Currently I’m rehabilitating a neck injury that I may have been walking around with for years – so I’ve a load of half written posts that are taking ages to finish due to keyboards not being my idea of fun at the moment. Here’s a post that was two thirds finished (I was going to discuss one other show about an orphan) but will tide you over until I’m back in the swing of things.

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In part four of Past My Bedtime, I briefly ran down TV Tokyo’s 1:30AM slot for the past six year. In order to have some fairness behind my mean one line synopses, I watched the first episodes a few of the shows I’d not seen before. And in some cases I do have a little more to say beyond what I wrote there.

Minami-ke

Given that this is probably the most successful of the shows airing in this slot, I was shocked how half-arsed it is. It even apologises in the opening for it. I got through the first half of the episode and gave up out of boredom. Limp gags and visually uninteresting, it’s an utterly inoffensive empty space.

Worth noting that this is the first show I will be discussing in this post that involves orphans. I’ve noted before about how the moe fad owes something to the Victorian cult of the child, and the other day I described modern anime as the inbred descendants of Space Battleship Yamato and World Masterpiece Theatre. Orphantainment is alive and well, but without the justification of being classic literature.

Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!

While not quite as frustrating as ufotable’s Futakoi Alternative, as it doesn’t have such a promising first episode, Manabi Straight is still infuriating.

Ignoring for a moment the elephant in the room that is Manabi Straight’s aesthetics, the problem watching this is it frequently feels like it’s been made by people who desperately want to animate awesome action and comedy, and are stuck animating material whose main aim is to be cute. There’s some really great action in the first episode, and outside of the poor background painting, the animation is exceptional throughout.

But it’s in the service of a story that while it makes vague gestures towards social commentary, is overshadowed by the elephantine house invader that is the character design. And that character design is basically going to be the huge sticking point for most viewers.

The bulk of the characters are in the second year of high school. They are sixteen or seventeen years old. Just like the main characters in Urusei Yatsura.

Unlike the cast of Urusei Yatsura, none of them appear to have gone through puberty.

Given that there are adults in the show too, and they look like they’ve stepped out of another show, it adds to the creepiness in that rather than just being a result of style – drawing them to look like 10 year olds was a deliberate choice. And for me that’s a big distraction from the merits it has in the animation department.

The story has a nugget of a clever idea, in that it’s supposedly a projection on Japan’s aging population and declining birth rates. But beyond exposition, there’s little social commentary in episode one, instead focusing on lead character Manabi’s whirlwind personality arriving at her new school. The entire first episode could work in modern times with a few cosmetic adjustments.

Of course, the lead in this show appears to be an orphan too.

So begins OTAKU PROBE. We at the JUNIOR ANTHROPOLOGY BRIGADE wish to thank Awesome Engine for giving us an outlet for our ambitious research into OTAKU CULTURE. We hope to provide a window into the world of the only interesting part of anime, the OTAKU!

Today we look at the way in which OTAKU decorate their OTAKU ROOMS.

A big part of OTAKU CULTURE is making your home resemble the storage room of a novelty gift shop. And the best way to do that is throw soft furnishings emblazoned with cartoon characters everwhere, fill every flat surface with toys, dvds, cds & games and cover every inch of wall with posters. OTAKU want people to question whether a human being could even live in the space.

Once this has been achieved the next step is to take photos of said living space and post them to the internet so that all the other OTAKU can admire your handy work and masturbate to it. This is why such photos are called SHELVING PORNOGRAPHY. There are even specialist sites dedicated to it.

A common misconception is that OTAKU who decorate in this way have a fetish for a particular character or character type. We at the JUNIOR ANTHROPOLOGY BRIGADE do not jump to such conclusions about OTAKU (or OTAKLUSIONS as they are better known). We do research. We surveyed a representative sample of OTAKU (15 – as determined by the Dairugger formula) and asked them why they live in a box full of toys.

There you have it, OTAKLUSIVE proof – OTAKU WANT TO BE THE PILLOW.

So, if the “dread spectre of moe” isn’t the real problem with late night anime on TV Tokyo, what is? Well allow me to state the bleedin’ obvious for a moment.

Giving the anime industry free rein.

By brokering the slots of anime, and rarely being involved in production beyond standards and practices, TV Tokyo basically have given the producers of anime for those slots free rein.

