Anime That Sucks – Anime World Order Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:59:01 — 55.0MB)

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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!

When we first saw Macross Zero, this was the best possible video quality. The 2002-era CG was poor in detail, janky in animation, and the interlaced video didn’t match the framerate of the VFX. Rough as this image is, it was even rougher in motion, and the story didn’t help matters either.

But this is the upscaled version as you’d see it today on Disney+ or AllTheAnime’s Blu-Ray release. It’s a lot less visually jarring; you can actually READ the text, for instance. We can’t say less headache-inducing, because there’s still the rest of the show to consider.

The final episode was a convoluted letdown, but it did give us this absolute unit of a Destroid. Kazutaka Miyatake, Hidetaka Tenjin, and Ichiro Itano did their part, at least. How Mao wasn’t vaporized by being near this thing as it fired is but one of many questions we have.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:12:14 — 60.6MB)

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2025 is off to a terrible start, not just in terms of current world events but because in this episode Daryl follows up on his previous review of the 1997 Berserk TV series with this review of the decades-anticipated Berserk sequel TV series from 2016. Oh boy.

Introduction (0:00 – 56:51)
It’s finally happened, after years of waiting! All of Macross (almost) is now streaming in the United States…with closed caption-y style subtitles because it’s Hulu and some edits to content because um…Disney? It’s still a major step forward. In addition, the one that isn’t streaming–Macross: Do You Remember Love?–is also now out on 4K UHD and finally with official English subtitles after decades of waiting…and it’s an AI upscale, like how they did Macross Zero. The Summer 2025 issue of Otaku USA Magazine is now out, and we’ve got reviews in there for some highly anticipated titles such as the They Were Eleven manga; no longer must you pay hundreds of dollars for used copies of Viz’s Four Shojo Stories! Discotek Media annnounced a new set of licenses, so we recap their anime announcements. This time around, they were focusing more on live-action and US animation than anime, but there’s still some solid Japanese animation picks worth considering. We then talk about what we’ve checked out in this current anime season that’s just started, as one has to do every few months lest you fall too out of touch. Contrary to popular belief, the AWO is watching current anime regularly. We’re just mostly writing about it rather than doing podcast episodes, because we like to wait for things to be completed before reviewing them just in case the quality of the show varies relative to how it started.

Review: Berserk 2016 (56:51 – 2:12:14)
Now that we reviewed the original 1997 television series, it’s only fitting that Daryl follow up and review the Duke Nukem Forever of anime: the 2016 sequel that is a hybrid of 3D CG with some traditional 2D digital animation. Perhaps comparing it to Duke Nukem Forever is unwarranted. After all, even Duke Nukem Forever at least had Dr. Proton. Let’s not think too hard about the fact that Duke Nukem Forever is now such a long time gone that it’s been out for pretty much as long as people were waiting for it to come out in the wake of Duke Nukem 3D. Anyway, this Berserk 2016 TV show remains a meme, and it’s been almost a decade. Daryl elected to show Gerald and Clarissa–who’d never actually seen it before–the retail Blu-Ray version (which he owns!), since that’s the “fixed” and “cleaned up” version rather than the broadcast version everybody else gets their animated GIFs and screen grabs from since that was a massively anticipated simulcast once upon a time. There is probably nothing about this we can say or insight we can provide that hasn’t extensively been said before by others who know Berserk in far more granular detail than we do.