Manga DVD Ring ni Kakero: New Cast Sound, Same Series Smell

Anyone who reads this blog should know that I am a giant fan of Masami Kurumada's Ring ni Kakero. Though you can classify it as a sports manga & anime series, specifically boxing, it's over-the-top style also makes it more of a shonen action/fight title, in the vein of Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, and One Piece. Understandably, there are people who prefer to have realism in stuff like this, and I do enjoy those kinds of titles as well, but to me Ring ni Kakero is simply 100% concentrated fun and entertaining all the way through. Like I mentioned in the last review, when Shadow Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment teamed up to make the Manga DVD series, Ring ni Kakero was chosen as one of the titles to be used. Coming in at a little over an hour in length, Manga DVD Ring ni Kakero (it uses the logo style RnK2 introduced, but doesn't have the "1", oddly enough) is the shortest of the three productions, and in some ways it does suffer a little because of that. Still, it's definitely an interesting piece that shows off how the series was adapted before Toei started animating it.

There's no real need to go into a full-on synopsis here, as Manga DVD Ring ni Kakero adapts the World Tournament Chapter, much like this year's Ring ni Kakero 1: Sekai Taikai-hen did. Instead, I'll bring up the parts that are the same and the parts that are different. The Manga DVD adapts the fights against Team France, Team Germany, and Team Greece, skipping out entirely on the beginning of the story arc as well as the fight against Team Italy. Since this is only about an hour long, this adaptation is very fast-paced, with fights going from start to finish like lightning when compared to how Sekai Taikai-hen adapted them. Admittedly, I don't really understand why this Manga DVD is only slightly over an hour long, while the other two (Kyoufu Shinbun and Sanctuary) are in the 80-minute range. Having it be this short results in some little portions of story being cut out, making this not as approachable for newcomers, and the fights definitely can go by way too fast, but that was probably the main idea anyway. Outside of the Super Famicom game, this was the first time the manga was adapted into a production with voice work, so they made it for pre-existing fans who simply wanted voices to go with some of their favorite scenes. But even with this shorter time, the Manga DVD does actually adapt two small scenes that the anime would skip over, both involving Team Germany; the first is a scene where Helga meets Team Golden Japan Jr. and then brags about how his country's style of data-based boxing is the future of the sport while the second scene is simply a moment where Scorpion and Ishimatsu trade some trash talk right outside the ring. They're not big scenes, but it was still cool to see that they were adapted in some way.

Manga DVD Kyoufu Shinbun: I Want to End My Subscription...

Back when I was reviewing the Ring ni Kakero anime series & Super Famicom video game I had mentioned something called the "Manga DVD". The Manga DVD series were a trio of DVDs produced by a company called Shadow Entertainment and distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Each DVD was based on a different manga series, Jirou Tsunoda's Kyoufu Shinbun, Masami Kurumada's Ring ni Kakero, and Sho Fumimura (a.k.a. Yoshiyuki Okamura/Buronson) & Ryoichi Ikegami's Sanctuary, and they were all released on October 3, 2003 at a price point of 980 Yen. With a tagline of "Enjoy the Digital Comics World!", the best comparison I can give for the Manga DVDs are that they were the manga equivalent of those video graphics novels based on popular comic series that occasionally come out here in North America, usually now with one of those original animated features that Marvel & DC produce lately. From what I can tell, SPE was hoping to make Manga DVD a larger brand, with these three being a test. Unfortunately, sales must not have been good since nothing else came from Manga DVD, making these three productions an obscure-yet-interesting part of anime & manga history. It isn't quite manga, since there's audio involved, and it isn't quite anime, since it's not actually animated but rather uses the manga panels with some video effects added in. And since today is Halloween I figure that it's the perfect time to talk about one of these productions.

Kyoufu Shinbun/Newspaper of Terror originally debuted back in Ahita Shoten's Weekly Shonen Champion magazine in 1973 and ran until 1976, totaling 29 volumes. Jirou Tsunoda is mostly known for doing horror manga, and Kyoufu Shinbun is no different, and with an apparent occult boom occurring in Japan during the 70s this manga was in the perfect time to shine. Even after its end the title still has a strong name behind it. In mid-1991, Studio Pierrot made a two-episode OVA based on the manga, with Tohru Furuya voicing main character Rei Kigata, and just a few months ago a recent live-action movie adaptation of the manga was released on DVD. In between the two, though, is Manga DVD Kyoufu Shinbun, an 86-minute feature that adapts the beginning, three individual stories, as well as the end of the manga. Though it's not subtitled in any way, if you have a basic knowledge of Japanese you should still be able to follow this feature just fine.

Rei Kigata is a no-nonsense high-school student who only believes in what he can see, so things like ghosts and the like don't exist to him. One night, though, a mysterious newspaper comes through his window; calling itself the "Kyoufu Shinbun" the newspaper describes the death of Rei's teacher that will occur the next day. Confused, Rei shows the paper to his teacher the next morning before they get to school, but all his teacher sees is a normal newspaper. After shooing Rei away, the teacher is then hit by a car and dies, making Rei believe fully in the paper. The paper Rei gets the next night reveals that every time he gets a paper 100 days will be taken from his remaining life. From here on out Rei becomes involved in mystery after mystery involving the occult, with the Kyoufu Shinbun still being delivered to Rei.