Studio Ghibli – Anime World Order Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:48:51 — 49.9MB)

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In a last-ditch effort to not review Hand Shakers, we decide to make a bunch of anger-inducing statements about anime, mecha, and conventions before reviewing the latest–and perhaps actually final this time–Hayao Miyazaki film, the critically acclaimed The Boy and the Heron.

Introduction (0:00 – 39:51)
With only 3 or 4 Patrons remaining before we hit the 250 patrons mark, we’re playing our remaining “make people quit backing us so we don’t have to review Hand Shakers” cards. Gerald keeps saying Mash’s name from Mashle is “Mashle” and thinks Delicious in Dungeon sucks, Daryl uses the phrase “mecha anime is dead” in a sentence while talking about Bravern, and Clarissa calls out people who work in IT that subsidize the furry fandom through commissions while keeping her Discord notification sounds enabled so you’ll think YOU’RE getting Discord notifications as you’re listening. Gerald also did a panel at the recently-concluded Megacon, and while it was not that heavily attended, there’s a possibility more people came to see him than Gina Carano. It was about the practice of Western productions outsourcing their animation production to Japan, so expect lots of delightful statements about your Generation X/millennial childhood favorites. We also weigh in with our recent experiences using the Crunchyroll Store!

On a less rage-baiting note, Clarissa will be a guest on this month’s Anime Nostalgia Podcast, as she joins Dawn to talk about Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Otaku In Memoriam: Derek Wakefield (39:51 – 48:30)

This year, we’d like to hear stories about noteworthy anime fans who are no longer around, ideally by people who knew or had interactions with them. If you knew someone and wish to share some memories of them, record something and email it to us so we can put them into later episodes. If you’d rather not vocalize it yourself, that’s fine too! Just write it up and we can read it on your behalf.

Dave Merrill is the first to take us up on the offer, as he sends in a memoriam of Derek Wakefield, founder of the Earth Defense Command, a Star Blazers club which became an anime club which set the foundation for Project A-Kon which is still going to this day. It would not be a stretch to credit Derek Wakefield as the founder of North Texas anime fandom. Derek’s willingness to help out new younger fans helped Dave embark on his anime fandom journey. The disappearance of web message boards across the Internet has resulted in the loss of quite a bit of early Internet anime fandom history, but for the moment the Internet Archive still exists where there is a snapshot of this May 2014 memoriam post for Derek posted a few days after Derek had passed away.

Review: The Boy and the Heron aka How Do You Live? (48:30 – 1:48:51)
The most revered of anime’s living grandmasters, Hayao Miyazaki, came out of retirement yet again to make another film, which for years we’ve been referring to as “BETTAR THAN YOUR NAME.” That’s “bettar” with an a, not “better”, because if Hayao Miyazaki is anything, he is–as the Gen Z’ers and Alphas don’t know–l33t liek JeffK. Once the Japanese title “How Do You Live?” was revealed the Zoolander associations commenced, no doubt being the catalyst for GKIDS selecting “The Boy and the Heron” as its international title for its theatrical release in late 2023. As of this episode, the film has won numerous awards, including the Golden Globe, and as such is a frontrunner to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. If so, it will mark the second time a Japanese animated work has won the award, with the previous instance being Miyazaki’s earlier work “Spirited Away” (which is also an international title that’s different from the Japanese one, but it’s just shorter). It has garnered considerable and near-universal critical acclaim as well.

But that’s not as important compared to what WE thought of it. We absolutely did not deliberately misrepresent the contents of the movie or of any books, documentaries, interviews, and should any discrepancies exist, they are purely accidental and are absolutely not an attempt to rile people up like how you know who does for the National Review.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:26:55 — 94.8MB)

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It’s our 200th episode! To celebrate, we interview the UK’s Most Dangerous anime scholar garderner/poet, Helen McCarthy! The one we did back in 2008 was technically a “bonus” and not an episode, back when we were trying to distinguish between such things!

Introduction (0:00 – 43:38)
After the obligatory shilling our stuff (Daryl was finally back on the Greatest Movie EVER! podcast to talk about Ninja in the Dragon’s Den), we get to talking some more about virtual conventions. Anime Expo’s is this weekend, and we hope it’s handled better than Fanimecon’s which just might be the single biggest debacle of all the virtual conventions we were aware of…which truth be told, is shockingly few since it’s hard to get the word out. In-person conventions are starting to come back–the wisdom of this is a bit shaky–but expect to see us at Otakon albeit with much less on our dockets. Anime Weekend Atlanta is still something of a toss up. We also talk a bit about what we’ve been watching/reading, along with what we’re looking forward to for the new Summer 2021 anime season. You know who doesn’t believe in doing less stuff during the pandemic? Tim Eldred, that’s who. Because having the single best resource in the world on Space Battleship Yamato just wasn’t enough work, July 1st looks to be the next big update to his personal website Artvalt, so head on over there for his next big compendium as it pertains to Fist of the North Star. There’s renewed interest in that now that the first volume of Viz’s Signature Edition is out (and selling out, from the looks of things). The first of multiple articles from Tim is now up: the Fist of the North Star Series Profile.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (43:38 – 46:30)
As if there weren’t enough recent major sales, the big birthday sales are going on over at Right Stuf and that means big discounts across the board along with Mega Deals that change daily along with weekly giveaways. As a PSA: if you bought Dear Brother on Blu-Ray, and you probably want to do that since it’ll go out of print in under a year’s time, open it up and double check to make sure your discs were not physically cracked in the packaging. Discotek used a standard width case along with a spindle which is very hard to remove the discs from, and while Daryl’s discs were fine there are multiple reports on social media from those who weren’t so fortunate. So if you need to get an exchange, this is something to find out now rather than once there are no more copies available.

Interview: Helen McCarthy (46:30 – 3:26:55)
We meant to get to this sooner. We’re just stricken by laziness. The same cannot be said for Helen McCarthy, which will become quite evident once you listen to this because we didn’t manage to cover everything in three hours! This was done through an international half duplex Skype connection, so there may be some occasional cutouts during cross-talk, but we mitigated this by mostly keeping quiet and listening AS YOU SHOULD TOO. But here are a few links you’ll probably want in addition to her blog which is already on the sidebar.: