Anime World Order Show # 198 – We Can’t See That He Is a Pioneer, Unlocking the Greatest Mysteries

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:42:36 — 47.1MB)

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Yeah, yeah, we missed releasing this in March. But hey, it means that we can talk about the anime that just ended, and what’s about to start! In this episode, Gerald reviews the 1992 3-part OAV series Green Legend Ran.

Introduction (0:00 – 34:55)
We were going to play a voicemail this episode to encourage others to send in voicemails of their own, but we had to talk about some things, such as the potentially promising new anime series of the season–hard to tell what’s good or bad based on a trailer/first episode, but we’ll try–what shows we just finished watching, that whole Tokyo Babylon anime debacle, and more. Also, if you hadn’t heard, the original film for Project A-Ko was finally found after decades. Turns out it was just misfiled! What’s next, a US release of Macross? Yeah, like that’d ever happ–actually, that didn’t occur as of the time this was recorded. NEXT TIME, BABY.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (34:55 – 39:05)
The clock is ticking to preorder the shojo classic Dear Brother on Blu-Ray. This is a shorter license than usual; about one year’s time, after which the series won’t be available to purchase (or stream…again). There’s no Cosmo DNA to bail us out of this one, so get what you can while you can. Incidentally, if you’re looking to pull the trigger on any manga purchases, such as the Cardcaptor Sakura hardcover editions, you probably want to do so ASAP since the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a huge increase in print media demand–manga especially–as well as a shortage of printing labor. Reprints of anything will be taking longer than usual to occur as a result.

Review: Green Legend Ran (39:05 – 1:42:36)
Gerald reviews this largely forgotten and vaguely remembered OAV series from 1992, overshadowed as a result of being released just a few months after Tenchi Muyo!, which was one of the signature anime for otaku of the 1990s. This does however require us to spend about 15 minutes talking about these things called “laserdiscs” before we get into the series itself. Truth be told, neither Daryl nor Clarissa had any concrete recollection of anything that happened in this series whatsoever despite both of them having seen it forever ago. With the series now available on demand courtesy of the anime streaming site HiDive, does Green Legend Ran stand the test of time? One thing that definitely did is Gerald’s old collector’s edition set!

No, this is NOT a laserdisc box! This is in fact Gerald’s VHS box set containing all three tapes. Let’s open it up!

Pioneer releases are highly sought after for their extras to this day. Not pictured: the T-shirt which may or may not have been in 5XL.

THERE’S THE T-SHIRT–er, oh yes, and also the TAPES!

Maybe THIS is what the director meant when he said “pay attention to Ran’s character development.”

More really nice extras included in the set. We actually did not make even a single joke about that Tinkerbell dress in this episode. It took restraint.

Pioneer commissioned original artwork for their LD/box set releases. You can see from Ran’s pose up there why we thought of Future Boy Conan. HE EVEN SMOKES CIGARETTES.

5 Replies to “Anime World Order Show # 198 – We Can’t See That He Is a Pioneer, Unlocking the Greatest Mysteries”

There should be more respect given to self contained OVAs. Movies are overrated in general, shows can be too long if you don’t want to invest the time (both versions of HxH say hello), but OVAs are just the perfect length for MOST stories. These should get good DVD releases, or BD if there is a good tape copy somewhere.

There won’t ever be a perfect release for Shamanic Princess, and this makes me sad. 2013 DVD is “””deinterlaced”””, and by that I mean ruined beyond recovery. Original release is good, but the tape source could be much better.

Geneon was a great import label while it lasted. Own a few of their US releases, notably Fantastic Children and Ergo Proxy. Geneon people seemingly tried their best to get the original japanese audio to make CDs from, instead of getting copies of tapes WHICH WAS COMMON PRACTICE for international releases for most of the 90s and early 2000s.

And speaking of Pioneer right now, they make great external BluRay drives. I have 1 of theirs and on top of working properly, it even can detect the elusive Track 0 which is a secret on select few albums (you need special software to rip those, sucky iTunes fails at that simple task).

1 more thing, is that I own an earlier R1 release of Castle of Cagliostro from Manga (the dual sided DVD), and it is GREAT. Also own R2 Birdy the Mighty Decode volumes, and those are progressive (NOT interlaced as you might expect). If Manga is a shit company, guess I lucked out.

I don’t know what Gerald is talking about, those Spirit Warrior/Peacock King/Kujaku-Oh OAVs are totally sweet. Also worth mentioning is that there’s live action Hong Kong Peacock King movies from Lam Ngai Kai, who also directed the live-action Riki-Oh. They’re not as wild as Riki-Oh, but they’re fun and worth tracking down if you liked the OAVs.

I came to your website thinking I might find a RightStuf affiliate link I could use because I had some RighteousStuf I wanted to order. Maybe my ad-blocker is hiding it? [You should be able to see an affiliate link to their site not only on the sidebar, but within the timecode stamps for this very post to which you are replying. Your ad blocker software would not hide either of these things, as they are both plain text links. –Daryl]