Robots – 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.

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As the Fall 2025 anime season approaches, we talk about our favorites of Summer 2025 before Gerald reviews Bubblegum Crash!, the 3-part sequel to Bubblegum Crisis which we reviewed roughly 17 years ago.

Introduction (0:00 – 50:50)
We start off by reading an email from a listener who watched Aim for the Top! Gunbuster for the first time as a result of our review from…wait, two years ago?! Incidentally, Discotek’s license for Gunbuster is about to expire, so buy the Blu-Ray now while it’s still available if you haven’t already done so. We mull over the possiblity of setting up some ranked choice polling for listeners to weigh in with their seasonal Top 3, revisiting past titles from the earliest days of the podcast, doing separate YouTube-friendly edits of the reviews, and getting some new merchandise made. The latter is derailed by the same thing that’s derailing more or less every pop culture hobby pursuit in the United States: the elimination of the de minimis exception.

With the Fall 2025 anime season upon us, we’ll be doing a trailer watch-along on 09/27/2025 at 3:00 PM on our Discord. There’s no way to record these to VOD for later viewing, so join us if you can. Hopefully, we didn’t screw up our server boosts and the Discord Stage still has enough slots for everyone. Hopefully also there’s no outlandishness with Discord’s servers the way there was during Otakon. Due to our con reports for Otakon, AFO, and such we never did get to weigh in on the Summer 2025 anime season, so we do so here. Marvel at how few of the most popular titles of the season we saw any of at all! We’ll be sure to add them to the backlog…

Review: Bubblegum Crash! (50:50 – 2:03:06)
After some required convincing of Daryl and Clarissa, Gerald reviews Bubblegum Crash!, which has never exactly held the most sterling of reputations among anime fans. Considering the last time we talked about anything related to Bubblegum Crisis was 15 years ago when we reviewed the AD Police Files OAV, it seems the time was right especially when one considers AnimEigo’s recent release of the series on Blu-Ray. If you order directly from the MediaOCD store, they throw in a slipcover! Remember: only deranged lunatics throw away the slipcover when they buy something on home video!