Later than NTV’s slots, the ratings are rather paltry, and the belief seems to be that there isn’t an audience that want to watch anime at 1:30AM and later. Instead the plan seems to be to rely on a pre-existing audience for the show. An audience that will be fanatical enough to find it wherever it might end up in the schedule. That’s even before you take into account that various parts of production committee will then be relying on them to also be fanatical enough to buy the various offshoots of the content necessary to make the whole exercise financially rewarding for those involved.

In part that’s a necessity of this end of the anime business, but in terms of getting eyes in front of the screen or making TV shows with a broad appeal like NTV’s or Fuji TV’s noitaminA do, it can’t beat the concept of developing a specific spot in the schedule with the broadcaster’s input. It looks like TV Tokyo themselves realised this and so they established an anime department last year, leading to them launching, with Sony’s Aniplex, the Anime no Chikara slot this year.

The kings (pun intended) of late night anime on TV Tokyo are Starchild Records, the anime subsidiary of King Records. Today, we’ll look at the Sunday night 1:30AM slot they’ve dominated since 2004.  Of the following shows – only three shows didn’t have Starchild credited on ANN (Rescue Wings, School Rumble, Nabari no O), most have a Starchild staff member on production or planning (often Atsushi Moriyama) and a lot have their own homepage on Starchild’s website.

Unfortunately the English language licensing website they set up (presumably as part of their ’04 US visit) hasn’t been updated since 2004, so I’m fumbling in the dark over a lot of these. They frequently handle DVD distribution for these shows too. Basically the series have become much more like infomercials for the CD and DVD releases, not to mention all the ancillary character goods, than a show designed to attract a rating. And while “moe” makes money, that’s what’s going to dominate these slots, because the TV ratings really don’t mean anything. As soon as something else becomes what sells to a niche, fanatical audience, then Starchild’s roster of shows will become full of that (you can see some that happening to a lesser extent with their post-Eva catalogue in the 90s). Though I do wonder with Atsushi Moriyama’s involvement with the Azumanga Daioh production led to their pursuit of similar properties in the slot discussed below, as most have his name attached in some way.

So sci-fi fans, if you are bemoaning the lack of sci-fi anime, it’s your own fault for not buying enough CDs, DVDs and merchandise. Your wallet just didn’t want it enough in comparison to the hug pillow brigade.

Doki Doki School Hours (2004) *
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Yoshiaki Iwasaki

A poor man’s Azumanga Daioh.

Fafner (2004) *
Studio: Xebec
Director: Nobuyoshi Habara

Evangelion for dullards.

Mahoraba ~Heartful days~ (2005) *
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Shinichiro Kimura

Apartment building sitcom teaches us that mental illness is adorable!

Pani Poni Dash! (2005) *
Studio: GANSIS, SHAFT
Director: Akiyuki Shinbo

A poor man’s Doki Doki School Hours.

RESCUE WINGS (2006)
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Katsushi Sakurabi

A reminder that slice of life doesn’t have to be about schoolgirls. It be can about helicopter rescue pilots too.

School Rumble: 2nd Semester (First series aired during the day) (2006)
Studio: Studio Comet
Director: Shinji Takamatsu

There was then a brief break from animated fare while unusual looking costumed hero Lion Maru G (who was also produced by Starchild) took to the air, before cartoons returned with…

Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! (2007)*
Studio: ufotable
Director: “Team Manabibeya”

A poor man’s Azumanga Daioh. IN THE FUTURE! Where apparently all 17 year-old girls look 10.

Heroic Age (2007) *
Studio: Xebec
Director: Toshimasa Suzuki

Robot show that blew its most interesting idea in the first episode (namely: SPACE TARZAN).

Minami-ke (2007)*
Studio: Dome
Director: Masahiko Ohta

The story of three dull sisters.

Minami-ke: Okawari (2008)*
Studio: asread
Director: Naoto Hosoda

That somehow warranted another series. From a different staff.

Nabari no O (2008)
Studio: JC Staff
Director:Kunihisa Sugishima

Agreeable ninja show.

Today In Class 5-2 (2008) *
Studio: Xebec
Director: Tsuyoshi Nagasawa

A poor man’s Manabi Straight. IN THE PRESENT!

