Posted on May 29, 2025

Project A-ko Versus the Universe, 1995-96

To this day, I still don’t know why we didn’t adapt every one of the A-ko stories into comics.

But it’s not like my Studio Go! partners and I called the shots on this. We were working for Central Park Media (A.K.A. US Manga Corps), and President John O’Donnell set the agenda. He loved Project A-ko so much that he basically launched his company with it. He imported every sequel for home video and secured publishing rights. There were five stories, but we adapted only three of them into comics.

Let’s do some history so I can make this point clearer…

It all started with the Project A-ko feature film, released in Japan June 1986. It was created by Director Katsuhiko Nishijima with production by APPP for a video label named Fairy Dust, which was known for the notorious adults-only Cream Lemon anime series. Originally conceived as a Cream Lemon episode, it evolved instead into a general audience comedy (with some “cheesecake” moments that echoed its origins). It was one of the first anime comedies to gain traction with collectors outside Japan and it spread like wildfire. CPM arrived on the scene with an official import in 1991.

The film was successful enough to spawn yearly sequels in Japan, all of which were released on the OVA (Original Video Anime) format. Character designer Yuji Moriyama took over directorial duties with APPP still producing the animation. Project A-ko 2: Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group was released in May 1987 and Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody followed in June 1988. CPM released them to the English-speaking world in 1994.

Yuji Moriyama completed his “trilogy” of OVAs with Project A-ko 4: Final in 1989, which CPM also released in 1994. Then the ground shifted in more ways than one. Katsuhiko Nishijima returned to create and direct a two-part OVA series titled Project A-ko the VS. It was produced by Studio Fantasia and Studio Signal for a company called Nextart. Battle 1: Gray Side was released in July 1990 and Battle 2: Blue Side followed a month later in July. CPM released both in 1994.

In fact, 1994 turned out to be a pretty big year for A-ko in the English-speaking world. Not only did CPM release all the sequels, an unpredictable chain of events put me in the driver’s seat to adapt the first movie into comic book form for Malibu (see it here). Hot on its heels, my friends John Ott, Bruce Lewis, and I formed Studio Go! and got right to work on a comic for Project A-ko 2, which was published a year later by CPM Comics (see it here).

The entire series on VHS from US Manga Corps

If you’re a normal person (whatever that is), you’d expect that we’d go on to adapt Parts 3 and 4 next, but here’s where it went wonky. Instead, John O’Donnell moved us directly to the 2-part A-ko the VS story, which was completely new to me. (Since I wasn’t as active in tape-trading as I used to be.) CPM sent over the VHS tapes for me to size up. The two volumes together added up to about 100 minutes, and following my “20 minutes = one comic book” rule, I determined that it would take five issues to contain it.

The first thing I thought needed addressing was the title, since “A-ko the VS” sounded incomplete and the “Gray side/Blue side” thing was just nonsensical, cooked up in Japan to sound cool. But it had nothing to do with the story. The comic had to have a name that actually made sense without losing connection to the original, so I came up with Project A-ko Versus the Universe. It kept that key word and connected to the story in a way “Blue side/Grey side” did not. John O’Donnell was OK with it, so that was that.

This was a pretty weird story, out of continuity with the first four. Rather than near-future Earth, it’s set on another planet in another time. I thought one way we could package it for comics was to create a Wizard of Oz-type wraparound, set in regular continuity, that would turn it into an extended dream sequence. John Ott came up with a scenario that I thought worked pretty well, but it was rejected by editorial before we could take it to the finish line. So we just proceeded with a straight-up adaptation.

This time out, the main characters A-ko and B-ko are partners in the desert, hunting giant sand turtles with A-ko as the muscle and B-ko as the brains. They have no idea who C-ko is when she literally drops into their lives with space pirates in pursuit. This drags our girls into a religious fundamentalist plot to collapse all parallel universes and start a new one in their place.

Katsuhiko Nishijima’s knack for screwball comedy was there in buckets, but the overall story was more dire and serious with bigger stakes. A tenuous connection was made with the original when we got to the parallel universe concept, but taking a hard turn into SF fantasy made this story feel like what it was; a digression from what came before. Nevertheless, it was my job to absorb it into my daily life for the next five months and give it the same level of attention as my other assignments.

There was no print media available, but my video capture process would give me all the drawing reference I needed. This was my third such project, so it rocketed forward with very little startup time. I began work on the first issue in the summer of 1995 (after wrapping up M.D. Geist) with a plan to publish in October. The series lasted through spring 1996, sharing my calendar with Cyber City parts 2 and 3, Star Blazers/The New Voyage, M.D. Geist Ground Zero, and Armored Trooper Votoms. It was an incredibly productive time; during some of these months I had three comics in stores simultaneously. (Not to mention the debut of my own creation, Grease Monkey from Kitchen Sink Press.)

Japanese VHS release; both volumes had lenticular covers, so they don’t photograph well

As you can guess, I was a busy guy. So busy, in fact, that I didn’t have time to do all the finished art for A-ko issue 1.
I took it to the layout stage and then John Ott stepped up to do the inking, which is why it looks different from all the subsequent issues. Beginning with issue 2, I did all the finished art and John reverted to color and lettering. Bruce dipped in as needed, ultimately taking over color and lettering on issue 5.

All five issues were released bimonthly. I didn’t save any of my production files, but you can read the finished comics from cover to cover below. This was my first CPM title to “spill over” into 1996, which became a year of transition when comics work finally gave way to animation. But that’s another story.

Trivia note: although A-ko herself wears a different outfit in the anime, John O’Donnell directed me to draw her in the iconic schoolgirl uniform from the first movie. That’s why she’s wearing it on all the covers and interiors after issue 1. I’m sure it had NOTHING to do with John wanting to see more panty shots. Because that would be RIDICULOUS.

DVD releases from US Manga Corps

As video formats evolved, CPM reissued the Project A-ko films on DVD. A-ko the VS parts 1 and 2 were combined onto a single DVD under the title Uncivil Wars, and later into a complete collection in 2002. After CPM tragically went out of business in 2009, the Project A-ko series was license-rescued by Discotek in 2021 and is now available on Blu-ray. However, part 4 was released in June 2023 and A-ko the VS has yet to appear.

All the current Discotek Blu-rays

Japanese DVD box set (Media Factory, 2003). As of yet, they have not graduated to Blu-ray.

Project A-ko Versus the Universe, 1995-96

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

Issue 5

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