We talk a lot about the "good old days" and the way things used to be, but sometimes we miss things from back then that should have been much bigger than it was. While there were good times that doesn't mean everything was perfect.
Case in point, the early days of manga and anime in the West was actually a lot spottier than you might remember. High selling classics from Japan, and even obscure favorites, were given a release over here and were not only much more underground than they were in the East, they also never really hit mainstream popularity even when anime and manga finally broke big.
As mentioned before, anime and manga were very much the alternative underground in the West back in the day. This is perhaps that is why they attracted so many hipsters. And a lot of those folks now run the industry today. This might explain why this era has yet to get a a fresh opportunity.
While some series like Akira, Spriggan, Mermaid Saga, Dragon Half, and Battle Angel Alita, were allowed a second wind, many have never quite got the chance to begin with. To this day works like Caravan Kidd, City Hunter, GetBackers, Outlanders, Pineapple Army, Psychic Girl Mai, Getter Robo, and Ogre Slayer, all of which were favorites in Japan and actually did release in the North America, have never had proper re-releases here despite the more friendlier market in the modern age. And even then, many modern audiences were trained to ignore old things.
This doesn't even go into Japanese mega sellers like Ushio & Tora, Ginga Sengoku Gun'yūden Rai, Tomorrow's Joe (Ashita no Joe), Mazinger Z, and Ghost Sweeper Mikami, which for whatever inexplicable reason never even got put out here in the first place and absolutely would have hit with audiences at the time this stuff was still underground here. The fact of the matter is that we missed out on a real treasure trove of a Golden Age, even back then. I doubt we'll ever really catch up with it.
One such series that was absolutely whiffed at back in the day was a series title you probably know despite probably never having read or seen before. This would be Yuzo Takeda's long running mystic horror adventure romance series 3x3 Eyes.
for those unaware, 3x3 Eyes is the story of Yakamo, a young man who has no family and is barely getting by in the world. One day he meets a strange dirty and exotic girl named Pai who seems to be looking for him. Through a string of events she ends up taking his soul into hers, turning him into a superzombie who cannot die until she does. Not only that but cults, monsters, and assassins, all seem to want her to resurrect a god who wishes to remake the world itself. Is she truly the key to it all?
However, Pai does not quite know who or what she is, bearer of a third eye and strange magic including the ability to summon giant monsters, and is also alone in the world. Yakumo decides to help her claim humanity along with his mortality, and the two go on a long journey fraught with mystery, danger, and secrets of the like you would never quite imagine. Despite its length, the series does not let up on its pacing.
3x3 Eyes (which refers to the eyes on the creatures that want to resurrect an evil god) is a strange bird in that it has all the elements that should guarantee huge success overseas. It originally ran from 1987 to 2002 in the same magazine Akira did, it has everything readers of classic adventure love (brave men, pretty women, cool monsters, strange magic, and a lot of adventure), had two OVAs that released during the golden age of the form, and its legitimately really good.
Despite that, 3x3 Eyes is about as well known as an obscure OVA such as Master of Mosquiton or K.O. Beast is today. Just about no one in the West remembers it ever existed in the first place.
And it wasn't for lack of trying!
Indie publishers and Dark Horse both attempted to put the manga out back in the day, but it never got any traction or much in the way of sales. The OVAs, despite being put out by Streamline, Orion, and Pioneer, the three biggest western anime companies back in the day, are still barely more than curiosities today. It also doesn't help that apparently the masters are in such rough shape that it makes a newer HD release all but impossible. Even now as older manga get Netflix anime remakes and new manga releases bundled with them, the 40 volume classic (though since re-released in omnibus form like many others to give it far fewer volumes) still remains unreleased here. It is as if it came, failed to catch on, and simply disappeared. We missed our chance, and that is simply all she wrote!
The series remains big in Japan, getting sequel manga to this day. In the West, it has been all but forgotten without a trace. It really is bizarre how that works sometimes!
It might not help that manga like this isn't really common anymore, making a new release even more unlikely. 3x3 Eyes is an adventure series, not like a battle, horror, or romance manga. There is a lot of action, plenty of weird horrors, and there is romance, but it is all in service of a journey through strange lands and hidden space, a series very much in the lineage of classics like Babel II, Cyborg 009, Trigun, or Fist of the North Star. It's the sort of thing you don't see much anymore. These series prioritize classic struggles of good and evil, the wonder and beauty of the world even during dark times, and things beyond which the eye can perceive into what is really important. Such series are not so much common anymore, even as the medium is more popular worldwide as it has ever been.
Perhaps there is just no market for such a series anymore. Maybe it was already dying off back in the day. Who really knows?
This isn't meant to decry things as terrible or anything like that, merely to point out that even when one does everything right, and even when one puts out a work that hits, it might not always do so in the way one expects. There is no formula for success.
That said, 3x3 Eyes is a series that does deserve to be remembered worldwide. It is in Japan, after all. Hopefully sometime in the near future it can achieve a second wind of western popularity of the sort so many classics are getting today. It is more than due for the same treatment.
If you haven't read it, I do highly recommend doing so however you can. It is an adventure unlike any you've take before. It will take you places you will never expect and lift you up when you are feeling low.
And that is what it's all about!
JD,
ReplyDeleteI dunno but I think I saw 3X3 eyes in French. Some of the titles you cite in the article, are familiar and I think I saw them in the French bookstore. Could it be that many of the manga and anime that didn't come to North America, did, but as French translations? I'm less familiar with the anime but mangas a little bit more. That's why some of the titles resonate because they trigger a vague memory about them.
xavier
3x3 Eyes WAS big decades ago in Japan, but it never really hit critical mass anywhere outside of Japan even if it had some releases. Even now as Battle Angel Alita and Akira get thick boxset re-releases, it remains unreleased and not talked about much.
DeleteIt's a shame, and why I wanted to highlight it here. Older stuff tends to be overlooked these days.