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There are officially too many good videogames coming out right now, but we resist the urge to slack off just barely. Daryl talks about The Twelve Kingdoms, Clarissa gives us her thoughts on the first few episodes of both Death Note and D. Gray-Man, and we somehow manage to talk about our experiences at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2006 in 30 minutes instead of 2 hours.
We were going to write in the rest of the show notes, but these videogames aren’t going to play themselves, okay?! Well, the ones that aren’t Final Fantasy 12, anyway.
Introduction (0:00 – 23:28)
We’ve got three copies of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid Volume 1 to give away, courtesy of Funimation. It’s simple: just email us your name and address (and while you’re at it, include some feedback about the podcast!) and then we’ll choose the winners at random from the entries we receive by the 16th or so. Actually, the 16th is Thanksgiving, isn’t it. Eh, whatever; we’re otaku who live in isolation. To us, Thanksgiving is just another day! If we were smart, we’d choose the winners randomly from the people who’ve added us as favorites on Podcast Pickle, but we’re not. Oh yeah, and we answer your emails: somehow, discussion on Rumiko Takahashi turns into discussion on Akira Toriyama. No wonder Keith Allison sent us this:
Let’s News! (23:28 – 31:49)
We talk about Vertical’s licensing of the manga Terra E or Toward the Terra by Keiko Takemiya the writer of some shonen ai stuff, HOWEVER Terra E is NOT shonen ai. Gerald is furious with the movie because his VHS tape of it died five minutes before the end forever depriving him of knowing the outcome. Production IG is also continuing the 70’s robot show Raideen which was remade previously in ’96. Also, Japanese companies are not being paid on their licenses, perhaps because they’re insane on their licensing costs.
Promo: R5 Central (31:49 – 33:14)
Mike’s just a little despondent over the news that the Wachowskis are going to be the ones making the upcoming live-action Speed Racer movie. The GAIM promo was originally what was in this space, but then everything got thrown into disarray when we heard that Rym and Scott pronounce it “Gee Aim.”
Review: The Twelve Kingdoms (33:14 – 53:49)
Daryl summarizes it this way: it’s like Fushigi Yuugi. Only it doesn’t suck. This was another excellent newer show that was pretty much ignored by the vast majority of anime fans, which is a crying shame because it’s awesome. If you’re into epic fantasy tales of political intrigue, this is the show for you.
See this map? MEMORIZE IT. There will be a test later.
Long straight red hair is second only in superiority to long straight black hair. Someday all the “redheads” of the world will have red hair like Jennifer Garner’s in the first episode of Alias.
This is why The Twelve Kingdoms succeeds where Fushigi Yuugi and all the rest fail. NO CRAPPY ROMANCE STORY.- Anime News Network’s entry for The Twelve Kingdoms – come on otaku, Aya Hisakawa is the voice of the main character! And it’s got Takehito Koyasu playing the role he always plays! In fact, there’s a lot of famous seiyuu in this, so you Hitoshi Doi types HAVE to watch it now!
- Twelve Kingdoms Encyclopedia of Terms – both in English and Japanese; the index page is a 404 so I’m just linking to the “K” page because there’s a lot of entries there and it inspires dread
- Incomplete fan translations of the novel which picked up where the anime ended: The Shore in Twilight, The Sky in Daybreak Vol 1, Vol 2 – too bad the translation was never completed
Early Impressions: Death Note and D. Gray-Man (53:49 – 1:04:11)
By listener request, Clarissa’s gone ahead and checked out some of the new shows currently airing in Japan so we can talk about something new for once. Here’s what she thinks so far about these two anime adaptations of popular Shonen Jump series.
This is Allen Walker. Observe, you can tell it’s the Victorian era by his stylish Black Jack ensemble.
This is Allen’s parasite-type anti-Akuma weapon, aka his left arm.
What is akuma? (Lady don’t hurt me.)
Okay, this is an akuma. I was going to pull a screencap, but none of them give a full view on one screen without being too tiny and dark to make out.
The Earl of the Millenium and his easy Akuma model kit! It only looks innocent until the soul of your loved one gets trapped in it and it kills you, then wears you like a flesh suit.
And because I like them and I felt like it, here’s Allen and a couple other Exorcists in their semi-gothy uniforms.Promo: Eeeper’s Choice (1:04:11 – 1:05:03)
Eeeper bought each of us copies of the Region 2 DVD of Only Yesterday just because we complained on an earlier episode that Turner Classic Movies aired it but there’s still no R1 DVD. We figure the least we can do to pay him back is play his promo.
Con Report: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2006 (1:05:03 – 1:33:58)
Nobody else in the Orlando area who goes to AWA seems to enjoy it at all except for us. This is mysterious and terrifying. Anyway, AWA was Daryl’s first convention, and it’s still his favorite. Listen on and discover why!
Promo: Otaku Generation (1:33:58 – 1:34:24)
OG’s got the right idea. Take goofy excerpts from your podcast and make THOSE your promos, that way you can have TONS of them. We should rip that idea off from them just like how we rip everything else off from them! Only we’ll claim we ripped off Dave and Joel instead. BRILLIANT!
