Captain that aired on NTV on April 2, 1980, where it scored a 17.5% rating & NTV received tons of letters of appreciation for airing it. This success led to a second airing on August 20, one that featured roughly an additional 30 minutes of footage, & the end result was an even higher rating than before with 20.7%. A year later a Captain anime movie ran in theaters starting July 18, 1981 (though this could have literally just been the extended version of the TV special, for all I can tell), & then in 1983 a full-on TV anime series adaptation of Captain aired on NTV from January to July for 26 episodes, adapting all the way up through the Summer Regional Tournament during Igarashi's tenure as "Captain". The Captain TV anime series would go on to become a classic in its own right, inspiring tons of future professional players in Japan, most notably the legendary Ichiro Suzuki, who literally brought a complete VHS set of Captain with him to the Orix BlueWave (now Orix Buffaloes) dorm when he joined the team in the early 90s. Captain's iconic theme song "Kimi wa Nanika ga Dekiru" by 99Harmony is also one of the most iconic anime theme songs of all time in Japan, having been covered numerous times by other music acts (so much so that two different covers were used for Play Ball's TV anime), and the series has essentially never left Japanese airwaves due to constant reruns.
Unfortunately, Akio Chiba himself wouldn't live to see the long & lasting legacy Captain would have in Japan, as on September 13, 1984 (a little over a year after Captain TV finished its original run on NTV) Chiba would commit suicide due to issues relating to bipolar disorder; he was only 41. However, in 2017 Cozy Jokura (of Gurazeni: Money Pitch fame) would be allowed to continue where Chiba left off by debuting Play Ball 2 in Grand Jump, which continued the story of Taniguchi's time in high school, now with both Marui & Igarashi joining him. Then in 2019 Jokura also debuted Captain 2 in Grand Jump, which finished up Kondo's run as "Captain" before finally joining everyone at high school, with a now-graduated Taniguchi acting as the team's coach. Play Ball 2 would end in 2021 after 12 volumes, while Captain 2 is still running to this day & currently totals 20 volumes. As for the Captain anime's chances at being licensed, I imagine Eiken likely still asks a pretty penny for it, due to its iconicity in Japan, while (as I said in the 00s list) I'm sure today Eiken would expect anyone who licenses Captain to also license the Play Ball anime, as well. Still, in an anime/manga fandom that has become more open to sports series than ever before... you never know.
The second half of this list begins with an anime that, honestly, I'm rather surprised hasn't been picked up yet due to its subject matter, despite the manga now being given its first ever official English release. After the end of his hit debut gag manga Susume! Pirates in 1980, & the failure of his early 1981 follow-up Hinomaru Gekijou, Hisashi Eguchi would debut Stop!! Hibari-kun! in the pages of Weekly Jump in late 1981, which told the story of Kosaku Sakamoto, a teenage boy who moves in with the family of Ibari Ozora, a yakuza boss who was also a family friend of his mother's, after he becomes an orphan following his mother's passing. However, the REAL star of the manga was the titular Hibari Ozora, the third of Ibari's children who Kosaku immediately crushes on... only for him to immediately discover that seeming female Hibari is actually a boy, though she prefers that everyone treat her like a girl; however, Hibari actually being a boy is a secret known only to the Ozora Family & a few associates. Yes, Stop!! Hibari-kun! was a zany, & sometimes absurdist, comedy manga starring a trans girl, which for early-80s Shonen Jump (&, hell, even today) was definitely a bit of a wild move. However, while there were some elements that have aged roughly in the 40+ years since its run, which totaled 61 chapters across four volumes & ended in late 1963 (there were a couple of lengthy hiatuses during its run), Hibari herself has generally been seen as a bit of a trailblazer for LGBTQ+ anime/manga fans, especially since Eguchi almost never made Hibari herself the butt of the joke, but rather had everyone around her look like fools for not simply seeing her as she wanted to be seen.
