B-Daman Bakugaiden RETURNS!

In an unexpected turn of events, Konami pulls a power move and buys back the rights to the B-Daman Bakugaiden anime.

Credit: Kaleidoskopical
(I just needed a spread for this article, okay?)

I'm unsure if this is anything I've ever outwardly acknowledged, so if not-- Konami has been surprising me with their numerous callbacks to legacy Bomberman content. I suppose it makes sense, given the series' better reception in Japan. For whatever reason, I mostly figured they were just going to treat the series as some cash cow they could pump a bunch of half-baked games and glorified live-services out of... which, to be fair, isn't wholly untrue.

Anyway, up until now, the first major Bomberman spinoff (because Robowarrior/Bomber King and any tertiary connections to Lode Runner more or less died off after two or three games), B-Daman Bakugaiden, was more or less stuck in some legal limbo with Hudson Soft refusing to do much with it in their latter years. Resultingly, they were more or less out in the open domain and people could upload of IV and V's episodes anywhere they wanted without much recourse legally.

In fact, this was so much so that the series, upon getting subbed by online denizen Steamy Jimmy in early-to-mid 2023, wound up getting something of a boost in popularity amongst many in the general Bomberman community. Out of nowhere, though, this changed when Asatsu-DK, the show's copyright holders, began striking down his channel into near-oblivion. Same happened to anyone else on YouTube who were hosting clips and- strangely enough- higher quality openings to IV and V. And for some time, this left quite a few people scratching their heads as to why this suddenly happened.

This was until a couple of weeks ago (I'm late to this, I know) when the Japanese Bomberman Twitter posted this:

After 25 years of seemingly doing nothing with either of these anime, Konami brought back the rights (though I'm unsure to what extent), collected their own scans, and have begun to distribute them to a plethora of anime streaming websites, including Bandai Channel, DMM TV, D Anime Store, and ABEMA. 

Regardless of any sentiments I may have about the lack of a worldwide release, I think this is REALLY cool. If this, the updates to R and R Online with the addition of few Hudson Soft songs and characters, that one video in Amazing Bomberman, the Super Bomberman 3 stickers, numerous vinyl releases, and just Bombergirl in general are anything to go by, then it's that there's been a rather gradual shift in Konami's handling of the IP. To even give R2 a slither of credit, because of the change of directors, that game does have a decidedly different tone and pays a bit more attention to characterization. Somebody at Konami currently cares a little bit more about the IP than a lot of us once thought.

I'll be making a part 2 of this post soon enough comparing Konami's official scans to the VHS rips that have been going around for years, as well as your best current option for checking this show out.

And as always, thank you all for reading this and be sure to stay tuned to the Bomberman Channel for even more late news and a 5% chance of a non news post being released.