Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1995 (Part 5)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"In terms of where the Jaguar was by the end of November 1995, there's no way to sugarcoat things here: It's a console that's now dead man walking, being supported by a manufacturer which has literally given up at this point, though not admitting it publicly, and while there are still two more games by third-parties set for release before Atari Corporation truly bites the dust, they're still technically co-published by Atari, so third-party support is more or less dead for a while; even the Jaguar CD is already on life-support, despite only being out for a handful of months."

It's now December 1995, a mere three months after the Sony PlayStation finally launched in North America, and the Atari Jaguar is, to put it simply, effectively screwed. Behind the scenes, Atari Corporation has given up, and might actually be considering transitioning from being a hardware manufacturer to being strictly a software company so as to possibly stave off going out of business; this will be important next time. Still, there are games for the 64(?)-bit Panthera of a console ready for release, so release they shall... and there's a new holiday season on the brink, to boot. Likely with hopes of taking advantage of the increased sales this season usually brings about, Atari Corp. decides to lower the price of the Jag once again, the second time in a single year (the last one was in March), now selling the "Core" package for just $100 starting December 16. That date was likely done on purpose, as over the course of the next two days four games would come out for the Jaguar, bringing an end to the console's most "prolific" year, at least when it comes to how many games came out in a 12-month span.

So, does 1995 at least end off with the Jaguar baring its fangs & claws in defiance... or will it be the whimper of a battered wild cat?

The day after the Jag's second price drop, December 17, saw the release of a single new game, I-War. Not to be confused with the 1997 PC game of the same name, which likely got renamed to Independence War in North America because of this Jaguar title existing first, I-War marks the end of a run that started all the way back with the Jag's launch in November 1993. Specifically, this is the final Jaguar game to be developed by Imagitec Design, the UK-based studio that had previously given the console Raiden, Evolution: Dino Dudes, Zool 2, Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, & Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, all of which were ports of other games from other hardware; according to later interviews, internal conflicts ended Imagitec's relationship with Atari Corp. In comparison, I-War is a 100% original creation from Imagitec, though it wasn't actually first made with the Jag in mind. Initially, Imagitec had proposed a racing game to Phillips Interactive Media, i.e. a game for the CD-i, before backing out of the deal & eventually teaming with Atari, with the game initially being named the likes of "Redemption" (which it used when it was first shown earlier in 1995), "Dreadnaught", & "Netwar" before getting its finalized title in time for release at the very end of 1995. Also unlike any of Imagitec's prior Jaguar fare, I-War is 100% polygonal, instead of sprite based. Imagitec would wind up getting purchased & absorbed by Gremlin Interactive in early 1997, so let's see if I-War winds up being a proper final hurrah for one of the Jaguar's most reliable supporters, as Imagitec games literally comprise 12% of the Jag's entire cartridge catalog (6 out of 50).

Dragonball Evolution vs. Knights of the Zodiac: Stop! Stop! He's Already Dead!!

It's a phrase that has brought about terror from almost all anime & manga fans who have heard it spoken: The "Hollywood" Live-Action Adaptation. While there have obviously been good to even great examples of this, for every Alita: Battle Angel, Guyver 2, Crying Freeman, or even Netflix's One Piece there have seemingly been at least two or three examples of a Ghost in the Shell, Fist of the North Star, or Netflix's Cowboy Bebop, if they ever actually make it into proper production (see: Akira, Robotech, or Neon Genesis Evangelion); yes, not all are actually from "Hollywood", but it helps establish the idea. It's arguably one of the prime examples of the old "Roll the Dice" or "Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal" adage, i.e. take a chance & hope for the best, but you know the chance is greater that it'll wind up terrible. The year 2024, in particular, is both one of celebration (on this blog, at least) as well as loss, as while we're in the middle of celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Masami Kurumada's career in manga here at the Land of Obscusion, we've also recently mourned the passing of Akira Toriyama, creator of Dr. Slump & Dragon Ball, someone who was in the trenches with Kurumada over at Shonen Jump, specifically during the 80s & early 90s (i.e. "until Kurumada left").

We'll give Akira Toriyama a much more fitting piece to honor him with later this month, but this is Kurumada's 50th Anniversary year... and it's April Fools' Day.

Dragon Ball was a smash hit, and with it (initially, at least) being focused on martial arts it only made sense that there'd be people who wanted to adapt it into live-action. Over in Korea & Taiwan two unofficial movie adaptations were produced: 1990's Dragon Ball: Fight Son Goku, Win Son Goku (which is known for being the most accurate live-action adaptation) & 1991's Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins (which actually got a licensed release in English by Tai Seng in the 00s). Legendary action star Jackie Chan voiced interest in producing an official live-action adaptation back in 1995 but admitted that it'd require special effects & a budget that was simply untenable at the time. It wouldn't be until 2002 that Shueisha finally sold the live-action rights to Dragon Ball, in this case to 20th Century Fox, and while Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle) was approached to direct (& was a fan of the manga), he declined & simply agreed to help produce, since he only wished the direct stories that he created; he'd later break that vow somewhat when he co-directed 2013's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Eventually James Wong (The One, Final Destination 1 & 3) would get hired to direct, and while Ben Ramsey wrote the initial drafts (& was credited in the final product) it was Wong who wrote the final draft himself. The finished film, Dragonball Evolution (yes, it's a single word for this film), would finally see release in 2009, first in Japan on March 10 & the United States on April 10... and it was utterly trounced. Ben Ramsey himself has gone off on the film numerous times over the years, it's often lambasted by all anime fans (voice actor Kyle Hebert has even done live roastings of the movie at some anime cons; it's how I first saw the film), and while the commonly stated rumor of Akira Toriyama hating it so much that he conceived of 2013's Battle of Gods in response isn't exactly true (Toei had started pre-production on it without Toriyama's involvement), it is reasonable to assume that Toriyama wanted to be more hands-on with the franchise following Evolution's release, if only to prevent something like it from happening again. Really, the only "good" thing to come from this film was the PSP video game adaptation, which was pretty much just DBZ: Shin Budokai, but with a modified cast; it was actually the first time Bulma was playable in a Dragon Ball fighting game.

Meanwhile, Masami Kurumada had wanted to see a live-action adaptation of Saint Seiya more or less since the manga debuted in 1986. There was an attempt at such a thing sometime in the 90s with StarStorm, which never went beyond a proof-of-concept pitch, but for the longest time the closest thing was a pair of musicals based on Saint Seiya, one in 1991 (starring members of the bands SMAP & Tokio) & another in 2011. That all changed in 2016, when Toei Animation announced a trio of Saint Seiya productions, including an anime adaptation of spin-off manga Saintia Sho (which eventually came out in late 2018), a full-on CG anime reboot series (which debuted in 2019 & is still getting made to this day), & a live-action theatrical adaptation, with Stage 6 Films (a division of Sony Pictures) co-producing the last one. Polish animator/illustrator/director Tomek Bagiński (then best known for his intros to CD Projekt Red's The Witcher series of games) was hired to direct. Befitting this being a (mostly) non-Japanese production, the film was titled Knights of the Zodiac (the name Saint Seiya tends to use abroad), though in Japan it eventually got the final title of Saint Seiya: The Beginning. After some delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film finally came out on April 27, 2023 in Latin America (natch), followed by Japanese & US releases over the next few weeks... and it was utterly trounced, even more so than Dragonball Evolution; DBE earned ~$9.36 million in the US ($56.5 million, worldwide), while KotZ only earned ~$6.986 million (with no reported worldwide box office).

In many ways, Dragon Ball & Saint Seiya have always had a bit of a symbiotic coexistence, even if Toriyama & Kurumada themselves respected each other too highly to ever consider each other "rivals", so to continue celebrating Kurumada's 50th Anniversary &, to some extent, celebrate the legacy of Akira Toriyama, let's compare both of these Jump icons at their (apparent) worst & see which film comes out on top!

