Aaron Long joins us again today, to talk about Memories, the 1995 anthology based on the works of Katsuhiro Otomo. That’s MAGNETIC ROSE, STINK BOMB and CANNON FODDER, three excellent short films. And because of what’s in this week’s Weekly Retro Recap, we guarantee that this review of Memories contains more references to MR STAIN IN JUNK ALLEY than any other you can find on the internet.

Plus we play a game of MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THESE as Aaron tries to improve on the performance in the whale-based quiz from the Mind Game episode.

In writing my 1994 for the Golden Ani-versary blog, I noticed that Studio Gallop had a group of creative talent running through their shoujo anime similar to Sailor Moon‘s crew. This Akko-chan inspired series is the first in a run of shoujo manga adaptations.

Princess Erika from the Land of Magic arrives on Earth in search of her human lookalike to gift them a magic item. This item is a magic ribbon that allows the wearer to transform into someone else for an hour a day. If this proves useful over the course of a year, Erika will be able to become ruler of her land.

Her human twin is a 14 year old tomboy, Himeko Nonohara (both parts are non talking animal roles for Ikue Ohtani), who has a crush on an older boy at school and wishes she was more feminine like her big sister. While she sulks about kicking another boy in the head in front of her crush, Erika appears outside Himeko’s bedroom window.

She explains herself and the ribbon. As per usual there are a bunch of arbitary rules, you can’t tell anyone, and if you dont recite the reversal chant before the hour’s up you will be stuck in the form you turned into. Oh and Himeko’s plush toy lion, Pokota is brought to life by the ribbon too (voiced by Kazue Ikura, who would go on to cover for Ohtani as Tony Tony Chopper on One Piece when she was pregnant).

The first thing Himeko changes into is her big sister, and that’s where the episode ends.

This is a funny, charming show, with some great character designs from the debuting Hajime Watanabe. Watanabe provides a unifying look to these shojo adaptations, and then would go onto frequently collaborate with the director of two of them, Akitaro Daichi.

No Daichi yet though, he wouldn’t appear on the scene until 1994, the director on this series is Hatsuki Tsuji. Tsuji had been animating as far back as the second series of Lupin III, and was a mainstay at Gallop through the 80s. This was his first director credit though. More recently he’s been the man for bringing trading card games to life, directing Yu Gi Oh, Live On Cardliver Kakeru and Cardfight Vanguard.

The head writer was Takashi Yamada, who has been head writer on a list of shoujo shows as long as your arm. 

• Crayon Kingdom of Dreams
• Heartcatch Precure
• Hime-chan’s Ribbon
• Little Red Riding Hood ChaCha
• Magical Doremi DOKKAN
• Mo~tto! Ojamajo Doremi
• Ojamajo Doremi
• Ojamajo Doremi #
• Onegai My Melody
• Onegai My Melody – Kuru Kuru Shuffle!
• Onegai My Melody Kirara
• Onegai My Melody Sukkiri
• Yumeiro Pâtissière
• Yumeiro Pâtissière SP Professional

I’m sure I’ve missed some, there’s plenty of others he’s written episodes for either under his real name or his pen names Midori Kuriyama and K.Y. Green. And even more that aren’t shoujo shows. Prolific is the word, currently he’s head writer on Danchi Tomoo.

Hiroaki Sakurai (Digi Charat, Cromartie High School) directed 10 episodes and would be a mainstay on these 90s Gallop shows. I think he’s the only episode director who’d be on the next Gallop show with Tsuji.

Animation directors Masayuki Onchi and Yoko Konishi would join Tsuji again on the next Gallop shoujo project, as would art director Shichiro Kobayashi.

Most of the script writers would return on future Gallop productions, including:

• Hiroshi Toda (scripts). Toda had been head writer on the first three seasons of Ranma 1/2. 
• Shigeru Yanagawa (scripts). And Yanagawa had been head writer on the last three seasons of Ranma 1/2.
• Miharu Hirami (scripts). Hirami would be head writer on the 1996 Gallop show Kodocha.
• Ryousuke Takahashi (scripts, production co-operation). Takahashi’s work at Gallop tends to get overlooked in comparison to his famous mecha creations, but he worked on a lot of their output in the 90s.
• Tomoko Konparu (scripts). Already a veteran in 1992 having started on Ikkyu in the 70s, Konparu has been the head writer on lots of shows in recent years, including Tomorrow’s Nadja, Chi’s Sweet Home and Nodame Cantabile. However, her first head writer position had been the year before Hime-chan’s Ribbon when she was in charge of scripts on the Dear Brother… adaptation.

On a side note, this show appears to have been part of the early push for SMAP, featuring as it does two of their songs for the themes and one of the members in the cast.

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Elliot Page from the UK Anime Network podcast and Epiloguists joins us with the returning Keepers of the Secret of the Sailor Madness, Niall Flanagan and Dwayne Moloney to talk the anime adaptation of the second part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, BATTLE TENDENCY.

And boy do we talk about. We talk about it for almost three hours. So expect spoilers by the truckload.

Plus all the usual features are here, including Ninja Scroll making it’s debut in the Weekly Retro Recap and rousing game of JOJO or BOBO?

