Anime World Order Show # 74 – Special All-Manga Edition

Kept you waiting, huh? For this episode we’re all reviewing manga titles. Gerald’s reviewing Dororo by Osamu Tezuka and Daryl’s reviewing Ressentiment by Kengo Hanazawa. Clarissa’s review of Part 4 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure will be postponed. Fear not Jojo’s fans, it’s still going to happen, just not now.

Two hours may not be enough time to make up for the AWO deficit, but in the previous…weeks…Daryl was once again a guest star on the Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast where he talked about Drive in an attempt to restart the Big Month of Mark [Dacascos], and was a guest on the Mistakes of Youth “podcast” (there is no podcast-specific feed!) where he once again talked about Macross Frontier. Also, the original poll was about whether or not you used the BitTorrent link, but it was taken down since we can just look at the tracker statistics to see exactly how many people used it.

And before anyone asks: if you want one of the hats, we can hook you up. Also, mudkip hats. Inquire within!

Introduction (0:00 – 24:25)
Daryl for whatever reason has decided to boost the crap out of the low frequency end of his voice in an attempt to sound cool for this entire episode, but it’s probably just [comically…?] distorted. Further proof that everyone he knows is becoming smarter than him by virtue of their continued educations, though perhaps “smarter” is the new “dumber.” In the emails department, we get some feedback regarding our discussion from the last episode regarding the cancelation of Toonami. We then shill like it’s going out of style for Hulu and its recent anime additions. Cross our hearts, we aren’t on the take. The site just has all kinds of awesome things on it. At some point MTV Music gets brought up, and since Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is on the brain the inevitable ugliness of Dio in the Holy Diver video is mentioned. And do we have toy/figure/model kit collections? PERHAPS.

Let’s News! (24:25 – 45:19)
With the exception of the fact that FUNimation seems to be doing better than expected, there is like, nothing but sleaze to talk about this episode. In an attempt to delay this fact, we go into what some of the top selling anime titles of the last few months have been, but it’s only a matter of time before we start talking about people who want to marry fictional characters, whether or not loli/shota stuff qualifies as obscenity, and a 38 year old guy who really, REALLY hopes the answer to that question is “no” right about now.

Promo: Weeaboobies (45:19 – 46:00)
Aside from the fact that this is the WORST NAME FOR ANYTHING EVER and also that face piercings = automatic disqualification, this all-female hosted anime podcast is out there to be excessively immature so we don’t have to be. But wait…we’re also excessively immature. Actually, I can’t really think of any truly “mature” podcasts dedicated to Japanese cartoons. I think people say that’s us from a relative standpoint. That is terrifying.

Review (manga): Dororo (46:00 – 1:10:27)
Then again, maybe it’s because we’re reviewing the Osamu Tezuka stuff. Gerald gets into this 3-volume manga series that has been released in English courtesy of Vertical Inc, which for our money’s worth is an early precursor to the “shonen” genre of anime that dominates much of the anime we consume in the US. Daryl reviewed this in the pages of Otaku USA magazine, PS buy the latest issue because it is radical kthxbye

Review (manga): Ressentiment (1:10:27 – 1:49:12)
Daryl’s been making offhand references to how good this comic is for quite some time now, but it’s only now that THE TRUTH can be told. Forget about Genshiken, Welcome to the NHK, Otaku no Video, and all that flippity floppity stuff: this is the real shit. Finally a tale of otakudom that tells it like it is…or at least, we think. Despite only being 4 volumes long, it’s not available for sale in the US and the scanlation efforts stopped at Chapter 29. Perhaps this review will inspire Manga-Screener or someone else to FINISH THE FIGHT. We can only hope. Our salvation–or lack thereof–depends on it!

Closing (1:49:12 – 1:55:54)
Hey, you people who responded to the previous poll saying you were interested in buying AWO T-shirts and/or hoodies (as famously depicted here)? Send us emails with some contact information, desired sizes, and the like. Once we get enough people, we’ll be able to put those orders in! How much would you pay for these things? We’re thinking that since they need to be shipped, it might be $10 for a shirt and $20 for a hoodie once we factor in the “buy mailers and postage” cost, but who knows? Let us know. Next episode will probably be a bonus edition where we do a variety of convention reports: Anime Weekend Atlanta, SITACon, and EXPCon. Plus we should have that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4 review ready to go. Next episode proper, we’re hoping to get Ryan Gavigan on as our special guest! Daryl will be talking about the original Bubblegum Crisis OAVs, Gerald will be talking about Riding Bean, and Clarissa will not be talking about Gunsmith Cats since she’s going to cover Yakitate! Japan. See you hopefully sooner than it took for this one to come out. Fallout 3 doesn’t play itself, you know! In the meantime, you can look at this picture of the Bureau of ATF:

Anime World Order Show # 54b – Special All-Daryl Edition…Almost

Please don’t let this be your first impression of this podcast. Please? Show 54 continues with Daryl’s advance review of 009-1…but due to technical difficulties and the onset of madness, Daryl decided to record the remaining segments…BY HIMSELF. As such, this is probably the single worst segment of AWO ever.

