Anime World Order Show # 224 – The Crime Is Drinking Budweiser After Showering, The Sentence is Death

Mike Toole returns to the show for this MONSTER CHILLER HORROR edition of AWO released on Halloween, in which Gerald reviews the polar opposite of The Poe Clan: Go Nagai’s Shuten Doji! Now that we’ve done this, the YouTubers can follow in our wake and make this one a meme darling.

Introduction (0:00 – 38:58)
We check in with Mike and what he’s been up to, Discotek Media and otherwise. It’s been a few years since Mike was last on, and we didn’t even get to see him this year at all since none of us went to Otakon this year. Plus, we finally play and respond to a listener voicemail after months of having it downloaded and sitting on the desktop waiting to be played. Look, eventually those shortcuts just blend into the background. This then makes us talk about the usual for 39 minutes: things currently airing this season, stuff that just came out on on Netflix which we haven’t had a chance to binge through prior to recording, the state of physical media anime publishing, memeing on Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Rintaro, and so on.

Review: Shuten Doji (38:58 – 1:45:41)
As part of his revenge against the world, Gerald unearths another generally forgotten (at the time of this recording) OAV that embodies everything the words “Go Nagai” emblazoned on the VHS box cover entails. Shuten Doji is exactly the sort of thing that gave “anime” its negative stigma in the US which never fully went away even after Pokémon came out. It’s violent, sexually crass, ill-paced in narrative, prone to extreme bouts of logic-stretching convenience, and it has got one terrible English dub. In the altered words of the late Menahem Golan, now zeees eeeez a AD VISION! In other words, it’s exactly the sort of thing we crave–well, except for Clarissa because she has sense–the way people nowadays crave being reincarnated in a world governed by generic RPG rules. Never before has there been an anime with a more cogent moral lesson to teach its viewers, which is “don’t adopt children.” Any similarities to the classic creature of Japanese myth are um, tenuous at best.

The plot to Superman? The future plot to GaoGaiGar? I suppose he did become the light…
A rare moment in which the leading lady Miyuki is clothed. That is remedied moments later.
As the closing theme to Gattiger the Super Car famously asked, why is there the shadow of my mother over my despicable enemy!
AD Vision made merchandise for Shuten Doji, such as this T-shirt. If you have an original one of these, people will buy them off you for hundreds of dollars because they have trust funds.

Anime World Order Show # 215 – Anime Was Whamageddon Even Before The Song Existed

We can copy this part of the otaku ideal. Just not the part where she can masquerade as a normal person.

So begins a new year of podcasting for us! We’re trying something new out by not necessarily reviewing one thing, but talking about a selection of Christmas-themed episodes of anime arranged from “least Christmas-y” to “most Christmas-y.”

This was not particularly Christmas-y.
This was not particularly Christmas-y.

Introduction (0:00 – 47:50)
We had the trivia episode last month, and so it’s only now that we’re able to get around to the fact that Daryl and Gerald both went to Anime Weekend Atlanta back in October. We report on the convention, some noteworthy aspects of programming we attended, ruminate on the convention’s future, and Gerald shares with us his first experience with going to Buc-ee’s.

Oh, here’s the video Gerald was referring to:

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (47:50 – 51:30)
It’s the end of an era, as a few weeks ago Shawne Kleckner announced his departure from the company we founded. We interviewed Shawne back in Show 183, and that sure doesn’t feel like it was back in 2019. But the Holiday Sale is on same as always, and there’s a lot of great deals to be had. Heck, even Aniplex Blu-Ray sets got a discount!

JUST TAKIN’ OUT THE TRASH

The Holiday Roundup (51:30 – 2:13:10)
There are plenty of anime with Christmas-themed episodes, or ones that take place around Christmas, but several have little to do with it. We watched an assortment of Christmas episodes and present them to you here, in the order of “least Christmas-y” to “most Christmas-y.” There are lots and lots and LOTS of Christmas themed anime stories, some of which are even good insofar as resembling stuff people might do around Christmas, and since we only talked about a handful here it’s almost a guarantee that we didn’t talk about your favorite. So let’s hear about it in the comments! There’s always next year, right?

Santa Company currently has THREE Kickstarters active for English language localizations. Santa Company: Secret of Christmas is the full-length version of what we were talking about.
Midsummer Merry Christmas is the newer entry released last year. There are also full-color comic books to translate. The goals are shockingly low, so with any luck these succeed. It’s tough, now that you don’t see many anime Kickstarter projects.

BIG CHRISTMAS, er HEAVEN’S DAY!
We imagine every anime club in the 90s showing Christmas theme stuff must have run Ranma 1/2’s.