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In this episode, we finally review that which had been suggested to us in that “suggest things for us to review” contest. As such, Clarissa’s reviewing 5 Centimeters Per Second, Daryl’s reviewing Swallowing the Earth, and Gerald’s reviewing The Wings of Honneamise. All of these things are exceedingly difficult…which is why you won’t be hearing any of them just yet! For now though, the emails segment is edited. So you can listen to that for now.
This segment was released using compressor settings that are different from what we typically use. Let us know if it sounds noticeably worse. Oh right, just vote on the poll we put up about it! Faster than leaving a comment.
Guest podcast appearances: Daryl and Gerald are once again on the Anime82 Podcast. Gerald contributed a review to Part 2 of his Mecha Madness special (up soon, we’ll edit in the link once it’s posted). Gerald’s reviewing Z-Mind and Daryl took Mobile Suit Gundam Paul Chapman [Unicorn]. Here’s the link to Daryl’s review, which starts at about the 75:45 mark of that file. Prior to that, there are reviews of Macross and Armored Trooper VOTOMS!
Naki no Ryu is here raw on YT:
Gerald, I have Naki no Ryu on laserdisc (even though I famously have no laserdisc player). The screenplay was co-written by Hiroyuki Yamaga; as Patrick Macias would say, “Perhaps you are familiar with him.”
I liked Daryl’s comment about how you would have remembered seeing the “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” sketch from KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE. The phrase “Show me your nuts!” with accompanying hand gestures was used a great deal around Viz during the PULP days.
About the sound quality: I noticed some sound static at 4:44, but that might be a microphone issue. Otherwise it does not sound any worse.
Dear Clarissa,
I apologize if this sounds pedantic, but it’s important to note the Dark Horse CLAMP omnibus editions are not reprints, but new editions. They are based on the previous translations (although some changes and expansions have been made to these, particularly with Chobits), but other aspects of these editions are entirely new: the format, the lettering, the inclusion of bonus color, but most importantly, the fact the manga pages in the Dark Horse editions are being scanned directly from CLAMP’s original artwork; they are newly “remastered,” as it were. If it was just a reprint, it would be a lot less work ^_^
You were talking about real world brands and products showing up in Anime. I had just seen Megazone 23 Part 1 (which you guys mentioned) a week ago for the first time and my friend commented about it. There was just so much it seemed almost jarring. Even when it is paid product placement in media these days, it usually seems more subtle.
Nevertheless, Megazone 23 was still awesome.
Thanks for fielding the email guys. It’s disappointing to hear future volumes of FMP are in such a state of limbo but at least I can stop checking the Tokyopop website every few weeks.
As an update, since the email I managed to listen to every back episode of AWO. Spending hours a day at the gym made this relatively easy. I’ve garnered a tremendous amount of terrific recommendations by doing so. The only downside of this is the crushing defeat I experience when I realize many of these titles are out of print in the US so I have to torrent or eBay them and thus cannot show my support for the title with dolla dolla bills.
On the plus side, the fact that I was able to purchase a manga where a grizzly bear with an assault rifle yells “Throw down your weapon and step away from the girl” as well as preorder Golgo 13 the TV series,
I haveinstills a new found faith and vigor in the US anime market.If you’re going to talk about fellatio, then you need to upload that footage from Anime Boston.
[All of the Anime Boston footage was stuff Gerald shot. Nobody’s ever getting copies of it, or at least not me. Because if we were to get copies, we’d post them on Youtube like so and other people might see them and think they were entertaining. And that just can’t stand. Because it would be EGOTISTICAL. Or something. –Daryl]
Hail AWO!
!I have the Baribari Densetsu anime if you want them (of course I do!).Nice character design on Densetsu, but not really my cup of tea.
I also have this really strange OVA about sushi from the 80s. Any chance you guys know what
itsit’s called? I could post a screenshot of the Japanese title, I guess. I cant wait to hear your Tezuka review Daryl, as I have yet to read that one. You guys ever consider reviewing the Nausicaa manga on the show?p.s Hey Clarissa, I would love to have you on Anime82 sometime. What do you say?
?I would LOVE a copy of Baribari Densetsu if you have a good enough copy!
I have only ever found a dreadful quality avi with Chinese subs….
Was Baribari ever fansubbed into English?
Strongblood, you gotta get your podcast on iTunes!
