Anime World Order Show # 33 – Listener Feedback with Dave Merrill, Fandom Hero

In our longest podcast to date, we were supposed to get caught up on responding to listener feedback with our special guest, the now-retired head of Anime Weekend Atlanta / Corn Pone Flicks member / Anime Hell founder / comicbook creator / Totally Lame Anime expert / Misterkitty.org co-creator / no longer a “Cap’n,” Dave Merrill. But we got too preoccupied with having him impart his wisdom to us so that our kung fu might become stronger. Oh, and we did this interview on his birthday.

Introduction (0:00 – 1:15)
Shortest introduction ever! Or perhaps it’s the longest, considering what this episode is!

Let’s News! (1:15 – 24:02)
Fine, so we’re weeks late in getting to this. Bandai issued a press release warning everyone that if they fansub Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, they’d be prepared to dispatch lawyers in order to defend their intellectual property. While they’re perfectly right to do so from a legal perspective, we weigh in on the significance of such an action and whether or not what they’re trying to do is actually harmful to them in the long run. Comparisons to the MPAA and RIAA result, which leads to us talking about the effectiveness of their anti-piracy efforts and what could be done. Nikkei BP did an article on the state of Japan’s animation industry, which is to say “not that great.” Finally, Bandai follows up their Liver Blow that was the fansub warning with this Gazelle Punch: they’re not going to allow exchanges of the old Zeta Gundam DVDs from the box set (the ones with awful subtitles) for the newer Zeta Gundam DVDs included in the individual sets (which have fixed subtitles). Daryl bought that set, and he is less than thrilled over this development.

Promo: Rangercast (24:02 – 24:47)
The sentai panel at Otakon was probably one of the best ones there, and this podcast is run by the guy who ran that panel. If it’s true about TV-Nihon wanting this guy gone because he DARED to suggest that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is sentai, then tokusatsu fandom is in even worse shape than we would have imagined.

Then we talked to Dave for the rest of the show. Additional show notes to come, but for now I’ll throw in the promo times.

Promo: R5 Central (1:05:12 – 1:06:16)
Speaking of tokusatsu, Mike made us a custom promo based upon the fact that Daryl lost his mind hearing that robot girl “Ai” voice being used for extended periods of time during his three-part Anime Central report. The observation that Gerald’s voice sounds as though Carl Macek is directing his words is entirely his own, though it is an idea not without merit. Man. One of these days we should get back to making political attack ads against the other podcasts.

Promo: GeekNights (1:39:59 – 1:41:05)
We have been informed that the promo we chose to play is actually the promo they made which was intentionally bad and meant to prevent people from wanting to listen. We have one of those too, actually. It is also our only promo. Anyway, check out Rym and Scott’s show. They’re a dynamic [100% heterosexual] duo for the new millennium.

Promo: Anime Pulse (2:01:03 – 2:01:33)
Do you know how frightening it is to have to write that timecode? DO YOU?! Old Man Chigo is the aspect of the Anime Pulse promos that we here at the Anime World Order relate to best. Even though they’re older than we are.

Closing (2:15:12 – 2:23:02)
Next time, we’re going to do a normal show for once! Remember those? The ones WITHOUT con reports or guests, where we talked about anime and stuff? Gerald’s reviewing the uncut version of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Clarissa’s tackling that mad outlaw Captain Harlock as she tells us all about Arcadia of My Youth, and Daryl steps up to his role as a Certified Anime Authority by reviewing the much-requested Haibane Renmei. Also, Gerald makes an outlandish bet which he didn’t realize was stacked horrendously against him until it was too late. Fortunately it will NEVER come to pass. Never ever.

62 Replies to “Anime World Order Show # 33 – Listener Feedback with Dave Merrill, Fandom Hero”

  1. I dunno if I’d call Kaiju Big Battel unrelated; Japanese monster movies and tokusatsu are really close to anime fandom, if not as popular. And hell, they put on a great show. When I was at their screening at Big Apple Anime Fest, though, the crowd wasn’t into that stuff and didn’t get it at all. Philistines.

