The show was running long this week, so we’re pushing the Megacon report back yet another week. Clarissa explains it all about Eyeshield 21 and Gerald reviews the classic anime Taro the Dragon Boy.
Introduction (0:00 – 37:08)
We caught up on answering emails last week, and this week we catch up on answering voicemail. As always, we spent forever answering even the simplest of questions, so in order to keep this from taking up half the show, we put one of our longer responses here in the show notes. If you don’t read these notes, then phooey to you! One of our readers, Patrick E. “Lobotomoy,” does read the show notes. He decided to take a comment we had on the last show to heart and Photoshop the Karas logo. Here it is:
I guess that’s officially our first fanart contribution other than the email from Golgo 13! Hmm, wonder if we should start asking for that stuff?
- Tokyopop’s official Rebirth page – this is actually a Korean comic, not a Japanese one
- Toonzone review of IGPX – Gerald did NOT check on this like he said he would, so let it be said that the first disc apparently does include the shorts all strung together into one thing after all
- Ebook Japan (Japanese) – contains practically all of Kazuo Koike’s works in downloadable format (if you pay)
- Bonus futanari discussion as advertised – this is not safe for work or children, and as a bonus bonus, you get a Discipline reading from the Happy House of Hentai!
- Anime Hell – what time does Midnight Madness start?
- Otaku Generation’s interview with Jeff “Rich Lather” Tatarek
- AnimeMusicVideos.org listing of Jeff Tatarek’s “Jigoku no Video” AMVs – includes a link to the Nausicaa AMV Daryl was talking about
- AnimeYume podcast
Promo: R5 Central – listen to the Year of Heroes episode for a sped-up complete history of sentai (30 years worth!) . JET-TO JET-TO JETMAN, LET’S GO TOBIDASE!
Let’s News! (37:08 – 51:30)
We finally get around to mentioning how Media Blasters licensed Voltron and plans to release it in its original and English forms. Bandai acknowledges that everything we’ve been telling you about the US anime market all these weeks is true, and the Street Fighter II movie–one of the few videogame-to-anime adaptations that isn’t absolutely awful–is finally going to be released uncut in America with the original Japanese track included.
Promo: Anime Pulse – go and answer their trivia questions so Daryl doesn’t have to! There’s prizes involved!
Review: Eyeshield 21 (51:30 – 1:15:13)
Clarissa reviews both the anime and manga for this currently-running Shonen Jump sports anime title. This quickly spirals out of control into a catch-all discussion on sports anime in general, namely the fact that so much of it is good stuff that nobody in America watches or reads. With any luck, we’ll change a few people’s minds on that.
- ANN entry for Eyeshield 21
- Wikipedia entry on Airsoft, which is really big in Asia — basically, hopped up BB guns that are often extremely detailed replicas of real guns
- Eyeshield 21 first episode up on YouTube
Promo: Otaku Generation – this week their guest is their friend who was away teaching English in Korea for some time; listen to his stories on the online multiplayer gaming scene there if you want to know why Daryl gave up on real-time strategy games over a decade ago. “KEKEKE ZERG RUSH” indeed.
Often Overlooked: Taro the Dragon Boy (1:15:13 – 1:28:18)
Gerald follows up his review of Discotek’s release of Animal Treasure Island by reviewing their release of this classic theatrical anime film. To think he edited out the really good “Anime Bites” reference that Daryl and Clarissa made. Doesn’t he realize that lending out that laserdisc to Seishun Shitemasu is the one worthwhile thing that Peter Payne has ever offered to anime fandom?! Now all he does is sell porno and T-shirts that say “looking for a Japanese girlfriend.” This is what he bases his sense of self-worth on.
Closing (1:28:18 – 1:29:28)
We’re going to be skipping a week due to us all having to prepare for Jacon next week. Whether that’s next week or the week after next is anyone’s guess, but we promise that Daryl’s Search for THE TRUTH: Megacon Edition will be present. In fact, that whole show will probably just be answering emails, talking about the news, and that segment. Consider yourselves warned.
About the Discipline reading in Spanish, the background song I used was “Te quiero puta” (i love you whore) by the german band Rammstein. It is a parody of mariachi songs mixed with industrial music.
i’ll go ahead and send a pic i took of Jeff T in the Ingram suit at AWA 2. (posing with a lovely holiday inn houseplant)
Gerald is correct about Godai playing rugby.
In fact:
http://www.furinkan.com/maison/intro/yeartwo.html
Hey alfonso, me ganaste yo también iba a hacer algo de Discipline, 😉
well maybe some other time, it was great, good job!
HEY!
Just to add more iodine to the pain, here’s the VHS cover artwork for “Taro the Dragon Boy” when RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video released it back under their “Magic Window” label. Makes me wonder how many kids were traumatized by watching this then. RCA/Columbia Pictures used to release a lot of dubbed anime titles then like Sanrio’s library including the “Unico” movies, “Ringing Bell”, as well as a series of Toei features that were dubbed by Peter Fernandez, though oddly distributed by Turner Program Services (responisble for the “Ultra 7” dub TNT used to play), as well as my personal fav, “Jack & The Beanstalk”, for which a DVD had been released last year from Hen’s Tooth Video.
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/338/taro0hk.jpg
Thinking back to it at times, it’s funny thinking of how it was mention that Sony Pictures has only released five or so anime titles, yet, in the pre-Sony Columbia Pictures of the 80’s, they had sh__loads of it (although dubbed)! Funny they’ll probably never raise to that level again.
Incidentally, “Puss ‘n Boots” will be out May 30th, just to keep you posted for a future “Overlooked Anime Review”!
http://www.rightstuf.com/cgi-bin/catalogmgr/tKFwEU4plUqZn95KvK/browse/item/69822/4/0/0
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/8497.html
Still feel your pain for the Cyborg 009 fiasco (thanks a lot Sony for giving the public the wrong impression).
How exactly did Sony screw up 009? I really wasn’t watching much of Cartoon Network during the time they were airing it, so I don’t know how they went about advertising it or anything. Can you explain a bit more about what went on?
(I think I recall hearing that 009 initially replaced Rurouni Kenshin in its timeslot when it first premiered. I’d imagine usurping one of the most popular anime shows on TV would be a major contributor to the ill will a lot of newcomers and casual fans feel towards the show. Of course, I could have all of my info completely wrong, in which case, kindly ignore this.)
Also, guys, that was the best use of the “Yo’ butt ain’t made for that!” soundclip ever. Brought tears to my eyes, it did.
Sony screwed up Cyborg 009 largely because they chose to release on DVD of it and drop about one or two disks into the show. The DVD release was very nice as they did one release for the Cartoon Network version and another for the uncut version which had a nice episode count, DTS sound and all the perks. But Sony never got more than a few episodes in so one really had to watch the show very carefully on TV since that’s the only time you’d ever see those episodes.lpptt
Actually, the DVD release was NOT very nice, even though it’s true that the episodes were in the original widescreen with 5.1 audio (and also DTS for the dub) and such. It was 8 episodes in the set (the uncut version was actually CHEAPER than the edited one, though the edited ones had additional audio like Spanish), but disc 1 had episodes 1 through 6 plus all the extras and disc 2 just had episodes 7 and 8. That is actually different from what the box says. I don’t have the eye to say that the video quality suffered as a result–it all looks fine to me–but it’s a mild authoring annoyance, much like how you have to keep viewing the FBI warning (unskippable) and AVEX logo if you select individual episodes in the menu.
In Toei-like fashion, the opening and ending credits sequences are unsubtitled, and none of the actual credits was translated either. In fact, the subtitle script throughout all the episodes is in fact the script to the English language dub rather than a translation of the Japanese (it’s “dubtitled”). All in all, it’s rife with a lot of “Japanese company releasing something in the US”-style mistakes, but the worst part is that they just never released any more episodes aside from that initial release.
Plus, nobody cared to encode the TV broadcast episodes or fansub the series past like, episode 3 or so, so anything past episode 8 is pretty much gone forever unless you know Japanese and feel like buying the 15 discs of the R2 release (3 episodes a disc). Heck, it’s even pretty tough to get the illegal Hong Kong bootlegs of the entire show with their poor video and audio plus crappy Engrish subtitles! Still, that’s the only way for anyone to see the entire show at this point, period. Wikipedia says the first 13 episodes were released in the US, but Wikipedia is wrong (what a shock).
Daryl Surat said…
Actually, the DVD release was NOT very nice, even though it’s true that the episodes were in the original widescreen with 5.1 audio (and also DTS for the dub) and such. It was 8 episodes in the set (the uncut version was actually CHEAPER than the edited one, though the edited ones had additional audio like Spanish), but disc 1 had episodes 1 through 6 plus all the extras and disc 2 just had episodes 7 and 8. That is actually different from what the box says. I don’t have the eye to say that the video quality suffered as a result–it all looks fine to me–but it’s a mild authoring annoyance, much like how you have to keep viewing the FBI warning (unskippable) and AVEX logo if you select individual episodes in the menu.
Still seems rather lame to me that the first disc could be crammed with 6 episodes plus extras, yet the second disc has only TWO episodes on it.
In Toei-like fashion, the opening and ending credits sequences are unsubtitled, and none of the actual credits was translated either.
Makes me think of the HK Cantonese dubs where they’ll do that too.
In fact, the subtitle script throughout all the episodes is in fact the script to the English language dub rather than a translation of the Japanese (it’s “dubtitled”). All in all, it’s rife with a lot of “Japanese company releasing something in the US”-style mistakes, but the worst part is that they just never released any more episodes aside from that initial release.
Plus, nobody cared to encode the TV broadcast episodes or fansub the series past like, episode 3 or so, so anything past episode 8 is pretty much gone forever unless you know Japanese and feel like buying the 15 discs of the R2 release (3 episodes a disc). Heck, it’s even pretty tough to get the illegal Hong Kong bootlegs of the entire show with their poor video and audio plus crappy Engrish subtitles! Still, that’s the only way for anyone to see the entire show at this point, period.
Still makes me sad. I only wish I had watched the show when it was on CN, but hardly had the chance to due to a nightly job I have. Think a friend of mine might’ve taped an episode or two when he was in Japan back when the show aired in my collection.
Wikipedia says the first 13 episodes were released in the US, but Wikipedia is wrong (what a shock).
There are times when I wish I could kick those jerks in the nuts for the misleading info that does occur on there once in a while. Don’t want to see that entry, but hopefully it doesn’t say “Worst Anime Ever Made!”
One of these days you should do Cyborg 009 (perhaps generalizing it’s manga and anime incarnations if possible).
Media Blasters may have licensed Voltron, but right afterwards they licensed GaoGaiGar! I know they have a pretty bad reputation for proofreading stuff; is that still true?
Is the ZOMG BONUS CONTENT going to be sent directly to my iPod via iTunes automatically, or do I have to go to the NSFW link while at work to download it? Sometimes, I’m out of ipecac, and I think this might help if I ever find myself in the position of needing to induce vomiting.
I feel I must correct you on American Sports movies.
Coach Carter, the aforementioned Cool Runnings, and that basketball movie with that white chick among others have the teams losing. Character development is a big deal in these things and it is more of a 60-40 split on whether they lose in the end or not.
Now as to sports manga, not my thing as I don’t like anything about sports most of the time and it seems it would be extra suspectible to the Tournament Trap
http://www.talkaboutcomics.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13585&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
(great minds think alike)
However if you guys are plugging it that much. And its good enough for Tezuka and Koike maybe I should give a scanlation of one a thumbthru
The bonus discussion MP3 is not part of the feed, so iTunes will not automatically download it. However, all you have to do to get it is type in the link we said on the air or click on the link in our show notes. It’s just a direct link to the MP3 which is hosted on my webspace, same as all the episodes. The link itself is safe for work. The audio of the MP3 isn’t, but then again neither is the rest of the show. 🙂
Regarding those sports movies mentioned and the “actually in about 40% of those movies they lose” assertion…the ONLY reason that Cool Runnings, Coach Carter, et al end with the team losing is because they’re adaptations of true stories, and in real life the team ended up losing so that’s the ending they’re stuck with. Something tells me that there are still Hollywood agents suggesting “can’t we change the ending so they win?” despite this.
Eliminate all those “based on a true story” American sports movies from consideration, and for the life of me I cannot think of a single movie where they lose in the end. I’m sure statistics dictate that there must be at least one, but I sure can’t think of it, ESPECIALLY if it’s a kid’s movie.
Eliminate all those “based on a true story” American sports movies from consideration, and for the life of me I cannot think of a single movie where they lose in the end.
Bad News Bears. Not only do they lose, but the lesson they learn is summed up when they break the second place trophy, flip off the winning team (which had just come over to tell them how much they respected them after such a hard fought game), and go off to smoke cigars and drink beer with Walter Matthau.
Also, Rocky. And doesn’t “Victory” end in a tie?
But all three of those came out in the 70s.
Wait, I take back “Bad News Bears. Going off to smoke cigars and drink beer with Walter Matthau IS winning.
Media Blasters may have licensed Voltron, but right afterwards they licensed GaoGaiGar! I know they have a pretty bad reputation for proofreading stuff; is that still true?