Closing (1:34:24 – 1:39:38)
This segment STINGS, and that’s a shoot! Next week, we’re actually probably just going to put up the rest of Clarissa’s take on the Fall 2006 season, but the week after THAT is when we’ll stick to what we said here. Gerald is going to live up to William Bradford’s expectations by reviewing “obscure bootleg anime from the 80s” since he’ll be talking about Future Police Urashiman. Daryl’s going to review obscure non-bootleg anime from the 80s since he’s going to talk about a movie he likes that everyone else hates (other than crazy old men who refuse to get broadband), The Dagger of Kamui. Finally, now that Daryl caved in on reviewing Fist of the North Star, Clarissa’s caving and reviewing Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure! Just Part 1 for now, otherwise it’d take up the entire show.
You know who’d make a good Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure/Fist of the North Star character? That’s right: Carl Horn!
The flattened-out pointed hand is the most vital element to mastery of both Hokuto Shinken and Stands alike.
I still hold my fanboy anger that Bandai has been wasting all this time with limited run, expensive garage kits when they SHOULD be popping all this stuff out in lovely, easy to build, CHEAP polystyrene injection mold plastic. The market is there but they’re going for ‘expensive cult item’ profits.
I don’t know if I agree. I mean I’m sure the market is healthy in Japan, but I have a hard time believing that it’s as big now where there’s videogames and such around, as it was in say in the early 80’s when it was one of the only games in town.
Also, I thought they were still making cheap model kits. I’ve seen some cheaper kits come out for Eureka 7, SD Gundam, Armored Core, and Mars Daybreak so I don’t think they’ve forgotten about that market completely.
If you look at Hobby Japan it looks like the only styrene models of anime mecha that sell are Gundam plastic kits. There are sometimes kits from other series, but the Gundam brand has sort of eaten the rest of the market. Bandai does make cheapo kits for just about every mecha series as it comes out though.
Companies go with resin for smaller markets because it makes more business sense and, as a side note, because the detail in resin figures is way better.
(put your moemoe resin kit of choice next to your its PVC clone and the differences are clear. same goes for gundam stuff, but they’re not the EXACT SAME figure)
I love twelve kingdoms.
The only problem of this series is the author have not published new episode since 2001.
The sequels are supposed to be published in sometime, but not sure.
How long shoud I have to wait…………………
If you wanna watch or read this series,
you have to have a patient to wait the sequel……
sub: The differences between resin and plastic are just a question of production cost. The tooling for plastic is vastly more expensive than resin; plastic kits don’t get economical until you’re producing tens of thousands of them. So there is a cost savings in simplifying the plastic kits. There are plenty of superdetailed plastic kits out there, from manufacturers like Tamiya or Hasegawa.
There are Hasegawa kits like this one that are so unbelievably detailed that I wonder how someone could possibly paint everything. And then I look into Hobby Japan and have to realize that the Japanese are capable of it. To give an example, the dashboard in these models is one tiny piece of plastic that’s probably no smaller than a dime. Yet, somehow, I’ve seen photos of those painted with each button colored and with a small schematic pained onto the tiny screen. I’ve got the photo in an issue of Hobby Japan that I should scan since it’s pretty amazing, that is, if it’s not Photoshoped.
Gerald said…
There are Hasegawa kits like this one that are so unbelievably detailed that I wonder how someone could possibly paint everything. And then I look into Hobby Japan and have to realize that the Japanese are capable of it. To give an example, the dashboard in these models is one tiny piece of plastic that’s probably no smaller than a dime. Yet, somehow, I’ve seen photos of those painted with each button colored and with a small schematic pained onto the tiny screen. I’ve got the photo in an issue of Hobby Japan that I should scan since it’s pretty amazing, that is, if it’s not Photoshoped.
It makes me think of a movie Dudley Moore was in called “Crazy People”, where he gets sent to the nut house and turns the other patients into ad agency execs with terribly crazy ideas for ads that speak in a bulls__t fashion. One that came up way at the end for Sony has a guy bring up that caucasians were just too damn big to handle tiny circuitry that the Japanese are capable of. I just thought of it for that one scene.
I’m watching the first disk of 12 Kingdoms. It’s pretty good but I was wondering if Nakajima ever stops being a whiny crybaby all the time.
If she doesn’t shut up with the bawling I don’t know if I can finish watching it.
I’m watching the first disk of 12 Kingdoms. It’s pretty good but I was wondering if Nakajima ever stops being a whiny crybaby all the time.
If only I had made mention of this very issue within my review of it in this episode.
Oh wait. I DID, and in no uncertain terms!
Oops. Sorry, it’s been a while since I listened to that episode. All I remember is that you liked it so I thought I’d check it out.
I like your podcast, but the commercials you run for other podcasters are totally unintelligible and horrible! Can you PLEASE give out tutorials for these assholes with audio software? [That may actually be our fault more than theirs; we typically apply noise filters/compression/etc to other promos to bring them in line with the rest of our mono radio/phone-quality audio, and that might mess things up if their shows are done in CD quality stereo sound. We haven’t run many promos in recent years since the individual shows aren’t multi-segmented. –Daryl]