    For the big cons (going back to my Otakon experience, again) the decision-making isn’t so much about relevance as it is the demographic. You can pack a WoW panel, of course, even if it has little to nothing to do with Japanese cartoons. Meanwhile, if I have a “Isn’t Norio Wakamoto Just The Goddamn Coolest?” panel probably ten people will show up at a big con, and that’s generous. This is why internet culture is everywhere; online community was already big for anime fans before, and now the new generation of fans gets all their shit online (regrettably, i know).

    It’s true this other stuff gets really huge attendance over many anime events, but let’s be realistic. Niche anime can’t pull in a big crowd to begin with. We’re kind of fucked in that respect.

    When I went to see Gaogaigar at Otakon the audience was small but respectable. When it turned out somebody couldn’t tell the difference between it and Godannar, and they ran that instead, attendance suddenly skyrocketed! Gaogaigar is a super-traditional robot anime, and to get it you have to be well-acquainted with the genre in the first place. Not many people at the typical anime con are. You know what people are acquainted with? Titties. Boobs: a common interest among human beings. We love them. You take a room full of anime fans, and you tell them behind door number 1 is a great anime they’ve never seen anything like before, and you tell them behind door number two is tits, you goddamn betcha you will see the majority of the crowd rush for door number two. You see what I’m saying?

    Can we really blame the crowd for doing other shit they’re interested in instead of seeing anime that they aren’t? It’s their vacation, and if they want to spend part of it on a two-hour line to play the same DDR Extreme machine in every mall in America, that’s sort of tragic, but hell. Let ’em. If they’re really solely around for non-anime shit I’d say that’s their bad judgement (i can’t imagine the thoughts of the person for whom the otaku rave or the game room is their sole justification for attending), not really the con’s. So yeah, I guess I can blame THOSE guys for coming to my goddamn party.

    I think there’s room for all this other stuff that people are into if it doesn’t take over the schedule, and I don’t think that any con is actually at the point where non-anime stuff, with not even the slightest shred of connection to the anime culture, takes over.

    Having J-rock concerts as a main event is kind of toeing the line, though. There’s lots of Japanese music that isn’t associated with anime that I like, but the connection to the anime culture is pretty tenuous. That’s not main-event material for an anime con… but these are backed by record companies and there are CDs to be sold.

    I’m really not liking the implications of that for the future.

  2. At the end of the day, it’s the people running a particular convention that are responsible for what events take place at that convention. Someone in charge of some aspect of the convention had to OK that World of Warcraft panel for whatever reason.

    sub:
    People probably wanted to see Godannar more than GGG because they knew about it before the convention. I love GaoGaiGar to death, but it’s not exactly a high-profile show.

    Then again, it probably IS the fanservice. But I’d like to pretend that it wasn’t and that the true winner of that day was Nobuyuki Hiyama (the one and only voice of truly great characters such as Godannar’s Kouji and GaoGaiGar’s Gai Shishiou).

  3. Bringing up the GaoGaiGar and Godannar thing is kind of depressing. As fun of a show that Godannar is, GaoGaiGar is simply better, I think. The fanservice was way too much in Godannar. To think that people choose Godannar over GaoGaiGar, is sort of depressing… It’s proof that the modern anime fans are all perverts in the end.

    If I may, I would draw a parallel of Daryl Surat, to the really cool characters in anime, that are so insanely awesome, that if they were in the show the whole time, then the it would pull off a Gundam SEED Destiny. And nothing should try to emulate Gundam SEED Destiny. A good example would be Soldat J with the King J-Der from GaoGaiGar.

  4. Daryl Surat said…
    Could people sign their posts or something if they’re posting anonymously? If this was 4chan or something it wouldn’t matter, but here it makes it easier for me to follow who said what. Right now I don’t know if it’s five people posting the same thing or just one guy, though I’m leaning toward the latter.

    It would help!

    Years ago, I did a panel where I showed nothing but anime clips and that was it. Some of it was bad, some of it was good, but it was entirely anime. Attendance wasn’t that great, and most people only really wanted to see the bad anime since my idea of “good anime” didn’t exactly coincide with other people’s (Hajime no Ippo, etc) and the good anime clips were well, not funny. So, the Panel OF DOOM for a while had very little anime since the best of the laughable anime clips all went into the bad anime panel, though it’s always had at least some.