Despite being a rather popular title, Eguchi's inability to maintain a proper weekly schedule is more or less what led to its sudden cancellation, as Editor-in-Chief Shigeo Nishimura refused Eguchi's request for a biweekly serialization pace. Regardless, said popularity is what would lead to Toei Animation producing a 35-episode TV anime adaptation of Stop!! Hibari-kun! that ran from May 1983 to January 1984, ending after the manga had been cancelled. Considering the disparity between manga length & anime length, it's not shocking to hear that the second half of the anime wound up going down its own path, mixing together anime-original stories with stories based on Eguchi's various one-shots. Unfortunately, due to this still pre-dating the era of VCRs really hitting it off & allowing people to record one show while watching another, the Hibari-kun! anime suffered from low ratings, as it was competing against not just fellow debuting anime Round Vernian Vifam, which was a bit of a surprise hit for its time, but also the megahit that was Doraemon, and some have argued that it starring a trans girl during the early 80s may have turned off parents, who'd rather have their kids watch Doraemon instead. Still, today Stop!! Hibari-kun! continues to be well received & respected by many, and that's what led to English comic publisher Peow2 deciding to make it their very first manga release in mid-2024, which they started releasing at the beginning of this year & are still in the midst of putting out, as of this piece. However, that's what makes the lack of any official English release for the Stop!! Hibari-kun! anime all the more confusing to me, as someone licensing the anime to potentially (& unofficially) go alongside the manga's official English release would have made perfect sense, not to mention the series in general being one that would likely appeal to what's now a much more notable & visible LGBTQ+ fandom than in the past.
Oh well, I guess that's just the confounding power Hibari Ozora continues to have over others, even decades later...
Next we have the series that marked the debut of a mangaka who's had a good number of his works, both in manga & anime, see official English release over the decades: Masakazu Katsura. Dating back to the 90s various English anime & manga companies have released a wide variety of titles from Katsura, namely Video Girl Ai, DNA², Shadow Lady, I"s, & Zetman, and his involvement outside of manga when it comes to character designs have seen English release as well, most notably Iria: Zeiram the Animation, Tiger & Bunny, Garo: Crimson Moon, The Girl in Twilight, & Astral Chain. However, the most notable work of Katsura's to have still never seen official English release is the title that he originally made his name with in Japan, Wingman (or "Wing-Man", according to some releases). Running from early 1983 to mid-1985 in Weekly Jump for 113 weekly chapters across 13 volumes, Wingman starred Kenta Hirono, a high school student who loves superheroes & sentai-style heroes & wished he could be one himself, creating a persona called "Wingman" & acting out his fantasies at school. However, after an encounter with a girl named Aoi Yume, the princess of an alternate universe named Podreams who has a book called the "Dream Note" that can make dreams come true, Kenta gets the ability to actually turn into Wingman and, alongside both Aoi & his childhood friend Miku Ogawa, Kenta fights against Rimel, an evil dictator who wants the Dream Note so that he can rule over both Podreams & Earth.
While Katsura created Wingman primarily to be a superhero series, his editor Kazuhiko Torishima asked that he include a romantic comedy aspect, which resulted in Aoi & Miku being Kenta's two love interests, plus other girls as the story continued on, & gave the series a little something extra. Katsura would then go on to become known primarily for his romance manga in Jump, both comical & serious, so Torishima clearly knew what Katsura would be best at. From February 1984 to February 1985 Toei would produce Yume Senshi/Dream Warrior Wingman, a 47-episode TV anime adaptation that apparently added the "Dream Warrior" surtitle in an effort to not lose any female viewers, as the anime that Wingman was replacing (Aishite Knight) was based on a shojo manga. The Wingman anime was notable for being the first anime to feature Ryo Horikawa in a lead role, as well as introducing an anime-original character (Kenta's next-door neighbor Masakazu Tonari) who'd later get added into the manga proper. The anime also pushed the romantic comedy aspects more, while also giving Wingman & his allies full-on pre-transformation speeches, to help push the tokusatsu influence; Red One from Bioman, the Super Sentai series that was running at the time, even cameos in the anime. While Wingman is definitely a smaller name amongst Masakazu Katsura's catalog nowadays it still hasn't been forgotten, as apparently many people who worked on Heisei Era entries for both Ultraman & Kamen Rider were fans of the manga & anime back when they were kids, and in 2024 a live-action TV adaptation was produced that was directed by tokusatsu legend Koichi Sakamoto.
