Bonus – On Anime Bootlegging and Mechademia Volume 1

This is not a standard episode of AWO, but since we’re all incredibly busy with school, convention preparation, and relocating to another city, we’re talking about the subject of bootlegging in anime as well as Volume 1 of the journal Mechademia, entitled “Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga.”

Oh, since we forgot to actually record something in post with regards to the subject, the keychain contest is over. Don’t worry, we have other contests as well, but they’ll be the more standard DVD giveaway ones.

The bootlegging discussion is from 0:00 – 47:20. Since Christian Daly and Greg “DESTROY SURAT” Spahr could tell we were totally going to steal from their material in doing a discussion on how to spot bootlegs, here is their Powerpoint presentation from their panel at AWA 2004 on the very same subject which contains pictures of several of the bootlegger logos as well as pretty much all of the information we conveyed, only it’s in a couple slides that can be read in minutes as opposed to heard by us. Jerry Chu was there too, but I don’t think he listens to this show. Then again, Greg probably doesn’t either. Too busy raising a family or something, the big wuss…NO WAIT, KEEP AWAY

Promo: Destroy All Podcasts DX (47:21 -48:07)
This podcast just came out today! And…their feed is down at the moment! However, they like the podcasts we like, such as…us! Therefore, we shall draw your attention to it, even though it’s their first episode and they’re undoubtedly still working things out. Edit: Okay so they’ve got three episodes, and not only do they use sound clips from the Hong Kong dub of DYRL, Tranzor Z, and Robotech…TO THE RESCUE! (I lie to myself and say they got them from us, and we in turn swiped it all from Mike Toole and Dave Merrill), but episode one is all about GETTER ROBO~! And really, discussion of that is the best possible application of one’s film degree, because we stole the film noir quotes from Jeremy Kaufmann, who runs this operation.

Review: Mechademia: Volume 1 (48:07 – 1:41:47)
Per its official web page, the focus of this journal is manga and anime, but rather than limit themselves to just that subject–perhaps to make it easier to get papers?–it is the editorial board’s position that the production, distribution, and reception of anime and manga continue to generate connective networks manifest in an expanding spiral of art, aesthetics, history, culture, and society that they call Art Mecho. Much like Superflat, Daryl has no clue what that actually means. We went through each of the major articles at the following times:

51:52 – The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism by Anne Allison
54:55 – Globalizing Manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and Beyond by Wendy Siuyi Wong
1:00:34 – The World of Anime Fandom in America by Susan Napier
1:09:59 – Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay by Theresa Winge
1:15:10 – Assessing Interactivity in Video Game Design by Mark J.P. Wolf
1:18:21 – Mori Minoru’s Day of Resurrection by Tatsumi Takayuki
1:21:57 – Superflat and the Layers of Image and History in 1990s Japan by Thomas Looser
1:26:25 – Kurenai no metalsuits, “Anime to wa nani ka/What is Animation?” by Ueno Toshiya
1:30:23 – The Multiplanar Image by Thomas Lamarre
1:32:51 – The Werewolf in the Crested Kimono: The Wolf-Human Dynamic in Anime and Manga by Antonia Levi
1:36:19 – Metamorphosis of the Japanese Girl: The Girl, the Hyper-Girl, and the Battling Beauty by Mari Kotani
1:38:25 – At this point we briefly go over the reviews and commentaries at the end

Closing (1:41:47 – 1:44:20)
Next time, Gerald’s reviewing the book The Notenki Memoirs which is all about the history of Gainax, Clarissa’s reviewing the yaoi anthology J-Boy, and Daryl’s going to review the original Record of Lodoss War OAVs. Though recorded weeks ago, we haven’t quite gotten around to finishing the editing of it. Or beginning it, for that matter.

Anime World Order Show # 52 – Delayed For Weeks By Conflicting Wishy-Washy Sentiments

This week, it’s all stuff we’re feeling kind of “eh” about, which partially accounts for why it took so long for us to edit it. Daryl reviews all of Ergo Proxy, Gerald tackles Megazone 23 Part 2, and Clarissa’s keeping it real [robot] with Hades Project Zeorymer.

It’s 3:15 AM. Show notes will be added later. Honestly though, this picture is pretty much what all of our shows are about. Or at least, what they all SHOULD be about:
Introduction (0:00 – 21:51)
Even though we probably have way too many entries already, the keychain contest is still ongoing, so let us know what titles you’ve looked at which you wouldn’t have done were it not for us. In the emails, we receive the ultimate nerd question: who are our favorite mecha designers? We can answer this with no problem. But what’s some good anime to show to a 10 year-old child, preferably ones featuring cats? Uh…we got nothin’.