    It’s hard running a panel based on a premise that has no easy target obviously, and I don’t mind you for detouring to present other things of interest.

    I have been gradually increasing the amount of anime footage shown, though. The AWA Panel is going to be mostly the same as the JACON panel, minus any “live action vs anime” segments that I didn’t put together myself, which is to say nearly all of them. But I’m also adding in Ippatsu Kikimusume, assorted clips from Combattler/Voltes V, Gundoh Musashi (provided I can FIND the actual episodes),

    That one’s a hoot! I only wish I could find those episodes as well (Best I’ve been able to find were a fansub of the first episode, and the first four that were parody subbed, people just aren’t bothering with this one, yet I see potential in it). Have to see if someone might have it on eMule or elsewhere.

    Ziv International Captain Harlock, Captain Future, Macron 1, Superbook, and such.

    Being reminded of having the “Malibu Graphis” edition of Captain Harlock. The “out-of-synch” first episode and over-modulated thrid episode are worth the price of slamming your body against the wall really hard! 🙂

    I’ve been experimenting with Yakkity Sax set to things like Grave of the Fireflies, Now and Then Here and There, and the like, but I don’t think that’ll be ready in time. I’d have to learn Premiere so I could speed up and loop footage.

    I still need to learn how to use those programs myself as well. Love to experiment in After Effects as well somehow. Have some tutorial guides and videos to watch on this, but need to set up time and effort to get it right (plus perhaps some extra cash to get a higher processor than the one I currently have in my PC).

    So yes, the Panel OF DOOM! still has jack all to do with jack, but I will guaran-damn-tee you that even so, it still manages to have more actual anime content in it than the things I’ve been declaring to well, not have any anime content. Perhaps someday I will be able to accomplish my original goal of showing nothing but anime clips for 2+ hours and keep the crowd’s interest; after seeing how people actually showed up to the AFO panel where Gerald and I did just that for one hour, there may be hope yet.

    We can only hope!

  5. alexander strange said…

    The Musashi parody subs are yet another fake name Studio ADTRW project; you can get them here.

    http://raspberryheaven.net:53284/index.html?search=Musashi

    I can get raw versions of an episode or two and the actually seriously translated one if you really want,

    I pretty much have most of what’s out there anyway, but raw episodes would be nice to edit to!

    but isn’t that kind of boring?

    Nah, not when you are an obsessive fan of cheese like me! Those things are as insipid as those Korean knock-off anime DVDs that were mentioned here before! Plus I like seeing the little parodies people have made for it on YouTube!

  6. I dont know if any of you care or not but Nintendo just released the date and price for the Wii. It will bee $249.99 and reeleased on November 19. It will also come with Wii Sports.

  7. Unfortunately, the fansub group who did the first episode admit in the opening credits that they only subbed the one episode so that they’d get noticed and they’d get translators for their group. Seriously!

  8. Sub said…
    Unfortunately, the fansub group who did the first episode admit in the opening credits that they only subbed the one episode so that they’d get noticed and they’d get translators for their group. Seriously!

    Yet nobody bothered to come forward and say they like to work on it.

    Bet it would be cheaper just licensing this if ADV doesn’t mind giving it the “Ghost Stories” treatment. That’s the only way I see this ever working here.

    Nice someone else had to bring up the WII. I personally wasn’t interesting in blowing huge sums of cash on that, but I can see that it’ll probably be the winner when it’s all said and done.

  9. Dave…you rock! I can’t go to AWA, but I look forward to the post-con interview. Great ep, by the way. Daryl – I look forward to your Renmei review. For the record, Gerald’s voice alright no matter who he sounds like or what accent he might have according to what day it is. For the record, I too am scared of the live-action remakes coming out soon. You should definitely take them apart when they do come out.

    Peace,

    Dan “On Tap”

  10. Yet nobody bothered to come forward and say they like to work on it.

    Well, I like to work on it, I did the last parody. My Japanese certainly isn’t good enough for the real thing, though.

    I’ll get the stuff up when I finish being asleep.

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