Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:12:14 — 60.6MB)
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2025 is off to a terrible start, not just in terms of current world events but because in this episode Daryl follows up on his previous review of the 1997 Berserk TV series with this review of the decades-anticipated Berserk sequel TV series from 2016. Oh boy.
Introduction (0:00 – 56:51)
It’s finally happened, after years of waiting! All of Macross (almost) is now streaming in the United States…with closed caption-y style subtitles because it’s Hulu and some edits to content because um…Disney? It’s still a major step forward. In addition, the one that isn’t streaming–Macross: Do You Remember Love?–is also now out on 4K UHD and finally with official English subtitles after decades of waiting…and it’s an AI upscale, like how they did Macross Zero. The Summer 2025 issue of Otaku USA Magazine is now out, and we’ve got reviews in there for some highly anticipated titles such as the They Were Eleven manga; no longer must you pay hundreds of dollars for used copies of Viz’s Four Shojo Stories! Discotek Media annnounced a new set of licenses, so we recap their anime announcements. This time around, they were focusing more on live-action and US animation than anime, but there’s still some solid Japanese animation picks worth considering. We then talk about what we’ve checked out in this current anime season that’s just started, as one has to do every few months lest you fall too out of touch. Contrary to popular belief, the AWO is watching current anime regularly. We’re just mostly writing about it rather than doing podcast episodes, because we like to wait for things to be completed before reviewing them just in case the quality of the show varies relative to how it started.
Review: Berserk 2016 (56:51 – 2:12:14)
Now that we reviewed the original 1997 television series, it’s only fitting that Daryl follow up and review the Duke Nukem Forever of anime: the 2016 sequel that is a hybrid of 3D CG with some traditional 2D digital animation. Perhaps comparing it to Duke Nukem Forever is unwarranted. After all, even Duke Nukem Forever at least had Dr. Proton. Let’s not think too hard about the fact that Duke Nukem Forever is now such a long time gone that it’s been out for pretty much as long as people were waiting for it to come out in the wake of Duke Nukem 3D. Anyway, this Berserk 2016 TV show remains a meme, and it’s been almost a decade. Daryl elected to show Gerald and Clarissa–who’d never actually seen it before–the retail Blu-Ray version (which he owns!), since that’s the “fixed” and “cleaned up” version rather than the broadcast version everybody else gets their animated GIFs and screen grabs from since that was a massively anticipated simulcast once upon a time. There is probably nothing about this we can say or insight we can provide that hasn’t extensively been said before by others who know Berserk in far more granular detail than we do.