Minami-ke Okaeri (2009) *
Studio: asread
Director: Kei Oikawa

If this dishwater gets three seasons then there must be a lot of Softy Walters out there to make it worthwhile.

Natsu no Arashi! (2009) *
Studio: SHAFT
Director: Shin Oonuma

Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered forties.

Kanamemo (2009) *
Studio: Feel
Director: Shigehito Takayanagi

Newsies, the moe generation.

Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-chu (2009) *
Studio: SHAFT
Director: Shin Oonuma / Kenichi Ishikura

More larks with the time travelling ghosts.

Hanamaru Kindergarten (2010) *
Studio: GAINAX
Director: Seiji Mizushima

Something about a school for weird looking glove puppets.

* Starchild Records involvement

As mentioned in part one, TV Tokyo launched their late night anime with Those Who Hunt Elves. It aired on Thursdays at the fictional time of 2515 (0115 to normal people). That slot was fairly consistently given over to anime until 2002, when it got bumped for The Mini-Skirt Police variety show. REPEATS of The Mini-Skirt Police variety show.

I don’t know for sure what killed it, but looking at the ratings, when the cutesy, nothing really happens treacle of Kokoro Library was put in the slot, the ratings for what had mainly been a sci-fi/fantasy action slot halved and didn’t recover. People beat on NOIR for being some sort of harbinger of doom, and I’m not a fan of it myself, but in terms of ratings it was consistent with what had come before. It’s Kokoro Library that needs the finger pointing at it here.

So all you “moe is the cancer killing anime” believers out there, take a note of 12 October 2001, the premiere of Kokoro Library. Then tear it up and throw it away, because in part four we’ll take a look at the real problem.

Those Who Hunt Elves (1996)
Studio: Group TAC
Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama

High concept stupidity from Yu Yagami’s manga. It’s one of the many, many, many transported to another world series that were popular in the 90s. I’d say that the animation hasn’t aged well, but it was hardly state of the art in 1996. When people wax nostalgic for the pre-digital animation era, they probably should take a second look at Those Who Hunt Elves. It frequently makes the first Slayers series look like Akira. I do still like the Keiji Gotoh character designs though.

EAT-MAN (1997)
Studio: Studio Deen
Director: Koichi Mashimo

Loved the manga, but this first series was a huge let down. Completely ignored the interesting visuals and setting of the manga and instead deposited hero Bolt Crank into some terribly clichéd futuristic world. Had I been paying attention to who made what I was watching back then, I’d have never put myself through watching future Koichi Mashimo projects.

Hyper Police (1997)
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Director: Takahiro Omori

Post-Apocalypse fantasy cop show. Reminded me a fair bit of the RIFTS rpg in its hodgepodge of future dystopia, monsters and animal people. Not watched this in over a decade, but remember quite enjoying what I’d seen. Again, that had a fair bit to do with the Keiji Goto designs. Whether I’d enjoy it today, is a whole other question. Forgot that Omori (Baccano!, Durarara!!) had directed it.

Virus Buster Serge (1997)
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Masami Obari

This Masami Obari creation took an eternity between it’s announcement and actual release in the UK. And I’ve still not actually seen any of it. However as it is Obari, I will assume it features bizzare fashions, pneumatic women, periodically fantastic animation, nonsensical writing and the odd Go Nagai homage.

OUTLAW STAR (1998)
Studio: Sunrise
Director: Mitsuru Hongo

This seems to be one of those shows with a fairly large vocal fanbase of folks who are now in their mid-twenties. Never seen it myself. BECAUSE I AM OLD.

SHADOW SKILL – Eigi (1998)
Studio: Studio Deen
Director: Tsukasa Sunaga

Caught a little of this. Story didn’t interest me, but surprised to see some nice looking action animation that looked like I should recognise who animated it.

BETTERMAN (1999)
Studio: Sunrise
Director: Yoshitomo Kometani

The middle work in Yoshitomo Yonetani’s loosely connected trilogy of Sunrise productions.

EXCEL SAGA (1999)
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Shinichi Watanabe

I’m not sure how well this plays to folks who came into anime post-2000. In many ways it feels like a topper to the previous 20-30 years of anime, and I don’t know if its satire works if you aren’t familiar with that era in any way. For 1999 though, it was perfect.

