Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin (Japanese: literally "Silver Fang: Shooting Star (or Meteor) Silver" is an adventure manga by Yoshihiro Takahashi. It was published by Shueisha in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1983 to 1987, and collected in 18 bound volumes. It received the 1987 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen series. The series tells the story of an Akita Inu pup called Gin (Japanese for "silver") who leaves his master, a young boy named Daisuke, to join a pack of wild
dogs. The pack is gathering strong
dogs from all over Japan to fight a deranged
bear named Akakabuto and his minions. The story begins from the point of view of the humans, but swings to the
dogs with episode seven of the
anime. It is in that episode that the audience hears the
dogs communicating with each other through speech, though it continues to be barks and whines to
human ears. Takahashi was reportedly inspired by a news article about hunting
dogs that had been abandoned by their masters and had begun living as wild animals.
Silver Fang "Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin" was adapted as a 21-episode
anime television series by Toei Animation. In western countries the
anime was released as a set of four VHS tapes, and censored for violent images. This led to the removal of several plot-critical scenes, including all footage from the episodes preceding the series finale as well as the deaths of certain characters. Due to limitations of sound-editing at the time this resulted in the background
music of certain scenes to be lost.
Atypically, the
anime has become extremely
popular in the Nordic countries (particularly Finland, Denmark and Sweden). The
anime has been dubbed in Korean, Finnish, Hungarian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The Finnish dub, Hopeanuoli, was created by Golden Voice OY and became wildly
popular. In 2003 the uncensored and non-dubbed version of the cartoon was released in Finland and Sweden as a 5 DVD box set. A corresponding DVD set was released in Denmark and Norway on October 3, 2006. Starting in May 2010, the Finnish publisher Punainen Jättiläinen will be releasing the original 18-volume manga.