With all the issues going on with Geneon USA at the moment, it’s kind of hard to figure out exactly what is going to happen with their ongoing series. What we can say is that much of their back-catalogue – the less popular in particular – is pretty likely to go out of print. Essentially, for a lot of their titles, it’s probably going to be a case of buying them now or, well, finding they’re not available later.

So, it seemed to me like it’s a good time to go through the Geneon back-catalogue and pick out a few of my favourites from the less popular titles – that is, the titles I think are worth watching out of those most probably haven’t seen. That means I’ll be skipping over the Vandreads, the GunxSwords, the Tenchi Muyos and the Paranoia Agents, since everyones seen them already.

Anyway, in alphabetical order, since that’s how I’m going through the list. I’ll Youtube the OPs if I can find them, otherwise I’m too lazy to upload them myself.

Black Heaven
Of course, the OP for this one has little in common with the actual content of the show – despite what it may look like, it’s actually a strange comedy about a bored salary man who is convinced to reform his old rock band after he’s contacted by an alien race whose super weapon is powered by his mad guitar skills. No, really. The early-era digital animation doesn’t particularly impress, but it’s worth watching for it’s unusual atmosphere and off-kilter humour. If nothing else, the scene where the band discuss the death of their former keyboard player – or, rather, the truth behind his death – is hilarious.

The Daichis – Earth Defence Family
Aliens are invading, and for no good reason The Daichis have found themselves suddenly endowed with access to the technology to fight them. Lured by the incentive of being paid for taking them out, they take to this task with aplomb, only to later find out that they actually have to pay for the use of their more powerful equipment. Finding themselves deep in debt, they have to keep on fighting the aliens whether they want to or not. Compounding the issue is that the parents were on the verge of divorce even before all this kicked off…

Much of this show was written by Shoji Kawamori, who was firmly in this weird mode throughout. The families young’un, Dai, grates a bit throughout, and the series does drag in places, but there are a lot of fun episodes too.. It’s one of those shows which has some interesting ideas and concepts which it doesn’t quite pull off, but it makes a damn good try of it, and does at least fall into the category of being refreshingly different.

El Hazard
Okay, so not exactly all that obscure, but it’s certainly pretty old – dating back to 1995 – and has always played second fiddle to Tenchi Muyo, though I’ve always preferred it myself. Much of my affection towards the show is, admittedly, rose-tinted glasses – it was one of the titles what was getting magazine coverage in the UK press magazines back when I was first getting into anime (I’m thinking AnimeUK here, prior to the UK release), and I became immediately infatuated with it once it did hit VHS here in the UK.

That said, I still think it holds up pretty well. To a certain degree, it seems like a pretty pedestrian world-displacement comedy, but it does have a far more amusing cast of characters than most, including an alcoholic PE teacher who gains super-human strength, but only when he’s sober, a loli-lesbian, and completely over-the-top megalomaniac villain with an army of bugs and a death-wish towards the hero (whom his younger sister crushes on). Speaking of the main character, he spends pretty much the entire series in drag, disguised as a missing princess in a plot line which builds up to an unexpected and hilarious twist.

There’s only one caveat with El Hazard – the sequels and spin-offs. It hails back from that era when AIC would sequel anything with an iota of success, and if they could sequel it they’d reimagine it instead. Just look at Tenchi Muyo – you have the original OAV series and it’s sequels, two different Tenchi remakes for TV, the Pretty Sammy OAV series, the Pretty Sammy TV show, the recent Magical Girl Club (or whatever it was called) TV series, GXP and a bunch of movies. El Hazard isn’t quite as bad, but OAVs directly following the original series is entirely extraneous, and the TV seasons aren’t really worth bothering with. The original OAV series wraps itself up nicely, anyway.

Fighting Spirit
AKA Hajime no Ippo. If any show is to blame for sinking Geneon USA, this is probably it – it’s a long show which sold pathetically, but Geneon persisted in releasing it – and dubbing it – regardless. It lost them a crapton of money as a result.

Why did they continuing releasing it? Because it’s great. It’s an epic tale of GUTS, MANLINESS and pOnOs jokes. Unfortunately, it’s an epic tale of GUTS, MANLINESS and pOnOs jokes centering around boxing. If being a sports anime wasn’t bad enough, it’s a sports anime in which the men make the cast of Dragonball Z look underdeveloped, and the design of the girls tends to fall into the categories of “unattractive” or “plain fugly” (in fact, it makes plenty of jokes about the later).

It’s a real shame it didn’t do better – of all the shows released R1 side in recent years, this one ranks among my favourites despite not really being a fan of sporting shows. Among the last releases coming out of Geneon USAs door before that November cut-off date is a pair of cheap Fighting Spirit collection boxes – it’s certainly worth trying to pick them up.

Gad Guard
It has a funky OP. I’m not really sure I have all that much to say about this one – whilst the story ultimately doesn’t actually go all that far, the design is fairly distinctive and the characters are pretty pleasant. There’s a few nice stories thrown in during it’s run, though it’s rarely spectacular. Ultimately, it’s one of those shows which doesn’t pretty much everything in an above average fashion, and does nothing particularly badly, but doesn’t quite manage to pull everything together in order to be fantastic. It’s still worth a look, though.

Gatekeepers
I only really mention this because it’s tj_hans favourite – I’m not really all that big a fan of it. jpmeyer wrote about the show, so go read his entry. I’m actually more of a fan of the OAV sequel, Gatekeepers 21, which takes the camp setting and stirs in a wedge of emo for good measure. Anyway, Gatekeepers and Gatekeepers 21 were recently re-released as a cheap set, so there isn’t really all that much to loose from it.

Heat Guy J
With this show, Escaflowne director Kazuki Akane set out to direct a show about manliness, so he obviously made one of the main male leads a robot. It’s probably the most polished thing to have come out of Satelight – it lacks the weirdo and/or craptacular animation of shows like Noein or Kamichama Karin, nor does it have the oft pretentious writing of the likes of Arjuna. Really, it’s just a fun, well made, pulpy adventure story – and it’s cheap.

Anyway, that’s enough to be chewing on for one day. I’ll go through the rest of the list tomorrow.