Argento Soma (2000)
Studio: Sunrise
Director:Kazuyoshi Katayama

More Evangelion cloning, with some Frankenstein and ET thrown in for good luck, this time from Big O head honcho Kazuyoshi Katayama. Whatever merits this may have, history is likely to forget it in the mix of similar shows produced. And Katayama is likely to be remembered for the more idiosyncratic Big O than anything else.

Still, it’s much better looking that Katayama’s Those Who Hunt Elves adaptation.

NOIR (2001)
Studio:Bee Train
Director:Koichi Mashimo

Bee Train and Koichi Mashimo set the tone for their 00s output with this show. That tone? UTTER BOREDOM. I managed to make my way through one single episode of this at a Minami Con, and it’s an astounding piece of work in how it manages to animate scenes that should be exciting – like gunfights – in such a way as to drain all the excitement from it and replace it with a ponderous seriousness.

Kokoro Library (2001)
Studio:Studio Deen
Director:Koji Masunari

Moe librarian anime based on moe librarian manga. With horrible character designs.

Aquarian Age (2002)
Studio: Broccoli / Madhouse Studios
Director:Yoshimitsu Ohashi

Trading card game gets a late night animation. This draws on the gameworld of the card game, rather than make an anime about people playing the card game. Because it’s SERIOUS FANTASY and therefore doesn’t want to roll around in bed full of children’s pocket money.

Also stuck amongst these shows was something called SPORTS BEAT and another called face4/4. No idea what that last thing was. Can’t find a description of it on the internet beyond it being on the resumes of a former bandmate of DANCE MAN and some teenage idol of the time. So there you go.

US Success

All but one series has been released in the USA, can you guess which one?

If you guessed Kokoro Library, you would be right!

However, how many are still in print is a whole other question…

ADV Films - Those Who Hunt Elves, Aquarian Age, Excel Saga, Noir and Shadow Skill. These all appear to be limbo following ADV’s demise, but most have stock still available.
Image Entertainment – Hyper Police. This is in a similar position following Image’s bankruptcy
Bandai Entertainment – Eat-Man, Outlaw Star, Betterman and Argento Soma. Eat Man only got a VHS release to my knowledge. Betterman is out of print now. Collections of Outlaw Star and Argento Soma are still available.
Manga Entertainment – Virus Buster Serge. A collection is still available.

When it comes to anime, Nippon Television have a reputation for being classy, second only to NHK. Daytime shows they air at the present include Detective Conan, Yumeiro Pâtissière and Anpanman. All very pleasant and family friendly.

While not necessarily family friendly, they’ve similarly brought a touch of class and quality to their late night programming. For much of the last 13 years they’ve had just one, sometimes two, late night anime series airing at a time. And what they’ve lacked in quantity they’ve more than made up for in quality.

If I was to pinpoint what ties most of them together, it’s that while they are aimed at much the same demographics as much of the late night shows (initially men in their late teens and early twenties, but eventually women too), they aren’t the part of that demographic who then spends loads of money on associated character goods. No Herr Docter Tenma hugging pillows for this audience. These are shows that are more likely to drive sales of the source material, rather than merchandise.

So why don’t these shows get the attention from some of the people who decry the rise of otaku-pandering shows? Well a lot of those people came into anime through sci-fi, and what they are actually complaining about is that they themselves aren’t being pandered to any longer. What they want are sci-fi shows, and for the most part the series NTV broadcast aren’t sci-fi. Why would they be? Sci-fi as a whole has been in a downturn in the last decade or so, so why should anime have been any different?

Secondly, a lot of these shows aren’t that easy to lay your hands on. Of the ones that came to the USA, a number are out of print and some had poor original releases. Of the ones that remain unlicensed, they haven’t necessarily been the favourites of the fansub community. Even if they have been fansubbed, they don’t necessarily have the vocal fanbase to evangelise about them to the extent that other titles do. At the bottom of the post I’ve provided a summary of the status of the titles that did get US releases.

The following list is how the Japanese wikipedia entries described the flow of the core post-midnight titles on NTV. As the title of the post hints, the majority come from Madhouse Studios and given that a number of their directors make their debuts directing an entire show, I wonder if they use this to nuture and develop talent. On the flipside of that though is the fact that Masayuki Kojima and Yuzo Sato have directed multiple shows in this slot.

