Anime World Order Show # 20 – Mechanist Doctrine and Dudettes Being Rudettes

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:30:36 — 41.5MB)

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This week, it’s all anime reviews as Clarissa talks about Ouran High School Host Club, Gerald reviews the limited edition release of Patlabor the Movie, and all will receive the anime blessing…and the cleansing. But will they lift up their arms and praise Daryl for reviewing Karas, as the vapors make them pure? NNNAYYYY, they will WAIL and SCREAM, most ungrateful…!

Introduction (0:00 – 28:35)
“Reliance upon others is weakness for the strong, but strength for the weak. Wisdom and balance lie in knowing your own nature over time.” — Chronicle of the Metal Age

For all the time we spend answering emails, we barely seem to get through that many. Curse our insistence on being thorough! We continue our Full Metal Panic discussion from last week and lament the fact that pretty much nobody has given us questions to ask Monkey Punch at Metrocon next week. Plus we talk about Galaxy Angel, The Melancholy of Harumi Suzumiya, what books and authors are worth looking into if you’re interested in anime from an academic standpoint, and of course, we complain about our archnemesis, the dark spectre of moe.

• Big Big Truck Productions – why, for a minute there I was wondering if EK was going to become EW, cause that’d just be GROSS!
• Fast Karate For the Gentleman’s episode about the dark spectre of moe
• A much more TRUTH infused definition of moe
• Big Damn Cowboys – Jeff “Rich Lather” Tatarek’s latest AMV and the side-by-side comparison to the actual opening to Firefly
• Anime Jump’s Review of Galaxy Angel – we trust Mike’s opinion on shows and apparently he liked it
• ANN’s entry for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
• Anime News Network poll asking why people go to anime conventions – notice how low some of the supposed “popular” events are
• Frederik L. Schodt’s homepage – has plenty of information about Schodt himself and all the books he’s written, like the one about Ranald MacDonald
• Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation by Helen McCarthy
• The Anime Encyclopedia by Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements – this is the expanded edition that is coming out this November.
• Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle, Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation by Susan Napier – this is the revised edition of her earlier book, Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke, Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation
• Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii by Brian Ruh
• The books of Gilles Poitras
• Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics by Paul Gravett
• Japan Edge: The Insider’s Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture – This was written by several people including Patrick Macias and Carl Horn
• Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews by Fred Patten – it says the author is Carl Macek, but he only did the foreword; Patrick mentioned using this book extensively when writing his book…
• Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo by Patrick Macias and Tomohiro Machiyama – This covers some of the really strange and unusal people that inhabit Tokyo, and if you want to know how cool it is check out our 5th episode
• Stone Bridge Press, publisher of most of these books we just listed

Let’s News! (28:36 – 37:10)
“The man who learns only what others know is as ignorant as if he learns nothing. The treasures of knowledge are the most rare, and guarded most harshly.” — Chronicle of the First Age

Gerald retracts his previous reporting that the PC games for Bible Black and Discipline are coming out in English, but gets his spirits back up by mentioning how exactly zero people wrote it to defend Trinity Blood. Media Blasters cancels their release of the Riki-Oh anime, prompting Daryl to express his desire for Viz to release the mindblowing manga once they’re done releasing Tough. Also, there’s a new hero in town and her name is Mimei Sakamoto. A shame she lacks the street cred of say, The Nish.

Review – Karas: The Prophecy (37:10 – 59:23)
“He poured his children’s eyes from glass and from steel wrought their hands that none could escape His judgement.” — The New Scripture of the Master Builder

When Daryl was new-forged, Karas took him away from the foundry mother and said “Thou art the child of my endeavors; follow me and thou shalt inherit the Earth.” Discover the links and similarities between Karas, tokusatsu, Final Fantasy Advent Children, and the secret Mechanist plot hatching within Soulforge Cathedral! Fine, fine, so “Karras” isn’t quite the same as “Karas,” but Daryl never asks himself “who’s going to get this?” Daryl just says to himself “the right people will get this.” Just like TV’s Frank.

• Daryl’s review of Final Fantasy: Advent Children
• Manga Video’s Official Karas website – note that it’s not a movie; also, read their synopsis page
• Official Japanese website for Karas, which hints of an Xbox 360 game in development
• Wikipedia’s entry on yokai
• Anime On DVD’s review of Karas that Gerald insisted on bringing up during this segment, then forgot to do so, just like with those F encodes by Michael Wishlow

Promo: R5 Central (59:23 – 1:00:09)
Mike Dent’s foray to Anime Central has resulted in a convention report that’s going to span three parts! Could he be searching for THE TRUTH as well, perhaps?

Often Overlooked: Patlabor the Movie, Limited Edition (1:00:09 – 1:15:48)
“To manipulate a man is a careful project. Too light a hand, and he follows his own whim; too heavy a hand and he will turn on you.” — Chronicle of the Metal Age

Back in our early shows we discussed this upcoming release and told people to check it out once it came out. Well, now that it’s come out, we’ll say it once more, only this time Gerald’s going to tell everyone exactly what you get for the extremely hefty price tag. Hmm, on second thought, most people should probably just check out the much more affordable “movie only” edition.

Review – Ouran High School Host Club (1:15:48 – 1:26:29)
“Bricky roads they trappers grass, stoney walls they trappers wind, iron stove it trappers fire. Trappers is we by the works of hands, and forgets us we were ever free…” –Inked grass scroll

Apparently things that only just came out on DVD are still considered “old releases” by the exacting standards of the Internet, so in an effort to not be labeled as the “we only talk about old stuff at the exclusion of everything else” podcast and be relabeled as the “we mostly talk about old stuff because we’re too lazy to watch through our backlog” podcast, Clarissa’s giving us our thoughts on this anime that’s all about a girl pretending to be a dude that’s pretending to be rude so all the ladies will swoon. Watch your step, there’s references to 80s sitcoms and teen comedies underfoot.

• Viz Shojo Beat site entry for Ouran – our review is actually for the anime, but you can get the manga officially courtesy of Viz [Daryl: With whatever funds are left over after you buy their releases of Phoenix, Golgo 13, and Tough of course!]
• Oh, just in case anyone’s curious. There are about three or four groups subbing this series right now; Clarissa’s watching Solar’s myself, and they seem fine.

Promo: Otaku Generation (1:26:29 – 1:26:43)
This week, the Podcast of Otaku Generation is rocking the dragon as they interview the hosts of Daizenshuu Ex, a podcast devoted to Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and all the merchandise and such associated with Akira Toriyama’s megahit about people standing around threatening to fight each other. All this, plus Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots!

Closing (1:26:43 – 1:30:36)
“When we looked at the relics of the precursors, we saw the height civilization can attain. When we looked at their ruins, we marked the danger of that height.” — Keeper Annals

Next week is an episode requiring years of preparation on the parts of us all, to the interest of well, probably nobody. Daryl is going to finally review the Often Overlooked OAV series Giant Robo, Gerald will review the old super robot series Combattler V which he and Clarissa have spent the last half year or so watching, and Clarissa is going to talk all about Saint Seiya. Sure, nobody’s going to listen since nobody cares about any of these shows, but let it not be said that our anime podcast is just like all the rest! Otherwise Daryl will see to it that you’re locked up within Shalebridge Cradle.