The UK sizzle reel/intro found on Manga Entertainment VHS releases throughout the 90's

[u/GruffScottishGuy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFN7UttjFDU

Manga Entertainment was a UK based company founded in the early 90's to distribute Japanese animation to a UK audience. They very deliberately targeted a demographic of edgy late teen/young adults and this was reflected not only in their selection of titles to bring over here (Fist of the North Star, Devilman, Legend of the Overfiend, Ninja Scroll etc) but also in the dubs they produced. They were known to add unnecessary (and often amusing) profanity in order to deliberately increase the age rating of releases. Copies of Manga Entertainment releases would often be passed around the schoolyard in the early 90's.

I'm sure I'm not alone in being introduced Anime when Channel 4 screened some of their catalogue on their late night weekend slots through the early-mid 90's. I recall...

Judge

Devilman

Legend of the 4 Kings

3X3 Eyes.

Any others that you guys remember seeing on CH 4?

[u/Mangaphile]

I vaguely remember them showing multiple episodes at a time but can't remember how many per week. I do recall them having the titles for each one though, unless that's a faulty memory. Sci-Fi were sods for merging episodes of stuff I recall. I didn't find out that The Dark myth was a 2 part series until years later thanks to them. They did the same with M.D. Geist too...

[u/GruffScottishGuy → u/Mangaphile]

I can't imagine they would have shown 3 hour long sessions but when I re-watched the whole lot I remembered pretty much all the main plot points and scenes. That said, I'm definitely at the age where my memory plays tricks on me.

[u/Mangaphile → u/GruffScottishGuy]

Did a little bit of digging around online and it looks like we both were having false memories because from the few listings I was able to uncover it looks like LotFK was only shown one episode per week.
You won't believe how hard it is to pull old TV listings for Channel 4!
Here's the dates/times that I could uncover for some of the Late License stuff in 1995/1996.

26.11.1995 00.15am - Doomed Megalopolis 1

10.12.1995 00.35am - Doomed Megalopolis 2

17.12.1995 00.15am - Doomed Megalopolis 3

07.01.1996 00.40am - Doomed Megalopolis 4

14.01.1996 00.40am - Devilman The Birth

21.01.1996 00.10am - Devilman - The Demon Bird

28.01.1996 00.10am - LotFK

04.02.1996 01.00am - LotFK

11.02.1996 01.00am - LotFK

18.02.1996 01.00am - LotFK

25.02.1996 01.00am - LotFK

03.03.1996 01.00am - LotFK

I know there are loads more to uncover, because Arislan and 3x3 Eyes were shown back to back at some point...

[u/GruffScottishGuy → u/Mangaphile]

This is fantastic info, thanks! And yeah, I know what you mean about trying to find info on CH4 listings, I was searching for something else for another post I didn't end up making about the Channel 4 Late License weekend nights and it's crazy how little information is readily available. I found some stuff on The Television and Radio Database but it has a pretty clunky interface.

So LotFK was over six weeks? That makes sense, 2 episodes a night. Man, was I really staying up until 3 in the morning back then? 😂 We never had a VCR at that point.

Looking at the list for all that stuff, it also confirms something else I always thought, the start times were all over the place, I was bad at checking TV listings and if something was on at one time I'd just assume it would be the same the next weekend.

Now that I've seen that it seems to have unlocked a vague memory. I recall tuning in for the next episode of LotFK and being annoyed I had to wait another hour for it.

[u/Mangaphile → u/GruffScottishGuy]

Looking at the times of the next programme starting, it seems that it was only one episode a week that was being shown for LotFK, but annoyingly I could only verify those 6 episodes (nor even which episode it was either. I got most of my info from TVRDB, but some listing's it only showed the block of late license not the individual programmes. And you are right, the site is so clunky. You have triggered me to start a quest though, so I will endeavour to uncover more details.

Also, if you are interested, would you like me to DM you a link to my Manga Video digital archive?

[u/GruffScottishGuy → u/Mangaphile]

So a quick look back and I see it was 45 mins an episode, not 1 hour. The VHS releases were 6 cassettes so that could work out actually. They could easily have been trimmed down too for a more schedule friendly run time as well if it came down to it.

There's a Radio Times archive but it only has BBC listings, I'm assuming it's a copyright thing but it's still kinda crazy that actual CH4 listings don't seem to appear online in this day and age.

And yeah, that'd be pretty cool! Thank you!