BASTARD!! (1992 OVA)

BASTARD!! (1992 OVA)

BASTARD!! -暗黒の破壊神-
1992 -1993 Anime International Company OVA 6 episodes Completed
Dark Fantasy Action Sword and Sorcery Comedy
Details & Synopsis
The kingdom of Meta-llicana is under attack by the Four Lords of Havoc, former followers of the legendary wizard Dark Schneider. Their campaign is tied to the seals restraining Anthrasax, an ancient god of destruction, and the kingdom's defenders are running out of options. High Priest Geo finally turns to the weapon he fears almost as much as the invaders: Dark Schneider himself, whose soul has been sealed inside the gentle boy Lucien Renlen.

Awakening Dark Schneider requires a kiss from Geo's daughter Yoko, and bringing him back does not produce an obedient hero. He is arrogant, vindictive, absurdly powerful and perfectly willing to settle old grudges while the kingdom burns around him. Yet his attachment to Yoko repeatedly pulls him toward protecting the people he claims not to care about, while encounters with Gara and Arshes Nei force him to confront the former comrades who once helped him try to conquer the world.

AIC's six-episode OVA, released from 1992 to 1993, compresses the early BASTARD!! manga into a fast run of sorcery, monsters, heavy-metal naming jokes and escalating magical battles. It ends after the conflict with Abigail rather than adapting the full manga, making this a distinct 1990s version of the story rather than a substitute for later adaptations.
Alt Title BASTARD!! -暗黒の破壊神-
Studio Anime International Company
Network OVA
Aired 1992 - 1993
Episodes 6
Genre Dark Fantasy, Action, Sword and Sorcery, Comedy
Status Completed
← All lore

Fansub & Scanlation History

1993–1995: The English VHS Fansub Trail

The 1995 TAAS/Oukami Catalog Preserves a Complete VHS Set

March 10, 1995 · Episodes 1–6 · AXIS scripts

The original March 10, 1995 Fan Subtitlers List puts BASTARD!! episodes 1–4 on one tape and episodes 5–6 on a second. The entry appears under Triangle Area Anime Society (TAAS) and its subsidiary Oukami Studios, operating from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Both tapes are expressly labeled as using AXIS scripts. All six English-subtitled episodes were therefore available through that tape service by March 1995, three years before Pioneer's official editions. The AXIS credit survives, but the original writing dates and full production team do not.

SOURCE: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.anime/c/a3XP2mpNloA
[TAAS-Oukami]

MIT Was Screening BASTARD!! Before the OVA Finished

June 18, 1993 · June 17, 1994

MIT Anime Club's historical schedule records BASTARD!! episodes 1–2 on June 18, 1993, followed by a screening of all six episodes on June 17, 1994. The first event came shortly before the Japanese OVA's final episode release. The schedules show how quickly BASTARD!! reached North American club audiences. They don't say which subtitle version MIT screened or whose tapes were on the projector.

SOURCE: https://anime.mit.edu/showings/history

AXIS Was a Script Credit, Not a Proven Separate Tape Release

1995 catalog · Translation lineage unresolved

The Raleigh catalog explicitly says AXIS Script on each of its two BASTARD!! VHS tapes. That is unusually specific evidence about the English translation underlying the tape offering. It does not show that AXIS independently distributed a complete public tape set under its own name, or establish the dates the scripts were originally written. The scripts have a name; a separately distributed AXIS tape set has yet to surface.
[AXIS]

Competing VHS Credits and Tape Lineages

SilverWynd Is Credited with a Complete VHS Set

Collector documentation · 1–6 · Undated

A surviving VHS collector list attributes all six BASTARD!! episodes to SilverWynd. The tape credit is significant but cannot by itself establish when this edition was first translated or whether its subtitles differ from the AXIS-script tapes distributed through Oukami. Another archive preserves SilverWynd-associated earlier volumes but uncertainty about the closing episodes. The catalogs should be kept distinct rather than force-matched to a single master.
[SilverWynd]

S. Baldric Productions: Episodes 1–3

VHS collector inventory · Quality OK

A documented collector inventory identifies the first three BASTARD!! OVA episodes under S. Baldric Productions, with a tape-quality grade of OK. The grade describes the condition of the collector's copy, not the quality of its translation. The original mastering date and translator remain unidentified.
[S.Baldric]

D.O.M.O. Ltd.: Episodes 4–6

VHS collector inventory · OK/PR grade

The same collector inventory places BASTARD!! episodes 4–6 under D.O.M.O. Ltd., complementing the S. Baldric episodes 1–3. Together, the two sets cover all six episodes, though their different group credits leave open whether they used related subtitle scripts.
[DOMO]

Wave Production and a Movie-Format Copy

Collector attribution · Runtime unknown

A separate collector catalog credits Wave Production with a movie-format BASTARD!! presentation. Without a complete tape listing or surviving footage, the exact OVA episode coverage, editing, subtitle origin, and first circulation date remain unresolved. It's another VHS-era version worth remembering, even though its contents remain uncertain.
[Wave]

Distribution Is Not the Same as Translation

Why the VHS credits remain separate

The TAAS/Oukami catalog explicitly names AXIS scripts, while other collector inventories credit SilverWynd, S. Baldric, D.O.M.O., and Wave Production. Some titles may have passed through multiple duplicators or script revisions. The tapes could represent different translations, re-edited scripts, or copies of shared masters. Their opening credits and dialogue would tell us much more than the catalog names alone; the first full English translation is still unidentified.

1998–2001: Pioneer and the Translation Debate

Pioneer Brings the OVA to Official English VHS

1998 · Three volumes · DVD in 2001

Pioneer released the six-episode OVA across three North American VHS volumes in 1998, offering subtitled and dubbed editions: Resurrection (episodes 1–2), Venom (3–4), and Exodus (5–6). A complete VHS set followed in 1999 and a complete DVD in 2001. The official tapes arrived after the club screenings and the AXIS-script versions documented in the 1995 trading catalog.

SOURCE: https://www.crystalacids.com/database/title/60/bastard/releases/

Fans Challenge Pioneers Heavy-Metal Names

August 29, 2001 · Translation criticism

BASTARD!! builds metal references into fantasy names such as Metallicana and Anthrasax. An August 2001 AnimeNation column documents contemporary criticism comparing older fansub wording with Pioneer's commercial English choices. Fans argued over those altered names, although the discussion doesn't establish that Pioneer was legally required to change them.

SOURCE: https://www.animenation.net/blog/ask-john-why-was-the-english-translation-of-bastard-censored/

The Anime Translation Story Did Not Begin in 2002

VHS and digital releases overlap with official video

AniDB's DVD-era listings begin after Pioneer's 1998 VHS release, but English-speaking fans had seen BASTARD!! long before those digital files appeared. By 1993–1995, audiences and tape collectors already had subtitle versions in circulation. The later digital projects reflect encoding, file distribution, and sometimes new revisions in a world where official English editions already existed.

Early English Scanlation Record

MangaProject Was Working on BASTARD!! by 2001

A contemporary-era forum record credits chapters 0-9 across volumes 1-2

A 2006 MangaHelpers discussion preserves an unusually useful retrospective project list for the manga. It credits MangaProject with chapters 0 through 9 across the first two volumes in 2001.

That date matters because Viz announced its English BASTARD!! license in July 2001 and the first collected English volume did not reach stores until August 2002.

BASTARD!! was being scanlated around the same time Viz was preparing its English edition, not merely after the licensed books stopped.

MangaProject's involvement places the series close to the early IRC-centered scanlation scene, when groups were still establishing how chapters would be translated and shared online.
[MangaProject]

Viz Publishes Part of the 27-Volume Manga

2002–2009 · Official English books

Kazushi Hagiwara's manga began in 1988. Viz licensed BASTARD!! in 2001 and published English collected volumes starting in 2002, eventually reaching nineteen of the twenty-seven Japanese volumes. Unlike the six-episode OVA, the manga's English history combines a long-running incomplete official edition with separate early scanlation projects. The manga's incomplete official English run also gave fan translators a different problem to tackle from the six-episode OVA.

Kindan no Aku and Dead Sea Scans Carried the Manga Into the Later IRC Era

2006-2007 project records

The same 2006 MangaHelpers record credits Kindan no Aku with chapters 10 through 56, spanning material in volumes 2 through 6, during 2006-2007. Forum posts from the period also point readers toward #lurk and the group's own IRC channel for distribution.

The thread separately lists Dead Sea Scans as beginning another BASTARD!! project in 2007. Later catalog records continue to associate that group with the series.

English scanlation continued alongside Viz's books, through the IRC channels that were central to manga fandom in the 2000s.

Those chapter ranges come from period community lists rather than a complete run of original group release announcements.
[Kindan no Aku-Dead Sea Scans] [Kindan no Aku] [Dead Sea Scans]

2002–2003: Early DVD-Era Fan Releases

The DVD-Era Catalog Begins with Greg

2002–2003 · Official-disc sources · Release dates uncertain

The previously supplied AniDB snapshot records Greg as a six-episode DVD-source release with its last update on August 26, 2002; Psychlo-Anime and Zhentarim DivX have later 2002 complete entries, followed by Animehaven in August 2003. AniDB's dates reflect updates to its listings, and a DVD-sourced edition could contain the disc's existing English subtitles. These groups carried BASTARD!! into the file-sharing years, but the translation trail reaches back to the VHS scene of the 1990s.

SOURCE: https://anidb.net/

What the Surviving Evidence Can and Cannot Prove

What the Contemporary Sources Establish

Screenings, catalog entries and collector attribution

MIT Anime Club screened BASTARD!! in 1993 and 1994. By March 1995, TAAS and Oukami Studios were advertising all six OVA episodes on VHS using AXIS scripts. Other surviving collections credit SilverWynd, S. Baldric Productions, D.O.M.O. Ltd. and Wave Production.

Pioneer brought official English VHS editions to stores in 1998, followed by DVD releases and a new digital circulation era. The older tapes establish an earlier English-language audience, even though no complete roster of the first translators or exact master dates has survived.

What Remains Unverified

Original scripts, tape generations and dates

The tapes leave several questions hanging. Who first wrote the AXIS scripts, and when? Did SilverWynd, S. Baldric Productions and D.O.M.O. Ltd. use their own English dialogue, or did they share a source? What exactly was on Wave Production's movie-format copy?

Collector inventories tell us that these versions circulated. The surviving tapes and their opening credits may yet explain how the versions were connected.