Anime World Order Show # 112 – We Don’t Want to Hurt You (But We Will If We Have To)

Gerald’s out sick, so courtesy of the Florida Anime Experience (May 24-26 in Orlando, FL) here’s an interview conducted with two of their guests, the dangerous acting duo of Michael McConnohie and Melodee M. Spevack. Rest assured: you’ve heard their work, so click that download link up above and BECOME A PART OF US.

  • If we wanted to take the easy way out, we would have just looked at the IMDB pages for Michael and Melodee and asked questions based on that.
  • Instead, we relied on our own memories as well as a copy of Adventures in Voice Acting, which both Michael and Melodee make brief appearances in.
  • The new issue of Otaku USA magazine is out. As supplemental pieces to his print articles, Daryl has web articles on Getter Robo: Armageddon and New Getter Robo. Relevance to this episode, you wonder? Michael McConnohie was the voice of Benkei in New Getter Robo! BOOM
  • Michael’s advice on becoming a voice actor. We didn’t bother asking about this stuff since EVERYBODY asks people that, and honestly we want to know about the other stuff anyway!
  • A behind the scenes look at the Conan stage show. Youtube actually has a full video of the stage show in two parts, but it’s from 1990 and WE NEED THE 1983-1984 VERSION.
  • We couldn’t remember, but the Japanese voice of Debonair in Season 2 of Magic Knight Rayearth (still no remastered set for Season 2, just Season 1) is a lady named Atsuko Takahata. She mostly works in live-action.
  • You know what else we can’t remember? What the eff went down in Isaac Asimov’s books. Foundation something, Norby something. All that we can remember are the Laws of Robotics and The Last Question. (PS: go read that if you never did)
  • Oh man, we didn’t even have TIME to get into their sci-fi fan films. They’ve also done Star Trek fan films. (And YOU thought that was just a Vic Mignogna thing!) Those intrigued may watch Melodee wreak havoc here and see Michael decked out as a space alien here.
  • The majority of sentences spoken by Daryl in this episode were indeed some variation of Shin’s lines of dialogue in the Streamline dub of Fist of the North Star. Try as he may, he could not work in the accidental poem “Hello Ken / How nice to see you again / How have you been?” or end a sentence with the phrase “…but I never finished the book.”
  • Those tags exist for a reason, but for ease of access here are our old interviews with Richard Epcar and Steve Blum, both of whom were mentioned this episode.
  • And yes, we did forget to talk more about Carl Macek. Fortunately, we did do the In Memory of Carl Macek panel with Tony Oliver at Anime Festival Orlando (and then with Richard Epcar at…was it Otakon?), and somebody has that recorded to video. Wonder if Harmony Gold ever finished that tribute video they were putting together…

Anime World Order Show # 108 – I, G, Kickstart Their Art, Give It a Start

Clarissa is occupied with schoolwork, so substituting as her is Paul Chapman from Otaku USA Magazine and the Greatest Movie EVER! podcast. He wrote an eBook short fiction collection and we forgot to mention it. In this episode, we talk about our time at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2012, Daryl reviews The Drops of God manga, and we totally don’t guilt/anger-trip you over the Production IG Kick-Heart Kickstarter. That’s it. Nothing else happened.

Introduction and Con Report: Anime Weekend Atlanta (0:00 – 54:30)
Damn. Just look at that timecode. Under normal circumstances we’d release that as its own podcast. BUT NOT TODAY. The three of us went to Anime Weekend Atlanta 2012 and dangit, we got things to SAY. But first, we read an email from a young child with a dream. Or maybe we didn’t and are just saying we did. You know, like how Daryl said he was going to write a Panel OF DOOM! report for the Anime Hell blog but never did.

Promo: Fightbait (54:30 – 55:08)
Multiple segments means we can actually have a space to play promos again! That devious Jean-Paul and his French-Canadian-ness is certainly not to be trusted, but look at Mr. Work Ethic and Mr. Sound Quality Improvements over there. Thinking he’s all that just because he’s shouting about the pedobait in underwear tank cartoon. WELL. I GUESS.

Review: The Drops of God (manga) (55:08 – 1:36:49)
Daryl hasn’t actually done reviews in quite some time, but in recognition of the fact that the Most Dangerous Ed Chavez is making Vertical Inc manage to do what Viz never could he figured it’s time to review this manga. Don’t be fooled by most of what you’ve ever read from the manga blogging community about this. Dispel those thoughts now, and let us reveal what this comic is REALLY about. Oh, that’s what some of them said too? HA. I’D SURE LIKE TO SEE EVIDENCE OF THAT, YES SIR-REE.

Promo: Method to Madness (1:36:49 – 1:37:35)
Feeling like you need some more mecha reviews in your podcasts lately? Gerald has declared November a month for building mecha model kits (pick one and just do it! Dammit, he even MADE A TUMBLR), but Sean and Kevin are doing a three-part series named OctoboRoboFest in which their next string of episodes will all review what they deem to be a silly robot anime. First up on their list? Godannar. A truly awesome mecha show, perhaps despite itself. Daryl likes it, anyway.

Conclusion (1:37:45 – 1:55:53)
We close things off by talking about Kick-Heart, the crowd-funded animation project from Production IG and Masaaki Yuasa. In the past we’ve reviewed Mind Game as well as Kemonozume and Kaiba, so you can bet that we backed this sucker the instant we saw it, despite the fact that it was posted as we’d arrived back from AWA and it was like 5:00 AM. A lot of other anime fans are less enthusiastic about this since they’re not keen on the premise, the creator, and/or the notion of “you mean I should pledge money to something I don’t care about with the idea that MAYBE later, someone will do something I do like?” Those people don’t understand that being first to try something carries greater weight as far as demonstrating viability is concerned. I bet they’re the kinds of people who watch anime they hate just so they can be mad about it online.

That’s it. Nothing else happened. Whatever you do, don’t tell Clarissa if your media player says the total running time of this episode is 2:05:31. That’s uh…that’s just variable bit-rate trickery. Either that or the greatest moment in podcasting history. It’s one of those.