Promo: Anime Roundtable and Review (21:51 – 22:12)
Radio TGO is a broadband online radio station primarily devoted to sports discussion. However, there is an anime show on there which is recorded live! They must certainly have it together more than we do, especially since they were able to make a promo lasting a mere 20 seconds! The problem is that the show airs on like, Sunday at 11:00 PM or something. Stupid live audio streams with their schedules! Fortunately, you can listen to all of the episodes at the website. Just be warned: there’s a lot of fanservice/maid show stuff listed here, which suggests that they reviewed that stuff of their own free will.

Review: Ergo Proxy (22:12 – 48:27)
Remember that time last year when EVERYONE wouldn’t stop talking about this show as if it were the second coming? A lot of that buzz seemed to quickly die off within a month or two, but now that Geneon is releasing the DVDs, Daryl’s decided to see what all the fuss was about. Deep Discount and DVD Pacific as always have the best prices, charging about $20 per disc; the first 3 discs are out so far which means that Volume 4 which comes out in May will contain all the MOST DANGEROUS episodes. What is the secret behind Ergo Proxy? Is Re-l Mayer’s father Oscar Mayer, as we all so dearly hope? And is Daryl compassionate enough to not play voicemails when people leaving them ask that they not be played, thus assuring that people would still want to call in? This picture should answer anything not revealed in the review:
Promo: Anime Roundtable (48:27 – 49:04)
No, see, it’s NOT the same podcast as the one we played the first promo for. That’s the joke: that there are now enough anime podcasts out there such that there are multiple ones that share very, very similar names. However, this one is actually quite good. WARNING: CONTAINS 100% CANADIANS.

Review: Megazone 23 Part 2 (49:04 – 1:06:39)
Gerald reviews the directorial debut of Ichiro Itano, and as noted in Show 50’s review of DYRL, Itano’s forte is as an animation director. As an overall director he ends up making “stellar” work such as Angel Cop and Violence Jack. This one’s a lot different from Part 1, and you need only look at the character designs by Yasuomi “Doggy Style Pedophile” Umezu to figure that out. In Daryl’s mind, the ending song to this is forever associated with Jeff Tatarek’s Super Hyper Mega Bloody Ultra Cosmo Death Extravaganza X-23 since he saw that before he saw this. All of Megazone 23 is always included as part of those sales ADV has every other week or so, so you should be able to get this for about $6.

Promo: R5 Central (1:06:39 – 1:07:39)
Mike informs us that over on the R5 Central Myspace page there’s some TRUE TOKUSATSU FAN who’s quite up in arms over the comments Daryl made in Episode 33 of R5 Central. We were going to reprint those comments here, but the Myspace code is so shoddy and the layout is so astonishly unreadable that trying to perform a Find on the page causes errors in the browser. However did that site get so massively popular anyway? People who use Livejournal (such as Clarissa) may be terrifying, but at least the underlying software is good.

Review: Hades Project Zeorymer (1:07:39 – 1:23:59)
Clarissa tackles this 4-part mecha OAV that’s over before you know it. Robot fans only for this one: regular, well-adjusted humans need not apply. It’s two DVDs, but now that CPM’s catalog titles are all so cheap, you can probably get both discs for about $12 in all. Man, Clarissa really does get the best emails and voicemails. We were thinking of just looping the part at the end Max Headroom style, but we wouldn’t want to steal the spotlight from Don Imus.

Closing (1:23:59 – 1:27:51)
This episode was recorded about three weeks ago, and we noted that we were all about to find ourselves with a decided lack of spare time due to work, school, conventions, and such. That is what’s currently happening right now, which is the real reason for this episode coming out as late as it did. Next time won’t be a typically structured show, since it’ll consist of two fairly long segments that reasonable podcasters would have released as their own separate episodes. First, we’re going to talk all about anime bootlegging since we’ve discovered that a lot of people don’t realize that a lot of anime and anime-related merchandise aren’t legitimate goods. We’re an audio show, but hopefully we’ll be able to give some pointers for how to identify this stuff. Second, we’ve put it off for far too long: we’re going to talk about the journal Mechademia, as seen on our sidebar. This is a journal of academic writings pertaining to anime and the like, so we’re not too well-equipped for the task. But we’re going to do it anyway, and we’re going to talk about pretty much every single paper in there. It won’t be pretty.