There’s an overwhelming amount of content that’s released every year and anime is one medium of entertainment that’s strived to push boundaries for decades now. The mainstream reception of anime outside of Japan has blossomed in exponential ways over the past few decades. Anime releases are now plentiful and the market is a far cry away from where it was during the experimental period of the 1990s.
Anime is now the standard, not the exception, and this rule also extends to dubbed anime series. A wide range of anime currently receive dubs, but there are also some titles back from the ‘90s that surprisingly have English adaptations. The dubbing industry was still fresh back then, yet there are some unusual projects that benefited from unexpected dubs.
10 Flame Of Recca Narrows In On The Shonen Staples & Is Ahead Of The Curve
Flame of Recca is a shonen series that follows a teenage delinquent who has aspirations toward becoming a ninja and accesses vast fire abilities. Flame of Recca is the kind of series that’s perfect for Adult Swim's Toonami block, but back in the '90s it had fewer places to find its audience. Flame of Recca is a tight 42 episodes and it doesn’t lose itself in endless filler like many of its peers, yet Flame of Recca still fell through the cracks during its release. Thankfully, the whole series is currently available to stream on RetroCrush.
9 Those Who Hunt Elves Sets Loose Deadly Hunters In A Fantastical Domain
Fantasy has gained an increasingly dominant role in mainstream anime series, and it's become common for shonen properties to heavily blend action and fantasy together. These series can sometimes exhaust what's already an overdone universe, but Those Who Hunt Elves is only 12 episodes that don't overstay their welcome.
Fantasy is given a dark edge when displaced hunters journey to retrieve the spell fragment-covered skins of elves. It's an odd series that defies modern expectations and its dub takes a big risk with the tiny anime.
8 Eat-Man Offers Striking Visuals & Odd Characters In A Weird, Warped World
Eat-Man is an especially odd series with heavy cyberpunk overtones. The anime, as well as its successor, Eat-Man '98, centers on a nomadic mercenary named Bolt Crank that can eat metal or literally anything. Bolt doesn't just have an invincible stomach, but the objects he eats get reproduced through his body. It's possible to think that the success of other cyberpunk anime properties from the time, like Ghost in the Shell, would give Eat-Man an audience, but it remains an unusual anime that stands out as an edgy sci-fi outlier of the 1990s.
7 Devilman Lady Is A Risky Series That Embraces Excess
Go Nagai is responsible for many foundational anime series, but his Devilman franchise has expanded in major ways and still turns out new content. Devilman Lady, or Devil Lady in the English dub, follows the events of the original series, but it basically functions as a gender-swapped remake. All of the Devilman properties are heavy with violence and sex and Devil Lady is an even harder sell back in the '90s. Nagai’s franchise had hardly made a name for itself outside of Japan at this point, so a dub for Devil Lady stands out as a bizarre anomaly.
6 Power Stone Adapts The Party Fighter Into An Anime That Travels The World
Anime and video games share a lot in common and it’s not unusual that one medium will end up adapting the other and take a story in a new direction. Capcom is one of the more famous video game developers, but Power Stone is a niche fighting franchise that never got the attention that it deserved.
Power Stone’s anime is a reasonably faithful and entertaining take on the video games, even if it does feel a little toothless. Power Stone’s dub actually aired on Canadian television, but it’s still an obscure release, much like the games that it’s based upon.
5 The Ping-Pong Club Presents Fearless Comedy That’s Still Risky By Modern Standards
The 1990s were exciting for anime outside of Japan because new companies took risks over the properties that they dubbed and there was less certainty over what would be popular. The Pong-Pong Club is a hormone-driven amped-up comedy that feels like the kind of program that would be made for Adult Swim. The Ping-Pong Club isn’t a major title, and it’s such an odd entity that’s designed to provoke that it’s genuinely surprising that there’s an English dub for it. There is sometimes an American sensibility with Ping-Pong Club’s sense of humor, but it’s still a very atypical program.
4 Mermaid Saga Explores The Endless Existence Of An Immortal Mermaid
The 1990s are a great decade for anime OVA series and many of these shorter investments received surprising English dubs as low-risk experiments. Mermaid Saga is only 11 episodes along with two OVA installments, but it comes from Rumiko Takahashi and is one of her more somber stories. Mermaid Saga follows an immortal male mermaid who strives for someone that can turn him back to human and end his hundreds of years of existence. The success of Ranma ½ made Takahashi a hot commodity, but Mermaid Saga is still a rarer release.
3 Nadia: Secret Of The Blue Water Is An Admirable Push For The ‘90s To Evolve
Studio Gainax is behind strange and experimental anime series, with Hideaki Anno being an unconventional genius when it comes to his contributions. Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water is an early effort from Anno that feels decidedly different with more of an adventure aesthetic. It’s still thought-provoking, but not steeped in existential dread. Nadia actually has two dubs, one by Streamline Pictures, which produced less than ten episodes, as well as Monster Island Studios’ dub with ADV. It’s an underseen gem that actually casts children in the young protagonist roles and there’s a decent script adaptation for the time.
2 Ranma ½’s Dub Help Launch The Market For Direct-To-Video Anime Releases
Rumiko Takahashi is a prolific name in manga throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and Ranma ½ is often viewed as one of her bigger successes. The series takes standard action and shonen tropes and cleverly subverts them with a surreal premise that accentuates the comedy of Ranma ½’s universe. Ranma ½ represents an important anime series from the ‘90s, but it’s still surprising that it features an English dub. Ranma ½ was essentially the first series to experiment with direct-to-video dubbed anime releases and Ranma’s success helped this distribution method dominate the decade.
1 Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team Explores The Personal Casualties Of War
Mobile Suit Gundam is one of the biggest anime institutions of all time and the mecha franchise has also made its mark with English dubs. It’s taken time for Gundam dubs to catch on, but many of the more important series have received dubs. The 08th MS Team is a 12-episode mini-series that feels like the Band of Brothers of Gundam. It's a gritty, small-scale story that focuses on grunt soldiers that are locked in guerilla jungle combat. It's realistic and unflinching for a Gundam series, which makes it a surprising choice to get an English dub so early on.
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