Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:52:10 — 52.1MB)
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It’s a brand new year, but not quite a brand new animal as Daryl reviews the somehow already half decade old TV series Odd Taxi. Since it’s something of a mystery series, we’ll note the review contains minor to perhaps moderate spoilers.
Introduction (0:00 – 52:07)
We sound off on the sudden and dramatic shift in practice over at the Crunchyroll Store, in which they will no longer be selling what they deem “slow sellers,” opting to focus solely on big titles. This meant that overnight, several hundred titles from Discotek as well as AnimEigo, Sentai Filmworks, Media Blasters etc. were erased from the store completely, to the point that pending orders for those titles were canceled. For now, the remaining option is to buy direct from the sellers whenever possible. Discotek doesn’t have their own online storefront, but MediaOCD will be adding 20-30 Discotek titles to their storefront each month to lessen the impact of this. So don’t resort to scalpers on ebay charging 500% markup for the removed titles! And that’s not all! Amazon has started not so covertly using generative AI for anime English dubbing, which despite being met with intense backlash from fans and licenseholders alike is proceeding forward regardless.
But contrary to popular belief, we don’t actually WANT to gripe constantly, so we read some emails that congratulate us on our 20 year anniversary as listeners reflect on how far they’ve come in their anime journeys since they first started listening to us. As it’s a new year and a new anime season, we wrap things up by going over some noteworthy titles currently airing as well as what we’re looking forward to for 2026. It’s looking like a lot of classic mecha series will be getting new installments this year: Macross, Gundam, VOTOMS, Patlabor. There were multiple anime films actually released in US theaters between the time of our last episode and now. We saw two of them: Lupin the Third – The Immortal Bloodline and All You Need Is Kill.
Daryl was a guest on The Greatest Movie EVER! podcast to talk about 2018’s Upgrade, which upon rewatch eight years later hits even closer than when it first came out.
Review: Odd Taxi (52:07 – 1:52:10)
Originally, we didn’t think there was a need to review Odd Taxi (often listed as one compound word, Oddtaxi, and stylized in allcaps as ODDTAXI), since it was such a critical darling in 2021. But then Daryl was reminded that 2021 is now half a decade ago when after nearly that many years of waiting, a US Blu-Ray set of the series was finally released by Crunchyroll a few months ago. That’s an affiliate link, as is this Amazon one where as of this writing it’s 50% off. You can also get a Goodsmile plushie of Shirakawa, the alpaca nurse. Mind you, the Blu-Ray set doesn’t quite include everything, but you can (for now) find the English subtitled audio/picture dramas online with little difficulty. What’s it all about? We’ll try to tell you without giving it all away in the process.