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Now that it’s been a year since the untimely passing of Akira Toriyama, Clarissa reviews his greatest work released in the US…namely, the first five Dr. Slump movies! These were released on DVD from Discotek, but are now long out of print. Gerald approves of this manuever.
Introduction (0:00 – 47:05)
Despite expiring 15 years ago, Daryl is hip; he’s cool; he’s 45. After 10 minutes of videogame discussion–mostly Gerald not liking Pacific Drive or Fallout: London–we start talking about some recent anime we’ve watched. Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master was a critical darling from last year which wasn’t necessarily the most popular thing, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket has a rather 1970s style approach to characterization despite being made in 1989, and the first three episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX–an Amazon Prime exclusive–show promise even though it’s not initially clear whether the “what if” premise adds anything or not.
We’re going to be guests at Anime Boston 2025! Was the last time we went really 2011? Daryl hasn’t done anime con panels in years, so hopefully he can shake the years of accumulated rust off and get to not being terrible. Terrible con panelists and the reasons for their being so is the subject of our listener email we discuss; yes, we’ve finally remembered to read and discuss an email question sent in! We should probably just designate a Q&A channel on that Discord of ours, huh. Another topic of discussion is optimal ways to recommend classic anime to people, which we generally agree is less about telling people “this is important” and more about telling people “this is an awesome thing you can watch which you may not have seen already.” And on that note…
Review: Dr. Slump Movies 1-5 (47:05 – 1:46:14)
Dr. Slump is an awesome thing you can watch which you may not have seen already…especially if you’re a fan in the United States, where the massive adoration for Akira Toriyama by and large begins and ends with Dragon Ball Z/Super. Viz has released all of the Dr. Slump manga which you can read with your Shonen Jump subscription that you probably already have, albeit with very slight edits for occasional scenes of cigarette smoking. Alas, none of the Dr. Slump anime is officially available to be viewed in the USA. Discotek released this DVD collection of the first five movies in 2014, and it didn’t do well enough for them to consider releasing all 11 of them. Similarly, the very long TV series from the 1980s has never officially been released, and while the 1990s series was briefly available in its entirety on Tubi of all places, you can’t get that officially now either. Of course, since this is a massively popular series around the world and there are many highly dedicated fans of Akira Toriyama, you can watch a considerable amount of Dr. Slump anime unofficially via fansubs. ACTUAL fansubs, not just rips of an official stream! As of this writing, they’re currently on episode 167.
These five movies offer a solid snapshot into what Dr. Slump is, who the characters are, and how the series changed over time to focus primarily on the almighty Arale-chan. Even if you don’t always find it funny, you’re highly unlikely to ever be bored since there’s always something entertaining going on.