Berserk (1997)
Studio: OLM
Director: Naohito Takahashi (Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot & Marple, Steel Angel Kurumi)

In retrospect, this adaptation of Kentaro Miura’s long running manga is somewhat anaemic. Certainly Takahashi and OLM would not be my first choice to be the creative forces behind adapting it. At the time though, it definitely felt like a breath of fresh air from the roleplaying tropes that your average fantasy anime regurgitated.

Master Keaton (1998)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Masayuki Kojima

This episodic adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s manga about an archaeologist and insurance investigator ran on Monday as opposed to Tuesday, but maintained and arguably raised the quality set by Berserk. Madhouse, Urasawa and Kojima would return to late night NTV to even greater success in the next decade.

Hidamari no Ki (2000)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Gisaburo Sugii

This Tezuka adaptation, while making sense for slot and the channel, seems to have slipped down the back of the sofa of history. Even the scans of DVD covers on Amazon were all blurry and full of artefacts. However someone in Japan has uploaded it all to Youtube, so maybe those few who do like it, love it, but not enough to take clear screenshots. Gisaburo Sugii tends to be hit and miss, so I’m not sure if this is worth your time.

Hajime no Ippo (2000)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Satoshi Nishimura

A prime example of a long running show scuppered in the US by its release format. 15 volumes at $29.98, you’d have dropped around $450 on this buying it as it came out. With Geneon now gone from the US market and no-one in a hurry to re-license it, the volumes are very varied in prices, some under the original price, others rising in price. Looking at Amazon UK, I can see the first box set (volumes 1-8) is now going for £190.85, as opposed to the original price of $79.99.

Tenchi Muyo GXP (2002)
Studio: AIC
Director: Shinichi Watanabe

Now this one seems a little odd compared to what we’ve had so far. A pseudo-sequel to AIC’s 90s phenomenon, directed by one of anime’s more satiric minds. There’s another AIC title further down the list that’s even more out of place, and what I’ve seen of GXP was certainly fun.

Hanada Shonen-shi (2002)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Masayuki Kojima

Masayuki Kojima is back, with this adaptation of Makoto Isshiki’s supernatural comedy about a boy who can see the dead. Another show I’ve not see much of, but certainly wouldn’t mind catching more of it. In terms of production it’s a step up again from Master Keaton, might be my favourite of Kojima’s shows based on my small sampling.

Air Master (2003)
Studio: Toei Animation
Director: Daisuke Nishio

Sitting between Hanada and Harlock, this seems a little trashy, but it’s fantastic trash. And as this whole thread started with Berserk, it kind of made sense they’d look to Young Animal again for more material. In terms of choreography, this is the stepping stone for Nishio between the shonen action shows he’s famous for and the physicality of the first Pretty Cure show.

Space Pirate Captain Harlock The Endless Odyssey (2003)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Rintaro

TV broadcast of the OAV series that was originally meant to be a TV show in the first place. When we get to the second programming stream they started, we’ll see they used other material that wasn’t first run then to begin with.

The Gokusen (2004)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

Despite what Anime News Network’s site and the English wiki page claim, I believe this is a Yuzo Sato directed show, which makes sense as there’ll be three more to come. Kozueko Morimoto’s manga about teacher/yakuza heir Kumiko Yamaguchi attempts to balance her two lives was a bigger success in its various live action incarnations, but this anime version was fun too. Though what was up with that dog?

MONSTER (2004)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Masayuki Kojima

Masayuki Kojima returns to Urasawa with this lengthy, overly faithful adaptation of the Fugitive-inspired thriller. If you don’t like reading, then check it out. Otherwise, the manga is a much more enjoyable option.

Akagi (2005)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

As good as Gokusen was, this was the show that made people notice Yuzo Sato. The first of two Nobuyuki Fukumoto adaptations that Sato’s been responsible for, and a great example of the gambling genre.

Ouran High School Host Club (2006)
Studio: BONES
Director: Takuya Igarashi

I’ll hazard a guess that this shojo manga adaptation got made due to the success of Honey & Clover on Fuji TV and NANA on NTV itself (see below). It’s a good choice, much like those two hits, it has an appeal that crosses gender boundaries to a degree, and a lot of that can be attributed to Igarashi’s direction and Norifumi Nakamura’s art design. It’s one of those anime that look far better than the manga they came from.

