The Mike Toole Show

ADV, Unreleased

Anime Boston, my hometown con, was a lot of fun this year. As is now tradition, roughly 20,000 nerds crammed into the Hynes Convention Center to get hyped up over their favorite cartoons from Japan. I've noticed something recently about convention life—first, that anime cons often function as a sort of “big tent” for all sorts of nerdy stuff, including video games, American cartoons and comics, and Doctor Who. Some fans worry about this stuff overtaking the actual anime, but I didn't see a whole lot of that in evidence at AB. I realize that this is partly down to the con's programming staff wisely refusing to abandon their mission statement of spreading Japanese pop culture in favor of My Little Pony, but everywhere I went, I saw people really into Japanese animation. Don't worry, fellas—anime is alive and well, and not about to be swallowed whole by something called Homestuck.

One standout AB experience was a pretty crowded and lively Elfen Lied, David reminded the audience that ADV Films still exists—because, you see, they still hold the rights to Elfen Lied. A couple of weeks later, we've got the announcement of an impending blu-ray releases of Elfen Lied from ADV (care of Sentai Filmworks, of course), and that's got me thinking: just what's left of the old ADV Films catalog? Which of their late 90s release slate never made the jump to DVD? Let's find out.

This isn't the Gō Nagai.

Fans around the world know Gō Nagai's two faces: one as dark hero and super robot trendsetter, with genre-defining hits like Mad Bull 34 guy. (In fairness, he's also the Lone Wolf & Cub guy!) It's probably the best of these three, but like the other two, it's missing in action.
 
Let's see… how else can I group this weird assortment of titles by theme? I know - anyone Adventures of Kotetsu? It was one of those weird short OVAs that seemed to be everywhere you looked in the 90s, which makes it like an awful lot of the rest of this list. But anyway! It's the tale of an energetic young girl (who looks an awful lot like girl Ranma) in the hunt for her missing older brother. It turns out that our heroine Linn Suzuki has some mystical powers – powers put to good use at the Kuon Detective Agency. Kotetsu is only really memorable for a few things – its dubbed version takes a stab at Linn's somewhat archaic Kyoto accent by using an actress with a credible English accent, firstly. Secondly, it's got lots of Yūji Moriyama.

Everyone should know who Yūji Moriyama is! He cut his teeth working for Compiler. ADV Films also kicked these two out on VHS, and I think they're pretty alright.

Luna Varga's strengths lie chiefly in silliness (it's the amazing fantasy story about a pretty girl who finds herself permanently seated atop the head of a gigantic, Godzilla-esque lizard—attached by the butt, you see, because she acts as its brain) and fanservice, but that'S.o.K since Moriyama specializes in that stuff. Compiler is a teensy bit more restrained, telling the age-old story of computer programs that are beamed into the real world and turn out to be attractive women. Two of these programs-turned-ladies, Compiler and Assembler, decide they like it here and set up shop with their human boyfriends—but it's sometimes necessary for them to leap into action and thwart other girls from computer program-ville, who wish to take over our world.

At its heart, Compiler is a light little romantic comedy, with bits of action and fanservice. It doesn't boast a particularly exciting pedigree—sure, it's based on manga by Kelly Manison, are pretty straightforward, but the series happens to have a lot of background chatter, and there the scriptwriters go bananas, inserting all manner of outlandish accents and references, most of which are clearly audible. ADV Films actually announced a DVD release for Compiler, but they started running into financial troubles not long afterwards.  We never got it.

According to company president AnimEigo's worst-selling anime title ever.

Manga UK, who didn't even bother translating the title (I'm sure fans were really roped in by seeing “MAKYU SENJO” in huge letters on the box)—and while Manga released both episodes, ADV didn't bother after that first one. That's probably for the best.

What do the preceding nine titles have in common? With the sole exception of Hanappe Bazooka, not one of them got a DVD release in Japan—they were Justin Sevakis, who's shepherded a variety of old movies and OVAs to digital for several studios. He comments:

“There's a few issues, but you can make a DVD from an old analog master, and it'll probably look fine. The issue is more with the original creator's rights, and if everything has been cleared for DVD release in general. Unlike Americans, Japanese companies tend not to take advantage of that "every video format that will ever be invented" clause on contracts. Every new step has to get cleared by the creator. So if there was no DVD in Japan, contractually nothing was set up for a DVD release anywhere else.”
So it's unlikely that many of these old shows are plagued by issues with materials or master tapes. Instead, they're simply mired in old contracts! What fun. Well, what happens when you add video games to the mix? That's… hard to say, really. It doesn't surprise me that franchise popular for decades in Japan but only prominent on these shores for the past 10 years or so, got its own OVA, which ADV Films saw fit to release in spite of the fact that the first English-language Fire Emblem game was several years away.

Did either of these two make it to DVD in Japan? Of course not! But two other titles based on games—the PC-based Labyrinth of Flames, and he's right on task here—there's enough bizarre upskirt shots in Megami Paradise that you could describe it as a prototype for AIKa. Maybe that's why it's on DVD in Japan, where so many other shows aren't.

The Grave of the Fireflies, but it ain't bad. It also ain't on DVD.

We're nearing the end of this pretty long list, so it's a good time to bring up Discotek picks it up.

The reason I'm bringing up Discotek specifically is because my favorite title on the list of ADV Films’ VHS-only relics used to be a 2-part OVA called Animage entreating fans to help fund the next episode. Never happened. Wonder if they can Kickstart it?

So tell me, gang: anything on this list catch your fancy? Did I miss a title? I'm pretty sure I didn't, but you never know with me, do you? There's more than twenty titles here—they all got subtitled versions, and most of them got a dub, too. Which one are you waiting for? Any other older classics from the VHS era (or older!!) where you just can't figure out why there isn't a shiny new DVD release yet? Sound off in the comments!!