Majokko Daisakusen -Little witching mischiefs-: Wars May Be Fought with Magic, but They Are Won by Girls

Founded in 1989, Toys for Bob came about via the meeting & collaboration of Paul Reiche III & Fred Ford, two UC Berkley grads (though they didn't actually know each other during that time) who had already worked in the gaming industry for a while beforehand, with Reiche previously working on D&D over at TSR, while Ford come from the now-defunct Magicsoft, which actually developed games for the Japanese market. While it wouldn't get the "Toys for Bob" name until 1993, the studio would make itself known almost instantly with its first game, the action/strategy PC game Star Control in 1990, which was followed up by an all-time cult classic sequel, 1992's Star Control II, but today most people would be familiar with the studio via its later work. Particularly, Toys for Bob would achieve mainstream notoriety with the toys-to-life Skylanders franchise from 2011 to 2016, before helping remake the first three entries for both Crash Bandicoot & Spyro the Dragon, only for eventual owner Activision to put the studio on Call of Duty support duty alongside the occasional Crash Bandicoot title... oh, and then Toys for Bob's physical office closed down earlier this year (& some employees were laid off), resulting in an initial worry that the studio itself was getting shut down. Luckily, this was a planned move by the studio, which will now work fully remote & has even managed to become an independently run studio.

However, as you can see from the title, this is NOT an Obscusion B-Side review, so that means that this is related to anime and/or manga! Yes, I am serious!!

In late 1998 Crystal Dynamics & Eidos Interactive released The Unholy War for the PlayStation, a game by Toys for Bob that fused together a turn-based strategy game with a 3D arena fighter; I remember playing a demo for it back in the day, and it was instantly memorable. According to an interview with Matt Barton in 2011, Reiche & Ford regretted not being able to include a proper "Story Mode", so the pair thought this concept would make for a perfect SD Gundam game, as they were fans of the more traditional turned-based strategy RPGs that Banpresto released in Japan at the time. With help from Crystal Dynamics the pair were able to get into contact with Bandai, which had published the altered Japanese version of Toys for Bob's Pandemonium! (titled Magical Hoppers) & actually loved what it had seen of The Unholy War, but felt that it had an "even bigger" license to go with the concept. Reiche & Ford decided to make a deal before knowing what property they'd be working with, so imagine their surprise when they started getting faxes from Bandai... only to see production sketches of magical girls from the 60s & 70s. Yep, Toys for Bob accidentally signed on to produce a combat-focused strategy game/3D arena fighter starring a bunch of Toei Animation's old magical girl anime! The end result is early 1999's Majokko Daisakusen/Operation Magical Girl -Little witching mischiefs-, and since The Unholy War never saw a Japanese release this was effectively that region's equivalent.

Twelve(+2) Anime with "Missing" Portions Yet to be Licensed for English Release Part 2

In theory, licensing an anime is actually an extremely straightforward process, and all one needs to do to get started is contact a licensor, of some sort; actually producing a satisfactory product from said license is the hard part. Anime Midstream admitted that they literally just cold e-mailed various companies when they got started in the late 00s, and eventually Sunrise bit & decided to give them a chance, despite having no prior experience to guarantee that they'll actually release a finished product. Hell, way back when I once sent an e-mail to dentsu USA as a lark, acting like I was looking into starting up a company, and I got a response back from dentsu USA, complete with an entire digital catalog as an attachment! (No, I don't have that digital catalog anymore, sadly) For the large amount of anime out there, licensing is rather simple... until it isn't. Last week we looked at six(+1) examples of anime that can be considered "missing" portions for official English release, whether it was because they were just separate licenses from the "main" portion we did get, they simply didn't exist back when we first got the "main" portion, they were part of a prior production that's since been superseded by a later production that now takes precedence, or they're currently associated with a company that no one really wants to work with, if possible.

However, to start things off for the second half of this list, we have another reason why a portion could go "missing" for English release: It was originally released via video game!

Debuting back in 2001 in the pages of Monthly Shonen Jump, Dragon Drive by Ken-ichi Sakura told the story of kids who are into the titular VR game where they fight alongside mystical dragons... only for the game to actually have a connection to an actual fantasy world, Rikyu, where said dragons come from. The manga itself wound up being split into two halves, with the first starring Reiji Oozora as he & some friends (& enemies) find themselves in Rikyu, while the second starred Takumi, the little brother of Makino (one of Reiji's supporting cast), & sees the Earth ruined when the dragons of Rikyu come to the players' world. Though the manga itself would run until 2006 across 14 volumes (split roughly evenly across both storylines), it was seemingly meant to be a media mix from the start, as the companies Bandai, Chan's, & Org were credited as "In Collaboration With" below Sakura, so it's no surprise that there were video games & even a collectible card game based on Dragon Drive, as well a TV anime adaptation by Madhouse that ran between 2002 & 2003 for 38 episodes. While Viz would eventually release the manga in English from 2007 to 2009, though it never received a digital re-release (so it's not in the SJ Vault today), Bandai Entertainment was actually first to bring the series over via the anime, releasing all 38 episodes across 10 dual-audio DVDs in 2004 & 2005, followed by two boxsets in 2006. I actually included the Dragon Drive anime in the 2016 license rescue list, as some of the DVD singles & boxsets have since gotten rather expensive, especially the second boxset.

