Since I did my last Anime Holy Grails video, pretty much most of the works on that list have been licensed in some form or another. So, it’s time to revisit the list.

Evangelion is available on Netflix and has received some very nice Blu-Ray releases, one of which I’ve done an unboxing video of. The City Hunter franchise is has received some excellent releases on Blu-ray from Discotek Media, as have the various elements of the GaoGaiGar saga. The rest of the Brave franchise (particularly Might Gaine) hasn’t been licensed yet, but hopefully, the success of GaoGaiGar has gotten the foot in the door for other parts of the Brave franchise.

While Macross slipped back into limbo after being potentially straightened out, due to Shawn Kleckner taking a long-deserved retirement accompanied by a Brink’s Truck full of money from Sony/Crunchyroll, releases of Macross 7 and later series aren’t off the table yet.

The main remaining works from my list of Anime Holy Grails are Zambot 3 and Angel’s Egg. Yoshitaka Amano mentioned during his pre-COVID Kumoricon appearance that the rights for Angel’s Egg can best be described as being in limbo if not FUBAR, so Angel’s Egg may remain unavailable legally unless someone provides a level of financial incentive to straighten all this out – which it’s possible that someone like Discotek won’t be able to bring the financial leverage to bear to straighten that out – leaving someone like the Criterion Collection who has both muscle and international Cinema clout to straighten things up.

With that in mind, here are my 4 picks for works to replace those that have been retrieved. I’ll probably redo this post as a video later, but I want to get these picks out now. As always, these are in no particular order.

#1: The Rest of Lodoss (Rune Soldier Louie & The Legend of Crystania + Manga & Novels)

There was a chunk of time when we were getting a steady clip of Lodoss – Funimation license rescued the original Lodoss anime and the TV series, and Seven Seas published the first Lodoss novel officially in English, in both a regular paperback and a very nice hardbound edition (which is the one I got) – and then things stopped. No more translations of the novels, no re-releases of the manga, and no license rescues of the other series – Legend of Crystania and Rune Soldier Louie.

Seven Seas has since said that they have no plans to release the remaining Lodoss novels in English and we should stop asking – but no reason that I found as to why (not selling well enough, difficult to get the translation clearances from Group SNE, etc.)

I hope that these remaining portions of the Lodoss saga will, eventually, get an official English Language US release – not only the main parts of the Lodoss Saga that have been animated but also the rest of the novels – possibly picked up by someone like J-Novel Club – and the previous manga releases that had gotten an English release. Hopefully, Udon’s release of Crown of the Covenant will show that there is enough of a market for Lodoss to support more releases of work in this universe.

Also, I wouldn’t mind an official English translation of Sword World 2.5 edition.

#2: Fang of the Sun Dougram

When I was getting into tabletop RPGs, and learned about Battletech, with this came learning about The Unseen – a collection of mechs that were based on licensed designs from various anime, that FASA had gotten – or rather thought that they’d gotten – in a licensing deal with model manufacturer Twentieth Century Imports. These designs came from three shows – Macross (the Destroids – which is where FASA got into trouble), Crusher Joe, and Fang of the Sun Dougram.

As my fandom grew, I ended up researching Dougram further and learned about Ryosuke Takahashi, and one of his other series – Armored Trooper VOTOMS – and with it Takahashi’s philosophy of the Real Robot. While Gundam and similar series still keep the concept of the giant robot as being the sort of high-performance ace custom, Takahashi’s interpretation places the real robot as being just a tool or other implement of war, like a Jeep or a machine gun, with the mystique falling ultimately behind not the implement itself, but it’s wielder.

Dougram was the first major step in that direction, I think, for Takahashi, and one which did so without going to the larger extremes that VOTOMS did with the mystique of the warrior – with the whole concept of both the Red Shoulders and the Perfect Soldiers (with the latter case feeling like Takahashi trying to create his own universe’s version of the Quizatz Hadarach, only created strictly for battle, rather than for leading humanity.)

#3: Master Keaton

In this past year, the anime adaptations of the works of Naoki Urasawa have gotten new life through Netflix putting Monster up for streaming, in advance of the new anime adaptation of Pluto – Urasawa’s own interpretation of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy story “The World’s Strongest” – where he took that story and put it into the framework of the mystery thriller stories that he’s become known for, through those works, along with 20th Century Boys.

As I mentioned in my review of the manga of Master Keaton, that manga feels like it lays a lot of ground work for what would come later with Monster, not just in terms of Urasawa as a writer of mysteries, but also in terms Urasawa developing his own background on Europe in the late 80s and early 90s, as the Iron Curtain came down and various countries that had been under the auspices of the Soviet Union tried to figure out what they were going to do now under this new geopolitical structure.

While I’d also very much love to see a physical release for Monster, I suspect a release for Master Keaton is more likely – and considering that Master Keaton also isn’t available for streaming while Monster is, I’d consider it a more pressing concern.

#4: Betterman

Of the various parts of the GaoGaiGar universe, the black sheep of the setting is Betterman, a combination mecha/Dark Transforming Hero action-horror series that operates on the fringes of the setting, with the cast eventually slipping in to the GaoGaiGar story through parts of GaoGaiGar final, and a sequel novel that has been incorporated into Super Robot Wars 30.

Betterman is also a series I watched semi-religiously on TechTV back in the day, when they had a limited anime block, and which I tried (and somewhat failed) to tape when I was not able to watch it live. It was a the first mecha-horror show I’d watched, though it wasn’t that intense on the scares, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

I’d love to see Betterman be made available again – the last mention I’d heard is that Sentai Filmworks had licensed it, but that announcement also mentioned that they’d licensed Overman King Gainer and Kurokami – both of which are getting releases from Discotek Media so those rights may be available again, and as Discotek has released the rest of the GaoGaiGar saga, they’re in the best position to pick up the series.

So, as things stand, my list of Anime Holy Grails is now:

• Zambot 3
• Angel’s Egg
• Betterman
• Master Keaton
• Fang of the Sun: Dougram
• The Rest of Lodoss

What other things would you consider would be on your own list of Anime Holy Grails for licenses? Please let me know in the comments below.

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