Death Note (2006)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Tetsuro Araki

Obviously this show was going to be made. I’m not convinced the material works in animated form, but Araki does about as well as you can with it and the pre-made fanbase seemed to love it.

Buzzer Beater II (2007)
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Director: Shigeyuki Miya

Odd one this, the original Buzzer Beater series had aired in 2005 on satellite channel WOWOW, but this sequel aired on NTV. Liked what I saw of the first series, loved original the web manga, but haven’t seen this sequel. Same production studio and director, so possibly more of the same.

Kaiji (2007)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

This second Fukumoto adaptation from Sato is probably a career best so far, and reportedly due for a sequel in the future.

Real Drive (2008)
Studio: Production IG
Director: Kazuhiro Furuhashi

A rare foray into science fiction for this timeslot. Yet another Production IG/Shirow collaboration, and as such I totally ignored it.

One Outs (2008)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

Taking a break from Fukumoto, but not gambling, Sato returns with this adaptation of Shinobu Kaitani’s tale of baseball and unfair wagers. The actual wagers are actually a smokescreen for what the story is actually about – sportsmanship. It’s much more about manipulating the rules of a sport to your advantage than the gambling itself.

Souten Kouro (2009)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Tsuneo Tominaga

A Three Kingdoms period manga adaptation notable for mainly using historical records rather than the Romance of The Three Kingdoms as a source and portraying Cao Cao more favourably. Despite that it still manages to be ludicrously over the top. How over the top? People are throwing horses around in the first episode. I’m not pointing fingers, but let’s note that Fist of The North Star director Toyoo Ashida was in the “Chief Director” chair.

Kimi ni Todoke (2009)
Studio: Production IG
Director: Hiro Kaburaki

The current series in the slot is this well received adaptation of Karuho Shiina’s shojo romance manga.

—

There was a secondary anime stream that started in 2004, to begin with it mainly contained syndicated series rather than first run series.

Ghost In The Shell SAC (Aired 2004)
Otogi Zoshi (2004)
Studio: Production IG
Director: Mizuho Nishikubo

First original show for this slot.

Ghost In The Shell SAC 2nd Gig (Aired 2005)
Angel Heart (Aired 2005)
Sasami Club (Aired 2006)
WAIT… WHAT?

Claymore (2007)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Hiroyuki Tanaka

Norihiro Yagi’s fantasy manga got a brief run on TV. Not a big fan, as it definitely suffers from some of the flaws of the shows that NTV air. For a show about swordswomen there’s an awful lot of walking and talking, rather than fighting.

Neuro -Supernatural Detective- (2007)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Hiroshi Koujina

Suffers similar problems to the Shonen Jump manga it’s based on, namely poor design on the human characters and lame mysteries. Koujina will be directing 50′s reform school drama Rainbow for NTV in April.

Top Secret – The Revelation (2008)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Hiroshi Aoyama

Sci-fi detective show involving reading people’s memories.

Moryo no Hako (2008)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Ryosuke Nakamura

Over-rated adaptation of a Natsuhiko Kyogoku mystery novel. Notable for having CLAMP character designs.

Hajime no Ippo New Challenger (2009)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Jun Shishido

Continuation of Hajime no Ippo.

It then went into repeats of Kaiji

—

There were also a couple of other titles that fell on different days and times on the schedule:

Kaze no Yojimbo (2001)
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Director: Hayato Date

Misjudged cartoon based on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. In a round about way.

NANA (2006)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Morio Asaka

Like Death Note, this is one of those shows that was always going to happen. The manga is one of the monster successes of the last decade, and the anime was a huge success too. Arguably I shouldn’t include it as it technically started before midnight (23:55) but it’s worth making note of it.

—

Success in the US?

Its hard to say if this really reflects the strength of titles or the strength of DVD distributors and how they package their releases. But here’s the status of the titles that made it onto DVD in the USA.

