Hi, I'd like to aid your search! I've been a visual kei J-Rock fan for quite a while so I'm familiar with Malice Mizer, I also have self-studied Japanese and offer fan translations too. My favorite J-rock band is Dir en Grey, but I also love D. and X-Japan.
From all the concerts I've seen Malice Mizer's stage presence was amazing and their outfits and make-up were always immaculate. I don't recall ever seeing a stage were they were sweaty or anything event at their huge live concerts. It's resonable to think this music video (Promotional Video = PV) of Syunikiss that you saw does exists but that the PV uses clips from one of Malice Mizer's live concerts along with footage recorded on a set (like the opening part you mentioned in which Gackt takes off a mask.)
I think this video is from one of their 1998 concerts. Gackt is wearing a mask in the beginning and then takes it off dramatically as you described. I wonder though if that's the same kind of mask that you're saying he had on in the PV/MV we're looking for.:
It seems that this manga also has a CD with it. There are a few tracks posted on youtube and all of the tracks seem to be available for download on a website called doujinstyle .com. I'm not sure if it's okay to link directly to it since it's probably most likely not legal, but considering that it does seem to be rare and this is the LMWF here's the link: www.doujinstyle.com/?p=page&type=1&id=11141I (I haven't downloaded it so I can't confirm if the download works or is correct.)
I remember reading comments saying it was originally supposed to air but because of fan service was taken off the schedule.
I can't find any evidence that Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School ever aired on Toonami. I don't recall the fanservice being that over the top, but it has been a long time since I watched it or read the manga. The video you saw was most likely a fan-made trailer uploaded to youtube. I can't find it online so I guess it's a lost fan made promo, but to be honest I'm sceptical.
So far the only evidence that The Timberwood Tales is connected to ABC is that first photo (it's of a VHS, right?) that extremewreck2000 shared in his initial post.
Also, for some reason there's a fandom wiki that has a blank page for The Timberwood tales. Not sure what the fashion designer Paul Marciano has to do with this cartoon or any of the others that are referenced on this fandom wiki... paul-marciano.fandom.com/wiki/The_Timberwood_Tales
I don't get why they're doing this. I mean, what do you even accomplish? Straight up destroying game preservation here.
Yeah, unfortunately people can be very selfish and rationalize nearly everything to fit their whims.
This other video by Patbytes also documents a similiar yet different situation in which some Bulgarian guy tried to change information all over the internet to credit himself as a composer for obscure Japanese games. He was called out for it and the rabbit-hole just get deeper as he buries himself in lies.
This guy came up with all sorts of crazy lore to support his lies, forged legal documents, made a few fake companies, a fake father (that he conveniently claimed later had passed away, yet the photo of him is a totally different unrelated person.) Although he didn't try to forcibly make media disappear (although he did try to copyright strike videos etc. that used "his" music) he did attempt to forcibly take credit for (and money on) obscure media that he never had anything to do with. This is the kind of person that I, and I assume many of you; can't stand especially in the lost media community.
It really does seem to be being actively erased from the internet.
There's also this article explaining the situation.: www.timeextension.com/news/2023/01/someone-is-trying-to-erase-this-obscure-japanese-video-game-from-the-internet This appears to be the only thread on LMW mentioning Cookie's Bustle. It might be a good idea to make a thread for it specifically since the title of this thread indicates more of a general discussion of forcibily disappeared media (which I'm also interesed in discussing too by the way.)
While I agree with you about the art style of The Timberwood Tales not looking "anime-ish" at all, it's worth it to remember that A LOT of animated series were outsourced and even fully animated by Japanese animation studios. These studios would change the character designs to fit the specifications of the client. So, this very well could have been animated by a Japanese studio even though it doesn't look like it.
MyDramalist.com doesn't list Age of Peace in it's database, but that's not surprising considering they used to not be a page for other obscurities like Kinjirareta Mariko on there before I requested it and wrote the page after finding the lost drama.
After watching the trailer for this film ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAXbkyBwmEk ) I'm wondering about the use of the term "3D movie" I can see that the movie heavily used CGI and was filmed on a greenscreen, but those kind of movies don't necessarily need a special screen to be shown in theaters. I'm wondering if Age of Peace was specifically filmed so that the viewers would need 3D glasses or some sort of I-Max like experience where the audience wouldn't need them. If a DVD release was planned then it would make sense to me that there would be a version of the film without the 3D effects.
This is intriguing. Just found a video featuring the Shonen Gaho magazine (少年画報) with the printed advertisment and a sticker paper craft of the Cat Eyed Boy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBkubdIQ2BA
After a bit more research, and skimming through the Japanese wikipedia page for Harris ハリス (harisu) I haven't been able to find any mention of gum TV-commercials they produced. If this commercial does exist I think the best way to find it is to search through Japanese terms like: " ハリスフーセンガム「猫目小僧」CM " I'll do my best to translate if you find anything.
Did you read the English translation of “Umezu Kazuo & Me”? If so I wonder if the word "advertisment" was translated to "commercial" by the translator. I'd like to take a look at the original Japanese text writtten and compare.
