Anime World Order Show # 54d – Clarissa Isn’t Dead, She Was Hibernating (like Superman)

After a month of procrastination and being occupied with actual work, we conclude the super-extended Show # 54 with Clarissa’s review of Ai no Kusabi. Its DBR–Dudes Bein’ Rude–rating is quite powerful indeed. This hopefully concludes the “non-standard format” episodes of the last month and change, but once again, if you’ve never heard the show before, you may not want to start with this one since our other episodes aren’t like this.

Introduction (00:00 – 13:19)

It’s somewhat difficult to select emails that are appropriate to read without all of our powers combined to answer them, but somehow Clarissa manages to select three whole messages. First of all, we deviate briefly from the mansex theme of this episode to talk about hot girls making out with each other–more specifically, why yuri manga is so hard to find and whether there’s any of it that’s good. Clarissa mentions a few titles, then directs everyone interested to Okazu since Erica is awesome and can school people on this better than anyone at AWO. The question of whether or not YesAsia sells bootlegs is addressed (the answer appears to be no), and Clarissa points people looking for Japanese DVDs to CD Japan, whose prices are cheaper, though they don’t have free shipping and you should probably check which one ends up costing less with that factored in. We close with a listener who wants us to review Wings of Honneamise, Angel Cop and Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Also, is Koichi Ohata the Japanese Rob Liefeld? Perhaps you can help us answer that.

News (13:20 – 23:25)

Clarissa, unchecked by cohosts talking about things that don’t involve Dudes Being Rude, ends up talking about a lot of news that has to do with that. Sanami Matoh is doing more FAKE, and Clarissa hopes that if it gets licensed, it’ll get a translation she can read without stabbing her eyes out. Also, Yuu Watase may be doing her first Boys Love manga (or maybe just another shoujo-which-happens-to-have-gay-boys-manga) as part of another magazine, which will also feature Alexander Daiou. Finally, AX happened, which means lots of licensing announcements and other news. Clarissa talks a few new licenses, the continuation of Yotsuba&!, and the keynote about the manga industry.

Review: Ai no Kusabi (23:26 – 53:27)

Future societies on human-colonized worlds, genetic engineering, highly-stratified class systems, supercomputer leaders, sex slaves and hot mansex. Plus Kaneto Shiozawa in possibly his hottest role? It must be Ai no Kusabi.

Though Clarissa generally wouldn’t look to BL manga for serious science fiction literature, since well, that’s not really the point, this one is actually pretty neat for the interaction between society and human emotion/desire. But the main focus is still definitely on incredibly handsome men and their torrid affair.

Clarissa forgot to note over the course of this review that this show is solely responsible for her bulletproof kink of the indirect cigarette kiss. It’s only fair that others should be warned before watching. It could happen to you!

Also, for the record, this is the concept art of the bikes looked at during the episode:

Promo: Robotronic Dynamite! (53:28 – 54:58)

Since this episode is a veritable buffet of mansex, it’s only fitting that we endorse the gayest podcast ever, using an appropriately-themed promo. This ‘cast features Joseph Luster, who can currently be found in Otaku USA, along with the AWO.

Closing (54:59 – 59:13)

And thus ends the most ridiculous episode of this podcast ever. Which for us is pretty severely ridiculous. The next episode’s already recorded, so there shouldn’t be another crazy gap between this one and the next. Next up, our powers combine once again, but instead of Captain Planet we end up with Daryl’s review of the Sanrio film Sea Prince and the Fire Child, Gerald’s take on the classic Gainax series Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, and Clarissa’s initial reactions to MPD Psycho.