Introduction (0:00 – 21:47)
Feedback time! Dane from Anime Pacific left a comment on this very blog you’re reading now regarding our bonus discussion on bootlegs. Since he lives in Hong Kong where a lot of the bootleggers are/were located, he’s got some insight. First time emailer Tim wants to know about James Bond influences in anime, and Daryl deliberately avoids mentioning Licensed By Royalty even though Jonathan Klein once said over IRC to give it more than one episode. Still, he dubbed the thing, so there’s no telling what tricks are up his sleeve. Future show guest Ryan Gavigan writes to let us know the connection between anime fandom and the Chicago Cubs (other than “they’re full of LOSERS! HAW HAW HAW HAW!”), and a 33 year-old geezer named Jeffrey has had his interest in Japanese cartoons rekindled thanks to us. And what’s the deal with these kids today, with their hair and their clothes and their rock and roll music? He wanted suggestions for space opera anime which we hadn’t already mentioned in the first 30 shows, and Daryl totally flaked.

Let’s News! (21:47 – 33:25)
In lieu of Gerald’s presence, Daryl presents the vital anime news of the week in a calm, objective fashion while discussing their greater ramifications. A small comicbook publisher named Seven Seas Entertainment was planning on publishing a lolicon manga in the US, but it got canceled. It’s been a crazy week as far as these issues go, what with the Adam Hughes statue hubbub and the quasi-porn cover to Heroes for Hire (aka a crappy comic nobody reads because it’s the Marvel equivalent to Birds of Prey), and this was just the icing on the cake. Do you suppose these tiny companies that release lots of those manga-inspired comicbooks actually benefit from all the negative publicity that results when those outside of the anime/manga/comics circles find out about some of the stuff they’re putting out? Did “Yaoi Press” (which, once again, does not actually release manga) benefit from all that Wal-Mart craziness? Daryl doubts that whole “no such thing as bad publicity” thing, but he already made the Don Imus reference somewhere else.

For years people have considered the feasibility of holding an anime convention for older fans, but the Providence Anime Conference (so yeah, it’s not technically a “con”) is the first to actually give it a shot. It’s an event solely for those over the age of 21. But despite the basic outlines stated in the FAQ, will this really be different from an ordinary anime con? I mean, it’s not like every single Narutard we know isn’t already over 21 anyway. And even though they say it won’t be awash in pornography, isn’t there a very good chance that’s what the dealers and artists are going to load up on? No clue. Could be awesome, could be wretched; we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out. It’s not for a whole year anyway.

Promo: R5 Central (33:25 – 34:43)
Daryl has heard several episodes of R5 Central and has played several of the promos. Therefore, he was more than capable of making his very own promo for the show. Bet you can’t distinguish it from the genuine article. Mike, eternally grateful, retaliates with this, the opening to the 1960s live-action 009-1:

Review: 009-1 (34:44 – 1:00:14)
For the record: Shotaro Ishi[no]mori did indeed create “Power Rangers” with the super sentai series Himitsu Sentai Goranger from 1975. Anyway. The problem with “girls with guns” of recent years is the unnecessary loli-bait, and so it is that in order to create a floating beacon of light amidst the turmoil and darkness (“fight, Corn Dog 7! Last ditch bid for freedom!”), anime has had to reach back to a manga from 40 years ago in order to restore balance to the world. The “Dave and Joel Show Notes 2.0” style shall suffice for the rest of this, since Dave’s dream is to have a girl with wide hips (and therefore, mad badonkadonk) beat him up, sleep with him, and then kill him, not necessarily in that order. Sorry Dave, but as wonderful as Black Lagoon may be, Revy is sporting one of the most hideous tattoos ever conceived. Neck/shoulder/arm? That’s an instant downgrade from “hot chick” to “Mike Tyson’s face.” Dear humanity: stop getting tattoos. They all look crappy and only make you look uglier. Daryl Surat, Arbiter of Taste, has spoken.

This review is about:

James Bond references
Headshots
Biometrics
The 1960s

Yumiko Shaku’s main claim to fame is as a [photo]gravure model, which probably means that to land this voice acting gig she had to let this dude, the producer, have sex with her. Actually, that’s probably how they select most voice actresses for roles.

I miss the old style Dave and Joel notes that were all pretending to be like, chat log excerpts.

Gerald: This is the worst episode of AWO ever.
Clarissa: Yeah, until next week.