Classics – Page 6 – Anime World Order Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:13:10 — 61.0MB)

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We can copy this part of the otaku ideal. Just not the part where she can masquerade as a normal person.

So begins a new year of podcasting for us! We’re trying something new out by not necessarily reviewing one thing, but talking about a selection of Christmas-themed episodes of anime arranged from “least Christmas-y” to “most Christmas-y.”

Introduction (0:00 – 47:50)
We had the trivia episode last month, and so it’s only now that we’re able to get around to the fact that Daryl and Gerald both went to Anime Weekend Atlanta back in October. We report on the convention, some noteworthy aspects of programming we attended, ruminate on the convention’s future, and Gerald shares with us his first experience with going to Buc-ee’s.

Oh, here’s the video Gerald was referring to:

This is @DarylSurat and me in matrimonial bliss. pic.twitter.com/eO2BskVhpk

— Essence of Anime (@Gerald_AWO) October 28, 2022

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (47:50 – 51:30)
It’s the end of an era, as a few weeks ago Shawne Kleckner announced his departure from the company we founded. We interviewed Shawne back in Show 183, and that sure doesn’t feel like it was back in 2019. But the Holiday Sale is on same as always, and there’s a lot of great deals to be had. Heck, even Aniplex Blu-Ray sets got a discount!

The Holiday Roundup (51:30 – 2:13:10)
There are plenty of anime with Christmas-themed episodes, or ones that take place around Christmas, but several have little to do with it. We watched an assortment of Christmas episodes and present them to you here, in the order of “least Christmas-y” to “most Christmas-y.” There are lots and lots and LOTS of Christmas themed anime stories, some of which are even good insofar as resembling stuff people might do around Christmas, and since we only talked about a handful here it’s almost a guarantee that we didn’t talk about your favorite. So let’s hear about it in the comments! There’s always next year, right?

Santa Company currently has THREE Kickstarters active for English language localizations. Santa Company: Secret of Christmas is the full-length version of what we were talking about.
Midsummer Merry Christmas is the newer entry released last year. There are also full-color comic books to translate. The goals are shockingly low, so with any luck these succeed. It’s tough, now that you don’t see many anime Kickstarter projects.

We imagine every anime club in the 90s showing Christmas theme stuff must have run Ranma 1/2’s.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:08:07 — 58.8MB)

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Because we just don’t have enough randos blaming us singlehandedly for American anime fandom’s ignorance, we’ve decided to talk about the theatrical film Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island, a remake of the “lost episode” of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series.

Intro (0:00 – 49:55)
The gauntlet of quality that is the current anime season is upon us, and we spend the first half of the intro simply running down what we’re currently watching. For once, only a very small amount of it is not from what’s ongoing as of this recording. Daryl and Gerald will be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta 2022 this week. Gerald has two 18+ offerings: Hentai of the 80s and 90s at 12:30 AM Thursday (technically it’s Friday but schedule wise that’s considered “Thursday night”), and then Anime in Non-Anime at midnight Friday. Then on Sunday at 12:45 PM, Daryl has the all-ages Thirty Years Ago: Anime in 1992.

For the second half of the intro, we talk about a topic that’s coming up more and more frequently now that the multi-billion dollar corporations own more and more of the US anime industry: the issue of worker pay (and the lack thereof). While most visible with regards to voice actors, this is widespread throughout which leads to the question: who’s seeing the benefits of anime’s elevated prominence, anyway?

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (49:55 – 52:43)
With Halloween upon us, this week is the time that Junji Ito hardcover manga editions are on sale. But that’s not all; you can also the um, not at all spooky Yotsuba&! at a solid discount, and with Tatami Time Machine Blues about to be released stateside on Disney+, the current sale for The Night is Short, Walk On Girl is timely indeed. You know what else is timely, considering this review? The fact that all of the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin manga is back in print!

Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island (52:43 – 2:08:07)

There I was, holed up on this island, when the Zeon came nosing around. They was gettin’ closer, CLOSER! “And?” I threw a ROCK at him! …it was a big rock…

Just as Umberto Eco noted that a common feature among fascists is that “by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak,” so too is the Anime World Order podcast a thing listened to by nobody hosted by nobodies whose articles are read by nobody yet simultaneously somehow responsible for the bad rep of Yoshiyuki Tomino among the English-speaking anime fanbase. (We prefer to think it was widespread availability of the cartoons that did that one.) So it goes that despite the fact that multiple entire podcasts dedicated to Mobile Suit Gundam exist, we give our own account of what may very well be the final film of Yoshikazu “YAS” Yasuhiko: a lavish, movie-length retelling of episode 15 of the first Mobile Suit Gundam TV series (which to this day is not legally available to view in the United States by personal request of Yoshiyuki Tomino), only this time it’s done without Tomino’s involvement and YAS isn’t hospitalized from overwork. We actually don’t start talking about the movie itself until 1:28:14 because we need to spend about 40 minutes on slander.

Meme-ified images from episode 15 are all over the Internet, particularly Thinzaku here.

Here’s how Doan’s Zaku looks in the movie. [guy who has only ever seen Armored Trooper VOTOMS] Getting a lot of Armored Trooper VOTOMS vibes from this

No off-model robots here; now any proportional changes are by design!

No amount of jank can prevent soft boy Amuro from shining through

The Men Who Created Gundam was a documentary, though the events do NOT take place in real time since talk of this episode is effectively absent
If you would rather hear a version of this story that isn’t told by partisan liars, Mobile Suit Breakdown as well as Operation V did entire episodes about Doan’s Island
We’re too lazy to see if the archived Anime Jump has the original anecdote, so here’s Mike Toole relaying the story a few years later on Anime News Network
Gundam expert and now also motherhood expert Lauren Orsini did this writeup regarding the years of fan investigative interest in “the episode of Gundam that Yoshiyuki Tomino doesn’t want you to see”
Tim Eldred has translations of multiple Yoshikazu Yasuhiko interviews which we have pulled out of context excerpts from in order to advance our venomous agenda. If you would rather not be deceived by our forked tongues you can read these interviews for yourself: https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/58/ https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/524a/ https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/549/ (other interviews are excerpted from those included at the ends of the volumes of the Gundam: The Origin manga)