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It’s been a few years, but our special guest is Mike Toole, whom we have summoned forth so that we may review the 5-part OVA Macross Zero from 2002, now available in the US after over twenty years.
Introduction (0:00 – 35:09)
We catch up with Mike and what he’s been up to lately as far as movies and anime series he’s been watching. Quite a few of them have been both, which leads to us talking about our general experiences with watching anime in movie theaters over the decades. We wrap things up by following up on our previous episode’s discussion regarding the then-planned changes to the Crunchyroll Store which are apparently now starting to happen.
Promo: Summer 2026 Trailer Watch-Along and Icons of Anime: The Western Awakening (35:09 – 39:52)
The Summer 2026 Anime Season Trailer Watch-Along is set for this coming Saturday, June 27th, at 3:00 PM Eastern time over on the Anime World Order Discord. Join us live, since there’s no where on the Internet where hosting a VOD of such a thing is permitted.
Tim Eldred is writing and directing a new documentary, Icons of Anime: The Western Awakening, for CreatorVC, an organization that has done several lengthy, high-quality documentaries focusing on pop culture in the past. This is still in the early planning stages, so we need everybody to go fill out this survey before August 3rd so that they can accurately gauge interest level and determine what people to interview and what topics to focus on (or not focus on). If you’ve ever seen other CreatorVC documentaries, then you know this is going to be far more than a typical YouTube video essay because the plan is to talk to as many of the people who were there at the time and were doing it as possible. Perhaps one of those people is even you! If so, send us an email and we’ll pass your contact information on to Tim.
Review: Macross Zero (39:52 – 1:59:00)
In the early 2000s, Visionary Creator Shoji Kawamori was definitely going through a phase. This highly-anticipated OVA series from the relatively new studio at the time, Satelight, was advertised and promoted as “the prequel to 1982’s Superdimensional Fortress Macross” and was released in celebration of the 20th anniversary of that in 2002. But in reality, it’s more of a followup to Kawamori’s previous work, Earth Girl Arjuna. What we’re trying to say is: if you have an account on the MacrossWorld forums, you probably shouldn’t listen to us talk about this one, since while we had the AllTheAnime Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray release, only Mike was responsible enough to rewatch with the commentary tracks on. The stellar supplemental materials–Creative Sphere knocks it out of the park yet again–are what make that set worthwhile, but they’re exclusive to the physical media version so us peons watching the streaming version (which is on Hulu here in the US, not Disney Plus like we said in the show) wouldn’t know about what’s on there.
HEY, MAYBE INSTEAD OF SCARLET WE SHOULD REVIEW EARTH GIRL ARJUNA IF WE GET TO ENOUGH PATREON SUBSCRIBERS!
