Anime World Order Show # 46 – Animated Snuff Film Misogynist Crap

In what will go down in history as the AWO’s darkest hour (it was Gerald’s idea!), this episode is entirely devoted to hentai. Daryl reviews the extensively surreal Kanashimi no Belladonna, Clarissa reviews the manga Pink Sniper by her favorite hentai artist Kengo Yonekura, and Gerald fulfills the dream by providing us with a highly-researched review of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend.

Know that this special commemorative Photoshop was…shall we say, OFFERED to us (you know, Comics-One is no more and their entire release of this has been scanned…hmm, ideas are forming…):

Remember, it’s not porn if you don’t draw the dick. Ikegami = ALL CLASS.

Introduction (0:00 – 22:25)
In the emails, we’re told that there IS quite a bit of horror anime after all. It’s just that most all of it is either hentai or isn’t stuff we’d consider scary, such as Serial Experiments Lain or Paranoia Agent. Actually, it’s a total misuse of the term for American fans to call pornographic Japanese cartoons and comics “hentai” since that’s how you’d describe a person, but it’s not like it’s the first time that American anime fandom has taken a Japanese word and misconstrued its meaning, and it won’t be the last. We also learn that even American movie horror fans are mentally decimated by Waita Uziga’s manga. People have been watching Mind Game as a result of Daryl’s review, which leads to a grand dismissive of experimental cinema that is sure to cause the TRUE FILM SCHOLARS to turn their noses up at how primitive we are. So be it. Waking Life is still a crappy movie, and so is Garden State. Carl Horn calls in to reveal to us a brand new insight about the End of Evangelion that dawned on him as a result of our Moon Phase review. Somebody notify Aaron Clark!

Let’s News! (22:25 – 36:27)
Digital Meme is going to be releasing 55 of those really old anime titles from 1928-1936 which were recently discovered on DVD in a four-disc set entitled the “Japanese Anime Classic Collection” on April 30th. The all-region set is going to be $110, and it’ll include English subtitles (plus Japanese, Chinese, and Korean). Still, the influence these have on modern anime is tenuous at best, since these are from the silent era. Daryl is so totally not buying into this post on Conversations on Ghibli, but he recommends everyone read it anyway since he clearly just has an inadequate brain capacity. Perhaps aliens turned him into a Scotsman. More likely, he’s just living up to his Magic: The Gathering card representation as “The Purveyor of Violence.” There’s yet another “there’s gonna be a live-action Ghost in the Shell!” story going around, but not only did they already make The Matrix (it’s totally stretching it, but here’s a page comparing screenshots from both), none of these “live action versions of anime” rumors should be taken to heart unless shooting actually starts. Clarissa is not pleased with Hollywood’s trend of doing bad remakes and screen adaptations of stories that are excessively dumbed down or unnecessarily updated. However, she can’t wait to see how Napoleon Dynamite influences anime. We talk some more about Tokyopop’s impending release of the Twelve Kingdoms novels, which Daryl mentioned during his review of it. Hajime no Ippo actually did really well on TV in Japan, which makes its lack of popularity here in the US all the more tragic. Maybe if they didn’t release a 75 episode series one disc at a time…

Review: Kanashimi no Belladonna (36:27 – 1:01:30)
Daryl talks about the final film released by Mushi Productions, the third of the so-called Animerama trilogy. We could talk about this movie, but suffice it to say that this movie is made by one of the men who directed Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight, which is what we best associate The Nish with. Yamato? What’s that? Also, behold these clips from Belladonna NOW before Youtube takes them down and deletes our account for violation of its terms of use, though we say they’re more “mature content” than “pornographic”:


Assuming Youtube has not deleted those videos and removed our account, pat yourself on the back because you have now seen the best parts of this film. Gerald’s recollection was slightly off, as those are in fact RABBITS flying out of that guy’s butt, not fish. Fish are involved in a different shot.