Berserk - released by Media Blasters. In Print. Complete collections released 3 times.
Master Keaton - released by Geneon. Out of Print. Never collected.
Hajime no Ippo – released by Geneon. Out of Print. Two boxsets.
Tenchi GXP – released by Funimation. In Print. Complete collections released twice.
Air Master – released by Toei. Out of Print. Never completed.
Gokusen - released by Media Blasters. In Print. Complete collections released 3 times.
Monster - currently airing on Sy-Fy.
Ouran Host Club - released by Funimation. In Print. Complete collection and Blu-Ray due out end of March.
Death Note – released by Viz Media. In Print. Two boxsets.
Otogi Zoshi - released by AnimeWorks. In Print. Complete Collection.
Claymore – released by Funimation. In Print. Complete collection and Blu-Ray.
Kaze no Yojimbo - released by Bandai Entertainment. Available. Never collected.
Space Pirate Captain Harlock The Endless Odyssey - released by Geneon. Out of Print. Collected.

I’ve decided to break my analysis of the post midnight anime into a series of smaller, more easily digested posts. You will be able to identify these by the prefix and tag “Past My Bedtime”.

There is a single driving factor behind this – TV Tokyo. As best as I can tell TV Tokyo’s approach to scheduling anime is this:

• Put a lot of it on TV.
• Hope someone watches.

While I believe it was they who started the boom in 1996 with Those Who Hunt Elves and have been the most prolific broadcaster of late night anime, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious strategy or particular audience they are going for. It’s going to take a lot of breaking down to try and make sense of anything going on there, and I don’t want that drowning out some of the clearer scheduling ideas other channels have had over the last 13 years.

So what is my point?

Well, I wanted to illustrate that if you ignore the shows that air after midnight or on satellite, the sort of content that makes up anime on television hasn’t really changed all that much in the last 30 years. The shows up there are pretty much occupying the same slots that existed for anime before the 1997 late night boom, in some cases literally the same slots (more on that in an upcoming post).

When you are comparing the anime of today to the anime of the past, you’ve got to compare like for like and people often fail to do that. A lot of the shows that get the most fervent defenders and attackers belong to a section of the market that is less than 15 years old, so it’s spurious to compare them to shows that were never aimed at the same hardcore audience. I know I’ve done it plenty of times myself.

So what has changed?

Well there’s one big change if you compared this to a listing from the 80s – the lack of robot shows.

Despite what some writers would have you believe, robot shows haven’t been edged out by the otaku pandering shows that air late at night. Those shows are going out in time slots that were never occupied by the classic robot shows.

Robot shows were edged out by the videogame, toy and card game shows. Though there’s also an argument to be made that they simply evolved into them. The anime industry chases the money, and for over a decade now, rather than in shows that sell toy robots, the money has been in shows that follow the Pokemon formula, be that for the purposes of selling monster fightin’ videogames, collectable card games or rev-em-up vehicular beetles. This means we’re probably due a “mature”, post-modern take on Pokemon at some point in the next decade. Gird your loins for that one.

There’s been a softening of the number of literary adaptations too. In part that’s down to the World Masterpiece Theatre and its copyists hitting a malaise in 90s that ultimately lead to WMT’s demise (probably part of a general TV anime malaise in the late 80s/early 90s that I’ll get around to writing about eventually). WMT returned in 2007, but is now relegated to satellite TV.

It’s not all gloom on the literary front, the adaptation of the Thriller Restaurant books was a success in 2009 and continues to be in 2010. While light novel adaptations enjoy some success in the post-midnight slots, Beast Player Erin is the only one that made my list above. Unlike the 13/26 episode adaptations you see late at night, Erin was a old school WMT-style year long work.

It’s also worth noting the couple of late evening, pre-midnight shows that had some success in ’09. Golgo 13 Best Selection began while the original run was still airing, but at an earlier time slot. This resulted in better ratings than the first run had received. Following that we had Shin Mazinger in a similar slot, and again it was more successful than similar post-midnight shows had been. There’s clearly a market for anime targeted at men in their 40s and older, and it will be interesting to see what tries to tap that market next.

Finally on the change front – there’s a lot of TV being made. I’ve listed 53 shows up there, and even then I’ve probably missed some. Admittedly, a sizable chunk started way before 2009 and others are sequels, but even taking that into account, when I compare them to my 80s overload posts I see that there’s more shows airing now than during the years Urusei Yatsura was airing. That being said, it has possibly peaked already. Prime time slots have been lost on Sundays and Saturdays over the last decade, damaging the overall ratings for anime, again, more on that in a later post.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same collection of adaptations of popular shonen & shojo manga, some magical girl shows created by studios to shift merchandise (and provide contrast with the tokusatsu shows they are scheduled with) and perennial old favourites the whole family can enjoy.

