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.:
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- Follow Helen on “the tweet tweet” as more and more people are referring to Twitter dot com even as they seem to be trying to do away with “just show me all the posts from the people I’m following in chronological order” on us
- You can still buy most of Helen’s books relatively easily courtesy of Amazon, where many are now offered digitally
- The Easter Con 1990 video room schedule is archived at the Anime Nostalgia Facility
- The BBC’s 1994 documentary on anime and manga hosted by (of course) Jonathan Ross, featuring Helen on camera
- Leah M. Holmes is on YouTube these days
- Her UK Anime Fandom Archive site is still there, too!
- Our review of The Art of Osamu Tezuka from so many years ago
- If you ever visit Tokyo, the Katsutaro Ryokan Annex is not only still around, but they’ve even got free Wi-Fi!
- As part of an ongoing series, the Third Impact Anime podcast is interviewing the contributors to Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Manga and Anime Legend. Helen was on Show 99 and then again in Show 109, Tim Eldred was on Show 107–look, just go there
- The ANN Encyclopedia’s plot synopsis for The Gigolo is as follows: “Jin is one horny hunk, a twenty-two-year-old stud with lady killer looks. He’s challenged by gorgeous Ai Mizushima to ‘make me scream with pleasure’. It’s a wager he can’t refuse, especially when the prize is a brand new sports car.”
Feel free to suggest/request additional links in the comments below, or bug us via email or through social media.
