The Mike Toole Show

Best of Bandai

We all saw it coming. For some of us, there were early signs: canceled re-releases, the lack of dubbed versions on some titles, and the occasional announcement of layoffs. But in the late 00s, this was par for the course for the anime business. For me, the warning signs came much earlier; I still vividly Jerry Chu, Bandai's marketing manager, was as upbeat as ever, but in a brief exchange at the company's booth, he let slip that Scrapped Princess had only limped out of the gate, sales-wise. “Before digital fansubs,” he remarked, “this series would've been a good performer, but they're really starting to affect sales.”

This isn't going to be a screed castigating digisubs-- honestly, while they presented a big problem for the business, ultimately it was the collapse of video stores and hard media in general that caused the anime business to contract, after the thrilling bubble years of the early 2000s. Bandai Entertainment were right at the forefront of that bubble, so it's perhaps inevitable that they'd be among the hardest hit when it burst. Now, after a year that saw the company cease new acquisitions, they've gone ahead and announced the cessation of all of their publications. At least temporarily, a big chunk of anime is exiting the North American market. As fans, we have to ask the question: which shows will probably be back? Which ones should we scramble to buy while we can, before Bandai stops shipping in November? Let's address these questions.

An awful lot of Bandai Entertainment stuff was really easy to like, and the company built on this appeal by positioning it on TV, getting it good exposure in video stores, and even releasing toy tie-ins. Their first big hit may have been Macross Plus). It was never a runaway hit in Japan, but Bebop’s success outside of the country spurred production of a sequel movie, and it's endured long enough that even now, new toys and merchandise are being planned for it.

I think Bebop is an excellent poster child for some of the problems the anime industry is facing these days, in fact. In Japan, it's getting a jazzed-up (ha!) blu-ray release at Christmas, packed with new artwork by character designer WOWOW), but it's been one of the medium's biggest hits outside of Japan for the last decade. And right now, it's looking like there won't be a way for western fans to get those sweet, shiny blu-rays at all! Well, I doubt we'll be waiting too long - Bandai Entertainment will continue to sublicense their stuff to other anime publishers, after all, and considering Bebop is their evergreen sales leader, it's going to be a sweet plum for another publisher to acquire.

Actually, Bebop isn't the only Bandai t that scored big in the west, but left a smaller impression at home. A few years prior to Cowboy Bebop, some of the same folks (mainly in the music department) worked on 1996's Maaya Sakamoto, who made her voice-acting debut as Hitomi. The subsequent movie retelling isn't nearly as crucial as the Escaflowne TV series, but it's still a very pretty film. Like Bebop, I find it pretty easy to picture Escaflowne getting picked up by another publisher.

Of Bandai's top-tier properties, it's hardest to predict where Gundam Unicorn OVAs are going out for simultaneous worldwide release, but they're highly-priced and I don't see this strategy working for the rest of the Gundam oeuvre. You can bet on Bebop and Escaflowne staying in print somehow, but Gundam? I'm not so sure.

When Gundam Wing hit the airwaves and scored big, it opened the floodgates for a bunch of other properties. I was honestly surprised when one of the first entries, debuting a year after Gundam Wing, was Joss Whedon's Firefly? I reckon it did...), but it was never as big on home video.

In of Bandai's top performers, that just leaves the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise. I've always kinda liked Haruhi - the series takes an assemblage of goofy stereotypes and formulaic situations and presents them in a really novel way, as the sardonic Kyon butts head with the titular antagonist, a bossy, boisterous high school girl who just might be the supreme being in disguise. I even liked the second season, in which director Yutaka Yamamoto trolls the franchise's fans with the great-in-concept, awful-in-execution “Endless Eight” series of episodes, a sequence that sounds like a neat twist on Groundhog Day, but gets boring awfully fast. Haruhi is recent enough that it'll probably stick around, one way or another - if any of its visual components are in danger of going out of print, I'd have to pick the Haruhi-chan gag shorts, which Bandai issued on two discs. I could see that stuff surviving as a pack-in in a “perfect collection” down the road, but who knows if that'll actually happen?

We've talked about the five titles that, according to Bandai chief Makoto Yukimura's superlative manga, as their big summer series, with plans for a series of six 2-disc special editions. But by midsummer, marketing chief Jerry Chu was itting that the series was tracking poorly. Just a few months later, Chu had left Bandai, and the remaining two volumes were scaled back to single-disc releases. Planetes is a refreshingly direct, honest examination of space travel, following the trajectory of a near-future spacebound garbage man who, inspired by a younger colleague, follows bigger dreams. Along with four discs worth of extras in the single-volume release, Planetes got a particularly excellent dub. I'd be kinda surprised if it vanished completely-- but those extras might!

I really have to give Bandai Entertainment credit for not giving up early on OVA) remains in print for now. If you like vast interplanetary warfare, taciturn elfin space princesses, or kooky made-up space languages, It's worth checking out.

Dammit, Funimation's licensing of the new sequel Eureka Seven: AO, I'd be surprised if we didn't see this sky-surfing back our way soon. I just thought it'd be bigger.

Another high-profile series that never seemed to quite break through is Aya Hirano re-enact her character Konata's aping of a 1980s shampoo commercial.

Last but not least, I'll hit on one of Bandai's final AAA titles - Sentai Filmworks rescuing both the second season and the original's dub cast, I wouldn't be shocked to see the first season quietly added to their cata the future.