Last year showed a number of titles and creators that wouldn’t look out of place in schedules decades ago. As well as the returns of Yatterman, GeGeGe no Kitaro and Dragonball, you had Zettai Karen Children (author Takashi Shiina’s Ghost Sweeper Mikami had a successful anime in 1993) and Cross Game (author Mitsuru Adachi has had anime adaptations in every decade since the 80s). Alongside that, you’ve got shows like Shin-chan, Maruko-chan, Sazae-san, Doraemon etc that literally have been in the schedules for decades plus recurring franchises like Gundam and Pokemon.

If you see a malaise in the sort of content output before midnight, then you probably need to look towards the manga industry rather than the anime industry. Even then it may be more down to changes in society and how different demographics are viewed. In the 80s, City Hunter would have been the equivalent of a Naruto or Bleach in terms of being a Shonen Jump manga turned anime, but outstripped them in success. However in the 21st Century, Tsukasa Hojo’s follow up Angel Heart is published in Comic Bunch and the anime adaptation went out in the middle of the night.

In part that’s down to writing for an audience that has grown up with you, but also due to the “me too” approach of how editors develop talent and series. Editors will be wanting the next One Piece now, but telling people to copy One Piece isn’t going to result in that, but that is what they’ll do. Additionally, there’s also the element of toning down that Daryl Surat has mentioned on Anime World Order, where the content in shonen manga is frequently a lot tamer than it was decades ago (as you may have deduced from my Violence Jack posts). That also goes for TV anime too, notoriously there was a clamp down after Evangelion on violence and sexuality that in part led to the late night and satellite anime shows that now dominate fan chatter.

I’m currently working on a couple of other follow ups to the post about what is mainstream anime, this post sprung out of them and seeing the same arguments going back and forth, again and again. In part those arguments come from the fact that much of Anglophone fandom has a view of anime that’s shot through the prisms of DVDs, streaming and fansubs. That removes any idea of how the show was originally marketed, who the audience it is intended for is and most of all having a reliance on a small number of gatekeepers of taste. This post won’t put a stop to those arguments but it’s part of shoring up some critical thinking on my part and how I approach anime criticism. And it might help drive home the point that anime doesn’t end where the internet chatter ends.

The main post I’m working on at the moment is an analysis of the Sunday anime schedules over the last 10 years, but I’ve also just started an overview of late night anime since 97, and seeing if there are discernible trends. The main trend I’ve decided on so far is that a lot of people scheduling anime late at night do so seemingly without rhyme or reason. Just look at what previously aired in the time slot Durarara!! currently occupies:

• Big Windup! Season 2
• Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~
• Sengoku Basara
• Linebarrels of Iron
• Itazura na Kiss
• Noramimi
• ULTRASEVEN X
  
• Romeo x Juliet
• The Galaxy Railways: Eternal Divergence
• Witchblade

Are they really expecting the same audience for each of those shows? After looking at this and what works during the Sunday daytime slots, I’m increasingly of the opinion that part of the noitaminA slot’s success is due to the fact the scheduler has a specific audience in mind for that time slot.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, more on all of that another time!

Tim Maughan is trying to get people to share recipes over on his site today. As all my recipes involve production lines, HACCP plans or confectionery equipment I’ll never personally afford, in response I am finally launching Horrors of Animated Food Hygiene, an idea I’ve had in my head ever since seeing Yakitate Japan.

Today: Higepiyo Episode 28

Higepiyo is a 2009 anime about a bearded chick. Not just any bearded chick, but the last man in Japan with the heart of a samurai. In this episode, he drunkenly falls into a cake shop’s flour, and the shop’s staff debate whether they can use it. With the help of some very spurious logic, they decide it’s fine to use the flour. Because chicks come from eggs and cakes often contain eggs and alcohol. That’s some gloriously spurious logic right there.

Despite Higepiyo being upfront about the contamination, the cakes sell like they are hot.

There are no depictions of any negative health repurcusions in this anime caused by the sozzled hirsute avian contamination of the raw ingredients. In fact it suggests dipping hairy drunk yellow birds in your flour will increase your business.

It is truly a HORROR OF ANIMATED FOOD HYGIENE.