Ask John: Are There Alternate Versions of Outlaw Star?

Question:
I have a question regarding Outlaw Star. Did it have a late night/daytime version like Maze, and if it did, which version did we get? I have heard it did, and we got the daytime version, but I have never found any proof.

Answer:
This question brings up quite a number of elements that need to be addressed. Before answering the question, let me comment on it directly. Maze Bakunetsu Jiku did not have a late night and daytime version. (I’ll come back to Maze in a moment.) In fact, I’ve never heard of an anime TV series broadcast in two different versions on Japanese television the way Gundam Wing was broadcast on American television in an edited Toonami version and not-quite-as-heavily-edited Adult Swim version. Outlaw Star was broadcast on the American Cartoon Network in an censored format that removed adult language, certain violent scenes, and skipped episode 23 entirely. All home video versions of Outlaw Star released in America are uncut and uncensored.

The earliest example of alternate video releases I know of dates back to the 1985 OAV Dream Hunter Rem. Although it had a very cute and colorful young girl protagonist accompanied by a cute pet dog, the series was quite dark and violent. Shortly after the initial release of the first OAV, a Dream Hunter Rem Special OAV was released- a re-edited version of the first OAV featuring nudity in scenes where the original OAV had none.

In the late 1990s, for a very short time, it seemed to be trendy in Japan to release alternate versions of TV anime. The 1997 Maze Bakunetsu Jiku TV series had no nudity during its TV broadcast, but the home video version did. The 1998 Weiss Kreuz, Nightwalker, and Outlaw Star TV series were all released to Japanese laserdisc in “special editions” that theoretically had more mature content than their original TV broadcast versions, although in my very limited comparisons between the TV broadcast versions and Japanese LD versions of these shows I’ve never noticed any differences. And in an unusual reversal of standards, the 12 episode Sakura Tsushin (Sakura Dairies) OAV series released in 1997 was edited to remove nudity then broadcast on Japanese TV the following year. Of partial relevance, the American release version of the Maze Bakunetsu Jiku TV series is the all ages friendly original Japanese TV version, not the “ecchi” Japanese home video version. America has also had Sakura Tsushin released in both its edited TV version and its original home video version.

While this short lived trend of producing “clean” and “mature” versions of anime TV series has largely died off in Japan, it still happens occasionally. The Lime-Iro Senkitan anime TV series from earlier this year was based on an adults-only PC game. The animation broadcast on Japanese television was risqué, but still relatively tame compared to the DVD release which included numerous scenes of topless and nude girls who where clothed in the TV broadcast version.

ADDENDUM
saymark2 wrote in with additional confirmation that the Japanese home video version of Outlaw Star episode 1 included a prologue montage of footage from the series accompanying Melfina saying, “Gene Starwind, thank you.” This prologue was not included in the American DVD release.