Anime World Order Show # 133 – Celebrating Nine Years (By Copying The Success of Others)

To celebrate roughly nine years of this podcast existing, Gerald has decided to do this episode in the style of a podcast he ACTUALLY enjoys: Atomic Trivia War 9000, which Daryl’s 2011 guest appearance on went so disastrously that neither Gerald nor Clarissa could muster the bravery to send them a Tweet saying “hey, can WE be on too since we’re well-rounded people who know how to bake?” in the three years since out of fear of rejection. Gerald’s got the questions, and perhaps we have the answers. Joining us for this episode is Paul “White Daryl” Chapman from Otaku USA Magazine and The Greatest Movie EVER! podcast.

Introduction (0:00 – 30:17)

It takes us about 11 minutes to get all these shills out of the way regarding other stuff we’re doing:

  • Two Bad Dudes Gaming, the Youtube videogaming channel which Gerald contributes to. If you want to see and hear Gerald scream in a high-pitched manner, be sure to watch the video of him playing Five Nights at Freddy’s.
  • Manga Cross-Stitch, by Helen McCarthy
  • The free Otaku USA Magazine anime PDF guide, consisting of articles from Daryl, Paul, and various other past AWO guests such as Tim Eldred, Mike Dent, Evan Minto, Erin Finnegan, and so on. If you like it, consider subscribing either in print or digitally (Kindle, iOS, Android, etc).
  • DB30Years, a free PDF zine created in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Dragon Ball featuring a contribution from Daryl
  • Colony Drop is also working on another fanzine, this time entirely about Mobile Police Patlabor, which hopefully Daryl will actually have a finished and usable article for when it (hopefully) comes out in the next few months
  • Lupin the Third: Napoleon’s Dictionary, an upcoming Discotek/Eastern Star release featuring a commentary track with Anime News Network’s Mike Toole as well as Daryl
  • GME Anime Fun Time is Paul’s monthly anime podcast which often features someone from AWO on as a guest
  • PSP-TV’s Channel OF DOOM! is two hours of Japanese and independent pro wrestling matches selected by Daryl every week. The playlist switches over Wednesday at 8 PM, though it stays up in rotation for the entire 7 days.

We finally get around to answering an email at around the 11:15 mark. IS ANIME OVER? The latest Astro Boy is going to be a Japan/France co-production, after all. Nothing can stop Shadow Rollins. IS THIS THE END OF THE WORLD? [Captain Harlock’s mouth hangs agape. Pink Floyd plays in background. Freeze frame.] And isn’t the only good Lupin the Third the parts Hayao Miyazaki made, because Hayao Miyazaki is without peer and everybody sucks except him, per what is suggested in his book essays and The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness?

Anime Trivia War Over 9000 (30:17 – 2:01:56)
Gerald, in conjunction with his Twitter followers, has assembled a series of questions to ask Daryl, Clarissa, and Paul. Score is kept such that the victor is to receive a prize in keeping with the true spirit of competition and uh, Christmas. For the record: the prize promised to the victor was never given. The scoring may also have been Clive Anderson’d. Marvel at what we know, and scream at your podcast player over what we don’t.

Anime World Order Show # 124 – Frozen Should Have Had Gambo Instead of Songs

After two months, we spend a lot of time not talking about anime, read an email about not watching it, and then FINALLY Daryl reviews the new anime anthology Short Peace. We’re out of practice here.

Introduction (0:00 – 45:12)
For roughly the first 13:30 of this introduction, there is more or less zero anime discussion until Daryl brings up that he’s reading through the excellent Anime: A History by Jonathan Clements, who it should be noted is NOT Richard Armitage. It’s an easy mistake to make, we know. We then read an email about a tale that’s played out all too often over the years: the phenomenon that is “otaku expiration” by way of a letter from one who died at the age of 17. In place of said dead velveteen otaku is A REAL BOY. Wait, we just mixed up children’s stories.

Review: Short Peace (45:12 – 1:22:00)
Daryl reviews the new anthology collection released last year. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, since one of the segments was nominated for an Oscar this year along with some other Japanese dude’s cartoon. We understand based on a webcomic we saw that other guy whose film was nominated for an Oscar loves to smile and make merchandise and robots and totally did not write this book or this book. Short Peace will be released by Sentai Filmworks soon, and we can only hope that they translate the commentary track on this thing because boy howdy, we sure would’ve loved to have known what they said BEFORE doing this review.

  • We reviewed Freedom Project back in Show 66. Despite this being Show 124, that episode was about six years ago…
  • As further proof that he sucks, the short which Daryl declared the weakest was actually the one that won the rarely-awarded Noboru Ofuji prize. We discussed how difficult it is to win that back when we reviewed Mind Game.
  • Show 96 about Redline, 30 episodes after the 2008 episode linked above, happened three years later. We probably briefly mentioned Katsuhito Ishii at some point.
  • Despite being only one standard American comicbook in length, Farewell to Weapons has been out of print for decades so comicbook sellers are charging a lot for it. Hopefully Kodansha will reprint it.
  • What’s far more affordable is the revised edition of Matt Alt’s Yokai Attack. If you read that, then you’d understand that THE RULES were indeed followed.

Closing (1:22:00 – 1:24:10)
We’re going to have to review a Shinji Aramaki CG movie next time, aren’t we. AREN’T WE?! In the meantime between now and then, do check out the new issue of Otaku USA. Daryl wrote articles on Kill La Kill, Robot Girls Z, and the manga editions of Space Brothers as well as Summer Wars. There’s also Carl Horn’s Royal Space 25th Anniversary Fanzine, featuring articles by Gerald and other people who aren’t Gerald. “Fanzine” is a misnomer for this thing, seeing as it’s got better layout, design, binding, paper quality etc than most professional publications.