The Strongest Battlegrounds (2001 TV series)

The Strongest Battlegrounds^[1] is a Japanese anime television series based on the manga of the same name. It is created by Nomura Tsunesaburo and produced by Ancient Rhino Entertainment and Yielding Arts. The series follows a teenager named Nakahara Masakado's adventures as he is forced to train for the annual "battle of the century" event within eight months, called the "Grand War", in which many people are given the opportunity to battle and defeat their opponents to the death to prepare themself for the real world that they faced later in life, which Nakahara refuses to do and tries to stop the games from happening.

The Strongest Battlegrounds premiered on the network YoruNet in Neo-Japan on February 10, 2001, running for a total of seven seasons, and contains a total of 201 episodes. Avast Television acquired the rights to produce a heavily edited English dub of the anime, which debuted in the United States on their children's network Children's Avast Television on May 5, 2002. Following the series' failure, Avast Television cancelled it after only six months of airing in December of that year. However, Robloxian Adult Swim produced a re-dub of the series, which debuted on June 8, 2003.

Since its debut in Neo-Japan, The Strongest Battlegrounds has received generally positive reviews for its animation, writing, and character development, as well as a significant commercial success, with YoruNet becoming one of the most-watched networks following the series' premiere, having a significant cultural impact, and having a fan base. The anime was considered a critical and commercial failure in the United States due to the English dub by Avast Television. However, with the production of the anime under Robloxian Adult Swim, The Strongest Battlegrounds became a huge critical and commercial success and was seen as one of the major shows that earned an audience in the western, as anime wasn't nearly as popular as before.

Premise

Based on the manga of the same name and set in a fictional universe where people are born by their parents with the ability to fight and battle, Nakahara Masakado (voiced by Ayuzawa Hiroya in Japanese and Alexander Porter in English, respectively) is a young teenager who is currently set to be one of the main people who will participate in the "Great War" event, where they will showcase their powers that they have developed over the years through training and hard work, before their battle, in which only one winner will win the games. However, Nakahara, who lives with his father because his mother died many years ago, does not want to play the games and believes that they are meant to hurt people and make them believe that they are evil and dangerous people. So, he decided to learn more about the games and the main hoster, Kanemaru Toshikuni (voiced by Kinoshita Raidon in Japanese and Bradley Moss in English), who created the games to get rid of the citizens of his cities rather than show their powers and, more importantly, heavily abuse the people who participate in the games.

Voice cast and characters

Production

Nomura Tsunesaburo had previously written The Strongest Battlegrounds manga, which was released in 1998. In 1999, Ancient Rhino Entertainment asked Nomura Tsunesaburo to come to their studio to discuss their focus on the manga, as the executives had been focusing on the manga he had created and were interested in creating an anime based on it. Nomura agreed to work on the series and directed the first 85 episodes of the anime, with the goal of making the series as similar to the chapter pages as possible. Ancient Rhino Entertainment began official development on the anime in June 2000, and in a press release about upcoming projects for their line-up, they confirmed that The Strongest Battlegrounds was being produced as an anime and was scheduled for release in early 2001; the original release date had been set for late 2000, but had to be pushed back to its current release date due to the creator's desire that everyone not rush through the story. When asked about the date, Nomura Tsunesaburo said that the series was most likely scheduled for November or December 2001. He stepped down as director starting with episode 86 because he wanted to focus on the manga first, then "concentration" on writing the anime alongside the production team. However, Nomura Tsunesaburo returned as producer and director beginning with episode 149. During production, the manga writer instructed voice actors Ayuzawa Hiroya and Kinoshita Raidon to match the character's tone and style.

During the series' early development, Nomura considered making each episode around 30 minutes long to match the pacing of the pages and adapt correctly, but abandoned the idea and made the episodes 22 to 25 minutes long, eight to five minutes shorter than they had originally planned to work on. While the manga was still being written, Ancient Rhino Entertainment wanted the creator to write original stories for the anime because they were concerned "of the thought of having close to the end point of the manga was at." Nomura Tsunesaburo told the production crew in 2001, following the release of the first episode, that he "would be with them," but he had to stand back and focus on the last volumes of his manga, which were completed by December 2002. By then, the anime had reached its third season. Because Nomura Tsunesaburo wanted to make the anime to finish all of the storylines he had written for the manga, he first requested that all of the episodes be produced based on many chapters ranging from 25 to 35 pages. However, due to animation challenges, he abandoned his plan in favor of taking the time to complete the story that the series had intended to tell. The Strongest Battlegrounds was adapted from all 30 volumes of the manga of the same name and premiered on the network YoruNet on February 5, 2001.

English localization

Avast Television reported in January 2002 that they had been planning on acquiring the anime's rights since its premiere in February 2001, but Ancient Rhino Entertainment had refused because they feared that the English dub would be "ruined" by the choices they had made after seeing previous animes adapted in English that were not as positive. As a result, Ancient Rhino Entertainment withheld the rights to an English dub for more than two months until the manga artist agreed to the concept. However, by March of that year, Ancient Rhino Entertainment stated that Avast Television had acquired the rights to the anime, and shortly thereafter, the company confirmed that The Strongest Battlegrounds was set to broadcast on their network later that year. Despite Ancient Rhino Entertainment's orders to make only minor changes, Avast Television significantly reduced the number of episodes from 63 to 33, wrote new scripts, and replaced the background music composed by the Japanese crew with Robloxian-style music to match the style that young children desired. On May 5, 2002, Avast Television premiered the series on Children's Avast Television. However, by November of that year, Avast Television reported that Ancient Rhino Entertainment had regained their rights and that production on the English dub had been officially halted, leaving the series with only 33 episodes, a reduction of 30 episodes from the first to second seasons. Furthermore, executives judged the series to be a critical and commercial disaster, stating that ratings were lower than projected but that the majority of viewers were teenagers.

On January 8, 2003, Robloxian Adult Swim announced that they were developing on an English dub for The Strongest Battlegrounds, and that the studio Ancient Rhino Entertainment was collaborating with them to produce the "dub as excellent as possible." Initially, following the tremendous failure of the original English dub, Ancient Rhino Entertainment refused to do English dubs "till the anime was done," but Robloxian Adult Swim was apparently able to persuade them to discuss another English dub. Robloxian Adult Swim's dubbed episodes premiered on their network on June 8, 2003, and were a commercial success, gaining a large fan following among teenagers. As a result, Ancient Rhino Entertainment ordered more episodes to be dubbed, with the exception of specials and recaps. Adult Swim then published the first DVD home media release of the first five episodes on December 7, 2003, followed by more in the late 2000s. As part of their April Fools event, Robloxian Adult Swim showed the original Japanese episodes that aired prior to the week of April 1, beginning with episodes from the fifth season. Adult Swim was originally scheduled to air the second English dub at roughly 1:00 a.m., but owing to high demand, the series was rescheduled to 11:30 p.m. timeslot. Adult Swim and Ancient Rhino Entertainment revealed in November 2004 that they planned to broadcast and release the original Japanese episodes, which would subsequently be dubbed into English and subtitled.

Episodes

Main article: List of The Strongest Battlegrounds episodes

Notes