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It’s our Sweet Sixteenth year of podcasting! To celebrate, Daryl decides we need more Ken Ishikawa so we review 1989’s Kyomu Senshi Miroku. But we think it’s probably Kyomu Senki Miroku? Whatever, you’ll surely be hearing about this from the YouTubers soon enough.
Introduction (0:00 – 30:21)
We kick off year sixteen of AWO by catching up on what we’ve been watching, which leads to some conversation and speculations regarding the Sony buyout of Crunchyroll from AT&T that is hopefully less anger-inducing to Justin Sevakis than the one he heard on YouTube with the 750K views. We observe that a ton of the new anime this season is NOT on Crunchyroll…and that nobody’s really talking about those shows. The anime landscape is undergoing yet another shift, but it’ll most likely be a year before the major changes become evident to us industry outsiders.
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- Anime Specific, the new podcast from Regan of Anime82 and Dane from Anime Pacific we were talking about
- There is in fact a standard edition Blu-Ray release of Demon Slayer courtesy of FUNimation. Here’s Volume 1, and here’s Volume 2.
Promo: Right Stuf Anime (30:21 – 33:08)
The 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of Bartender is finally out, so you can see for yourselves that there’s more to “iyashikei” anime than young girls eating cake. You can also have young LADIES drinking BOOZE. Or old dads…drinking BOOZE. We’re just saying, it’s a broad umbrella term. You can also preorder your Cyber City Oedo 808 Blu-Ray, though most of the healing in that comes from throwing cyber vampires out into the cold blackness of space, causing them to decompress but then recompress. See? It’s healing.
Review: Kyomu Senshi Miroku or as we insist, Kyomu Senki Miroku (30:21 – 1:29:57)
I believed you were different? I hoped you were different! What started off as a casual name drop from Blacotaku1 in Show 194 has given rise to what lies before you now. We recommend you listen to Show 184 first before listening to this (and that in turn recommended you listen to Show 165 first, as our ongoing ploy to keep you listening to us), but really this is the spiritual successor to Show 54 because that was when Gerald reviewed Black Lion by Go Nagai. Well, Ken Ishikawa took a look at Black Lion and said “pfft, that’s nothing” as Ken Ishikawa would do when looking at everything Go Nagai did. The result is this six episode onslaught of NINJANIGANS, and you’re either not ready to handle it or years of listening to AWO have steeled your resolve.
It really is senSHI (??, military history), not senKI (??, war chronicle). HOWEVER, Japanese Wikipedia tells me that several of Ishikawa’s titles were retroactively edited into a shared continuity called “Kyomu Senki” in the year 2000 (so Daryl is almost not wrong). The last of those series is Skull Killer Jaki-oh, which has been described as Ishikawa’s answer to Evangelion written four years before Evangelion. (Ishikawa, in his infinite wisdom, knew that good dogs are better than moms.)
Makai Tensho is a Yamada Futaro novel. It’s the second book in his Yagyu Jubei trilogy, the first book of which is straight historical fiction and the last book of which is dimension-hopping sci-fi. Ishikawa has done adaptations of several Yamada novel, including his insane and incomplete adaptation of Yagyu Jubei Dies, and all of them are worth reading. Most anime fans probably know Yamada’s work through Basilisk (also based on one of his novels) if they know it at all.
I think early Ishikawa art looks a lot like Nagai’s but with worse brushwork, but I really like the style he developed later in his career. His bio-organic designs are really distinctive and his people have a solid, rounded quality that’s rare in manga.
Also, I got into Ishikawa’s manga while living in Ishikawa Prefecture, which led to some confusing conversations because they’re both “Ishikawa Ken.” (Some bookstore clerks must have thought I was EXTREMELY lost.)
Also, Sanada Yukimura wasn’t the main character of Samurai Deeper Kyo; he was just in it. The manga was an above average shonen fighting thing, but the anime was trash (anime-only ending, massively toned down violence, and they made all the villains turn into goofy monsters instead of just being dudes with swords).
Funimation has actually released Demon Slayer in standard Blu-ray editions at standard price. So far, that’s the only Overprice^H^HAniplex which has been given that treatment, as far as I can see.
[The very same links to this you included were already in the show notes before you left this comment! –Daryl]
Congrats on the anniversary! It’s amazing that across 16 years of podcasting y’all still manage to find insane shit to unleash upon us.
And here I thought the most important news was the Viz has licensed the Fist of the North Star manga (first volume out June 15). [sarcasm] I’d like to personally take just a little bit of credit for this, since clearly they were waiting for me to spend actual money acquiring the Master Editions. If I’d only known, I would have obliged them sooner. [/sarcasm]
While listening to the review I kept thinking that the show sounded oddly familiar. Lo and behold, a quick search of my computer revealed that I already had this title – though under the shortened title of “Miroku.” And I have no idea when or from where I acquired it. I’m sure my thinking was something along the lines of: “this looks interesting, I’ll check it out.” (Famous last words…) I’m pretty sure I haven’t yet watched more than maybe the first episode, but the simple fact that I already had it is making me question if AWO isn’t influencing me more than I realized.
You were wondering how people still find your channel? For me personally, I’ve been been a subscriber to Otaku USA since 2016 and also collect old copies. Recently, I came across the Anime World Order web address in, I want to say, the December 2015 issue while I was reading thru it. I thought to myself, “I wonder if that old website is still active,” and to my pleasant surprise it was. Originally I dismissed it (I kind of thought Gerald was a bit whiney too [“…screw the music industry, never pay for music…”]), but I came back around.
If y’all are thinking that AWO would get better coverage on YouTube, you’d be correct. As a mid-20 year old, I use YouTube as a browser practically and it’s just easier to keep up with people on there. The only website-based podcasters that I can think of are Australian Music Radio and The Art of Manliness both of which have YouTube channels as well. Word of caution though, I’m a small YouTube content creator (my channel is really, really small), but I started looking for other options after I realized just how involved shooting video is. It’s time consuming and requires different equipment than podcasting; however, if you’re considering the transition, you might want to check out Trash Taste (a collaboration between The Anime Man, Gigukk, and Conner [several very successful anime YouTubers that have built themselves up]). Not saying they’re good or bad just that y’all’s three person setup reminds me of them. [While I’m inclined to say that one episode of a successful anime YouTuber series has more views than every episode of this podcast put together over the last 16 years–the Patreon for the show you listed is 55x larger than ours in a fraction of the time–I don’t think we’d want to consider emulating that approach as I don’t think “pivot to video” is of particular appeal to us. Maybe just mirror the audio for review segments on there or something. –Daryl]
A little something about Shonen Protagonists™. I recently watched the entirety of 1999 Hunter x Hunter animation (ended in 2004), and that version of Gon stands out above the rest. SURE, he is:
– Brave
– Eager
– Stubborn
(the shonen trinity)
BUT more was done to make him interesting. He is ALSO:
– Very lovable overall
– Friend to all living things
– Basically grew up in a forest, so has the senses of an animal
– While the show took its time to catch up with the manga, instead of USELESS filler, GOOD filler was made that humanized Gon and made him feel like a real person
His sometimes naïve but kind and optimistic nature attracts people to his side, and makes them root for him (directly brought up in the show twice). His stubborness is brought up as well and discussed (how it is both a strength and a weakness). In other words, Naruto he is not. Annoying cunt he is DEFINITELY not. Gon in 1999 Hunter x Hunter is one of the best shonen protagonists ever.