Anime World Order Show # 29 – Better Late Than Never

Better late than never, I guess. Daryl reviews the horror anime Requiem From the Darkness, Clarissa reminisces on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya now that it’s ended, and Gerald talks about his favorite anime of all time, Gall Force.

Introduction (0:00 – 25:10)
Gerald starts things off by making a joke about how “Ichi” is pronounced the same as “itchy” that’s so subtle he didn’t even know he was doing it. In the emails department, Patrick M. writes in to tell us all about the other Osamu Tezuka that was mentioned back in the Shadow Skill segment of Show # 26, the Popcorn Samurai likens Gerald to Eagle from The Muppets, Area 88 mega-fan Cloudy-Sky likens Gerald to Butthead and Stephen Hawking while expressing approval over Daryl’s review of Area 88 back in Show # 4 (by the way, it’s out on DVD now!), and we explain the reason why we haven’t reviewed too many television series to date. Plus Keith over at Teleport City reveals an even grimmer secret about MD Geist that we neglected to reveal in our recent review. Since there’s really no news this week, we close things off by mentioning that Intersound Inc, where the Harmony Gold/Streamline Pictures releases were dubbed, is going out of business and is selling off all their equipment. This leads into a brief discussion on anime dubs.

Promo: Fast Karate for the Gentleman (25:10 – 26:14)
Dave and Joel’s gaming and anime podcast is one of Daryl’s favorites, and it’s not just because they frequently talk about how awesome Daryl is. It’s because they provide him with jokes to steal. If you’re going to Otakon, stop by the Artist’s Alley and check them out!

Overlooked: Requiem From the Darkness (26:14 – 46:40)
In an attempt to be more contemporary, Daryl talks about this 13-episode horror-themed anime series released by Geneon about a year or two ago which absolutely nobody cared about except for about three of us over in ADTRW. He was planning to show a clip of it at Anime Festival Orlando, but ran out of panel time. Laugh to yourselves as a guy who knows nothing about art or visual aesthetics tries feebly to describe a show whose primary characteristic is the fact that it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before! Sample screenshots are posted below.

Screenshots don’t adequately reflect the effect that the CG and camerawork has on the show, but there’s quite a bit of that too. After this segment had finished recording, Gerald mentioned how he thought the style of this show was just too confusing to follow what was happening. He should have mentioned it while the recorder was on!

Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (46:40 – 1:05:11)
Clarissa trumps all of us in attempting to review something recent for a change by tackling what was the most popular anime series in Japan last season. We weren’t sure whether to bother with it since everywhere you go there’s people who won’t shut up about this series, but apparently people want to hear our thoughts. This one was pretty tough to review, since roughly 15 minutes were excised from this segment for the sake of removing spoilers.

Promo: Popcorn Samurai (1:05:11 – 1:06:39)
Here’s a brand-new podcast that just started up which is all about samurai movies! In the first episode, he talks about Seven Samurai and starts off the first part of what will be an extensive piece dedicated to the Zatoichi films. Hmm, now that we’ve got a podcast all about chambara, I wonder if there’s anything out there dedicated entirely to 70s Shaw Brothers kung fu pictures? Could this be a job for Jules Carrozza aka “Kojiro Abe”?! Note to self: get the Celestial remastered version of Heroes of the East.

Review: Gall Force (1:06:39 – 1:25:25)
Gerald reviews what is his favorite anime ever, the OAV series Gall Force. Despite being OAVs, Gall Force is not his favorite OAV series–Gunbuster is–and by his own admission, Gall Force is not the best anime ever made. This also ended up being a really long segment: for time constraints, all instances of screaming about how awesome laser beams that fire out in one direction then change direction are have been removed. That alone probably took up ten minutes.

  • Gerald’s personal and never updated page on Gall Force (It’ll happen one day)

Closing (1:25:25 – 1:30:05)
It’s 1:30 AM as I write this, and the gist of the matter is that we were all occupied with getting ready for our panels at Anime Festival Orlando this weekend. I had 24 hours to compile, capture, then author a DVD containing two hours of assorted video clips. Did I mention I didn’t actually know how to not suck at authoring DVDs? It took me 3 days to put together a DVD that ended up being about 30 minutes. It’s not the DVD layouts and menus that’ll kill you, it’s encoding/converting everything over to MPEG-2. Gerald and Clarissa had similar obligations, and on top of that both of them are experiencing grievous computer hardware troubles.