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Greg Driver joins us today to talk the 1987 & 1990 Devilman OAVs. Underground discos, spurned bird women and Stonehenge sending a message to the stars. We try to make sense of a great OAV series that unfortunately fizzled out before it really had a chance to get going. And throughout the episode Brian fails to keep a handle on what Miki Makimura’s name actually is (Maki? Miki? Maku?)

Plus, the UK anime releases, WATCHUWATCH, Dear Boys enters it’s first week in the Weekly Retro Recap and we round off with a game of THE CUTS ARE RIGHT!

Hey, hey the gang’s all here! That’s right, Anthony is back and just in time to talk Street Fighter II The Animated Movie with guests Lewis Smith and Ebbie AKA bizarrejelly5.

We’ve all the usual nonsense, WatchUWatch, Weekly Retro Recap, UK anime releases, plus talk about the inaugural GEMUCON that everyone bar Brian went to.

Then we get into it with the 1994 animated motion picture about men and women wandering the world getting into fights.

Here is half the episode that this episode was meant to be. Due to some technical problems, we lost the part of the episode containing the topic. Well bits of it. Enough to make it unintelligible. Plus Anthony was into week two of his hangover and so it was just me and Bradley again.

Nevertheless, friend listener, you shall not be denied your DITB fix. Here is the opening of the lost episode, reforged into a mini-episode. We talk A Letter To Momo, Gorillaz, Blood C and more.

And we finally have a “lost episode” like all good podcasts have.

Enjoy.

Anthony was super hungover the day we recorded this so  he’s not on this episode.

Filling in for him is Bradley C Meek. And considering the pair of us make this episode take almost 2 hours, it was probably for the best that there weren’t three of us on the podcast.

First up we talk about all the winter anime we watched, then we look ahead to the spring season shows and what excites us there. And that’s pretty much it.

Apart from the week’s UK anime releases of course, and the Weekly Retro Recap. With Anthony absent can Tomorrow’s Nadja survive another week, or will Brian send it on its merry way? Find out on another fun packed episode of the show twitter calls DITB.

Here is something different from our usual podcast.

The product of decades spent listening to BBC Radio 4, this is a pilot episode for a panel show/quiz version of the podcast, expanding on the games we play on the episodes with guests on.

It was an interesting experiment, and when we do it again, there’s a few changes I’ll make behind the scenes, and one rule change to the final round. Hopefully though this first draft feels different to the typical anime podcast.

On this episode, Anthony competes against Lewis Smith and Leon Everett. Who will win? Find out on episode 85 of Dynamite In The Brain…

Humanity is trapped on Earth by the alien Radam who have taken over the Orbital Ring System space station that surrounds it. A chance for hope arrives in the form of an amnesiac who can turn into the armoured warrior, Tekkaman Blade.

An updating of the original Tatsunoko Pro series Tekkaman (1975) it aired in an “adapted” English form from Saban as “Teknoman”.

This caught me off guard a little, particularly at the start, when they introduce the Space Knight characters. There was more attempts at goofy humour than I was expecting, such as the pilot Noal getting told off for eating snacks on the bridge, rather than for his aggressive flirting/sexual harassment of his navigator Aki.

This can all be explained when you see that Satoru Akahori & Hiroshi Negishi worked on this, along with frequent collaborator (maybe mentor, does anyone know?) Mayori Sekijima. Akahori had his fingers in a lot of pies throughout the 90s into the 00s, whether as screenwriter, or from having his manga/novels adapted. Or writing novels/manga based on anime.

Akahori & Negishi’s main work together was the 2 Letter Alphabet Series between 1990-99:

• NG Knight Ramune & 40 (1990 – 1991)
• KO Beast Century (1992 – 1993)
• SM Girls Saber Marionette (1995 – 1999)
• VS Knight Ramune & 40 Fire (1996)

Akahori & Sekijima had previously written Legendary Ninja Cats (aka Samurai Pizza Cats) together for Tatsunoko Pro. Sekijima would write the various Saber Marionette J series that were based Akahori & Negishi’s original concept. Negishi was also involved in Akahori’s Heretical Hour Love Game (yes, Akahori had a series with his own name in the title) and co-created the Master Mosquiton concept with him. 

I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, and I’ve not touched on all the work they did without the others’ direct involvement. They certainly kept themselves busy.

Anyway, the point is, if you see these names working together, you are going to expect something goofier than the you get here, and so some attempt at comedy shouldn’t be unexpected. It’s brief though, and the majority of the episode features Tekkaman Blade tearing up aliens. As you might expect and/or want from such a show.

Looking at what ratings I could find for the time, it fell short of what Scramble Saver Kids, the Monkey Punch tribute to Thunderbirds, was doing in it’s slot previously. Though to give you some perspective, if it got the same ratings today, it would be a top ten anime in Japan. 

From this episode my first thought is that the concept might have been better served with a different creative team behind it. If you’ve seen enough of their other work, you can tell it’s them working on it, but at the same time it feels a watered down version of the work they created themselves. And if you want a serious remake of the 70s show, do you really want to use guys who normally amuse themselves by naming characters after food?

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Leon Everett and Lewis Smith join us for the first of two episodes. This week we talk about the 2004 Hiroyuki Imaishi film DEAD LEAVES. And for some reason, Sucker Punch will get talked about much more than you would expect.

Also, will Tomorrow’s Nadja make it through another Weekly Retro Recap?

No game though, for reasons that will become clear on next week’s episode.