However, back then I had no idea that Bandai Entertainment's releases were technically "missing" something... an entire episode, in fact! That being said, though, it's not like Bandai Entertainment willingly skipped over it, and in fact the people there may not have even known of this episode's existence, since (to my knowledge) it was only ever released once, and as part of a video game release. As I mentioned before, Dragon Drive had some video game adaptations, three to be in fact, but we'll be focusing on the final, GameCube game, Dragon Drive: D-Masters Shot, a 3D aerial combat/rail shooter developed by Treasure! Released on August 8, 2003, D-Masters Shot came out roughly five months after the TV anime had finished airing in Japan, so it was decided that the game would actually include two GameCube mini-discs. The first was the "Game Disc", which contained the game itself, but the second was the "Anime Disc", which contained an episode-length OVA, Shinku no Himitsu/The Secret of Evolution, which was effectively Episode 39 of the TV anime & acted as an epilogue to the show! Now, to be fair, it's not like the TV anime had an unfulfilling finale or anything like that, but when I realized only a few years ago that this (mostly forgotten, despite the developer) GameCube-exclusive video game contained a bonus epilogue episode for Dragon Drive, one of those early anime I watched when I first started getting into the medium in the mid-00s, my mind was absolutely blown away.

Twelve(+2) Anime with "Missing" Portions Yet to be Licensed for English Release Part 1

As simple as we, as fans, might think it is, actually licensing anime can sometimes be a tricky thing. If it's an older production there can be situations like needing to reunite a production committee, figuring out who has the rights if a company is no longer in business (& then seeing if the seeming current owner even has the paperwork to prove it, for legal reasons), and if there are multiple parts to an anime then each of those individual parts could have their own licensing situations. That last one is what I want to focus on, as there have been multiple examples of an anime getting licensed for English release, only for it to not truly be "complete" due to there being other productions related to it in some fashion that weren't also licensed. Sometimes it's simply because said other productions weren't made yet, sometimes it was made by a completely different set of companies (& because of that it might purposefully be made unavailable for licensing, so as to prevent market confusion), sometimes there's just one change in companies that makes it a completely different licensing situation as everything else, and sometimes it's simply a case of "no one really wants to work with that company". Therefore, which anime are "missing" from English release, i.e. we got part of it, but not all of it?

I tried my best to include just 12 for this two-part list, but in the end I wanted to include all of the ones I could come across (though this is not a "complete" list, I'm sure), so I'm cheating & adding in a "(+2)" for this list! What is this, 2012?!

Debuting in early 2000, Kino's Journey -the Beautiful World- by Keiichi Sigsawa (story) & Kouhaku Kuroboshi (art) is a novel series detailing the travels of the titular Kino & her talking motorcycle Hermes as they visit various places in their world, staying no longer than three days so as to not feel like they'll ever "settle down", with the concept of the series being to showcase the different cultures & customs of the world's inhabitants; it's still running to this day & currently totals 23 volumes. In Spring 2003 a 13-episode TV anime adaptation aired on WOWOW, with animation by A.C.G.T. & direction by the late Ryutaro Nakamura (Serial Experiments Lain, Sakura Wars TV [2000]), and in early 2004 ADV Films started releasing it on dual-audio DVD. The reason why the release happened so quickly was because this anime was one of the handful that ADV actually managed to be part of a production committee for, with co-founder John Ledford even being listed in the Japanese credits as a producer. Because of this, ADV essentially has a perpetual license for this 2003 anime (there would later be a 12-episode reboot in 2017 that FUNimation/Crunchyroll currently has), which has resulted in it being both available via streaming over at Hidive & as well as the occasional modern re-release, most recently in 2019. While the 2017 reboot went on to receive a more mixed (though overall still positive) reception, the 2003 series is still considered an all-time classic, though maybe today it's probably more of a cult-classic.