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With Otakon 2022 nearly upon us (we’ll be there and have panels), Clarissa reviews 2014’s Witch Craft Works, a 12-episode adaptation of Ryu Mizunami’s recently-completed manga, the entirety of which is now available in English both digitally as well as in print.
Introduction (0:00 – 35:22)
We actually remembered to read an email for a change! An intrepid listener weighs in with thoughts on Gundam 00, intrigued by our review of the series back in 2017. This leads to a brief aside regarding the subject of tokusatsu that is available on free streaming, and at this point we would like to make it clear that none of us is an expert in tokusatsu. Fortunately, there are now dedicated communities and channels for that, so our half-baked thoughts on the subject needn’t be the definitive word. The question of what is and isn’t streaming changes rapidly; about 90 titles just vanished without warning from HiDive about two weeks ago. The most notable of which was Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which was only down for a few hours before reappearing, but it goes to show that there’s no guarantee of streaming availability. Incidentally, Gerald has finally gotten around to watching Angel Cop, just shy of 15 years after Daryl’s old review. Unlike back then, now we have Angel Cop in full native HD with accurate subtitles!
Oh yeah, we’ll be at Otakon 2022. Daryl has “Thirty Years Ago: Anime in 1992” at 12:45 PM on Friday in the AMV Theater, and Gerald is presenting “A Sophisticatedly Unsophisticated Look at Fan Service (18+)” Sunday 12:15 AM in Panel 7. See you there, and remember to wear a new N95 and bring proof of COVID-19 vaccination!
Promo: Right Stuf Anime (35:22 – 38:30)
It’s the last week of the 35th birthday sale, so pick up some comics and cartoons while they’re on steep discount. You may also want to start saving up for some upcoming ultra fancy edition box sets, because as was announced earlier this month, we are finally getting the Macross sequels on Blu-Ray in the United States. Right Stuf will be handling releases of Macross 7, Macross Frontier, and Macross Delta, while Animeigo will be bringing over Macross II (listen to our old review here) and Anime Limited/AllTheAnime will be releasing Macross Plus on Blu-Ray in the US. Hmm, aren’t there other Macross titles which could stand for a Blu-Ray release in the US? We’ll have to wait and see if any further announcements get made, but for now we note that there is a Bigwest panel at Otakon Saturday morning…
Review: Witch Craft Works (38:30 – 1:14:56)
Clarissa takes point on reviewing this action-comedy series from 2014 about the virtues of having a tall, long-haired, big-boobed magical girlfriend carry you around everywhere and beat up everybody who tries to mess with you.
There has not (thus far) been a US release of the series on a physical media format. For now, you can still watch the series on Crunchyroll (minus the bonus OVA episode and Japan Blu-Ray exclusive chibi short segments). I suppose it wouldn’t be out of place in the other WCW for there to be a storyline where all the ladies are after a guy for his “white stuff.” I mean, that explains Torrie Wilson and David Flair at least, right?
Although this anime only adapts about 6 or so volumes worth of the manga, which ran for 17 volumes, we’d say that the series covers most of the major action that happens. Still, in true Ah/Oh My Goddess! fashion, the artwork remains exceptional as the magical girlfriend hijinks hamster wheel spins in place, and the series is now fully available in both print as well as digital.
Even though Kamen Rider is popular, in terms of impact in the US, it hasn’t done very well at all. Unlike Super Sentai and Ultraman where there are a bunch of physical and streaming releases, Kamen Rider has so few for some reason. There isn’t a good reason for why that is. So unfortunately, most of Kamen Rider is only available through pirated means.
But there is the upcoming Kamen Rider W (it can be read as Double due to how Japanese people say the letter “W” as “Double”) sequel anime Fuuto Pi which I don’t know how people who haven’t watched the original series could follow Fuuto Pi. Shout Factory is failing to capitalize on the new anime to bring Kamen Rider W to streaming. Also Kamen Rider W is one of the better series to watch.
Out of the big 3 Toku series (Ultraman, Super Sentai, Kamen Rider), Ultraman probably the biggest reach since Tsuburaya has a YouTube Channel called Ultraman Official which they do Simulucast of their latest series with English subtitles. They don’t sub their CM spots which they are part of the episode itself but the sub quality is good. I do wish Toei would follow the Tsuburaya model and try to expand Kamen Rider and Super Sentai to international audiences.
It seems like Crunchyroll has been picking those random OVAs now. Even the Attack on Titan OVAs are finally available for streaming.
Also I highly doubt Tomino could ever fix G-Reco with 5 movies.
This is a question you might answer. So, I got Kino’s Journey (the good one) on Bluray, but since the show was only rendered in SD, it’s a SD on Blu-ray release. Which would normally be fine, some things are forever stuck in SD, that’s reality I accept. Except the video is encoded as just standard 60i, instead of 24p (23.976p). So, no matter what player I watch the Blu-ray on, the movement is slightly stutter-y, with some ghosting. Which is how it would appear on old CRTs, of course. But I know you can encode SD as progressive on a DVD, I have a buttload of those, old and new. So, is this just lazy authoring, people in charge not taking the time to put “this session is 23.9fps” flags where needed, or are all NTSC SD on Blu-ray releases crappy like this? Are other releases better, or should SD on BD be avoided entirely?
SD on Blu-Ray is generally perfectly fine, but a habitual offender as far as authoring mistakes goes is Sentai Filmworks, who did that Kino’s Journey release you’ve got. That’s not the first time I’ve heard/seen that they authored discs with the wrong flags set (I think VOTOMS like, got the field order wrong or something so it looks unnaturally jerky?). Not everything they release is subject to this, but it’s not uncommon either.
I haven’t heard or encountered issues with Discotek’s SD on BD releases. They seem to be the other anime studio that does several releases in that manner.
You have no idea how helpful you just were, thanks a whole lot!
I think my neighbors hate me because I made an hour loop of the ending song and I play it ALL DA TIME
I dunno if One Punch Man Season 2 switching to JC Staff is why people don’t like that season as much as season 1. If anything, I think it’s probably more due to the Garou arc taking the narrative focus away from Saitama and the season 1 characters he was hanging out with. I know that sure killed it for me.
Anyway, maybe I’m misremembering, but I feel like the reason this got lost in the shuffle is that there was a LOT of witch themed anime in that part of the 2010s. If you didn’t know someone who was watching it as it simulcast or just sampled everything, it seems fairly easy to miss, especially if you’re not big into fantasy.