  • Jules Michelet and his book, La Sorciere; “La Sorciere” is actually the film’s sub-title
  • I don’t think any of this stuff happened to the real Joan of Arc
  • Clarissa made a reference to Tommy Johnson, but Daryl’s only knowledge of him would be from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he only saw that once.
  • Art Nouveau — apparently that’s the style this moviefilm was supposedly done in
  • 200, by the United States propaganda department – Daryl happens to know that the style shown here was REAL style Belladonna was done in. The name for this style is, shall we say, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds-influenced. No, not the Shatner song! (The Beatles? Who are they?)

Promo: R5 Central (1:01:30 – 1:02:29)
Courageous mecha pilot/large black man (hint hint, ladies…though just so you know, PER HIS OWN ADMISSION, it’s a climax the moment he starts!) Mike Dent is not a number. He is a free man! Be sure to check out Episode 33 featuring special guest monologue by Daryl Surat! He’s got a special comment for tokusatsu fandom, and it starts around the 17 minute mark. CLI-MAX JUMP! ii JUMP! ii JUMP! Suge-JUMP! ii JUMP! ii JUMP! Suge-JUMP!

Review: Pink Sniper (1:02:29 – 1:25:04)
Man, you know this episode is trouble when the most normal hentai title being discussed is the one that contains cow people having sex. Clarissa throws her Magic: The Gathering card representation for a loop, since despite the fact that Pink Sniper is a porn manga from a female author, it’s not yaoi. Well, if you don’t count the sequel, anyway. Kengo Yonekura is one of Clarissa’s favorite artists, and part of that has to do with the fact that the guys have faces and aren’t just invisible aside from their peen. How are the people who buy this [guys] supposed to mentally swap out the guy for themselves if they can see his face?! Even regular porn knows not to do that! To the disbelief of all, this is commercially available in English thanks to Eros Comix, which is actually still releasing this stuff even after Dark Horse bought out Studio Proteus years ago. This is probably the only ACTUAL porn review of the show, and as such, Daryl asks THE TOUGH QUESTIONS~!

  • Yonekura Kengo’s web site – the site moved recently, so unfortunately her gallery is down at the moment, but you can still access her works listing.
  • You can order Pink Sniper directly from Eros Comix or from bookstores like Amazon; it’s cheaper on Amazon than most other places, but they don’t appear to have it in stock so it could take a while

Promo: Happy House of Hentai (1:25:04 – 1:25:27)
Lord Kaosu and Hello Kitty just hit Show # 50, so congrats are in order! Check them out for hentai reviews of…um, The Sims 2…and uh…Speed Grapher. And Dead or Alive Xtreme 2–wait a second, those aren’t hentai! All that Phantasy Star Universe Lord K’s been playing lately must have thrown him for a loop. Why, he’s even started up a PSU-only podcast. Curse you people and your…work ethic! You know, TECHNICALLY, we’ve released over 50 things too, if you count the stuff that wasn’t actually shows! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Review: Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1:25:27 – 1:53:39)
Did Wesley Willis compose that music or something? Of all the segments Gerald has ever done, he has probably done the most research and preparation on this one, another winner brought to us by The Nish. Brought about by a request from Teleport City (Keith’s review of Overfiend is up, even though it’s not listed on the front page…WONDER WHY), this could have easily been half the episode on its own, what with Gerald’s Magic: The Gathering card representation and all, so a lot had to go for the sake of time, such as Daryl talking about how much he wishes this anime never existed, and that the existence of Overfiend is why he never really tells anyone that he’s an anime fan to this day, which doesn’t stop his cockblocking friends from chiming in with “you know, DARYL is an ANIME FAN!” which has since been upped to “you know, DARYL is an INTERNET CELEBRITY because he has a PODCAST about ANIME!” Swell, guys. Thanks for the help there. Anyway, what remains is the result of much editing and reorganizing, and that’s our official excuse for why this episode is a week late. Watch this space for what is sure to be a great deal of supplemental links.

Promo: Otaku Generation (1:53:39 – 1:53:53)
Dan “The Fan” is gone, but in his place is…A GIRL?! And…KYLE?! Wow, I wonder what he’s going to review after that extended hiatus brought about by being burned out from watching mediocre anime. Wait, E’s Otherwise? E’S OTHERWISE?! One of the more notoriously crappy shows in recent years? And he was looking FORWARD to it?! Yeah, we get the feeling that Kyle will be itching for another hiatus real soon. And while we all got copies of the first volume of Mechademia to review several weeks ago, Bryce actually beat us to the punch since a fan sent in a copy. Man. We freaking fail at the timeliness.

