Ask John: Will Stranger & Shadow Reach America?

Question:
Do you think “Sword of the Stranger” and “Shadow” will ever be released in America? The reason I ask about “Shadow” is because I remember you wrote about how this is the best ninja anime you ever saw but I can’t find no trailers or any information about it.

Answer:
Making licensing predictions is always a bit of a crap shoot. I make predictions based on my perception of odds, but I can’t ever conclusively predict what will happen in the future. My hypothesis, a guess based on observation and rational speculation, is that the 2006 feature film Stranger ~Mukoh Hadan~ will eventually see an official American home video release. Sadly, I’m not quite as optimistic about the possibility of an official American release of the 2004 Shadow OVA series.

With the exception of productions which have not been released in Japan yet, and the short Rahxephon OVA which was released exclusively with the Japanese Rahxephon Playstation 2 game, nearly every anime production that BONES has made in its seven year history has been licensed for official American release. The motion picture Stranger, and the 2007 Skull Man television series are BONES’ only anime productions that have not yet been licensed for American release. With a precedent like that, it’s very easy to presume that Stranger will eventually reach America. In fact, considering its content and style, Skull Man is also a probable future American release.

Stranger is a lushly animated and unashamedly violent samurai action picture. Action oriented swordplay stories including Jubei Ninpucho, Rurouni Kenshin, Berserk, and Claymore tend to be quite popular among American fans, so the odds are good that Stranger will also be well received among American viewers. Furthermore, the fact that Stranger is a single feature film works in its favor. Typically American consumers gravitate toward self-contained, feature length anime releases. American consumers like to believe that they’re getting value for their money, and don’t like to commit to an extended release that entails a wait between volume releases and uncertainty that the entire series will be fully released. Average American consumers like to be able to make a single, one-time purchase of an entire, self-contained story, and feel like the amount they’ve paid for the purchase is justified by the DVD’s running time. (Logically value should be determined by the quality of the DVD’s content rather than its length because a brilliant 30 minute film is a better investment than a terrible 90 minute film, but logic doesn’t always apply to average American consumer purchasing decisions.) The fact that Stranger is a single, self-contained feature will automatically make it more attractive to a large number of American consumers than a longer series released over multiple DVD volumes.

I have previously espoused the qualities of the Shadow OVA series. Animation studio A.P.P.P. initially announced plans to distribute the series in America in 2004 through its American subsidiary Super Techno Arts. Unfortunately, those release plans were canceled and Super Techno Arts is now, in practical effect, defunct. A number of years have passed, and Shadow remains unavailable on American DVD. If the series has gone unlicensed for this long, I think it’s natural to presume that it will never be licensed. After all, if the show was probable to be licensed, it probably would have already been acquired by now. Furthermore complicating the potential of an American license is the fact that there are very few potential American licensors for the series. Shadow is an anime similar in tone and style to Kite and Mezzo Forte. It’s a graphically violent action series about a young female killer, and it contains gratuitous nudity and brief scenes of explicit sex. There simply aren’t very many American licensors that handle that sort of material. In fact, Media Blasters is arguably the only active American distribution company that distributes strictly adult oriented action anime.

AD Vision and Manga Entertainment distribute violent anime series that include nudity and sexuality, including Jubei Ninpucho (“Ninja Scroll”), Tokko, Elfen Lied, and Gantz, but these titles are all relatively mainstream productions which are primarily bloody action with a small amount of sex. FUNimation, Nozomi, Bandai Entertainment, and Bandai Visual do not distribute anime that includes graphic sexuality. Critical Mass, JapanAnime, and ASM primarily distribute pornographic anime. Shadow is not a mainstream title, nor is it outright pornographic, making it less than ideal for any of these aforementioned distributors, and potentially reducing its chances of being acquired for official American release.