Anime World Order Show # 12 – Searching for Odin, My Love!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:34:25 — 43.2MB)

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Our guest this week is Mike Toole from Anime Jump, who’s been putting the “dumb” in anime fandom since 1998! Gerald and Clarissa review the excellent series Monster, and Mike and Daryl review the Often Overlooked (and notoriously terrible) Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight. Yes, that’s spelled correctly.

Introduction (0:00 – 19:26)
Our guest for the episode, Mike Toole, joins us from the start and we immediately dive right into talking about our ideal anime convention. Wait, didn’t someone ask us this already? Whatever, Mike’s here this time! If you want to play Mario Kart DS with him, his Friend Code is 137506166547. Wait, weren’t you not supposed to give those out over the Internet or something?

• Greg Ayres (he’s coming to a con near you! But he’s not just a rave DJ guy or a “cool voice actor vicariously living out the dream for you,” so be sure to go to his panels about fansubber ethics)
• IMDB entry for The Three Amigos
• At some point Daryl tries to make a reference to this Monty Python episode but fails
• ANN entry for Maya Okamoto
• ANN entry for Norio Wakamoto (voice of Chiyo’s dad, Mechazawa, etc)
• ANN entry for Kaneto Shiozawa (Rest in peace; Paul von Oberstein is Daryl’s role model)
• Official fanclub for Akira Kamiya (voice of Kenshiro, Ryo Saeba, Roy Fokker, and much more)
• ANN entry for Kenichi Sonoda (creator of Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats)
• An unofficial Go Nagai fan site (“father” of manga, not to be confused with Osamu Tezuka who is the “God” of manga)
• Wikipedia entry on Haim Saban (man who brought us Power Rangers and too much hacked up anime to count; his spirit lives on within 4Kids Entertainment)
• ANN entry on Haruki Kadokawa (Gerald considers him to be easily the craziest man to work in anime)
• IMDB entry for The Final Countdown
• AnimeHell.org (god damn it, what time does Midnight Madness start?)
• An English language page about Loudness (they’re touring the US!)
• Anime Weekend Atlanta (Daryl’s first convention and still his favorite)

Let’s News! (19:26 – 29:28)
Rather abrupt transition into the news this week. The 2005 profits for 4Kids Entertainment are down 60% from 2004 because the kids who grew up on Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh now realize that their little kid brothers or whatever are into the same thing and therefore it can’t possibly be cool. In other news, everything about Bleach is licensed worldwide by Viz Media. Expect people to continue fansubbing and scanning it anyway without even having the decency to say “yeah, we’re doing this because we’re thieves and want to watch/read this for free.” At least software and movie pirates own up to what they are.

Promo: Ninja Consultant (29:28 – 31:14)
Erin from Ninja Consultant is probably our #1 fan among other podcasters, but Noah thinks Daryl is a stupid head for saying that Hols, Prince of the Sun was merely “good” instead of “the best thing ever made.” This type of criticism is normally levied towards Daryl by American comicbook fans who just can’t fathom the concept of someone not liking Watchmen / Sandman / Transmetropolitan / Preacher / insert decent-but-not-incredible thing written by someone from the British Isles here. The absolute worst is when those comics people say “oh, well CLEARLY you didn’t understand it! Read it again!” Anyway, listen to the Ninja Consultant podcast, even though this promo is like, twice as long as most promos.

Synopsis/Review: Monster [CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FOUR EPISODES OR SO] (31:14 – 48:34)
Clarissa and Gerald both wanted to do a segment about Naoki Urasawa’s long-running manga series turned anime, but hadn’t done so until now since they were still watching the show. Not that it matters, since you can’t really talk about anything that happens without giving the series away. This segment is essentially a plot synopsis of the first few episodes (so that’s basically the first volume of the manga), but it’s not like they’re ruining the series for you or even giving away much of anything. Still, we’re putting the warning there. Buy this you geeks.

• ANN’s Entry on Monster (For a quick overview of the show)
• Official Monster Site (Japanese)
• Viz’ Official Monster Site (Buy the damn manga, it’s just that good)

Promo: Corn Pone Flicks (48:34 – 49:37)
Leader Desslok has a plan to stick it to the man in this 1999 short which can be viewed on the CPF website or on Google Video. A “Cocaine Howitzer” production? Why, whatever is it that Matt Murray could have been referring to with that joke? Perhaps the next segment will shed some light on the matter!
PS: read Matt’s movie reviews. He just did a really good one on V for Vendetta. Incidentally, the comicbook to that is also “just okay” and not “the greatest thing ever committed to the printed medium by the greatest author to ever live” no matter what comicbook fans say.

Often Overlooked: Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight (49:37 – 1:27:03)
When Daryl ran into Mike at Katsucon 12, it was only for a brief moment since Mike was on staff and had matters to attend to. But he insisted that he be on the show when we did our review of Odin, so we waited until this fateful day. Look people, when you start talking about “worst anime ever made,” you are not qualified to speak on the subject unless you’ve seen Odin, okay? This is one of the single biggest disasters in anime history, and Mike and Daryl will tell you all about exactly why that is with the help of quite a few audio clips. Listen on and be forever enlightened.

• ANN’s Entry on Odin
• Central Park Media’s Official Odin Site (Be careful, that release is edited, what you’re really looking for is this release. Wait, you’re not looking for this, so IGNORE THAT LINK!)
• Picture of the elevator moment that’s forever burned into Daryl’s head for no good reason

In late 2012, many years after this review, someone has uploaded the 2 hour and 20 minute version of Odin to Youtube.

Closing (1:27:03 – 1:34:25)
Sorry this episode was even later than usual, but Daryl had gotten word that his grandmother had died right before we recorded this episode, and was attending the funeral during the days he would normally spend editing the show (fortunately Gerald and Clarissa did most of the work in his absence). We close things up by playing what is easily the greatest Discipline ad copy reading we’ve received to date, courtesy of our friend Max, aka the “Lensman…THE DUB” guy from a few episodes back. Next week–and that’s next week for you, later today for us–Gerald brings back the Creator Spotlight segment by talking about his favorite director, Katsuhito Akiyama. Clarissa will review the long-running yet Often Overlooked manga series From Eroica With Love by Yasuko Aoike, and Daryl will review a currently-running manga by Naoki Urasawa entitled Pluto.