So basically, that’s why Show # 29 was late. Actually, this is all a lie; all of the segments were complete days ago with the exception of the Gall Force review and the closing. Anyway, next time on AWO, it’s one of two things. Either we’re fast-tracking our Anime Festival Orlando coverage–probably no TRUTH report this time around since Daryl ended up becoming part of it–or we’re reviewing the things we mentioned in the show. Daryl’s going to be talking about another Geneon series which nobody bought, New Getter Robo. People clearly mistakenly thought it was about robots when it is really about KARATE. Another fine offering from Go Nagai and Ken Ishikawa. In stark contrast to that, Clarissa’s going to review the manga Antique Bakery, and Gerald’s going to review the limited edition box set of Patlabor the Movie 2, which is one of our favorite films.

Anime World Order Show # 28 – Fantastic Child Thoughtbird OF TRUTH: The Movie

In an attempt to more accurately reflect what this podcast is SUPPOSED to be, Gerald reviews the new(ish) anime Fantastic Children, Clarissa reviews the not-so-surprisingly forgotten A Wind Named Amnesia, and Daryl’s search for THE TRUTH at anime conventions continues with Part 2 of The Japanese Animation Convention is Decadent and Depraved!

Introduction (00:00 – 27:55)
We play some voicemails that are are reactions to the GeekNights voicemail from last week: SimHuman’s got issues with live action vs animated porn and has a super idea regarding segregating cosplayers from the rest of the convention, then Jeff Tatarek shares with us his long experience with cosplay and AMVs. Not content to stop there, Jeff dons his Zecter to defeat the Maharaja Mack Daddy once and for all, undoubtedly to prepare him for his second guest appearance on the Otaku Generation podcast. Chad Clayton also writes in regarding whether or not Project A-Ko was obviously a comedy given that there are people in this world who don’t realize Commando is a real-time documentary, which somehow results in us discussing the state of comedy in anime overall. Finally, we talk about why the Japanese haven’t updated their distribution system, even though we don’t have any qualifications to answer such a question. Then again we don’t have the qualifications to answer any questions.

  • Mangacast – this man is a MACHINE because of the number of episodes this guy is up to, but unfortunately there’s no way to navigate through them

Let’s News! (27:56 – 35:40)
We take a look at a supremely bad business plan involving several Japanese companies releasing manga from the 1920’s and also some of the first work of some of the manga greats like Leiji Matsumoto. The Director of CMX also reveals why they took the only good thing about Tenjou Tenge out of it. We also discuss the top ten list of what ICv2 considers the most powerful people in the American anime industry. Daryl would like to semi-retract the statement he made regarding Diamond owning ICv2, as he can find no concrete evidence of this being the case despite there being very strong ties. Sort of like Dick Cheney and Halliburton. We also discuss the entry of Illumitoon into the anime distribution marketplace. Clearly, CPM having money problems wasn’t a hint that the market was oversaturated!

Overlooked Anime: A Wind Named Amnesia (35:41 – 52:59)
Clarissa takes a look an a the sadly overlooked 1990 movie A Wind Named Amnesia. This is what happens when thoughtbird gets too greedy. Find out the secret hidden connections between this, Galaxy Express 999 and the not-in-real-time documentary Johnny Mnemonic!

Review: Fantastic Children (53:00 – 1:07:12)
Gerald tries to actually catch up with what everyone else out there is watching by reviewing a show that was released two years ago. Unfortunately, despite NOTHING but positive reviews online and no one daring to say anything negative about the show, Gerald is unable to find much to like about it (well at least the first 10 episodes). This probably comes from the vast amount of scenes of people looking at something and being TERRIFIED before everything fades to black, which annoys him when it’s done over five times per episode.

  • ANN’s Page on Fantastic Children
  • Official Japanese Fantastic Children Site – the official Japanese site gives away everything about the show, so if you can read Japanese be warned…though if you CAN read Japanese, you should be spending your time at better endeavors, like translating Sakigake! Otoko Juku!

THE TRUTH about anime fandom: The Japanese Animation Convention is Decadent and Depraved, Part 2 (1:06:14 – 1:29:40)
Daryl’s ongoing journey to bridge the divide between modern anime fandom and himself for the sake of his own salvation continues now, with Part Two of this special wannabe gonzo tell-all. Part 1 is here in Show 23.

Closing (1:29:40 – 1:33:39)
Can it be that some of the things we say actually result in people watching the stuff we’d be talking about? Better mention how Animeigo is selling Crusher Joe for like $6 with free shipping, plus their other stuff is going for awfully cheap too! The box your orders will ship in look like they were personally stomped upon by Robert Woodhead himself, but the contents should still be fine. Next time, it’s Daryl’s turn to watch something recent–and by his standards that means “from only a few years back”–so he’s going to watch the 13 episode series, Natsuhiko Kyogoku’s Requiem From the Darkness. Now that the series is over, Clarissa is going to acquiesce the demands of the masses and review something that actually IS recent, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Finally, Gerald is going to review one of his favorite anime, Gall Force.