Anime World Order Show # 200 – Let’s ACTUALLY Interview Helen McCarthy Already

It’s our 200th episode! To celebrate, we interview the UK’s Most Dangerous anime scholar garderner/poet, Helen McCarthy! The one we did back in 2008 was technically a “bonus” and not an episode, back when we were trying to distinguish between such things!

Introduction (0:00 – 43:38)
After the obligatory shilling our stuff (Daryl was finally back on the Greatest Movie EVER! podcast to talk about Ninja in the Dragon’s Den), we get to talking some more about virtual conventions. Anime Expo’s is this weekend, and we hope it’s handled better than Fanimecon’s which just might be the single biggest debacle of all the virtual conventions we were aware of…which truth be told, is shockingly few since it’s hard to get the word out. In-person conventions are starting to come back–the wisdom of this is a bit shaky–but expect to see us at Otakon albeit with much less on our dockets. Anime Weekend Atlanta is still something of a toss up. We also talk a bit about what we’ve been watching/reading, along with what we’re looking forward to for the new Summer 2021 anime season. You know who doesn’t believe in doing less stuff during the pandemic? Tim Eldred, that’s who. Because having the single best resource in the world on Space Battleship Yamato just wasn’t enough work, July 1st looks to be the next big update to his personal website Artvalt, so head on over there for his next big compendium as it pertains to Fist of the North Star. There’s renewed interest in that now that the first volume of Viz’s Signature Edition is out (and selling out, from the looks of things). The first of multiple articles from Tim is now up: the Fist of the North Star Series Profile.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (43:38 – 46:30)
As if there weren’t enough recent major sales, the big birthday sales are going on over at Right Stuf and that means big discounts across the board along with Mega Deals that change daily along with weekly giveaways. As a PSA: if you bought Dear Brother on Blu-Ray, and you probably want to do that since it’ll go out of print in under a year’s time, open it up and double check to make sure your discs were not physically cracked in the packaging. Discotek used a standard width case along with a spindle which is very hard to remove the discs from, and while Daryl’s discs were fine there are multiple reports on social media from those who weren’t so fortunate. So if you need to get an exchange, this is something to find out now rather than once there are no more copies available.

Interview: Helen McCarthy (46:30 – 3:26:55)
We meant to get to this sooner. We’re just stricken by laziness. The same cannot be said for Helen McCarthy, which will become quite evident once you listen to this because we didn’t manage to cover everything in three hours! This was done through an international half duplex Skype connection, so there may be some occasional cutouts during cross-talk, but we mitigated this by mostly keeping quiet and listening AS YOU SHOULD TOO. But here are a few links you’ll probably want in addition to her blog which is already on the sidebar.:

Feel free to suggest/request additional links in the comments below, or bug us via email or through social media.

Anime World Order Show # 196 – Let’s Stop Those Jerks From Abandoning Love

It’s our Sweet Sixteenth year of podcasting! To celebrate, Daryl decides we need more Ken Ishikawa so we review 1989’s Kyomu Senshi Miroku. But we think it’s probably Kyomu Senki Miroku? Whatever, you’ll surely be hearing about this from the YouTubers soon enough.

Introduction (0:00 – 30:21)
We kick off year sixteen of AWO by catching up on what we’ve been watching, which leads to some conversation and speculations regarding the Sony buyout of Crunchyroll from AT&T that is hopefully less anger-inducing to Justin Sevakis than the one he heard on YouTube with the 750K views. We observe that a ton of the new anime this season is NOT on Crunchyroll…and that nobody’s really talking about those shows. The anime landscape is undergoing yet another shift, but it’ll most likely be a year before the major changes become evident to us industry outsiders.

    • Anime Specific, the new podcast from Regan of Anime82 and Dane from Anime Pacific we were talking about
    • There is in fact a standard edition Blu-Ray release of Demon Slayer courtesy of FUNimation. Here’s Volume 1, and here’s Volume 2.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (30:21 – 33:08)
The 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of Bartender is finally out, so you can see for yourselves that there’s more to “iyashikei” anime than young girls eating cake. You can also have young LADIES drinking BOOZE. Or old dads…drinking BOOZE. We’re just saying, it’s a broad umbrella term. You can also preorder your Cyber City Oedo 808 Blu-Ray, though most of the healing in that comes from throwing cyber vampires out into the cold blackness of space, causing them to decompress but then recompress. See? It’s healing.

Review: Kyomu Senshi Miroku or as we insist, Kyomu Senki Miroku (30:21 – 1:29:57)
I believed you were different? I hoped you were different! What started off as a casual name drop from Blacotaku1 in Show 194 has given rise to what lies before you now. We recommend you listen to Show 184 first before listening to this (and that in turn recommended you listen to Show 165 first, as our ongoing ploy to keep you listening to us), but really this is the spiritual successor to Show 54 because that was when Gerald reviewed Black Lion by Go Nagai. Well, Ken Ishikawa took a look at Black Lion and said “pfft, that’s nothing” as Ken Ishikawa would do when looking at everything Go Nagai did. The result is this six episode onslaught of NINJANIGANS, and you’re either not ready to handle it or years of listening to AWO have steeled your resolve.