Anime World Order Show # 214 – Ego Hat, You’ve Ruined My Life

It’s our annual Thanksgiving trivia episode! We’re joined this time by the highly versatile writer Kara Dennison (@RubyCosmos), who in addition to writing prose fiction also contributes to Crunchyroll and Otaku USA as well as a bunch of other places we can’t remember. As Lupin the Third would say, compared to her we’re stumblebums.

Introduction (0:00 – 17:32)
We talk to Kara about her endeavors, like how she contributed to a Sherlock Holmes anthology, helped officially subtitle Mazinger Z, and how she’s been diving into Digimon and Lupin the Third lately. The conversation eventually turns towards old parody dubs and we start reminiscing about Roadbusted. It’s on YouTube now!

Trivia Round One (17:32 – 1:19:27)
Technical problems won’t hold us back from disappointing you again, though it does mean that Gerald had to omit the audio category. Although Daryl can cue up and play audio files to a voice call with ease, that’s because he has audio interface hardware and it’s trickier to do purely through software means because you can think everything is working during solo/single person tests but it doesn’t once multiple users are present. The questions, as usual, are contributed by LISTENERS LIKE YOURSELVES so be sure to listen along and lambast us for not knowing simple things that you definitely know the answer to. Alternatively, be AMAZED at the things we do know the answers to! I’m sure some of you out there are like that, anyway.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (1:19:27 – 1:21:55)
It’s the annual weekly Black Friday sale, where pretty much everything is on sale. Look for bundle package deals for manga, DVDs/Blu-Rays, and even figurines. Best of all, the free shipping limit is (for now) once again back to the pre-COVID value of $50! Why, you could just preorder GaoGaiGar and hit that threshold (or be a few dollars shy if you save the additional 10% with the Got Anime? membership).

Trivia Round Two (1:21:55 – 2:04:22)
For the second round, you’ll get to delight yourself listening to us try and pronounce words in French, discuss the finer distinctions between Superbook and The Flying House, and everybody’s favorite thing: us hating on Sola Digital Arts. You know, the typical AWO experience!

6 Replies to “Anime World Order Show # 214 – Ego Hat, You’ve Ruined My Life”

    1. Oh, I get why, but the filename for that image is incorrect. That’s Minya, Godzilla’s son. Godzooky is “Godzilla’s” nephew from the abysmal Godzilla in Name Only Hanna-Barbera cartoon. [This is, of course, already stated within the various metadata fields for the image which we filled in before the post went live, but it looks like WordPress doesn’t display any of that when you set the image as the featured one for a given post. —-Daryl]

  1. We indeed have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, starting with your trivia show featuring Kara Dennison! Gerald, I’m sure you realize this, but these particular shows are actually a great way to learn about the history of not only anime itself, but the history of the anime industry, both domestic and foreign. Do you think an AWO trivia show might work adapted as a con panel…?

    As Dan Dunn said, “That’s just a theory!” but “blage” may be a variant of “blag,” one of whose meanings in British slang is gains made through trickery or robbery–it can be a noun or verb (I learned the word from Big Vern in Viz–the Viz from Newcastle, not the one from San Francisco). Just as there’s British dubs, there must be British subtitles, right?

    San Jose’s former PBS station KTEH, on which Evangelion had its first US airing (Lain too, I believe) was a local friendly media place for science fiction and, later, anime fans in the San Francisco Bay Area–recall San Jose was the original home of the SF convention BayCon, which hosted Toren Smith’s famous anime program in 1986 (AnimeCon ’91 and AnimeExpo ’92 were also both held in San Jose). For example, when KTEH showed The Prisoner in the 1980s, they lent it a fannish touch by featuring episode intros from local writer Scott Apel, who would sport cosplay and props appropriate to that particular episode (you can find them on YouTube, just as you can KTEH’s anime pledge drives from the late 90s and early 2000s).

    I dunno about ADV’s voice actors; at least when I interviewed them for Animerica, they struck me as people who were considered and thoughtful towards their performances. An interesting thing to observe is how the fan culture around voice acting itself has changed. If you look at the very earliest years of cons such as A-Kon, AX, or Otakon, you don’t see a lot of English (or even Japanese) VAs on the guest list. Although today English voice actors are often the most popular guests, I seem to recall that the idea of watching anime dubbed wasn’t fully accepted among many hardcore fans here in the 1990s. It may have been because dubbing was associated with the past edits and compromises of ethnically cleansed anime on TV by fat Yankee pig producers, whereas subtitled releases were specifically aimed at fans who acknowledged and admired anime as Japanese creative works. For fans who argued animation was not an inferior medium to live-action, the argument also sometimes was: subtitles are accepted for watching live-action foreign works; why should it be different when the foreign work is an anime?

    It’s possible, then, that a preference for subtitles also reflected a desire to present anime in the same mode of status and recognition that foreign films enjoyed* (on the flip side, this can be called snobbery, but again, no one called it snobbery in the 1990s to go see a live-action Japanese film subtitled instead of dubbed). Of course, still another side of it is that it simply took less time and capital to subtitle a work than it did to dub it–just because licensing companies started with otaku as a niche, didn’t mean they lacked ambition to eventually reach a wider audience through dubs. Furthermore, my own attitudes towards dubs were sometimes inconsistent and hypocritical–for example, I found fault at the time with Streamline’s dubs, despite having been a fan of Robotech, which took far greater liberties with the source material. The irony, if that’s the right word, is that today, with streaming, subbed anime is an even more vigorous part of the English-language fan scene than it was in the 1990s, yet at the same time this co-exists with well-developed fan respect and popularity for English-language dub actors. I think it represents the growth and flexibility of the industry and its audience.

    “Full-size panties”…I almost answered “Laputa.” Not Miyazaki’s only underwear joke, actually.

    —Carl

    P.S. Everyone remembers David slinging the stone at Goliath, but in fact he did also cut off his head afterwards, which would make your Anime’s Craziest Deaths BIBLICALLY INERRANT (I Samuel 17:51) HAW! HAW!

    *Proving I’ve learned nothing since being machine-gunned in Roadbusted, permit me to drone on about how Toshio Okada wrote in his memoir that Star Quest was a dub because he was told that Americans don’t watch subtitled films. Even putting aside the fact this was an invitation-only screening and not a general release, in Los Angeles especially there existed an audience for subtitled foreign films in the 1980s, and it had for decades.

    1. Thanks for providing context about KTEH! That wasn’t their only tie to the BBC – they also got props and talent from them for their many Dr Who pledge drives, and KTEH premiered the 4th season of Red Dwarf in a marathon before it even aired in the UK! It’s my working theory that the station was hounded by ravenous sci-fi fans for anime, which makes sense since it was the audience at the time and their first anime shown, Robotech, would have had that crossover appeal. I actually gave a panel about its programming at last year’s Fanime, which was the inspiration for these questions. During my research, I came across many of your posts on rec.arts.anime.misc (such as this praise for Lain: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.anime.misc/c/ob0poi9uA_s/m/K2Tt0Gbh6TgJ); it’s been incredible helpful to have your very descriptive posts archived. Besides just anime on TV, I’ve also been looking into the legacy of the Hannifens, and was able to make contact with Eclare. She’s agreed to answer some questions, which is really exciting!

      The pledge drives were archived by a certain OtakuD50, and you can find them on his YoutubeChannel: https://www.youtube.com/%5BOtakuD50%5D. Fascinating stuff. I know Kenny Lauderdale is working on a video about it.

      PS – I’m well past obsequious at this point, but thanks chatting about Honnemaise together after your industry panel at Fanime!

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