I have Feedburner. You can copy and paste the feed thingy into iTunes if you like. [That would be of very limited usefulness, for to do so would require someone already have knowledge of your podcast’s existence. He’s saying you should get it listed in the iTunes Music Store so that people can find your podcast to begin with. –Daryl]
I currently do not have a credit card, so when I tried to get an iTunes account I was unable to do so. Perhaps one of my home boys can help me out? I will attempt to get this to happen. [You do not need an iTunes account to submit a podcast to the iTunes Store. You don’t even need to have iTunes installed. You do it via their website. –Daryl]
Lord Daryl thanks for the glorious Gundam rant on my show by the way. You are truly a king amongst men!
Hate to drag up MOE once again in the AWO comments section, but I’ve noticed that the trend has moved back towards composing songs especially for the show, but this is typically for moe-centric anime where they have all the seiyuu singing the opening song.
I suppose it’s not the same as screaming the robot’s name in the song, but I can assure you that normal people don’t buy those singles…
I guess another thing they also do is use idols/bands popular amongst otaku to sing openings, and they are all very obscure to the mainstream.
Gerald, is Dark Horse really that unsuccessful? There are over half a million copies of Berserk in print, and Hellsing / Trigun have got to be doing pretty well for them.
Logic it out. 34 volumes
,. If we call it 500,000 copies that’s only 14,706 copies per volume. That’s not too bad for something I consider overpriced for the market (sadly, a re-occurring issue with Dark Horse IMHO) but that’s nowhere near blockbuster sales.And note, they say “in print,“
,NOT sold. Since Dark Horse manga is sold unreturnable to the comic shop trade and isn’t strippable for the book store trade (whole copy only returnable depending on vendor which is a king bitch hassle for the book stores), there’s no telling how many of those copies are sitting in various distro warehouses like at Ingram and Baker & Taylor.I mean, all power to Dark Horse but they do have some issues to deal with. Such as where is my Total War: M.A.R.S. Patrol vol. 2? And this time put the pages in the right order dammit. And how about some CHEAP reprints of Magnus: Robot Fighter and not a damn $50 OOP HC
,that ALSO had mis-ordered pages? Huh?Yeah. I went there.
Perhaps. Given that the anime property is well over 10 years old, it’s pretty impressive for a manga series not tied to a mega-hit like Naruto / Bleach. Particularly given the fact that they’re all shrink-wrapped. But yes, there is a lot of marketing-speak in the statement they made. Also, tad nitpicky here, but you can’t divide that by 34 since the 34th volume doesn’t come out til August. So more like 15,152 copies per volume.
On the other hand, I totally agree about the pricing. It is a SIGNIFICANT investment to get all 33 copies of Berserk. As in, just shy of $500 at MSRP, not including tax or anything else. Even getting discounts and free shipping at Rightstuf via various sales, it still cost me about $315. Granted, Berserk is typically longer than your average tankobon at around 240 pages, but that price is still hard to swallow.
Also, just look at Blade of the Immortal. The latest volumes are $20 each. Jesus!
“Only one thing I buy from Tokyopop.” – I’ll admit I’m buying those Gravitation compilations. But unless they get the second Getten series, I’m not really interested.
RE: TMS edits. The Superman episodes didn’t even air on that Japanese-American channel. BTW, apparently, the UV release of the Golgo 13 movie not only has the OP and ED songs mixed up with the Japanese and dub tracks, but we didn’t even get the R2 commentary track from Dezaki. The “special edition” Cagliostro from Manga is the biggest offender, though, because they chopped up the opening sequence into a series of stills which the ML speculates is about reverse importation more than copyright issues.
Steve: Believe me. If Berserk were doing badly, it would be canceled, just like Worst and (allegedly) Bastard. DH is still stubborn about giving YUA another shot. They could just wide-ban the damn manga, since it’s so short. Berserk is at an even further disadvantage than those other three manga, because it’s gotta depend on 18+ fans. So I don’t think a 34+ volume “niche” manga would survive, especially in this current market, if not enough people were buying it.
As for the price, you can get it discounted on Amazon, and it probably offsets the losses from the lack of younger readers. You also have to take into account that DMP is translating it and DH is distributing it, so more people have to get paid. But I hear you on OOP reprints, as it’s a bitch to find a decently priced used copy of Lux and Alby.
irradin: I think I’m more irritated that DH is too effing lazy to number the BoTi books than anything else.
At this point it’s probably easier to just wait for the Full Metal Panic author to finish the light novel series in Japan and then see whether or not the ending will be good enough, regardless of what happens to the U.S. release in the meanwhile.
