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Anime World Order Show # 241 – Even Goku Would Flee From Poop on a Stick

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:46:14 — 48.7MB)

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Now that it’s been a year since the untimely passing of Akira Toriyama, Clarissa reviews his greatest work released in the US…namely, the first five Dr. Slump movies! These were released on DVD from Discotek, but are now long out of print. Gerald approves of this manuever.

Introduction (0:00 – 47:05)
Despite expiring 15 years ago, Daryl is hip; he’s cool; he’s 45. After 10 minutes of videogame discussion–mostly Gerald not liking Pacific Drive or Fallout: London–we start talking about some recent anime we’ve watched. Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master was a critical darling from last year which wasn’t necessarily the most popular thing, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket has a rather 1970s style approach to characterization despite being made in 1989, and the first three episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX–an Amazon Prime exclusive–show promise even though it’s not initially clear whether the “what if” premise adds anything or not.

We’re going to be guests at Anime Boston 2025! Was the last time we went really 2011? Daryl hasn’t done anime con panels in years, so hopefully he can shake the years of accumulated rust off and get to not being terrible. Terrible con panelists and the reasons for their being so is the subject of our listener email we discuss; yes, we’ve finally remembered to read and discuss an email question sent in! We should probably just designate a Q&A channel on that Discord of ours, huh. Another topic of discussion is optimal ways to recommend classic anime to people, which we generally agree is less about telling people “this is important” and more about telling people “this is an awesome thing you can watch which you may not have seen already.” And on that note…

Review: Dr. Slump Movies 1-5 (47:05 – 1:46:14)

Dr. Slump is an awesome thing you can watch which you may not have seen already…especially if you’re a fan in the United States, where the massive adoration for Akira Toriyama by and large begins and ends with Dragon Ball Z/Super. Viz has released all of the Dr. Slump manga which you can read with your Shonen Jump subscription that you probably already have, albeit with very slight edits for occasional scenes of cigarette smoking. Alas, none of the Dr. Slump anime is officially available to be viewed in the USA. Discotek released this DVD collection of the first five movies in 2014, and it didn’t do well enough for them to consider releasing all 11 of them. Similarly, the very long TV series from the 1980s has never officially been released, and while the 1990s series was briefly available in its entirety on Tubi of all places, you can’t get that officially now either. Of course, since this is a massively popular series around the world and there are many highly dedicated fans of Akira Toriyama, you can watch a considerable amount of Dr. Slump anime unofficially via fansubs. ACTUAL fansubs, not just rips of an official stream! As of this writing, they’re currently on episode 167.

These five movies offer a solid snapshot into what Dr. Slump is, who the characters are, and how the series changed over time to focus primarily on the almighty Arale-chan. Even if you don’t always find it funny, you’re highly unlikely to ever be bored since there’s always something entertaining going on.

Down on the ground! It’s a walking bird! It’s a grounded plane! It’s SUPPAMAN! “Super” sounds like “suppa,” which means “sour.”
No need for a bold Zack Snyder reimagining here.
Parodying Star Wars is old hat at this point, but Dr. Slump was doing it before Return of the Jedi came out (and Toriyama himself was at it before Empire Strikes Back)
Toyoo Ashida directed Fist of the North Star and couldn’t help parodying it when given the chance in Dr. Slump. In 2025, Me and Roboco keeps the tradition alive.
I saw My Lucky Stars long before I’d seen or heard of Dr. Slump, so I didn’t get this sequence at the time where Jackie dressed as Arale and murdered some samurai in a theme park funhouse. Okay, maybe I still don’t get it now that I’ve written that sentence out.
Photo of Akira Toriyama with Jackie Chan circa 1989.
It wasn’t and it did.
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Anime World Order Show # 240 – Jazz Music? More like JASS Music

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:23:43 — 38.4MB)

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In this episode, Gerald jazzes up the proceedings by reviewing the 2023 theatrical film Blue Giant, released in theaters, home video, and streaming by GKIDS.

Introduction (0:00 – 42:01)
When we started this podcast, we felt that other anime podcasts spent more time talking about videogames than anime. So naturally, Daryl talks about videogames he’s been playing before the anime he’s mostly not seasonally watching at the moment. There are, at least, plenty of upcoming Animeigo releases (of things from 20+ years ago) and current manga releases (of things from 40+ years ago) for him to dive into, plus he’s finally got the 4K UHD of the (40 year old) Macross: Do You Remember Love? which is…yeah, not great. Fortunately, Gerald and Clarissa are more current. And yes, that is totally future dub voice of Heero Yuy in Gundam Wing, Mark Hildrath, dropping those sick Canadian white boy rapper beats as laid down by future Miraculous Ladybug composer Alain Garcia on a show that had episodes directed by a guy who would later go on to direct that cowbell episode of Utena. (Power Rangers/DBZ dub fans could already tell those were indeed Ron Wasserman synthesizers backing up the Cam Clarke narration.)

Review: Blue Giant (42:01 – 1:23:43)\
Blue Giant is a seinen manga released in English via omnibus editions courtesy of Seven Seas Entertainment, and this theatrical film arrives courtesy of GKIDS. Who else would even know what to attempt to do with a movie like this, anyway? Blue Giant is the tale of a trio of young adults striving to make an impact upon the Tokyo jazz scene, as high school seniors naturally tend to aspire to. And unlike those OTHER anime titles about bands trying to amount to something, these guys don’t just have one song followed by 7 CDs of soundtracks featuring a ton of music you never hear in the anime itself! Blue Giant is ongoing by way of sequels, but this two-hour film adapts the original 10-volume storyline thanks to some deliberate focused decisions on what to skip over or summarize and what to cover in detail.

It’s a monumental challenge to interpret these manga sound effects as the music heard in the animated film. Or it would have been, had it not been for one simple trick.

The trick in question is that the ultra-talented jazz tour de force that is Hiromi Uehara (known worldwide as just “Hiromi”) was a longtime fan of the manga and is the one handling all the music in this movie.

Blue Giant’s cinematography and framing is not done with portrait mode on your phone in mind, which is why this couldn’t work as the episode’s embedded artwork. Wait, don’t they require both widescreen and portrait artwork these days? And doesn’t the resolution have to be 10x what we provide? Maybe that’s why we’re not listed up top anymore. It couldn’t possibly be lack of popularity due to talking about things like this instead of doing recaps of Solo Leveling or whatever is going on.
What guys HAVEN’T had a meaningful friendship start from encountering a stranger in the public restroom and having this be said as the icebreaker?

The director is Yuzuru Tachikawa of Mob Psycho 100 fame, so expect some really innovative camerawork and animation techniques on display here. Though due to time constraints, there are some very brief uses of 3D CG employed. But how do they compare to the level of 3D CG we just experienced with Berserk 2016? We go into it.

Remember when Daryl said that at least this movie didn’t do the Berserk 2016 thing with its CG shots? He lied.