Anime World Order Show # 75a – 3rd Year Anniversary, So We Better Talk About Bubblegum Crisis

For our final podcast of the year, we celebrate our third year anniversary with our special guest, Ryan Gavigan! Took us long enough; we’d been meaning to record this since before our first year anniversary. In the first part of this show, we talk to Ryan about his sordid life in anime fandom and Daryl reviews the Bubblegum Crisis OAVs, aka “the only Bubblegum Crisis that exists” or if you prefer “the REAL Bubblegum Crisis.”

Introduction (0:00 – 40:40)
For our three year anniversary, we figured we’d record an actual show proper with everyone together for the very first time instead of just a bonus. Nearly all podcasts do this, but not us! That’s why we didn’t know to position the microphones in such a way as to prevent echoing induced from multiple mics recording the same sounds. Oh well. So who is this Ryan Gavigan, anyway? Listen and find out for yourself!

Promo: Weeaboobies (40:40 – 43:33)
This is a genuine custom promo made by Erin from the Ninja Consultant podcast! Includes genuine voicemail message from Erin!

Review: Bubblegum Crisis (43:33 – 1:45:46)
Daryl…sort of talks about Bubblegum Crisis for an hour. Maybe. The way he sees it, all the cool anime podcasts already talked about it so he has nothing to lose!

Bubblegum Crisis is, as the title card suggests, the story of [the] Knight Sabers. Not the Knight Saviors.
BGC was made in the 1980s.
Daley Wong and Leon McNichol, the two longest-living members of the AD Police. Daley, if you couldn’t tell, is a flamboyant homosexual of the type and variety never to be respected by the Iron Shiek. All Leon ever does right is take his shades off, put his shades on, say stupid things, and occasionally shoot someone. So THAT’S where CSI: Miami came from. YEAHHHHHH!
This is Priss in her concert gear. You might have to squint to notice it, but she looks KINDA like Pris from Blade Runner!
But despite the haircut, she is not “the gay,” as that ugly freckleface girl from Transporter 3 would say. Otherwise, she’d be enjoying this more.
If she was, there’d be scenes of her doing this sort of thing. BGC is not exactly a subtle series. So stop contemplating whether Sylia is a boomer. (PS: Deckard = NOT A REPLICANT, NO MATTER WHAT)
In addition to her skeletal structure, Priss is constantly breaking the rules. Observe this BLATANT DISREGARD for the laws of physics.
Sylia Stingray, by contrast, complies with the laws of physics. This is the law of buoyancy. Though I guess buoyancy isn’t a law so much as a force. Fuck it.
The wardrobe for Vision’s truly, truly outrageous number comes to us courtesy of the Cyber City Oedo Mercenary Girl’s Closet.
But if you’re thinking of cosplaying it, know that there are downsides. MORE LIKE BACKSIDES, AMIRITE
Vision’s character designer was Satoshi Urushihara. The breasts on his female characters are always that shiny because he uses his many, many love dolls as reference. (EDIT: Actually, Kenichi Sonoda designed her, too. The joke still applies.) Gerald only has one inflatable anime girl love doll for the moment.
Nene is the worst character, so naturally the Japanese gave her an entire episode. Nothing “proto”-moe about it!
Largo however, is the best character other than Sylia. That Hiroaki Gouda (No. Edam? No.) probably designed him is a true oddity, as he directed the Nene episode then spent the rest of his life directing all the Ah My Goddess! anime.
Maybe Masami Obari might have designed Largo. If Masami Obari is involved and it does not involve either Largo or Terry Bogard, then I’m probably not interested.Obari-tan wants us all to know: this person is DEFINITELY Australian.
As a rule, it is pointless to bother doing high-definition remasterings for most non-theatrical anime made prior to the onset of HD. However, certain bits of hilarious English/Engrish text become more easily noticeable here. WHAT’S THAT BETWEEN THOSE BOOKS NENE, HUH? This must be the REAL reason PT Chapman loves you so. PS: Mackie is “the character we, the viewer, would actually be.” Dwell on THAT.
Oh yeah, there’s mecha in this series, which is why it’s awesome. Sylia is the leader!
Nobody gonna beat my car / It’s gonna break the speed of sound / Ooh, it’s a killing machine / It’s got everything / Except for a girl in powered armor riding a giant fucking motorcycle / But other than that, it’s cool
This is the part Sonoda was responsible for; the mechanical designs of the hardsuits. Also, the little girl in the first episode FO’ SHO’. Note the presence of the high heels which make this awesome and EMPOWERING and why Japanese animation is mature advanced sci-fi storytelling with STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS blah blah blahThis is clearly the Shinji Aramaki part. Because it’s AWESOME.
Motorcycles that transform into robots…AND THEY CAN FLY? If they can fly, why even HAVE motorcycles? Only Shinji Aramaki truly knows.This is what happens to most members of the AD Police that are not in helicopters. (If they’re in helicopters, they get immolated due to the freaking chopper exploding. Holy CRAP.) Note that this guy lost his hands before losing his arms, and that head comes off about a second after this screenshot was taken.