Closing (1:53:53 – 2:02:10)
Can you believe that this week’s episode is LONGER than the latest episode of Otaku Generation?! Special belated congratulations to Tim Eldred, whose graphic novel Grease Monkey has won the 2007 award for Best Book for Young Adults from the American Library Association. Plus, if you purchase the Viz DVD release of the Densha Otoko movie, it includes a commentary track by TV’s Patrick Macias, Most Dangerous Tomohiro Machiyama, and “Jay Tack.” Does japattack.com even get updated anymore? We’re not quite sure. Next week, we have ANOTHER astonishing idea, and this time it’s Daryl’s fault! For you see, next time around we’re not only going to review just Volume 1 of the title we’re reviewing as opposed to the entire series, but we’re also going to review things that we’ve never ever seen before and have absolutely no idea as to what they’re about! Chris over at ADV sent us a bunch of stuff to review as well as give away, and so Daryl’s got an advance review of Le Chevalier d’Eon (set for release 2/20), Gerald takes a look at Utawarerumono since he saw the preview for it on The Anime Network and thought it looked interesting, and Clarissa tackles Volume 1 of Nerima Daikon Brothers! Don’t bother spoiling the secret, since this episode’s actually already recorded and we just suck when it comes to editing. Namely, that we have to edit at all. All the smart podcasters never seem to need to do that.

Anime World Order Show # 45 – This Episode Contains More Dead Babies Than Usual

Daryl reviews the gekiga/manga titles The Push Man and Other Stories and also Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Clarissa reviews the recent anime series Black Lagoon, and Gerald reviews the second of the Robot Romance Trilogy, Voltes V. The comics contain lots of dead babies, they probably shoot babies in Black Lagoon, and women are repulsed enough by 70s super robot anime such as Voltes V that they miscarry.

Full show notes to be added soon, though in all honesty they’re not quite done on the last several shows because there’s links to be added.

Introduction (0:00 – 33:10)
Yes, it takes us the length of most entire podcast episodes just to say what we’re going to talk about. But we also have listener feedback to go through…sort of. Naka-Kon‘s in Kansas City–not Kansas–on the first weekend of March, where their guest will be none other than Stevie B, or as they used to say in the IRC days, STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVE BENNNNNNETTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT! “Stevie B” is shorter and more accurate. For the umpteenth time, we talk about the whole issue of people using “manga” to describe non-Japanese comics, but apparently there’s what we believe and what everyone else seems to believe. They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Copernicus…and right now we’re not looking so good. And what is a TRUE cosplayer, anyway?

Let’s News! (33:10 – 54:08)
ADV has acquired the rights to release 009-1, a recent series which nobody bothered to fansub because nobody seems to ever fansub Shotaro Ishinomori-based properties. We haven’t seen the show ourselves, but it involves something ribald, no doubt. Funimation’s going to be remastering all of Dragon Ball in widescreen, except the show wasn’t originally in widescreen. We strongly suspect it to be a Project A-Ko job, since when you look at the comparison footage sections it is TOTALLY OBVIOUS THAT THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF THE PICTURE HAVE BEEN CUT OFF. Hopefully the Daizenshuu EX podcast knows the score, as their latest episode is all about Funimation’s “cover-ups” over the years with regards to releasing the series.

Actually, upon further investigation over at this forum thread on Daizenshuu EX, we were wrong. It looks as though not only the top and bottom of the picture are being cut off…BUT ALSO THE SIDES. No really, take a look at these comparison screenshots:

And Funimation’s spending HOW much money to do this? Oh, there’s also not going to be any next episode previews apparently…and the “CHA LA HEAD CHA LA” opening theme song won’t be the same version. How is THAT supposed to be a definitive release? You tell us. Oh well, other news:

Viz is going to be releasing digital downloads of Death Note, presumably in high-quality fansub format. We really hope this gets done properly (that is to say, not like how other paid anime digital downloads are), and more importantly, priced reasonably. In addition to Vertical Inc’s upcoming English-language release of the 1970s shojo manga “To Terra…”, there’s also going to be a new Towards the Terra television series. Finally, Sony really screwed the pooch on this BluRay thing. Wait a second, I thought this was supposed to be NEWS!