We've talked big hits, we've talked almost-hits, now let's talk about a few titles that are, quite literally, almost gone-- stuff that's completely out of print, and starting to vanish entirely from the retail level. I've touched on this subject before, and my favorite example from Bandai Entertainment is still Zegapain. Zegapain never had a big chance in North America without the ancillary products like model kits and video games that Japan got, but it's a solid shonen mecha series that bucks convention in a few surprising ways, and establishes a sinister doomsday scenario that reveals just enough, per episode, to keep you wanting more. I had to search long and hard for volume 4 of the series, which my friend James finally unearthed. Now, both volumes 4 and 6 have fallen off the face of the earth, and are only available by hilariously high aftermarket pricing. Fans might've gotten a respite from this, but Bandai's planned release of a Zegapain collection was cancelled.

Bandai also cancelled the complete collection of FLAG, King Gainer, but I've talked about that one pretty extensively in my Yoshiyuki Tomino column.

I was so excited when I saw the first stills and Newtype Japan magazine articles for Yoshiyuki Sadamoto), an original story, and an excellent visual style. It's also one of those rare anime stories where the teenage heroes act like teenagers-- they're all awkward and dumb and lovelorn and just trying to get through the day without being completely humiliated. I was attracted enough to the premise of the film - a high school girl discovers a way to make short jumps back in time, and tries to “fix” her life using this gimmick - enough that I traveled to the New York Children's Film Festival to see it. It took awhile for a video release, but Bandai eventually stepped up to the plate. The lavish DVD special edition release is still available - but the single-disc, bare-bones blu-ray, which is still the version I'd rather have? Gone baby, gone.

So we've talked about Bandai Entertainment's big hits, their sleeper hits, and the stuff that didn't get the attention it deserved. You know what's left, right? It's the “what the hell were they thinking?!” pile! I can already picture you hopping up and down in your chairs, yelling “Junkers Come Here?

God, I love that cover art more than I love my own son! Good thing I don't have any kids. Anyway, the intriguing blend of comic sans font and ill-formed word balloon conceals a perfectly good little family movie, albeit a strange one. How many coming-of-age movies are magical realist tales of little girls coping with parental divorce with the help of a talking, wish-granting schnauzer who loves samurai movies? Another “why did they release this” all-star is Future GPX Cyber Formula. Take a gander at this:

I love the way the dog is looking at the camera, as if to say “Seriously, why does this DVD release exist?” This 37-episode, sub-only boat anchor has got to be one of those contractual obligation releases. Like, the licensing manager at Sunrise was all “Okay, we'll let you have Cowboy Bebop, but you must also release... this!” Thanks a lot, Japan! Amusingly, after being priced down to $30 at most outlets, Cyber Formula actually sold out. I guess $30 was the right price!

Don't Leave Me Alone, Daisy was one of Bandai Entertainment's earlest VHS releases, but it took forever to make the jump to DVD. I'm kinda surprised it even made that jump - it's a show that excellently showcases a huge cultural gap, as science nerd Techno falls for classmate Hitomi and tries to win her affections with the help of robots, death rays, and insistently calling her “Daisy” above her objections. Now, Japanese audiences might've watched it and went “Awww, that besotted dork will do anything to capture her heart!,” but American audiences were more like “Oh god, he's going to kill her! Why is he threatening her?!” One reviewer on Amazon thinks the show was unfairly judged. I don't know, man.

Bandai made history with Akiyuki Shinbo. It doesn't really get that Shinbo style until episode 4, when the gang of girl protagonists beats a heatwave by stripping down and then using an increasingly outlandish series of props to conceal their naughty bits. But Tenamonya Voyagers’ driving appeal is its complicated web of visual pop culture references and quotes, a list so dense and intricate that even my Japanese friends couldn't begin to place them all (one correspondent was IDing snips of dialogue and scenes lifted from mid-70s variety shows). With no liner notes to explain this, Tenamonya Voyagers is just a moderately interesting OVA with, as is typical for OVA releases, a horrible, awful non-ending. Not a very auspicious choice for first-ever DVD-only anime!

Last-- finally!-- last but not least, there was Saber Marionette J. Who re Saber Marionette J? Because seriously, I kinda fucking don't.

Her name is Lime, right? Jesus, what's with the fangs? I something about squeaky shoes, and squeaky Megumi Hayashibara, and other robot girlfriends, and some sort of bitchy rival dude. It was on another planet, but it was in ancient Japan.... seriously, can anyone explain to me why this entire thing-- middling TV series, blah OVA sequel, and awful TV sequel-- got released? Does anyone even what happened in this show, off the top of their heads? No looking at Wikipedia, that's cheating! I'm fascinated, because I don't there being a culture or phenomenon around this show, but we still got the whole damn thing. Ten years later, are there any fans left?

Alright, so I didn't talk about Toward the Terra. Hey, what the hell do you want from me? If I talked about all of this stuff, the damn column would be 10,000 words long! At any rate, Bandai Entertainment's had a long reign in the American anime biz. I'm not really happy with the way they've spun their operation down - I still really feel like bean-counters in Japan put the kibosh on a very modest but sustainable business - but them's the breaks. We'll definitely see some of these titles quietly get picked up by other publishers, but not all of them. How about you? Are you just biding your time for those Cowboy Bebop blu-rays? Are there any shows you're scrambling to buy, now that the rush is on? Are there any shows you've already missed the boat on? What was your favorite Bandai Entertainment release? Sound off in the comments!