See? You should go watch this cartoon. Again, if need be.

Anime World Order Show # 74 – Special All-Manga Edition

Kept you waiting, huh? For this episode we’re all reviewing manga titles. Gerald’s reviewing Dororo by Osamu Tezuka and Daryl’s reviewing Ressentiment by Kengo Hanazawa. Clarissa’s review of Part 4 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure will be postponed. Fear not Jojo’s fans, it’s still going to happen, just not now.

Two hours may not be enough time to make up for the AWO deficit, but in the previous…weeks…Daryl was once again a guest star on the Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast where he talked about Drive in an attempt to restart the Big Month of Mark [Dacascos], and was a guest on the Mistakes of Youth “podcast” (there is no podcast-specific feed!) where he once again talked about Macross Frontier. Also, the original poll was about whether or not you used the BitTorrent link, but it was taken down since we can just look at the tracker statistics to see exactly how many people used it.

And before anyone asks: if you want one of the hats, we can hook you up. Also, mudkip hats. Inquire within!

Introduction (0:00 – 24:25)
Daryl for whatever reason has decided to boost the crap out of the low frequency end of his voice in an attempt to sound cool for this entire episode, but it’s probably just [comically…?] distorted. Further proof that everyone he knows is becoming smarter than him by virtue of their continued educations, though perhaps “smarter” is the new “dumber.” In the emails department, we get some feedback regarding our discussion from the last episode regarding the cancelation of Toonami. We then shill like it’s going out of style for Hulu and its recent anime additions. Cross our hearts, we aren’t on the take. The site just has all kinds of awesome things on it. At some point MTV Music gets brought up, and since Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is on the brain the inevitable ugliness of Dio in the Holy Diver video is mentioned. And do we have toy/figure/model kit collections? PERHAPS.

Let’s News! (24:25 – 45:19)
With the exception of the fact that FUNimation seems to be doing better than expected, there is like, nothing but sleaze to talk about this episode. In an attempt to delay this fact, we go into what some of the top selling anime titles of the last few months have been, but it’s only a matter of time before we start talking about people who want to marry fictional characters, whether or not loli/shota stuff qualifies as obscenity, and a 38 year old guy who really, REALLY hopes the answer to that question is “no” right about now.

Promo: Weeaboobies (45:19 – 46:00)
Aside from the fact that this is the WORST NAME FOR ANYTHING EVER and also that face piercings = automatic disqualification, this all-female hosted anime podcast is out there to be excessively immature so we don’t have to be. But wait…we’re also excessively immature. Actually, I can’t really think of any truly “mature” podcasts dedicated to Japanese cartoons. I think people say that’s us from a relative standpoint. That is terrifying.

Review (manga): Dororo (46:00 – 1:10:27)
Then again, maybe it’s because we’re reviewing the Osamu Tezuka stuff. Gerald gets into this 3-volume manga series that has been released in English courtesy of Vertical Inc, which for our money’s worth is an early precursor to the “shonen” genre of anime that dominates much of the anime we consume in the US. Daryl reviewed this in the pages of Otaku USA magazine, PS buy the latest issue because it is radical kthxbye

Review (manga): Ressentiment (1:10:27 – 1:49:12)
Daryl’s been making offhand references to how good this comic is for quite some time now, but it’s only now that THE TRUTH can be told. Forget about Genshiken, Welcome to the NHK, Otaku no Video, and all that flippity floppity stuff: this is the real shit. Finally a tale of otakudom that tells it like it is…or at least, we think. Despite only being 4 volumes long, it’s not available for sale in the US and the scanlation efforts stopped at Chapter 29. Perhaps this review will inspire Manga-Screener or someone else to FINISH THE FIGHT. We can only hope. Our salvation–or lack thereof–depends on it!

Closing (1:49:12 – 1:55:54)
Hey, you people who responded to the previous poll saying you were interested in buying AWO T-shirts and/or hoodies (as famously depicted here)? Send us emails with some contact information, desired sizes, and the like. Once we get enough people, we’ll be able to put those orders in! How much would you pay for these things? We’re thinking that since they need to be shipped, it might be $10 for a shirt and $20 for a hoodie once we factor in the “buy mailers and postage” cost, but who knows? Let us know. Next episode will probably be a bonus edition where we do a variety of convention reports: Anime Weekend Atlanta, SITACon, and EXPCon. Plus we should have that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4 review ready to go. Next episode proper, we’re hoping to get Ryan Gavigan on as our special guest! Daryl will be talking about the original Bubblegum Crisis OAVs, Gerald will be talking about Riding Bean, and Clarissa will not be talking about Gunsmith Cats since she’s going to cover Yakitate! Japan. See you hopefully sooner than it took for this one to come out. Fallout 3 doesn’t play itself, you know! In the meantime, you can look at this picture of the Bureau of ATF: