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In an attempt to more accurately reflect what this podcast is SUPPOSED to be, Gerald reviews the new(ish) anime Fantastic Children, Clarissa reviews the not-so-surprisingly forgotten A Wind Named Amnesia, and Daryl’s search for THE TRUTH at anime conventions continues with Part 2 of The Japanese Animation Convention is Decadent and Depraved!
Introduction (00:00 – 27:55)
We play some voicemails that are are reactions to the GeekNights voicemail from last week: SimHuman’s got issues with live action vs animated porn and has a super idea regarding segregating cosplayers from the rest of the convention, then Jeff Tatarek shares with us his long experience with cosplay and AMVs. Not content to stop there, Jeff dons his Zecter to defeat the Maharaja Mack Daddy once and for all, undoubtedly to prepare him for his second guest appearance on the Otaku Generation podcast. Chad Clayton also writes in regarding whether or not Project A-Ko was obviously a comedy given that there are people in this world who don’t realize Commando is a real-time documentary, which somehow results in us discussing the state of comedy in anime overall. Finally, we talk about why the Japanese haven’t updated their distribution system, even though we don’t have any qualifications to answer such a question. Then again we don’t have the qualifications to answer any questions.
- Mangacast – this man is a MACHINE because of the number of episodes this guy is up to, but unfortunately there’s no way to navigate through them
Let’s News! (27:56 – 35:40)
We take a look at a supremely bad business plan involving several Japanese companies releasing manga from the 1920’s and also some of the first work of some of the manga greats like Leiji Matsumoto. The Director of CMX also reveals why they took the only good thing about Tenjou Tenge out of it. We also discuss the top ten list of what ICv2 considers the most powerful people in the American anime industry. Daryl would like to semi-retract the statement he made regarding Diamond owning ICv2, as he can find no concrete evidence of this being the case despite there being very strong ties. Sort of like Dick Cheney and Halliburton. We also discuss the entry of Illumitoon into the anime distribution marketplace. Clearly, CPM having money problems wasn’t a hint that the market was oversaturated!
- Comipress translated article for classic manga boom
- ANN’s Page on Metropolis Manga
- Tezuka World’s Official Site on Metropolis Manga
- Dark Horse’s Official Site on Metropolis Manga
- Ultra Jump’s Official Site
- Business Jump’s Official Site (Japanese) – this was the anthology that originally ran Battle Angel until it switched over to Ultra Jump
Overlooked Anime: A Wind Named Amnesia (35:41 – 52:59)
Clarissa takes a look an a the sadly overlooked 1990 movie A Wind Named Amnesia. This is what happens when thoughtbird gets too greedy. Find out the secret hidden connections between this, Galaxy Express 999 and the not-in-real-time documentary Johnny Mnemonic!
Review: Fantastic Children (53:00 – 1:07:12)
Gerald tries to actually catch up with what everyone else out there is watching by reviewing a show that was released two years ago. Unfortunately, despite NOTHING but positive reviews online and no one daring to say anything negative about the show, Gerald is unable to find much to like about it (well at least the first 10 episodes). This probably comes from the vast amount of scenes of people looking at something and being TERRIFIED before everything fades to black, which annoys him when it’s done over five times per episode.
- ANN’s Page on Fantastic Children
- Official Japanese Fantastic Children Site – the official Japanese site gives away everything about the show, so if you can read Japanese be warned…though if you CAN read Japanese, you should be spending your time at better endeavors, like translating Sakigake! Otoko Juku!
THE TRUTH about anime fandom: The Japanese Animation Convention is Decadent and Depraved, Part 2 (1:06:14 – 1:29:40)
Daryl’s ongoing journey to bridge the divide between modern anime fandom and himself for the sake of his own salvation continues now, with Part Two of this special wannabe gonzo tell-all. Part 1 is here in Show 23.
- The Corner Raver – he emailed us months ago asking when this report would be up; video of him in action can be supplied if there is demand
- Girls Love the Revolutionary Wii Controller – this is how Ted Bundy would operate
- Clarissa’s brother – well no, not really; he was one of many Truth Underminers
- The Brain Smith in his yaoi attendant uniform – you can see more of The Brain at Risingsun.net; he most recently resorted to dressing up as Captain Jack Sparrow to get a free movie ticket
- The highly vocal, highly visible majority that dominates the face of anime conventions
- The guys in the video that the people in the previous link showed me – an interview with them was conducted but was omitted for time constraints; the picture says it all anyway
- Picture of a girl soliciting sexual favors – photo taken by Daryl around 11 AM
- Picture of the same girl being taken up on her offer – photo taken by Gerald roughly 12 hours later; we’re pretty sure she didn’t move from that spot all day. Note the very important dollar bill.
- A Florida anime club president and her husband – we’ll be seeing them again at AWA
Closing (1:29:40 – 1:33:39)
Can it be that some of the things we say actually result in people watching the stuff we’d be talking about? Better mention how Animeigo is selling Crusher Joe for like $6 with free shipping, plus their other stuff is going for awfully cheap too! The box your orders will ship in look like they were personally stomped upon by Robert Woodhead himself, but the contents should still be fine. Next time, it’s Daryl’s turn to watch something recent–and by his standards that means “from only a few years back”–so he’s going to watch the 13 episode series, Natsuhiko Kyogoku’s Requiem From the Darkness. Now that the series is over, Clarissa is going to acquiesce the demands of the masses and review something that actually IS recent, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Finally, Gerald is going to review one of his favorite anime, Gall Force.
I have to go to work in less than six hours. Why in Bob’s name did I sit here, frantically pressing F5 in hopes of getting this downloaded before I go to sleep?
I am watching A Wind Named Amnesia via Amazon video. It is free for Amazon Prime members. [It is also free with ads on RetroCrush. Man, this episode is from 14 years ago… —-Daryl]
Same reason I’m messing with the site despite having to be awake in about the same amount of time: love for the sound of one’s own voice!
We’re having some problems with the feed. Namely, it’s too darned big. The iTunes summaries always appeared as a huge jumbled block of unreadable text, and it’s because our feed contained the entire blog posts in them. For the moment, I’ve removed all but the most recent 5 episodes from the feed to keep the feed size in check, but the real solution will be that the feed will contain something very short (ie “in this episode we talk about how to shoot down a helicopter the Crystal Triangle way”) and the website will contain the full set of notes.
…just as soon as I figure out how to do that in Feedburner given that I’m not hosting the podcast blog on my own personal space, but rather the Blogger servers.
(Steve)
Another 8 hours of downloading to start, but I have to comment on the pics.
Too Much Truth!
I mean, the brain guy..there’s a girl in the background who I SWEAR is carrying a Woozle!
A FUCKING WOOZLE!
I thought we killed them all in the ’80s.
Let’s all take a journey to..THE BRAIN PALACE!
Haven’t got through the whole episode yet, but this first review makes it sound like there’s an entire genre of “mysteriously knowledgable women and visiting places that represent the human condition” out there in anime. Have you seen Kino’s Journeys, for instance? I eagerly await the episode where you review it back-to-back with Magnos the Robot.
(By the way, I found an old Superbook VHS tape in a Goodwill. I think I’ll donate it to Daryl at AFO, since if anyone needs a tape of Superbook it’s him.)
OK, here’s something I do know about. I haven’t watched all of Fantastic Children, but I did watch 18 episodes, and that’s enough to know this:
* Nothing happens for 10 episodes. The only time I was really annoyed with it were the scenes where Helga stared into a pool of water for ten minutes, but I was of course watching it for free.
* The Children of Béfort meet Helga. At this point the show infodumps the entire plot and stuff starts happening. Lots of it. It also gets even more dramatic than anything, even Planetes, and then I stopped watching because I was getting sick of dramatic suspense. I’ll have to go back to it sometime.
Also, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that the ending was sung in Russian in one episode, and the fansubbers decided that the thing to do would be to put in karaoke in Cyrillic, romanized Russian, and English.
(The ending was done by the half-Russian/half-Japanese ORIGA.)
Haha, thanks for reading my letter.
My terminology probably wasn’t all that helpful, but when I said “zany comedy” I was meaning to to refer to that particular subset of anime comedy that’s very loud, fast-paced, gag-a-second type of stuff. Excel Saga, Elf Princess Rane, Animation Runner Kuromi, Kodocha’s more frenetic moments, stuff like that. Maybe “parody-comedy” is a more specific term, but those Akitaroh Daichi titles aren’t really parodies of anything.