Promo: Weekly Anime Review (54:08 – 54:42)
Due to the grim nature of existence, Aaron hasn’t been able to do a new episode for the last month and a half, but he’s back with a review of Perfect Blue. Well, actually the review is by someone else because people record reviews and send them to him for him to play. Be sure to do that CHAM dance as you listen.

Review: The Push Man and Other Stories / Abandon the Old in Tokyo (manga) (54:42 – 1:25:17)
In reviewing these publications by Drawn and Quarterly, Daryl offers forth a brief primer on gekiga, before speaking at length about dead babies and film noir. But to be serious for a moment, while Yoshihiro Tatsumi never really got a whole lot of financial success or critical acclaim, his contributions to the development of Japanese comics shouldn’t go overlooked. That’s where we come in!

  • Gekiga: The Flipside of Manga by Paul Gravett – not safe for work; no wonder the books he writes get banned from libraries!
  • Interview with Yoshihiro Tatsumi in Publisher’s Weekly — this is how Daryl pretends to be knowledgeable; he reads things other people wrote and then regurgitates the information. What separates him from a scholar is that scholars can actually process and analyze this information. Also, they remember the things they read.
  • Dave and Joel’s Forums – I bet more people would post there if they ever mentioned that these forums existed on their show! This is the thread Daryl was ripping off from.

Promo: Ninja Consultant (1:25:17 – 1:27:04)
Erin and Noah just got back from Japan! Be sure to leave comments in their Livejournal asking them what they thought of their contribution to our one year anniversary show, because they’ve been in Japan all this time and probably haven’t heard it yet!

Review: Voltes V (1:27:04 – 1:50:14)
We are so totally jazzed over all the hits from the Philippines that’ll inevitably result from this…MAYBE. Marvel and be amazed as grown adults talk about a show for 8 year-olds. You know it’s for 8 year-olds because the toy commercials for Voltes V teach all the important life lessons you should be aware of before you’re grown up, namely that it’s better for the robot to take the beating than you:

American Otaku People Retsuden, here we come!

Review: Black Lagoon (1:50:14 – 2:17:16)
This is one of Clarissa’s favorite shows that have recently aired. It’s one great big homage to Hollywood action movies, and you either understand this from the start or you don’t. It’s pretty violent, but if you were an 8 year-old that watched it, the lesson you’d learn would be “if you shoot enough people, nobody will notice how crappy your tattoo is, or perhaps they will notice it but they won’t bring up how dumb it looks out of fear of being killed, just like how nobody makes fun of Dio or Zangetsu the Mid-day.” Daryl can’t stop talking about Jay Karnes, unless he’s talking about the Greatest GREATEST Movie EVER of course. He’d make a damn fine action hero, that Jay Karnes. And Kenneth Johnson should be cast as Max Payne, if that movie ever gets made.

Promo: GeekNights (2:17:16 – 2:18:15)
Rym and Scott are not really a fan of playing promos, since promos people record are never indicative of the nature of the actual show (we’re living proof). It’s far more productive promo-wise to just mention the name of another podcast and talk about it positively, sort of like how in AM talk radio they just suddenly start talking about riding the NordicTrack for 15 minutes. That said, we gotta have SOMETHING to give people a break from our terrifying voices.

Closing (2:18:15 – 2:24:13)
We’re all losing our minds. See that running time? Yeah, our sanity? It’s broken. And as proof of that, THE NEXT EPISODE OF AWO IS ENTIRELY ABOUT HENTAI. Gerald, the architect of this scheme, shall be reviewing Urotsukidoji aka Legend of the Overfiend. Clarissa’s reviewing a hentai manga entitled Pink Sniper by her favorite hentai artist, Yonekura Kengo. And Daryl’s mental state is at the point where he can watch Kanashimi no Belladonna and live to tell the tale.

Brace yourselves.