Yep, it was true when they first started and it’s still true today. While they’ve gotten a bit better technically, they still seem to have problems in using spell check on their subtitles. For reference, I will probably be doing a review of Another Lady Innocent in a future show and one line in it reads “I’m Coming! I’m Coning!” (yes, it is a hentai if you couldn’t figure that out). You’d think that the QC people would catch things like that, but Media Blasters, it seems, operates on a pretty tight budget or employs horny 14 year olds as their quality checkers.
This doesn’t even go into the problems they had a few years ago when practically every release by put out was encoded in some strange mono format that came out both speakers. I don’t know the details, but basically everything from a few years back is essentially a mono disk, something they’ve said they would be fixing YEARS AGO. But that’s a whole different bag of worms. Either way, I’m looking forward to their release of Gaogaigar and the other old-school robot shows, and just hope they can get that spellcheck right.
Gerald–
You’re just not up on the cutting edge of Japanese sexual fetishes. “Coning” is very popular these days.
Another great show, guys… though Clarissa really needs to use a little more PASSION and perhaps a just an extra dash of GUTS when talking about something as important as Eyeshield 21. Otherwise how would we know of their ETERNAL STRUGGLE(!!!!!)?!
Enjoyable all the same. Mostly writing this comment to just add one more log to the fire of ‘you are not alone’ re: Cyborg 009. One of my favorite shows, back at a time when I actually watched Cartoon Network and would get all excited to come home from work and watch a kids cartoon.
We anime fans are so lame. It is a delight for the senses.
Great episode guys; I especially enjoyed the spanish reading of Discipline. Kudos to Alfonso for that one.
@Dave Riley: Take pride in being lame—being anything else is overrated.
I followed the recommendation about eyeshield, now after 3 days of watching the series I’m hooked… sadly there are only 43 or so episodes fansubbed so far.
I was hesitant to try any sports anime having a bitter aftertaste with Captain Tsubasa, since they needed half an episode to get to the other side of the field, only for someone to kick it back. I also remember games lasting several episodes, which is not the case with Eyeshield (then again my memory is not that good, Capt aired more than 10 years ago).
I also remember Goal Field Hunter, which was this horrible series about a Brazilian kid (with the mandatory Japanese parents) who is a very good soccer player, but gets in a fight with the team owner’s son and is banished from ever playing soccer in Brazil because we all know that soccer is not Brazil’s national sport and there arent like a million clubs to play with, and , so he goes to Japan to play there, since that is the logical choice for any soccer player.
It is funny to watch such an american sport through the eyes of the japanese, only in anime will you find a team reluctant to let a black character play, knowing that almost 70% of the NFL players are african-american.
Anyhoo, loved it, keep the recommendations coming!
I should mention that Sven is sent to a hospital and that planet is taken over by the Planet Doom.
Also the reason no fouls are called in ES 21 is because their was only one real foul in the entire series. No one really wants to see offsides called, or facemask.
Sorry Dave. I guess my BURNING PASSION has been curtailed quite a bit by the end of the semester. 🙂
Charred Knight, was that it? It’s been a while since I watched Voltron, so my memories are a little spotty. I knew they hadn’t killed him, but I seemed to remember the team at least thinking he was dead, and being very surprised to encounter him again when he escaped from those caverns in Doom territory. After which he did the smart thing and ran off with Romelle, who was far cooler than Allura, lion pilot or no. 😉
Also, just to be Devil’s Advocate, running spell check wouldn’t help errors like the aforementioned ‘coning,’ as that’s an actual word and spell check would think nothing of it.
That in no way invalidates your point about hiring good QCers, of course. Which I do wonder about. Some errors will always slip through, though I think perhaps Media Blasters has too many to fall within those bounds.
Hey, there you go. Media Blasters, if you want good QCers, feel free to hire me once I escape from University. I promise to be a spelling and grammar Nazi. Heh.
Here’s where my info about Golion/Voltron(Since I haven’t watched it religiously since I was 4) comes from
http://golion.animation-web.com/
its easily the best Golion site on the web.
It mentions what happened in episode 7. “In “Voltron”, Sven was injured by Haggar and her Robeast and was sent to Planet Ebb for treatment. In “GoLion”, Shirogane (Sven) died.”
Also in Voltron they remove all mention of death, an example is an episode when in the japanese version they think the princess is dead, and in the american version they know she’s only sleeping. So I am pretty sure they never thought he was dead.