As you guys mentioned, there are still a lot of shows that have a lot more restraint and wit, and those are the shows that I like best. Azumanga Daioh, Cromartie High School, and even Galaxy Angel seldom fail to make me laugh. I just tend to see a lot of the really stupid, loud comedies, which leads me to make occasionally crass generalizations about the state of today’s anime comedy.
****
Wow, it’s been years since I’ve ever even thought of Wind Named Amnesia. I may actually have to see it again, though I don’t really remember being that impressed when I first saw it. I don’t know if it’s the ~8-9 years of distance talking, but it struck me as not much more than a potentially fascinating (yet largely untapped) premise and some scattershot execution. I wonder if I’d like it better at 26 than I did at 16.
I do like the idea of turning it into a TV series, or at least letting it span a few OVAs. The movie was so pressed for time that I don’t think it ever really developed its ideas or made a point that stuck. And yeah, the ending is a huge moment of “wait, that’s it?”
I want you guys to know that I had to take my headphones off and hold them at arm’s length during the fangirl shriek. Bad flashbacks.
All right, here’s the deal. Rather than rely on the automatically generated Atom XML file that Blogger creates when I do a post, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and manually create an entirely separate RSS XML file that will have to be manually updated each time a new episode is released. The benefit to this is that I can now make the feed entries very short, which means that there should not be any more problems with the feed size being too large. Therefore, all of the episodes should be showing up again in iTunes and what have you soon. There should be no need for anyone to have to change anything on their side: the Feedburner link is still the feed.
Of course, the operative word is “should.” I’ve never done this before and I have no clue whether it’ll work as advertised. If something’s gone all weird on you as a result, let me know.
8 hour downloads? Man, it’s 2006. Ain’t you people heard of DSL? It costs less than dial-up, and you can download way more porn and podcasts.
Wind Named Amnesia was one of those movies I liked a lot, and then if asked to describe what it was about, I wouldn’t be able to remember. I guess it really is a wind named amnesia. Time to rewatch it.
Hey, that “Will Yaoi for Money” guy — did he yell out, “Rico, get over here!” Was he calling out Rico Tubbs, smartly-dressed member of the vice squad of the city of Miami? That’s it! I’m Miami Vice cosplaying next convention I attend. My Overfiend costume can wait.
What really disturbs me about these teenage yaoi fangirls are the parents… sure, kids can sneak out to do a lot of stuff they don’t know about, but come on – hanging out in some hotel after 9pm?
As much as I’d love to see the cosplayers segregated and required to pay a fee to do their thing, you have to realize (as it was pointed out by clarissa, iirc) that the Japanese cons you’re talking about are really Doujin events. For one thing, you don’t have to pay an admission fee to even get into (most of, if not all of) these things, cause you’re paying them money to get their catalogue. They have to make money off of the cosplayers somehow, that space they stand in isn’t going to pay for itself!
Also, separating cosplayers seems a lot more important at the doujin events when you realize how incredibly packed the things can get. Anyone that is wearing anything large or obtrusive will probably get that part of their costume destroyed. Hell, even the rolling backpacks that the cosplayers bring are a huge pain in the ass at those things. As so many things seem to be, it’d be wonderful if we could do it here because it’d make our lives a little easier, but it’s pretty much neccesary in Japan. Well, I will give an exception for the 50+ year old guy dressed up as Suiseiseki from Rozen Maiden that apparently wandered the halls last comic market, that’s just awesome.
Hey guys-
I’m a new listener, and I’m glad to hear that educated people like yourselves can bring thought WITH enthusiasm/zeal back to anime/manga using the podcast mechanism. I have to admit…Daryl’s escapades among what some would term “neophytes” to be remarkably similar to my recent con visits. I have much nostalgia like some other listeners, for the early days of convention-dom on the East Coast. There is a great deal of truth being revealed here, and I’ll be listening to bring truth to my own thoughts of con experiences, future and past. If nothing else, I can laugh at what crazy @#$% people will do just to get attention at cons.
Dan “On Tap”
Okay, I love the show, but you guys need to stop being such good reviewers as I even want to buy the stuff you say to stay away from just to see if it is as hilariously bad as you say. Especially MD Giest with the whole unplugged robot final battle thing, what the hell. I’m too poor to keep having my interest kindled like this.
Clarissa is probably already aware of this, but if she doesnt like Haruhi that she may suddenly find herself e-sieged by fans. Just look at the thread it spawned on ADTRW, freaking massive beast of a thread.
You probably already thought of this or had it suggested, but maybe you could do a seperate MP3 recording of answering a portion of the backlogged emails and voicemails, like you did with that massive beast of an MP3 with GeekNights. Just an idea.
-Ell
Wow, Crayon Shin-chan is going on AdultSwim next month. I can only imagine the editing.
I totally agree that Fantastic Children was dissappointing. But the first 9 episodes of Juuni Kokki so its hard for even old school ppl to judge whether Fantastic Children are good or or not.
About the art: I dont know if its because I draw myself, I find that FC had really great art. Anime isnt supposed to be detailed–its suppose to be stylized and therefore unique. Unlike Shakugan no Shana and Zero no Tsukaima which share the same char designs.
The ppl in Gundam seed all have Down’s Syndrome.
I do admit it’s hard to review something you only saw a fraction thereof such as with Gerald’s review of “Fantastic Children”. I myself probably would not be interested in seeing it anyway, but I know I could do a great review of “Future Boy Conan” (having seen that three times over), of course I’m TOO old-school to bother with that.
Everytime I go to a Best Buy I can NEVER make up my mind over what to get at all, since it’s all too unfamiliar to me at this point, I’ll just follow AWO and go from there (once I get paid this week I might as well pick up the Giant Robo brick since I keep missing out on doing so, I just hope my Best Buy bothers to keep it in stock or else I’ll just forget ever going anywhere for a month, it’s getting to a point I can’t even trust stores anymore, and often I find better things on eBay that fills my plate). Of course AnimEigo’s still got some closeout items of interest I could get too (Crusher Joe and the KOR material, though I already have the Crusher Joe LDs and haven’t been interested in it further than that, unless there’s something in the dub I might get a kick out of).
how can you talk about the wonderful cast of johnny mnemonic and forget henry rollins? for shame.
Hey Gerald where can i buy Crusher Joe OAV online that ship worldwide? I tried my usually good supplier in the US but no luck. Help?
Hey Gerald where can i buy Crusher Joe OAV online that ship worldwide? I tried my usually good supplier in the US but no luck. Help?
Give DVD Pacific a shot. We buy from there a lot since they’re located close by and have low price. They have Crusher Joe in stock, albiet Low Stock and they seem to ship everywhere.
I believe Amazon has Crusher Joe as well. At least, they did when I bought it from them.
Once again a full force five on the richter scale of a podcast. I REALLY enjoy the search (especialy the photos that are associated with it). I listen to the search first then eagerly rush to check out the photos that accompany each section having envisioned in my mind what the people should look like and it never matches up the TRUTH is always more amazing than anything I had imagined. Can we please have a video podcast of the search one of these days?
Oh yea them anime reviews are amazing as well. Thanks for the insight.
BUILD A BLOODY TOP TEN LIST ALREADY!
Best WIshes.
About what that guy said regarding Fantastic Children:
Great plot twist at the end? No, no, no. The twist is… too litte too late and happens as a result of a terrible wrench in the narrative. It takes a leap into the fantastical (rather than fantastic) that makes sense in restrospect, but just doesn’t blend seamlessly with all the stuff you see at the beginning.
There is a review that agrees with you in a lot of ways: http://www.anime-planet.com/reviews/a632.html
You honestly think anyone named Jeff “Leaky Bladder” Tatarek could defeat The MMD? Foolish mortals, you’ve brought a curse upon all your houses!
No seriously. Glad to see you’re all still podcasting. My goal in life is to see as many of the podcasts from the era succeed and thrive. Kudos to you all.
[This podcast was like, from eight years ago! –Daryl]
Yup, eight years and still podcasting. Wow, quick moderation! Wait, eight years ago you were on episode 28 and now your podcast is just barely over 100. What gives?
Interesting, I thought you did not review Fantastic Children.
It’s strange to see you not liking it (strange, but not impossible). As for me? It is one of the best stories in anime. Perhaps I am biased due to liking the ideas and themes? I don’t know.
Or maybe I do. Anyway, the show is great. It’s just not for everyone.