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It’s the annual trivia episode! For the first time, we have TWO special trivia guests: Christina Rose and Jason Moses, freelance Japanese to English otaku translators whose most recent gig is Super Robot Wars 30, out now on Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch (check the comments for additional details regarding how to get the Switch version and DLC in English), and for the first time with no region lockout, PC via Steam!
Introduction (0:00 – 25:30)
We may know who Christina and Jason are, and we may know what this whole “Super Robot Wars” thing is, but that doesn’t mean YOU do! We give them the opportunity to explain how they got into this whole sordid situation and what’s so super about these robot wars anyway, for the benefit of everybody out there who has never typed the word “akurasu” into their web browser address bar. Like Tim Eldred.
- Christina’s Twitter LP of a King of Fighters visual novel
- Dave Cabrera’s SRW Let’s Play was unfortunately deleted from the Internet forever when he deleted his Livejournal, and no archive backup exists. But he’s on Twitter, still blowing our minds and stealing our hearts
Promo: Right Stuf Anime (25:30 – 27:30)
The Holiday Sale is underway! Everything is on sale, plus, each day there’s a new Mega Deal. The weekly specials are also going on as well, so if you’ve got gift shopping to do (or just buy stuff for yourself at a discount) now is the time when you have to ask the tough questions like “do I REALLY need to buy a vacuum cleaner when instead, I could spend that money on getting all of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure in hardcover?” Plus, if you use our affiliate link to visit their site we’ll get a commission, which we use to help support our definitely not out of control pornography addiction podcast hosting expenses.
Trivia! (25:30 – 2:31:50)
It’s the usual three rounds worth of questions from categories of questionable merit, though the ones with the most merit (and difficulty) are listener-submitted. Revel as none of us know the answers to things we really should be able to answer, considering we own these things or did reviews of these things or grew up with these things. Tim Eldred won’t believe we didn’t get the alphabetical order of the Yamato movies right.
- HiDive has many great titles, such as the one true Colorful here
- Todd McFarlane’s interview with The Comics Journal
- The official Oishinbo YouTube channel
Closing (2:31:50 – 3:01:35)
This was originally part of the introduction, but it ran a little long so we figured we’d put it here instead. As it turns out, several of the titles that we’ve discussed on AWO in the past (check the Review Index up top for the list!) are titles that have been featured in Super Robot Wars. We go through the list. And mention Tim Eldred one more time.
“Or perhaps he’s wondering why someone would shoot a man, before throwing him out of a plane?” – someone who watched Gundam Wing, apparently.
Glad you got a kick out of my category; they’re always fun to write.
So, I have a question about Super Robot Wars 30. I really enjoy SRPGs (FF Tactics, Fire Emblem, 13 Sentinels, Valkyria Chronicles), so this is a series I’ve long wanted to get into. I don’t like playing games on the computer, and I especially don’t like Windows-only games, since I’m a Mac guy and have to play them in a virtual machine. So, I’d really prefer to play SRW 30 on my Switch. I figured I would just get a physical copy as an import, or maybe from the Retro Saikou booth at a con, but I think y’all pointed out on the show that I’d need a non-US eShop account to do DLC (and since the first wave of DLC includes Sakura Wars, I want to get in on that).
I’m fine with setting up an overseas account and buying gift cards online — I have an iTunes JP account that I used for Uta Macross and Muv-Luv Strike Frontier — but for SRW 30 in English, do I need to set up the eShop account in an English-speaking Asian region? Someone mentioned Singapore; is that the best option, or are there others like Hong Kong? Or is it possible to just have a JP account, buy the game there, and then set the in-game language to English?
Thanks in advance, and sorry if this is a big ask, but I bet a lot of other listeners are keen to get in on SRW 30 after hearing Christina and Jason’s enthusiasm for it.
I am not an expert on the Nintendo versions because the Switch versions don’t support adding custom MP3 tracks, but looks like when it comes to the Switch specifically, all you do is just get the Japanese version. The “Supported Languages” say “Japanese” and “English.” This is not the same as how the previous game, Super Robot Wars T, was.
The Hong Kong Nintendo eShop listing for SRW 30 only lists the supported languages as “Chinese” and “Korean,” so you would NOT get that version of SRW 30 (by contrast, the supported languages for the HK Nintendo eShop listing for SRW T lists “English” alongside those).
The reason I had used Singapore as my example because that was what I used for the Sony PSN store side of things. The desired physical release is referred to as the “Asia” release, or sometimes the “Asia English” release; make sure you get one for “Asia” and not one marked as for “Japan.” I got physical PS4 editions of Moon Dwellers, V, and X through a Malaysian store called “Heavyarm Store” that Mike Toole had directed me towards, and for all of those DLC I used the Singapore Sony store to get them (for T and 30, I went digital only through the SGN Playstation store).
I just wanted to confirm that Daryl’s guidance above *does* work. I set up a JP eShop account (with the instructions here: https://www.gamesradar.com/3-easy-steps-to-setup-your-nintendo-switch-for-imports-with-a-japanese-eshop-account/), created a local user for that account on my Switch, went to the SRW 30 page (the basic version, not the ultimate edition that Daryl links to), clicked the Demo button and it downloaded right away. Better yet, it defaulted into English (not sure if it picked up a system setting, or because that’s what language I accepted the license in). Anyways, I’ll go get a 10,000¥ card to buy the full game once I’m done with the demo, but long story short: the JP version works just great for playing in EN on a US Switch.
