Category: Classics

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Anime World Order Show # 79b – Bruce Willis-chan, Why Have You Forsaken Us

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:51:28 — 51.0MB)

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Behold the final half, and by “half” we mean “105 minutes” of AWO Show 79 in which Clarissa goes to Detroit Metal City and Daryl largely glosses over the finer points of Queen Millennia.

Let’s News! (0:00 – 28:40)
More news on top of the previous news? Yeah, because stuff happened.

Review: Detroit Metal City (28:40 – 56:10)
[Clarissa starts stopwatch]
RAPERAPERAPERAPERAPERAPERAPERAPERAPERAPE
[stops stopwatch, checks time…still not quite 1 second or better 🙁 ]


The opening of DMC is awesome, though it only fully encapsulates the nature of the series when combined with Negishi’s terrible ending pop song. If you’re curious to compare the anime with the live action movie, there’s a PV of Satsugai here.

Behold, Negishi’s terrible songwriting. Luckily the manager is awesome enough to fix his lyrics and traumatize him in one fell swoop!

I had to add Krauser-tan. All shall love her and despair!

Review: Queen Millennia (56:10 – 1:43:51)
Daryl reviews what he declares to be the Leiji Matsumoto equivalent of a Michael Bay movie, though perhaps Roland Emmerich is a more apt fit. There’s a lot of lore and history behind all of this, but he generally ignores it for the sake of focusing on the IMPORTANT THINGS. All screencaps taken from the R2 remastered anamorphic DVD, patched to include the English fansub by BOX on the subtitle track. They oughta release a version that’s just a H264 encode from this.

This is Leiji Matsumoto and he is ON THE ATTACK. Steve Harrison sent this picture like, a year and a half ago. We are using it now.
Daryl wants to believe that this is Cartoon Leiji Matsumoto, whose presence in this cartoon thus explains why it was made.The ghost of Jackson Beck would like to inform you that GI Matsumoto is the code name for Dai Nippon’s daring, highly untrained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against AMERIC…er, wait
Our lead characters. With the exception of “handsome male lead” this image neatly encapsulates Leiji Matusmoto’s character design preferences. Here, Yukino is in her “scientist” outfit as opposed to her “sexy teacher in nightgown” outfit.
Yukino in her titular role as Queen Millennia. We can only assume that nobody realizes Yukino is indeed Queen Millennia because they’re too busy staring at the fully exposed cleavage and heart-shaped midriff which doubles as a vagina indicator arrow to look up at her face.
This picture can best be described as “the REAL sentais” as it deftly conveys exactly why Matsumoto started giving his women such long hair in the first place.
Yukino’s sister, Selen. Aka Girl Captain Harlock. In the Maetel Legend OAVs, they used the other Girl Captain Harlock instead: Emeraldas. Suffice to say that even though Matsumoto and some fans want continuity between these works, there isn’t any because nothing fits the way it would need to. Therefore, Emeraldas and Maetel are only sisters in Maetel Legend, because they’re filling in for the roles of Yukino and Selen.
It might just be because it’s faithful to the manga which we never read, but nothing says “Matsumoto by the guy who directed most of the 70s Go Nagai Super Robot shows” better than Space Battleship Cleopatra. HASSHIN! Despite what’s stated in the segment, Cleopatra does have lines.

Closing (1:43:51 – 1:51:27)
EE “Doc” Finnegan is presumably too busy unleashing the Terror of MechaBridezilla to listen to this podcast, but we’ll still be her friend to the end, much like Chucky in the Child’s Play movies. In the next exciting installment of AWO, we’re trying something new because rather than having each person pick the title they wish to talk about, someone else will be choosing it for them! Daryl’s up first, so he’s decided to force-feed Gerald and Clarissa with Masaaki Yuasa because they won’t do it themselves. As such, Gerald shall be reviewing Kemonozume and Clarissa will be reviewing Kaiba while Daryl opts to NOT review Cat Soup and instead talk more about Yoshiaki Kawajiri. So Goku: Midnight Eye’s coming at’cha.

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Anime World Order Show # 78b – It’s Totally Off-Topic, Except Not

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:31:22 — 41.8MB)

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Here’s the second half of Show 78. This was actually completed and ready to post some time ago.

Let’s News! (0:00 – 42:00)
Perhaps you’ve noticed that Best Buy has cut down their anime section rather drastically. There were some clearance sales that came and went, but there wasn’t much worth picking up anyway…because all the copies of Akira on Blu-Ray were long gone. Riyoko Ikeda, who at some point started getting that extra “i” in her name so she wouldn’t just be “Ryoko,” got great accolades from France for helping to popularize French culture amidst the Japanese. We think the award is fully deserved due to this car advertisement. If you haven’t really gotten into the whole “streaming anime” thing, perhaps you should give it another look because there’s a lot of titles coming out for which streaming just might be the only way you’ll see a translated English version officially available. There is probably not going to be an official translated English version of the Japanese porn comic with Barack Obama and John McCain. Sorry ladies, but it is not yaoi…YET. More bad news on that front: Sunshine Creation is canceled…again! Fortunately Figma is there to save the day in this time of need.

Review: Heaven Wars Shurato (42:00 – 1:26:22)
Clarissa concludes her reviews of all the “[pretty] boys in armor” anime series with this. Previously–and by that we mean about three years ago–she had reviewed Saint Seiya and Yoroiden Samurai Troopers. If you liked those, then you will probably like this! Probably.

This is a story about reincarnation and fighting godlike beings while wearing cool armor, but also about bros.
Well, until Lady Vishnu decides to show up, anyway.
Then it’s off to Tenkuukai, which to be fair is pretty gorgeous.
After that horrible things happen and Shurato is very sad, and kind of pissed off at Gai suddenly being evil. Hmm, I wonder how much of that Kamui and Fuuma nonsense in X derived from CLAMP’s love of Shurato…
This is pretty much the gang of major characters for Shurato, with a couple of exceptions. There’s something I find very pleasant and “human” about Okuda’s character designs that makes it stand out from Saint Seiya (with it’s crazily beautiful and exaggerated designs) and Samurai Troopers.
As we mentioned, these shows are largely about cool-looking armor. So here’s an idea of what they look like.
Here’s Reiga’s. Am I the only one who just doesn’t think the bird head works as well?

In addition to the show, I highly recommend any of the artbooks with Matsuri Okuda’s original illustrations. There are some really beautiful and melodramatic pieces, along with lots of silly stuff. Here’s some good samples. BTW, a lot of nice images including the ones here can be found at Arcadia’s Shulato Shrine.

Closing (1:26:22 – 1:31:22)
Next time, Gerald is a terrorist straight out of Hell because he’s reviewing Chi’s Sweet Home, and Clarissa lives a happy, peaceful, lighthearted existence within Detroit Metal City. For a moment we thought we might have those backwards, but no. Definitely not. Daryl’s reviewing Queen Millennia: The Movie.