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to all three reviews. I’ve got mixed feelings about 5 Centimeters Per Second but it’s still worthy of praise and I definitely need to check out Wings of Honneamise one of these days (incidentally…as difficult or intimidating as an Utena review might be, which is perfectly understandable, I’m sure it would be worth listening to).
Can’t say I know a thing about Swallowing the Earth, outside of the fact it’s supposed to be a somewhat flawed work according to some of the buzz out there, but I’ve been reading Phoenix lately (thanks to Daryl’s impressive review of the TV series way back when), which means I’m automatically in the mood for almost anything Tezuka-related.
Good mahjong anime does not always need the yakuza, but it does have to have cheating.
Gotta throw this in: the anime music industry as we now know it started with Space Battleship Yamato. I speak this after years of research into the subject.
The first J Pop star to specifically record an anime theme was Kenji “Julie” Sawada, who did the end theme for Arrivederci Yamato in 1978. (Technically, Isao Sasaki was the first pop star to cross the line, but Sawada was closer to what we now define as J Pop.)
Then there were the multiple gold and platinum records of Yamato symphonic and BGM albums from ’78 to ’80. Anime soundtracks had never seen sales like that before, and everyone was eager to emulate this as quickly as possible. I’m pretty sure the next big music breakthrough happened with the multiple pop-rock ‘image songs’ of the MS Gundam movies.
Yamato also set the tone for live shows with the first all-Yamato concerts in summer 1978 and the big Festival in Budokan in 1980. Nascent ‘anison’ concerts got going during that time, usually sponsored by Yamato’s music publisher, Nippon Columbia.
Nobody did stuff like this before Yamato, but everyone did it afterward. The whole story of that music is told at starblazers.com.
How do you feel about Dark Horse printing those moe-fied
fairytailsfairy tales done by the artist POP (who also did Moetan)? Seems like a complete 180 degree. [It’s not a 180 if you consider that both are considered seinen titles targeted at the same demographic. Content-wise they were already releasing stuff like Oh My Goddess. Eh. –Daryl]People sometimes forget that Dark Horse’s longest-running manga title (actually, the longest-running manga title in America, period) is Oh My Goddess!, which started in 1994. It was radical for its time, in that no one was getting disemboweled by psychic cyborgs. Remember, this was the year that Manga Man came to America…for all you mad, bad main-gah people.
On the
sujectsubject of anime openings, it does seem that it‘s not only moe shows and robot remakes that get songs that are about the show. Kaichou wa Maid-sama, at least, seems to have very show appropriate lyrics in the OP and ED, although that could, I suppose, be coincidence…Wondering which was the first OP to not include the name of the show in the lyrics. I’m thinking early 80s is probably the timeframe to focus on. Urashiman or Govarian might be candidates (both 1983), but I’m probably forgetting something. Urusei Yatsura started in ’81, what about that? (I’ve never seen any of it, so I can’t judge.)
[I noted in the episode how the show name is never stated in Urusei Yatsura’s many theme songs. As they’re still created specifically for the series and done in a high volume–not just a song or two–I suggested it as the “break away point” over Yamato. The original question was “which series started the trend of using pop songs completely unrelated to the anime as the norm?” Maison Ikkoku used Alone Again by Gilbert O’Sullivan around 1986-1987, but that seems a little late. –Daryl]
I have to dig up the date but Ashita no Joe doesn’t mention the title chara (Joe Yabuki) in the OP theme..dammit, I don’t have that third This Is Animation volume…OK…um..yeah. OK, about what I thought, 1970.
And neither Galaxy Express 999
ornor Space Pirate Captain Harlock mention their respective iconic images and that’s ’79 and ’78.For Sunrise you’ve got a tie between Votoms and Dirty Pair.
Hey, I had to get this in since Tim hogged the “Yamato did it first!” slot. 🙂
The 1969 Dororo anime doesn’t seem to have the full title of the show in the OP, although someone with better Japanese than me might want to double check on that one.
It seems like not including the title in the OP isn’t really the issue, since shows with the title in the OP and shows without the title in the OP seem to have coexisted at least as far back as 1969, probably longer if someone cares to dig farther back (interesting to note that the Heidi OP, from not only the same year as Yamato, but actually the same time slot on a different network when Yamato debuted) doesn’t mention the title or the title character at all.
