Jake Hepburn: The Anime

Jake Hepburn: The Anime is a Shounen / Hentai / Harem / Moe / Fantasy / Action anime that premiered in 1989. It is based on the best selling manga serialized weekly in Shonen Jump, written by Masamune Shirow and Eiichiro Oda, and illustrated by Tite Kubo. The series features Mamoru Miyano as Japanese voice actor for Jake Hepburn whilst Greg Aryes voices his English counterpart.

Synposis
Jake Hepburn: The Anime is all about the protagonist, Jake, and his adventures in Japan and the rest of the world. The series follows Jake and his friends as they fight against evil and strive to become the best there ever was. The main plot line focuses on Jake's goal to become the King of School Days, and the trouble that he runs into because of this.

Seasons
JHTA is divided into 69 seasons. The seasons are divided into three parts, known as chapters, with the seasons in each chapter grouped into sagas.

Golden Age Chapter
This chapter details Jake's childhood and his battles with the moustache clan. It introduces key elements of the series, such as the world of School Days Online and Jake's various abilities. The chapter concludes with Jake's battles in the Shinigami Society and his struggle with The Lunchbox.

Dark Days Chapter
The second chapter of JHTA takes place after the Two Year Training Period and features a much darker story line. The main villains feature prominently in this chapter which climaxes with an all out war in which many of the main cast are killed off.

Journey Grande Chapter
After the Imperial War, Jake goes on a spiritual journey for enlightenment and attempts to bring back his friends who were killed. As a result of this, the final chapter sees Jake travelling around the world and meeting a wide cast of characters which become essential to the plot of the final story arcs.

1989 - 2000: Debut and depature of Toei
Toei animation picked up the rights to JHTA when the third chapter was released in Shonen Jump, as it had become incredibly popular by that point and they suspected an anime series would be a hit. Other studios, such as Studio BONES and Ufotable, also competed for the rights. After Toei was successful, the first season of the anime debuted in October 1985.

In 1998 the original series co-author, Oda, became busy with his top selling manga, One Piece, and Kubo continued to add another character to Bleach, and so the anime went on a one year hiatus. This was the first of many hiatuses to come.

Within 12 months, however, the rights were picked up by Gen Urobuchi, along with Studio Ufotable, and the anime returned, much to the delight of many fans who had lost hope.

2001 - 2016: Return of Toei and the last hiatus
In March, 2015, Toei Animation, along with Eiichiro Oda, revealed they would be coming back to work on Jake Hepburn: The Anime. Ufotable announced that they believed JHTA would reach "even greater heights" now that they were collaboratively working with Toei Animation.

In June 2015 the voice actor for the series' main character, Jake Hepburn, was unable to drive to the set to record any lines, due to his ute breaking down. This resulted in an extended hiatus which delayed the release of the final seasons. The hiatus was further extended when JHTA was dropped by the Fox Sports Japan channel.

At the same time the series went on hiatus, Ufotable announced that they would be leaving JHTA to work on Mitchell Ellis: The Anime (META). However, since META is a spin-off, Ufotable and Toei continued to work together due to the frequent crossovers between the two shows.

The hiatus also forced Toei to push back the release date of the double feature films which would conclude the series, until another network could air the final seasons. Eventually, in November 2015, the show was picked up by ABC3 and Nick Jr. who aired the remaining episodes. In May 2016 Toei finally released the two feature films which concluded the series.

Release
The English language version is licensed in America and Australia by 4KIDS Entertainment and features extensive editing of controversial content that might offend US audiences, such as guns, hamsters, and sliced cheese. Because of this, the first 16 seasons have been reduced to three episodes. 4KIDS also made the appropriate decision to remove the entire Japanese soundtrack and replace it with a hipster beatnik rap for the opening and closing theme. They released the English dubbed episodes over 27 DVD volumes in 2002 before putting production on hiatus, until more episodes could be dubbed.

Films
The JHTA series spawned six animated feature films which were highly successful. The final two films served as the conclusion to the first phase of the AU. There was also a live action film in production with Michael Bay attached as director, however the status of this film is unknown.