Anime World Order Show # 242 – You CAN Stop the Signal, If You’re a Buff Catgirl

0In this episode, by popular request Daryl reviews the 1998 sci-fi Western Outlaw Star, which we all remember so little about it’s almost like we’re seeing it for the first time. The original Toonami Generation is now middle-aged, after all.

Introduction (0:00 – 1:03.22)
Anime Boston is just two weeks away; we’d better start working on all those panels we’re doing, huh? For now, it’s another new anime season, and another batch of titles to check out. We talk about what we’re watching, since there’s a fair bit of good stuff airing right now. But also, Gerald saw a movie that displeased him mightily. We spend about 45 minutes discussing this.

But then we also talk about the incredibly short print runs of both manga and anime these days, which means we have no choice but to bring up the fact that the recent policy decisions being undertaken by the government are now having tangible effects on our existences of watching cartoons, playing videogames, and going to fan conventions. This is less than 15 minutes worth of discussion, but we know this is all anyone will pretend we talked about. So look: we’d love to stick to just talking about anime and avoid politics anything, but politics thinks otherwise. If want to argue about this, we will just delete/hide your comments without responding or showing them to anyone.

Rough news all around, and while it’s affecting merchandise right now (model kits, toys, apparel), printed materials are supposed to be exempt from all this tariff junk as are goods from Canada and Mexico that are compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). That should theoretically include most authored anime Blu-Rays and UHDs…except since we recorded this they’re talking about levying tariffs on foreign-produced media. Can that actually happen? Realistically not, but we’ve been saying that about a lot of things lately that are happening in the dumbest possible way. As The Comics Journal succinctly put it, “they might fuck us up at any moment.”

This is a unique time in history, and not in a good way.

Never in our lives have we been unable to preorder otaku goods because of who’s running the government. These are not things that can (or should) ever be shifted to domestic production.

There was no plan of action or implementation period because nobody making these decisions thought them through first.

One day, someone is going to pretend all of this was no big deal and that it was all blown out of proportion. So we’ll take the screenshots now, because who knows if there’ll even still be an Internet Archive of web snapshots in the future.

Review: Outlaw Star (1:03:22 – 2:29:08)
Daryl reviews a series that has been highly requested over the years, presumably because Outlaw Star aired during what people now nostalgically refer to as the “golden age” of Toonami/Adult Swim: that time during their early inceptions where they were first showing anime nationwide, effectively creating a brand new wave of anime fandom that spanned wider than fansubs or retail store rentals/releases had ever done before. Outlaw Star’s hybrid of Eastern mysticism with science fiction and the tropes of the American Western made it reasonably accessible to audiences who did not have prior knowledge of Japan, but the fact that it aired concurrently with two other space Westerns, one of which was Cowboy Bebop, means it is forever destined to be thought of as lesser by comparison even 27 years later. Nevertheless, we’ll try to evaluate it separately from that, seeing as how it’s been 27 years and all.

Any similarities between Gene Starwind and Lupin the Third are entirely on purpose.

An example of Hicaru Tanaka’s concept art for the series, which was used for the ending credits.

Aisha Clanclan could definitely manage the Oinky Doink Café.

In 2025, men want what Fred is trying so desperately to rid himself of.

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