A podcast all about Japanese cartoons and comics as discussed by three self-proclaimed experts in the world of anime and manga! Plus anime news / reviews, coverage of classic anime, hentai / yaoi, and much, much more. Updated every week. We hope.
For this episode, Daryl looks back to his teenage days and endeavors to make No-Brand Heroes of you all as he reviews the 1991 OAV anime adaptation of Here Is Greenwood alongside its original 1986 shojo manga.
Introduction (0:00 – 1:02:10)
We kind of mixed in the AWOmake with the actual episode here, since until about 36:40 we sound off on Sony’s decision to abandon physical media support for their future game consoles and software releases, which has a not-entirely indirect impact on the anime side of things as well once taken in conjunction with the Crunchyroll Store’s new restriction to only sell to those with Mega Fan or Ultimate Fan level subscriptions while also putting the rest of their physical media on final clearance. Eventually, we get to talking about what we’re watching in the current anime season, which has several incredible offerings. And if you haven’t already done so, please fill out the survey for the upcoming documentary Icons of Anime: The Western Awakening as there are only a few days remaining to do so!
Review: Here is Greenwood (1:02:10 – 2:13:03)
Here is Greenwood was one of the early VHS fansub favorites among American anime fans of the 1990s. This may seem odd considering how back then, a majority of anime fans were college guys and Greenwood is a shojo series set in an all-boys’ private school, but back then anime was hard enough to come by that fans would watch whatever they could get. Plus, despite being shojo, back in the 1980s and 1990s that term wasn’t synonymous with “romance” the way it seemingly is these days.
The Software Sculptors VHS box for the first of three volumes of Here is Greenwood. Note the “Not Mainstream” logo in the corner to warn away potentially disgruntled customers looking for blood and violent sex.Shun Kisaragi is Greenwood’s most iconic character despite being perfectly normal and having a perfectly normal family.Anime back then was not afraid to just use regular brand names in open defiance of copyright, but sometimes it was funnier to change them.It’s not dwelled upon but it’s always fun to see what details the animators put into vehicles, A/V equipment, and what games/movies are on the shelves.And of course, motorcycles.Just bros being dudes, man.Just dudes being bros, man.
It’s been a few years, but our special guest is Mike Toole, whom we have summoned forth so that we may review the 5-part OVA Macross Zero from 2002, now available in the US after over twenty years.
Introduction (0:00 – 35:09)
We catch up with Mike and what he’s been up to lately as far as movies and anime series he’s been watching. Quite a few of them have been both, which leads to us talking about our general experiences with watching anime in movie theaters over the decades. We wrap things up by following up on our previous episode’s discussion regarding the then-planned changes to the Crunchyroll Store which are apparently now starting to happen.
Promo: Summer 2026 Trailer Watch-Along and Icons of Anime: The Western Awakening (35:09 – 39:52)
The Summer 2026 Anime Season Trailer Watch-Along is set for this coming Saturday, June 27th, at 3:00 PM Eastern time over on the Anime World Order Discord. Join us live, since there’s no where on the Internet where hosting a VOD of such a thing is permitted.
Tim Eldred is writing and directing a new documentary, Icons of Anime: The Western Awakening, for CreatorVC, an organization that has done several lengthy, high-quality documentaries focusing on pop culture in the past. This is still in the early planning stages, so we need everybody to go fill out this survey before August 3rd so that they can accurately gauge interest level and determine what people to interview and what topics to focus on (or not focus on). If you’ve ever seen other CreatorVC documentaries, then you know this is going to be far more than a typical YouTube video essay because the plan is to talk to as many of the people who were there at the time and were doing it as possible. Perhaps one of those people is even you! If so, send us an email and we’ll pass your contact information on to Tim.
Review: Macross Zero (39:52 – 1:59:00)
In the early 2000s, Visionary Creator Shoji Kawamori was definitely going through a phase. This highly-anticipated OVA series from the relatively new studio at the time, Satelight, was advertised and promoted as “the prequel to 1982’s Superdimensional Fortress Macross” and was released in celebration of the 20th anniversary of that in 2002. But in reality, it’s more of a followup to Kawamori’s previous work, Earth Girl Arjuna. What we’re trying to say is: if you have an account on the MacrossWorld forums, you probably shouldn’t listen to us talk about this one, since while we had the AllTheAnime Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray release, only Mike was responsible enough to rewatch with the commentary tracks on. The stellar supplemental materials–Creative Sphere knocks it out of the park yet again–are what make that set worthwhile, but they’re exclusive to the physical media version so us peons watching the streaming version (which is on Hulu here in the US, not Disney Plus like we said in the show) wouldn’t know about what’s on there.
HEY, MAYBE INSTEAD OF SCARLET WE SHOULD REVIEW EARTH GIRL ARJUNA IF WE GET TO ENOUGH PATREON SUBSCRIBERS!
When we first saw Macross Zero, this was the best possible video quality. The 2002-era CG was poor in detail, janky in animation, and the interlaced video didn’t match the framerate of the VFX. Rough as this image is, it was even rougher in motion, and the story didn’t help matters either.But this is the upscaled version as you’d see it today on Disney+ or AllTheAnime’s Blu-Ray release. It’s a lot less visually jarring; you can actually READ the text, for instance. We can’t say less headache-inducing, because there’s still the rest of the show to consider.The final episode was a convoluted letdown, but it did give us this absolute unit of a Destroid. Kazutaka Miyatake, Hidetaka Tenjin, and Ichiro Itano did their part, at least. How Mao wasn’t vaporized by being near this thing as it fired is but one of many questions we have.
