Anime World Order # 237 – Triv-ia! Don’t Give It Up, Ba-sil! Triv-ia! Don’t Give It Up Ger-ald!

For the tenth time, it’s our annual trivia episode! We are joined by Basil, head honcho of the OSMcast as well as The Carbuncle Chronicle and OSMquest podcasts who’s been doing this for just about as long as we have. Basil has been doing this for about as long as us and is from our same fandom generation, though he’s got more experience on camera as our Patreon supporters at the $5 and up tiers were able to see during the live recording which was held about a week ago.

Introduction (0:00 – 18:20)
We talk to Basil about how he became an anime fan and what inspired him to start podcasting, while also going over his contributions to anime conventions in the Southeastern United States which are numerous enough that we couldn’t get into them all.

Trivia Round One (18:20 – 1:18:22)
The carnage commences! Yell in frustration as we are unable to identify famous anime catgirls, are asked questions about animals in which not one single person says “call me YOON-kers!”, and have to remember anime by their OP/ED song titles…to limited success.

Trivia Round Two (1:18:22 – 2:11:11)
This one’s got a music category aka the sort of thing that would prevent us from posting this to YouTube and the like. We’ve also got to identify titles whose international titles don’t necessarily align to what a translation of their Japanese titles are, aka “absolute anathema to adherent users of MyAnimeList.” There was going to be another round of Anime Family Feud, but regrettably Basil actually had family committments over the weekend and could not simply sit around all day and talk about vague memories of cartoons. There’s always next year, I guess!

Anime World Order Show # 236 – It’s Shark Time, Baby

The initial version of the file that was uploaded was in stereo rather than mono, meaning different people spoke on different channels. That has now been fixed. Delete the old file and redownload if you encounter this issue.

Although we’re posting this on Halloween, there’s not much especially spooky about this episode since after having seen Uzumaki, Daryl has instead elected to review the theatrical film adaptation of Look Back by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Be forewarned that we do spoil it all in the event you didn’t already read or watch it first.

Introduction (0:00 – 54:24)
We were fortunate that the two recent hurricanes did not do significant damage to where any of us were, but it was lucky breaks on both occasions. We go over what we’re watching in the current anime season, and Daryl finally receives his Macross Plus Blu-Ray set. Not mentioned in the recording is the fact that due to inadequate packaging during transportation–this despite shipping from the old Right Stuf warehouse, which has clearly been mandated some changes to their procedures and policies by the new Sony ownership–a corner of his Blu-Ray set box was slightly crushed despite no damage to the exterior packaging box; an extremely common thing which Crunchyroll Store’s service reps say they can do absolutely nothing to remedy. This is not even close to the worst news coming out about Crunchyroll as we touch upon the then-breaking David Wald situation and contrast that with some recent financial publication coverage of Crunchyroll strategically rolled out to coincide with the broadcast start of the new Dragon Ball Daima series. Toho’s acquisition of GKIDS has us wondering if a similar fate will befall them, for the number of independent anime publishers in the US is basically down to about two or three guys at this point. Oh yeah, and we also talk about the anime adaptation of Uzumaki, which was originally going to be the subject of this episode until well, we saw the rest of it. Not stated in this recording: we’re 99.5% sure that the infamous quality drop coincides with the concurrent-with-production merger of Warner Brothers and Discovery to form WBD and the appointment of then-new CEO David Zaslav. We’re placing our chips on the roulette wheel as far as that, since it’d also neatly explain why Jason DeMarco couldn’t name names when talking about who was responsible (before locking/disabling his social media accounts).

Review: Look Back (54:24 – 1:47:03)
Originally released in US theaters in a very limited engagement, 2024’s Look Back vastly exceeded expectations and got additional showtimes, which on a per capita basis is better than the singing clown movie everybody who saw it hated. Adapted from a one-shot released in 2021 by Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto, this film by Kiyotaka Oshiyama (whom we’d previously talked about in our review of Flip Flappers) is absolutely worth seeing by everyone. It’ll stream on Prime Video starting November 7, 2024. You can also read the original manga courtesy of Viz, who have released it both in print as well as digitally. If you pay the $3 a month for Shonen Jump, it is available to read as part of that. Daryl recommends you either watch the film or read the manga before listening to this, since we basically summarize what happens scene by scene from start to finish in order to give our thoughts on it.