I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but I happened to search for Enoki Films USA of Vidoevo and found this presumably deleted youtube video:
Update: Just realized you already posted a like to this video earlier in the thread. I guess it's not deleted on youtube after all. Well at least it's good to know there's a backup of the video on Vidoevo. I hope it gets completely found.
I brought this topic up in the LMW discord last year and no one cared and/or argued that it "wasn't even lost media." I'm glad to see there's interest here on the forums. I first found out about these from this video by BlueBoyPhin:
Based on the wiki page about this it was a joint French & South Korean animated series so it's odd that you only wrote that it's a French series. Secondly, the second reference in that article that is supposed to show that there was an "English dub and it it was supposed to be aired in North America" seems to lead to an unrelated article ( I don't know Korean but it seems unrelated.) This looks like an interesting series, I do hope the English dub gets found if it exists.
As a fan of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern I've always been interested in adaptations (a while back I created a thread about a possible animated adaptation of Pern. forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/8005/animation-anne-mccaffrey-dragonriders-pern ) This video gave some insight as to why the project didn't move forward.:
I would also like to find some set photos etc. about this adaptation. I wonder what actors were cast for the pilot and if it would be possible to contact them to ask about the project.
There are so many good points here about why dubs shouldn't be excluded from the LMW community. There's a thread called "The Dub Purge" that really needs more discussion like this, most of the comments on that thread are so one-sided and they are actively deleting pages from the wiki. Here's the thread I'm referring to: forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/447/dub-purge
I have fleshed out the description on the fundraiser AND provided a proof of authenticity for the product. And yes, I'm sure they'll give the goods, they are a fairly well known seller in the circle of Japanese products and it would be extremely bad for them to rip off a customer.
I'm a bit sceptical of this. Can you read Japanese? You should ask the seller to give more proof of the authenticity of the script, that half of a page isn't enough to tell. But perhaps I'm just having trouble reading it, it's a good idea to ask other users of this forum that know Japanese if they think this script is legit or not.
Interesting, I hope we can find out more about this. I'm assuming these are the 16 episodes uploaded on IA you mentioned: archive.org/details/OmakaseScrappers
There seem to be a quite a few obscure/lost anime and manga that credit Monkey Punch as being involved in their creation. Another example is the anime RGB Adventure, youtube user Aocchi summaries it well in the description of this video ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmTAOKHiG5k ):
"From the studio behind Gundou Musashi comes an anime so awful that it caused the company to declare bankruptcy and cancel its production halfway through the show (stopping at 6 episodes out of the originally planned 13). Well, it was actually due to a lawsuit over copyright infringement, but the show's quality sure wasn't doing it any favors either. The history behind this show's existence is quite interesting. It was originally based on a CG ride attraction, that according to this source ( www.weblio.jp/wkpja/content/RGB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%89%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC_RGB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%89%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E6%A6%82%E8%A6%81 ) somehow involved Monkey Punch, the creator of Lupin III, although no other source I've found confirms this so I'm unsure of its authenticity. The rest of the show has little to no CG at all, which leads me to think that this ED may originate from the CG film used for the simulator ride, especially since the Banjo-Kazooie lookin' bird does not appear in the actual show at all.
To further support this theory, the show includes short CG scenes to indicate the cut to and from commercial breaks, not dissimilar to other anime which use title cards for the same purpose. These scenes used look incredibly similar to what you would find in an attraction ride like this, with it coming from a first-person point of view, and just like the ED they have little to do with the actual show itself."
Now this is a quality lost media thread! Thank you for sharing all of the research you've done. It'd be great if theory 1 or 2 is true but as you explained it seems much for likely that your 3rd theory is correct. It's a real shame considering how much concept art and more can be found of Meiji Gekken: 1874, the people that worked on it clearly wanted to make something great. I hope I can help find information about Meiji Gekken: 1874 too and that this topic gets more attention in the community.
I'm still working on composing an e-mail in Japanese to Takahara Ozaki and getting checked with some native speakers friends, so no new updates on that except that I'm still working on it.
There's a lot of information (press releases, news, reports, photos) about Anime Expo 2008 here: animecons.com/events/info/1351/anime-expo-2008 If anyone else wants to help me out with searching for mentions of Necro Dragon that'd be super helpful, it's a lot of information to go through.
It's really not necessary to keep making new threads about this topic when you can just update the two previous threads you've already made, it clutters up the forums. So, please don't be that guy...
Anyway, yay, I'm sincerely glad to finally see this! Thank you for sharing. I'll add this to my long list of stuff I'd like to translate into English and add subtitles to. I'll let everyone know when it's done (please be patient, it's going to be quite a while before I can get to it.) In the mean time I'll keep searching for more episodes, the books and also the elusive Japanese audiobook.
Ok, I'm going to get lammyvox for this because I don't know a thing about Japanese lost media.
Thanks for reaching out via DM treasurehunter64x but I don't there's not much I can do to help. I hope that the photo archive can be fully restored, it's surprising that Kjeld Duits didn't keep several external hard drives to back up all of the photos. At this point I guess it can't be helped unless someone else out there saved all of the photos.
Update on the search: I wrote up a tweet about Necro Dragon,please RT:
I still would like to find a scan of program/schedule book from Anime Expo 2008 to verify if a there was a panel held or if there was a vendors hall booth or somewhere where the preview was shown by Sony's A-1 Pictures.
Takaharu Ozaki is the co-creator and director of Necrodragon and is still active in the anime industry today. My plan is to try to e-mail him in Japanese, which will take quite a while because I want to triple check (with Native speakers) and make sure my e-mail is up to professional standards before sending it.
Interesting, so you were the main vocalist of the song, what did this other "someone" do? They composed the song, but did they write the lyrics too? Can you remember what any of the lyrics are? Even only knowing the chorus would prove very helpful in finding this song. What genre was the song? Was it a Christmas song since the composer claimed it aired around that time on BBC Radio 1? Is "love is in the house" in the chorus? I'm intrigued and hope to help if I can.