In fact, Yume Senshi Wingman is the only remaining anime adaptation of a Masakazu Katsura manga that has yet to receive an official English release, as all other ones have seen at least one prior English release. While his name recognition today in English isn't what it once was back in the 90s & 00s, I think this is a gap that should probably be filled in at some point.
We end the first half of this 80s-themed list of unlicensed TV anime with a bit of a rarity: A Tatsunoko anime adaptation of a shojo manga. Running from 1983 to 1986 in Shogakukan's Ciao, Alpine Rose by Michiyo Akaishi told the tale of Randy Cortot, a boy living in the Swiss Alps during the 1930s who lives with his aunt & uncle & comes across a girl who was the sole survivor of a plane crash. Randy brings the lady home & finds out that she's suffering from amnesia & can't remember who she is, so Randy names her "Jeudi" (French for Thursday) in honor of the day of the week he found her. Randy & Jeudi are raised together, but after a few years Jeudi wants to finally figure out who she really is, with her only clue being a song that's stuck in her head titled "Alpen Rose", which is German for "Alpine Rose". This all happens while Europe is in the midst of World War II, and (naturally) over the course of their adventure Jeudi & Randy slowly fall in love. Alpine Rose was one of Akaishi's earliest manga, it was only her second serialization, and she's continuing to make manga to this very day, though anime adaptations have more or less eluded her for her entire career... except once.
On April 6, 1985 Fuji TV debuted Honou no/Fire of the Alpen Rose: Jeudi & Randy, a TV anime adaptation of Akaishi's manga that was handled by Tatsunoko Pro, making it the first time Tatsunoko ever adapted a shojo manga. Unfortunately, despite being planned to run for a whole year, the Alpine Rose anime would come to an early end on October 5 after only 20 episodes, and while there doesn't look to be any direct confirmation about what led to the abrupt ending it is noteworthy that this would be the final Tatsunoko anime to air on Fuji TV, which had aired the vast majority of Tatsunoko's shows since the studio's founding in 1962, until 2011 when [C] – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control aired as a part of noitaminA. The Alpine Rose anime also marked the start of a bizarre run of anime from Tatsunoko that would only last around 20 episodes or so, before Zillion broke the streak in 1987 with 31 episodes. Still, it's not as though Honou no Alpen Rose: Jeudi & Randy sounded like a lackluster production, as it was directed by the late Hidehito Ueda (who had directed Mecha-Doc for Tatsunoko just prior to this), had Sukehiro Tomita (Sailor Moon, Macross 7) handle series composition, featured music by Joe Hisaishi, & included a rather impressive voice cast, including the duo of Keiichi Nanba & Yoshino Takamori as Randy & Jeudi. The show's even been released on Blu-Ray in Japan, so it's not as though Tatsunoko has ignored it, after all this time.
As for the idea of Tatsunoko & shojo manga adaptations, we'll get to their other one in Part 2.
-----
With that we come to the end of the first half of this list of still-yet-to-be-licensed TV anime from the 80s. While this decade has arguably been more mined out for official English release by this point than the 60s & 70s, there are still more than enough iconic (or simply just interesting) titles left for companies to bring over, should they be daring enough to give any a try. We'll see more of that next week in the second half, as while the titles across both of these parts may not necessarily be the first things people think of they are (mostly) titles that would make older fans go "Oh, yeah, why hasn't this one been released in English yet?".
Ganbare Genki © Yu Koyama/Shogakukan・Toei Animation
Tokimeki Tonight © Koi Ikeno/Shueisha・Toho
Captain © Akio Chiba・Eiken
Stop!! Hibari-kun! © Hisashi Eguchi/Shueisha・Toei Animation
Yume Senshi Wingman © Masakazu Katsura/Shueisha・Toei Animation
Honou no Alpen Rose: Judy & Randy © Michiyo Akaishi・Shogakukan/Tatsunoko Pro
No comments:
Post a Comment