Shoutouts are always fun, but why would any of you assume I don’t know anything about SRW? All my favorite robots are involved. But (A) my videogame days are behind me and (B) I’m not interested in deformed versions of my favorite robots. Authenticity, please.
Daryl, you’re pushing me into “that guy” mode today. Okay, you brought this on yourself.
Space Battleship Yamato The New Voyage was indeed a 90-minute TV movie, but Be Forever Yamato hadn’t been conceived yet when it was made. Nishizaki didn’t even know if the next Yamato project would be a movie or a series. There was no element in The New Voyage that told people to go see Be Forever Yamato. So if you’re dismissing TNV on that basis, you’re not scoring much higher than the racist anti-vaxxer uncle at your dinner table.
I luckily don’t have any racist anti-vaxxer uncles myself, but you might be taking the spoken comment a bit overly literally. No, TNV was not actually an ad for a movie that wouldn’t be out for another year; it didn’t end with a trailer and a release date or anything. But narratively, that’s exactly the purpose it serves. It introduces a bunch of new characters and situations, but doesn’t really develop them particularly much. The implication to the audience is “this stuff will become important later,” and as it turns out only a few of those characters even show up again despite seeming like they might be important. This is probably why I most likely have only watched it exactly once, decades ago. I imagine once 2205 comes out and I can actually see it, that I might go back and rewatch TNV to see everything that got changed.
I don’t think any of this is a particularly controversial position of mine to take regarding The New Voyage, though I’ll accept that I was lacking in suitable precision several hours into the Saturday night 4+ hour recording session. Your own written commentary for the film more or less aligns with what I think about it:
https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/category/classic-saga-archive/the-new-voyage/commentary-the-new-voyage/
https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/646/
There is zero controversy in any of this. The movie was the opening part of a new storyline. Full development of all the characters was not the plan. Same for 2205. I didn’t expect anything different.
Gerald, I’m puzzling over your alphabetical ordering of Yamato movies. “Arrivederci Yamato” would technically come first, but I’m not aware of any video release by that name. If you have a Japanese edition, the title would start with “Saraba.” If you have an American edition, the title would start with “Farewell.” Why oh why must you vex me with this?
Glad I decided to listen to this one, even though I usually skip the trivia episodes. Pretty fun to learn that one of the SRW translators came out of the fan translation pits and made it to the big league jobs, as someone who worked on a fan translation myself.
Not surprised that the Knights and Magic guy worked out better in this game. The light novel industry seems to operate on the concept of “what if we took this fan fiction level writer and forced them to crank out stories on tight deadlines, with zero effort into giving them entry level creative writing classes to improve the quality of their work.” That creates a lot of poorly fleshed out/thought out material that happens to work better in the context of another work, because the other work fills out the gaps in the LN IP.
Every so often, /m/ talks about what a western SRW game would look like and the last few years have been pretty good in expanding the roster of stuff with actual mecha in them. Ten years ago, you’d basically be limited to Megas, IGPX, Power Rangers, Voltron, BattleTech/MechWarrior, Heavy Gear, ExoSquad, CthulhuTech, and the litany of space opera shows that heavily involved spaceships. Now there’s a bunch of western indie mecha games to fill out the roster with, although as far as I know, only Sunrider actually has proper fleshed out characters.
One thing that always gets me with SRW as a concept, whether it’s just confined to one countries IPs or IPs from both sides of the Pacific, is the scope gap between the stuff that’s set on one planet (usually Earth) and all the stuff that has regular interstellar travel. There’s a startlingly low amount of actual mecha IPs where both sides can travel faster than light, and I think the west actually has a slight edge in numbers there.
In case anyone’s curious, someone on Youtube translated the Kaiji scenario from Girls’ RPG Cinderella Life.
https://youtu.be/370K7wutmTY
On watching Oishinbo on you tube.
They don’t skip episodes, it’s that YouTube displays them randomly.
To see the episodes in order:
1. Log into, or create, a free YouTube account.
2. Go to the series and subscribe to it.
3. Click on the videos tab in the series page and you will see the latest episode first.
I can confirm the official subtitles for L-Gaim do still exist. I saved the subtitle scripts for a few shows (including L-Gaim) shortly before Daisuki dissolved in 2017. I also created versions synced to the Japanese DVD release, if anybody is interested.
https://mega.nz/file/LZRnnbiI#6ovll06G5wlNPP2eLPwzbjzTVVZQqfeHgcB3JQ6VbIM
I’ll throw in Vifam for good measure.
https://mega.nz/file/SZJClb4C#IHwCDfqY4iPs3wLYkYRXTr5gX7v5TuMJy_LGZMxA8Jg
You’re amazing!! This is incredible, thank you for taking the time to save these when you could. Merry Christmas!
Late to the party, but you’re seriously underselling the madness that is Angel Sanctuary in that brief mention. Dark shojo manga with an incest fetish is on a whole other level from the shonen and seinen power fantasy you’re used to seeing that in. The OVA is terrible and covers nothing, but manga-only moments like feeding the orphans dynamite in the slums of heaven are up there with the best that Riki-Oh has to offer.
I am a simple person: I hear B The Beginning mentioned, I comment.
I am perhaps one of the few who really cared about that anime. As far as convoluted supernatural mysteries that are crammed into 12 episodes go, it was very impressive. 2nd season is technically only half complete, so still waiting for part 2. Of part 2. Some good music too, both songs, and certain bits of the score. Which I imported for 1 bonus track by the composer.