Anime World Order

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:35:20 — 44.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

Clarissa reviews the hottest anime of the year! The year 2016, that is. YURI!!! on ICE isn’t as rude as the hockey player dudes of today, but men’s figure skaters can have their own heated rivalry! Or maybe they’re an extended series of “Russian taunts.”

Introduction (0:00 – 43:07)
The Crunchyroll Anime Awards just concluded, and this year it’s not just us wondering what the deal is. Even the Japanese language edition of Wired (archived here should that be paywalled) is doing articles pontificating on how weird it is that an awards for anime with no Japanese judges and no Japanese users (because Crunchyroll is geoblocked from being accessed within Japan) elects to hold their awards show in Japan while not targeting Japanese audiences.

There were multiple theatrical anime showings at the movie theaters lately. We all missed out on seeing Visionary ~~Director~~ Creator Shoji Kawamori’s latest film, Labyrinth, since apparently it contains zero dance magic and is entirely about how you kids need to put down that cell phone. But Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe has proven something of a litmus test within the Gundam fanbase overall, due to its lack of emphasis on mecha action in favor of a protagonist trying desperately not to be horny on main like the mind’s eye versions of his heroes. Hopefully we needn’t wait another five years before JUSTICE FOR CHAN IS SERVED. For now, the highlights of Bandai’s financial statements for the fiscal year is showing that Mobile Suit Gundam is bringing more money to them than Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece. Sure, that’s just Bandai’s cut rather than the overall take, but anybody trying to tell you that GQuuuuuuX or Witch From Mercury were somehow financially unsuccessful should be blocked and unsubscribed for either lying like hell or being outlandishly wrong.

17:41: We continue to notice oddities with the Crunchyroll Store, and haven’t been the only ones. We read an email from a former Crunchyroll employee–we checked, it’s real–which more or less confirms everything we’ve been speculating and then some. Something tells us we ought to do an interview about this.

We wrap up things by talking up the revamped and expanding MediaOCD store before hating some more on the speculative market vultures who so far haven’t proven successful at doing to English-translated anime and manga what they did to used videogames, trading cards, and American comicbooks.

Review: YURI!!! on ICE (43:07 – 1:35:20)
Clarissa met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and tribal tattoo-trunked legs of stone
Stand in the blizzard. Near them, on the ice,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose grin,
And winked single eye, and sneer of pure hetero command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The finger-gunned hands that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the medal pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Jean-Jacques Leroy, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Yes, I was born to make history!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level zamboni’ed ice stretches far away.

In other words, we regret to inform everybody that it’s been a full decade now since this series from director Sayo Yamamoto took the globe by storm, igniting a fandom so large it broke containment from the usual anime otaku circles. The most unexpected of unexpected hits, it resulted in Sayo Yamamoto never directing a full anime series ever again; the formal announcement that the planned theatrical film sequel was canceled was only made last year. Although as of this writing it remains readily available via streaming, given all that’s going on you might want to consider buying the series on home video while it’s still readily available (the Limited Edition is long out of print).

[extremely Stormer from Jem and the Holograms voice] But Yuri, you’re still among the absolute best in the world!

But Yuri’s got a point. Even at the elite final level, nobody remembers the guy who came in 6th place out of 6.

Claims that the title is misleading due to a lack of lesbians are absurd! But look! See? There’s Yuri and he’s on the ice.

Yuri Plisetsky is another, more different, Yuri. Victor randomly decides to call him “Yurio” to distinguish him from ~~pig~~ katsudon Yuri.

[extremely Fight Club narrator voice] This is my HOUSE. What are you DOING in my HOUSE?! Victor and Marla may have something in common, I suppose…

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:40:38 — 46.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

It’s our 250th episode, except it’s actually closer to 332! No better time for Gerald to review 1983’s Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years by Osamu Tezuka, now officially released in English. Nudity! Eye gouging! Beheading! Slavery, and not even the B.S. “ethical” kind you see on a curiously elevated basis within contemporary isekai! All this and so much more in a movie meant for the entire family!

Introduction (0:00 – 43:40)
We certainly weren’t expecting to show me the way to you this year, but out of nowhere Sentai Filmworks has announced they will be releasing 1984’s Heavy Metal L-Gaim on Blu-Ray in one complete collection. It’s $65 to preorder it, and while there’s certainly a possibility that it could go on sale later in the year, you are rolling the dice on that since when it comes to these classic anime releases it’s just as likely to quickly go out of print. For now, Panzer World Galient and Queen Millennia remain readily available (and have gone on sale), but all of the previous 1980s Yoshiyuki Tomino mecha titles Sentai Filmworks released–Space Runaway Ideon, Blue Gale Xabungle, Aura Battler Dunbine–are now out of print. After going over some fan feedback to our previous episode, we talk about what current anime we’re watching and manga we’re currently reading. This segues us into discussions regarding the contemporary reticence for anime adaptations to deviate from their source material, and since everything we say is never QUITE up to date, in the time since this recording was made you can once again purchase the Discotek releases of Urusei Yatsura and soon Lady Oscar: The Rose of Versailles courtesy of MediaOCD’s Discotek Deep Dive section.

Because Apple hates everybody and their draconian rules dictate what everybody else must do, it seems that later this year Patreon will be forcing us to a monthly billing rather than a per-creation one. We therefore are throwing down the gauntlet. For if we get to 350 subscribers, we will review Scarlet by Mamoru Hosoda! Will it make us even more angry than Gundam Narrative? ONLY YOU CAN MAKE US ANSWER.

Review – Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years (43:40 – 1:40:38)
SkySet Entertainment is a newly-formed localization studio, and their first release comes courtesy of Tezuka Productions, whose unofficial slogan ever since the gold rush days of licensing Tezuka’s manga may as well have been “we’ll license out stuff to anybody!” 1983’s Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years is one of several made-for-TV movies created for Nippon Television Network’s annual 24-hour “Love Saves the Earth” charity fundraiser. Originally released in a print-on-demand Blu-Ray authored by SkySet themselves, a better version is now available courtesy of AnimEigo/MediaOCD. You can also stream Prime Rose on Retrocrush in Japanese as well as English dubbed. For those with Amazon Prime subscriptions, Prime Rose is also available on Prime Video.