It could be the case that the genre is more important in determining whether the title is in the OP (Super Robot shows almost always have it, World Masterpiece Theater shows are likely not to). I think It’d probably be more interesting to look for is the first show where the OP had no tangible connection to the plot, rather than the OP didn’t have the title in it. After all, while there’s no mention of Joe by name in the OP of Ashita no Joe, for example, or of the 999 in that opening, who can deny that they’re in the same spirit as OPs like Yamato that do mention the name?
Good points there. GE999 does talk (sing?) about traveling, Harlock does mention sailing the Sea of Stars and so on.
The OP for Votoms is all about not being happy and we all know Chirico is not happy.
So for what you’re saying, Uhrwerk, a good example might be Speed Grapher which I understand used Duran-Duran’s Girls on Film as the OP theme?
well, wait, let me catch myself, because that song does have relevance to the show…dammit. I guess only if one dips into the hell of MOE can one find examples.
Well, I can’t comment on Duran Duran, not having seen Speed Grapher, but I don’t think we have to go so far as moe. In fact, I have to agree with wildarmsheero a few posts up. The moe shows I’m familiar with have songs that are a lot more closely tied to the show. (nekomimi mode, nekomimi mode DESU!)
Intuitively, I think we can agree that there’s definitely a difference between an OP like Ashita no Joe or GE999, and one like, say, “Just Communication” for Gundam Wing. I’m not sure how to draw a hard line, but I’d say definitely a song like “Just Communication” doesn’t really have much to do with Wing, at least not in the way the Harlock OP relates to Harlock, or Tobe Gundam relates to Gundam.
Sure, you can probably read some kind of emotional link, or say that maybe that such-and-such J-pop opening has a similar theme to the show it’s tacked onto, but that’s a far cry from “The steam train cuts the darkness, into the sea of stars,” which would bring us right back to the original question as asked on the show…
THEME FROM A JAPANESE ANIMATION FOR TEENAGERS THAT MAYBE YOU COULD SELL IN AMERICA ON DVD:
When I was far away,
I lost everything.
Because of you,
The “that” inside has begun to grow
But… such a thing…
Can it be forgiven?
TAIYAKI IS SWEET,
BUT MY TEARS ARE BITTER
THIS SADNESS WON’T MAKE IT ABLE TO DO ANOTHER DAY FOR IT
I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT… ALWAYS
What are those lyrics from?
The “if you don’t protect your copyright/trademark, you lose it” thing is, I believe, a myth. Companies don’t sue because they have to; they sue because they can/want to. There is no “use it or lose it” clause in American (or most international) copyright law. Heap that one onto the pile next to the Mann Act and the “you can legally distribute it in a version that isn’t commercially available in the United States” myths.
Not using your trademark is certainly not a myth. In fact, it’s the version about copyrights that’s a myth, which is usually based on someone hearing about trademarks and not understanding the difference between trademarks and copyrights.
There are a LOT of different songs in Macross 7. However, there are only like 3 in the first 5 or 6 episodes, so people who quit the series early are convinced it’s like Robotech and they just play Planet Dance every five seconds.
The idea that all the songs sound the same is also silly since we even hear music by a bunch of different fictional bands and singers within the series that sound nothing like Fire Bomber, like the laid back pop music of Alice Holiday, and the various stupid bands Fire Bomber competes with in the battle of the bands. Also the Fire Bomber songs Mylene is the only singer for are usually a lot more fun and poppy than the more rock oriented songs Basara is lead on.
Example of an Alice Holiday song that sounds NOTHING like Fire Bomber: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/p071mGAPJU8/
But Macross 7 is an excellent example of cramming a show full of music and selling lots of soundtrack albums and while there are certainly some soundtrack songs that don’t show up on the show, Macross 7 has a ton of music in the show. Characters are often listening the radio and you hear songs like this on it: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/Zd6DWuKZk-A/
Macross mostly eschews background music entirely in favor of vocal pop or rock songs.
The latest episode works fine on my computer but for some reason it plays at double speed when I play it on my DS with an R4. Don’t know why, nothing else does that. [Strange, it’s encoded exactly the same way as all the other episodes. Issues like that typically suggest your player doesn’t like the sampling rate used, but if it plays one it should play them all. –Daryl]
On the subject of audio quality – I’ve listened to this episode twice now, once on headphones and once on speakers. It doesn’t sound bad, but it does sound compressed. I’d suggest backing off on the compression a little, somewhere between the old and new settings.