Final Fantasy IX is my favorite Final Fantasy so it's interesting to see there was a fandub. I was looking through the comments on episode 21.4 and several comments mention that this episode was deleted by youtube, there are also several comments of people saying that it was never completed. One comment that caught my eye is from avengefulgirl95, she says she was one of the voice actresses in the finale and that "youtube deleted the video and there was no backup copy." That's really shocking to me considering how much I've heard goes into making fan dubs, each voice actor would surely have some backups of their own recorded lines right? I guess it's possible that since this was a fan project backing up their work wasn't a high priority for them, it's understandable I guess.
I suspect the film was pretty far along in development considering that according to Anime News Network a preview was shown at Anime Expo in 2008.
Most of text in the photo of the large promo poster above is too small for me to read in English or in Japanese but Sony's A-1 pictures certainly had a lot planned that they were confident enough in to preview to the public.
English text on the left, describing some of the story: "Miraculously surviving the massacre, Shinobu takes up the identity of underground assassin "NecroDragon" to hunt down Kengo."
Characters (listed on the right side of the poster): Shinobu Ryuzaki, Megumi Soga, Yuri Kazama, Kengo Kaji & Naoya Aoki. I can't make out any of the text next to the characters but it might mention who each character's voice actor was going to be.
Transcription of the Japanese text on the right side of Shinobu's face (hopefully I got it right, there were a few kanji I had to look up.) : 「奇跡的に生き延びた竜畸忍は、闇の殺し屋 "ネクロドラゴン”となり黒幕・梶を追う。」 My English translation of the large Japanese text on the post (on the right side of Shinobu's face) : " A dragon shinobi that miraculously survived becomes the dark killer "NecroDragon" and pursues mastermind Kaji."
I wish this photo was higher quality so that it was more legible. Hopefully, we can find more info about the animation preview that was shown at Anime Expo in 2008. It would also be interesting to find a schedule for the con that year and see what the panel's description was.
5. It was also released in theaters in Japan, but I haven’t seen anyone claim it was available for purchase there either, let alone more info than the dets of its registration in Japan.
I've heard of H.O.T, and respect that they're 1st Gen. but I haven't delved into their music much at all, I do like what little I've heard though. I am a fan of S. M. Entertainment's Girls' Generation though, so I'm familiar with 少女時代 mainly from their Japanese music. They still have a large fanbase in Japan, as do many other S.M. Ent artists. It's fascinating to me that S.M. Ent has lost media considering how prolific they are in Asia and internationally too. I don't know Korean but I have been studying Japanese for quite some time and like doing fan translations. I'll do what I can to aid the search.
After searching " H.O.T 映画 Age of Peace" on duckduckgo, I found a Japanese K-pop fan's blog that mentions Age of Peace briefly in this post: korea15.com/hot/ " (その日韓合同で作った映画「Age of Peace」の監督が、今では超有名人な山崎貴監督です。なぜか山崎監督の経歴には、この時の映画の事が書かれていないけど...) "
The blogger claims that "Age of Peace was created jointly by Japan and Korea as the now famous director Takashi Yamazaki directed the film. For some reason, Yamazaki's biography doesn't mention that he worked on the movie..."
Unfortunately, the blogger doesn't add a source for Takashi Yamazaki being the director. The LMW page for this movie claims that it was directed by Lawrence Lee though... I'm not sure what to believe. I'll continue to dig into this on the Japanese side of things and translate what I can find in this thread.
I haven't been searching much lately. I do have some stuff to state though. The seller on Yahouku lowered the price to 80,000 yen and at 1:23 in a web series the group did, a portion of one of their songs can be heard. It might be a part of My Dear Friend, not sure. Probably not since the vocals sound like Maika Miyashita. www.dailymotion.com/video/x5i9b0
Awesome find, thanks for sharing. I'm assuming these are web-episodes that used to be on their website, or maybe they're from a DVD ( wish the video quality was higher but it's not the worst I've seen especially considering how obscure this is.) These episodes probably came out in 2007 or so since My Dear Friend was released on December 4th, 2007.
I'm going to watch all of these (here are episodes 1 ~ 8 of P-Aの挑戦 (P-A's Challenge): www.dailymotion.com/search/P-A(%E3%83%91%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A8%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B8)%20-%20P-A%E3%81%AE%E6%8C%91%E6%88%A6/videos It's a good idea to download these and put them on archive.org just in case these web-episodes become lost media too. I may end up translating and subtitling them in English when I get finished with the mountain of other things I'm translating at the moment. For now though I'll watch and translate anything notable regarding the lost song. Feel free to ask me questions if you want. I'll do my best to answer.
I really hope that they play more of My Dear Friend in this web series. It was difficult to tell in the first episode (file#1) if that snippet was from the song or not. But My Dear Friend was mentioned and the download page was shown in file #1 at 4:42. Apparently when this episode was made PowerAge had 10,000 downloads and the other producer in glasses says that their goal is 50,000 for My Dear Friend & Yakusoku.
The second episode in particular was very touching Misaki Ikeda, Erena Abe, Maika Miyashita and Maya Hasuda went out promoting by making hand-drawn signs, passing out flyers and holding a street live. They performed the dance to Yakusoku but seemingly not My Dear Friend. The audience reaction seemed very positive, I laughed a bit at the old guy that was like "goodo!" The 8th episode says "to be continued" just like the previous ones, so I wonder if more episodes were made. I wonder, are the 4 original member's blogs still up? If so I'd be interested in reading them and I'll translate any important info. in this thread if you want. If the links no longer work perhaps using the wayback machine will work, do you happen to know the urls for the member blogs?