Anime World Order Show # 197 – You Grew All That Human Tissue in Orbit and It Doesn’t Even Work

We flip-flop a bit on our promise to be the anime podcast that sticks to talking about anime, but after a while Clarissa gets us back on track by talking about 2016’s Flip Flappers, per request of our Patreon donors. See? We pay attention to those requests sometimes!

Introduction (0:00 – 46:09)
We catch up on what we’ve been up to. Daryl’s been in the “manic” phase of his manic/depressive output, having watched through multiple series and read through several volumes of manga in the last few weeks while also sinking an additional 100 hours into Nioh 2 now that it’s on PC after doing nothing at all for most of this year to date. Gerald has been streaming Death Stranding, which he declares the videogame equivalent of Pu-tan from Cromartie High School. He and Clarissa have also been getting through some current shows and rewatching some old comfort picks, which leads us to our email question regarding iyashikei (“healing”) anime. Seems to be in high demand lately, given current world events. UPDATE: Ed Chavez has contacted us to correct the vicious misinformation we have spread about him, as he has not personally played Death Stranding. He’s just heard good things and knows people who like it.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (46:09 – 50:05)
It’s Helen McCarthy’s birthday, so check out her brand new book Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Manga and Anime Legend, featuring a variety of contributions from an assortment of highly qualified and intelligent folks, some of whom even listen to/have been guests on this very podcast! You can also get your preorders in for the hardcover Viz Signature edition of Fist of the North Star, and here’s hoping enough people do that Viz manages to accomplish what has never been done before and complete a physical English language release of the series! Also, a possible contender for worst overall show of the past decade, Hand Shakers, is $15. Daryl always mentally mixes up Hand Shakers with Flip Flappers. WHAT IF WE REVIEWED HAND SHAKERS, GUYS

Review: Flip Flappers (50.05 – 1:28:35)
As requested by a few of our Patreon donors, Clarissa provides an effectively spoiler-free review of one of her favorite series from late 2016…wait, 2016? It’s been nearly five years ago already?! And the director, Kiyotaka Oshiyama, hasn’t been allowed to direct anything full-length ever since? But Hand Shakers got a SEQUEL?! There’s just no justice in this world. Flip Flappers is a yuri-themed SFF series which is an increasingly rare instance of being something anime-original; that is, not adapted from any prior source material. Unfortunately, it was not particularly popular in Japan, and the US release is starting to get a bit harder to find (with the limited editions Gerald and Clarissa own being out of print), so anime-original titles remain an increased financial gamble. For now, it remains streaming on Hidive and VRV, but who knows how long that’ll last?

Anime World Order Show # 196 – Let’s Stop Those Jerks From Abandoning Love

It’s our Sweet Sixteenth year of podcasting! To celebrate, Daryl decides we need more Ken Ishikawa so we review 1989’s Kyomu Senshi Miroku. But we think it’s probably Kyomu Senki Miroku? Whatever, you’ll surely be hearing about this from the YouTubers soon enough.

Introduction (0:00 – 30:21)
We kick off year sixteen of AWO by catching up on what we’ve been watching, which leads to some conversation and speculations regarding the Sony buyout of Crunchyroll from AT&T that is hopefully less anger-inducing to Justin Sevakis than the one he heard on YouTube with the 750K views. We observe that a ton of the new anime this season is NOT on Crunchyroll…and that nobody’s really talking about those shows. The anime landscape is undergoing yet another shift, but it’ll most likely be a year before the major changes become evident to us industry outsiders.

    • Anime Specific, the new podcast from Regan of Anime82 and Dane from Anime Pacific we were talking about
    • There is in fact a standard edition Blu-Ray release of Demon Slayer courtesy of FUNimation. Here’s Volume 1, and here’s Volume 2.

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (30:21 – 33:08)
The 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of Bartender is finally out, so you can see for yourselves that there’s more to “iyashikei” anime than young girls eating cake. You can also have young LADIES drinking BOOZE. Or old dads…drinking BOOZE. We’re just saying, it’s a broad umbrella term. You can also preorder your Cyber City Oedo 808 Blu-Ray, though most of the healing in that comes from throwing cyber vampires out into the cold blackness of space, causing them to decompress but then recompress. See? It’s healing.

Review: Kyomu Senshi Miroku or as we insist, Kyomu Senki Miroku (30:21 – 1:29:57)
I believed you were different? I hoped you were different! What started off as a casual name drop from Blacotaku1 in Show 194 has given rise to what lies before you now. We recommend you listen to Show 184 first before listening to this (and that in turn recommended you listen to Show 165 first, as our ongoing ploy to keep you listening to us), but really this is the spiritual successor to Show 54 because that was when Gerald reviewed Black Lion by Go Nagai. Well, Ken Ishikawa took a look at Black Lion and said “pfft, that’s nothing” as Ken Ishikawa would do when looking at everything Go Nagai did. The result is this six episode onslaught of NINJANIGANS, and you’re either not ready to handle it or years of listening to AWO have steeled your resolve.