Ask John: What Happened to Tatakau Shisho?

Question:
For a while I’ve been interested in seeing Tatakau Shisho – The Book of Bantorra. Have you heard anything on a domestic release for that series?

Answer:
Crunchyroll simulcast the Tatakau Shisho television series two years ago, but since then no domestic company has acquired the series for home video release. The absence of a domestic license does and doesn’t seem odd. The anime series, a seeming hybrid of The Three Musketeers, Read or Die, and X-Men, seems ideally targeted to the tastes of American viewers. However, the series also seemed to buckle under its own enormous weight. While certainly not as pretentious as similarly dark and “mature” shows like Texhnolyze or Ergo Proxy, Tatakau Shisho was extensively imbued with a tone of self-importance and, although not entirely without humor, the show didn’t have much humor or a rousing sense of fun or involving, intriguing excitement and tension as titles like Chevalier, R.O.D. and Gankutsuou did. So despite overtly seemingly like a program particularly suited to American tastes, Tatakau Shisho ~The Book of Bantora~ failed to click with otaku, evidently domestically or in Japan. The series disappeared into relative obscurity rapidly, and while the comparable Densetsu no Yusha no Densetsu may not have been technically as ambitious or as well produced, it’s been picked up for American DVD release while Tatakau Shisho hasn’t because it’s still more fun and more enjoyable to watch than Tatakau Shisho.

With relatively obscure shows of middling popularity getting licensed for domestic DVD release, such as Crystal Blaze, Towa no Quon, Senko no Night Raid, Yoku Wakaru Gendai Maho, and the Loups-Garous movie, I won’t be surprised to see Tatakau Shisho eventually get picked up for domestic DVD release. But considering its marginal success as a streaming title and its rather poor consumer support in Japan, I imagine that it’s a positive but not high priority or highly desirable title for any domestic distributor.