Ebbie aka BizarreJelly5 joins us today to talk about her favourite TV show of all time, Kino’s Journey. Brian and Anthony have never seen it before, so find out how they react to this tale of a girl and her talking motorcycle.

Brian has heard of another show with a talking motorcycle, so we also talk a little about the failed pilot Heat Vision & Jack.

Plus he tests Anthony & Ebbie’s knowledge of bikers in popular culture in the game BIKER TROVE.

All this and R.O.D. the TV makes its debut as the Weekly Retro Recap. Rev your engines dear listener, for it’s another tearaway episode of the show they call DITB.

Inferno Cop. Nuff Said.

Elliot Page and Lewis Smith join us today to talk about the 2001 OAV series, READ OR DIE. Superpowered librarians, resurrected great men from history and “British” accents are all here in this week’s episode. PLUS: Digi-girl Pop is our Weekly Retro Recap.

Miracle Girls, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Little Women II: Jo’s Boys, The Brave Express Might Gaine, Sailor Moon R, Gosaurer

Mobile Suit V Gundam, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Legend of the Swordmaster Yaiba, Dinosaur Planet, Nintama Rantaro, Pokonyan

Hurricane! Iron Leaguer, Dragon League, Lupin III Orders To Assassinate Lupin, Tama & Friends, Muka Muka Paradise, Love! Hello Kitty

Heisei Inu Monogatari Bow, Jungle King Taa-chan, Slam Dunk, Tanoshi Willow Town, Blue Legend Shoot, Striped Tiger Shimajiro

Puppet Show Heike Monogatari

Shows Ending In 1993:

Chirorin Mura Monogatari, Super Electric Robot Iron Man 28 FX, Brave Legend Da Garn, Flower Magic-using Mary Bell, Teknoman, Sailor Moon

Energy Bomb Ganbaruger, Oi! Ryoma, Chikyu SOS Soreike Kororin, Tomato-man and the Knights of the Salad Table, Super Bikkuriman, Yadamon

Mikan’s Picture Diary, Calimero, Dog of Flanders: My Patolasshu, Hime-chan’s Ribbon, Kaze no Naka no Shoujo Kinpatsu no Jeanie, Papuwa of the South Seas

Space Oz Adventure, Super Zugan

Shows continuing through 1993:

Sazae-san, Doraemon, Anpanman, Dragonball Z, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Cooking Papa

Crayon Shin-chan, Kobo-chan, Get a Grip, Tsuyoshi!!, Yuu Yuu Hakusho

Initial thought after I made this list was “Irresponsible Captain Tylor looks really out of place”. As a non-robot sci-fi show in prime time it looks really odd next to all the manga adaptations and brightly coloured cartoons for kids. In fact it’s so odd, that my post on 1994 that I did for the Golden Ani-Versary blog might have read differently had I realised it before.

The second thought was that we had a lot of shows continuing throughout the year, taking us to ten (eleven if you count the Sailor Moon series as a whole). Five of which are still on the air today. 1992 only had five continue from 91 to 93, and all continued through this year too.

Slam Dunk and Ghost Sweeper Mikami were the big ratings hits among the shows launched this year. However, despite doing better than Super Bikkuriman, Ghost Sweeper Mikami was cancelled after 45 episodes. According to an unsubstantiated “fact” on wikipedia, this was due to lack of merchandise sales.

In terms of longevity though, Nintama Rantaro was the winner, as it continued to air to the present day.

Looking at the Animage Grand Prix ratings, everything was still massively overshadowed by Yu Yu Hakusho and Sailor Moon (which got in there twice). Tylor, Gundam V, and Mikami were the new TV shows making the top ten.

As I go into writing about the new shows, I have seen episodes of four shows that started in 1993. And the Lupin III special.

• Captain Tylor – I have seen random episodes of this show. I was going to buy it on VHS at one point, but managed to order volume 5 instead of volume 1 and never got the rest. I’ve seen some of the last episodes at a convention back in the 90s.
• Ghost Sweeper Mikami – I’ve seen the first few episodes of this back when it was getting fansubbed.
• Mobile Suit V Gundam – I’ve seen the first episode of this.
• Slam Dunk – I’ve seen the first few episodes of this way, way back before the ill-fated attempt at releasing on DVD in the US. Entirely possible they were dodgy HK bootlegs.

One last note, the odd picture for the Hello Kitty show is the dinosaur character that was the only original animation on the show. The rest was recycled material from earlier Hello Kitty animation. Finding that information out was the trickiest part of compiling this list. Tanoshi Willow Town (a Wind in the Willows adaptation) also proved tricky to find a screenshot for.

We’re back to looking at films/OAVs/specials from 10 years ago, and today it is 2003′s LUPIN III special. Where, get this, rather than stealing treasure, he has to return it. I know, right?

To help us deal with this strange turn of events in the life of everyone’s favourite thief, we have Bradley C. Meek on board. We’ll also have a game of GUESS THE EUROPEAN and ZATCH BELL will attempt to make it past week two of its stint in the Weekly Retro Recap slot.

Enjoy!

Gary Hedges joins us today to talk about Slayers The Motion Picture (1995), Lina and Naga’s first animated outing together. Plus all the usual features, with this week’s Weekly Retro Recap being episode 1 of Zatch Bell.

And yes, there is a game. One which we had to record twice as the rules in the first attempt made it something of a disaster. Is the final version any less of a disaster? You be the judge!

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.

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?

Elliot’s Twitter

Niall’s Twitter

SOTSM Tumblr

Dwayne’s Tumblr

Dwayne’s Deviantart

Dwayne’s Comic

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?

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.

Fester Fish’s father, Aaron Long, joins us once again, this time to talk Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 film MIND GAME. Which mainly involves telling each other how much we love it as we attempt to provide a film synopsis. In fact we love it so much, we will probably do another episode in the future once we have all digested the extras on the Region 4 DVD release. And then probably another one after that.

Plus, Tomorrow’s Nadja enters WEEK THREE of the Weekly Retro Recap, the first show to do so. Can it make it to week four? And we round the show off with perhaps the toughest game we’ve ever played on the show and a terrible pun.

ENJOY.

The other big new show of 1992. Or at least the one I am able to see the first episode of (sorry Crayon Shin-chan).

Based on the manga by Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi’s future husband, Yoshihiro Togashi, this anime would run until January 1995 and 112 episodes. A pretty good stint for the 90s, there’s a bigger Shonen Jump manga that gets its anime in 1993 that didn’t run that long.

This first episode introduces us to delinquent with a heart of gold, Yusuke Urameshi, just after he’s been hit by a car and killed. We learn in a flashback some of his troubles, including mean teachers, a drunk mother, unwillingness to attend classes and other kids wanting to fight him. Then we see exactly how he ended up getting hit by a car – he was saving a little kid from getting run over. 

A girl riding a flying paddle shows up, introduces herself as Botan, and says she’s here to take him to the other side. There’s one problem though, they weren’t expecting him, so they need him to go through some sort of trial before bringing him back to life. Yusuke is happy though remaing a wandering spirit on Earth, until he sees how his death is effecting his friends and family, and so decides to let Botan take him to do this trial.

And that’s your lot for this episode.

The positive is it does a really good job of establishing Yusuke’s personality and the world around him, the negative is it feels a little insubstantial as a first episode. We don’t really get to the actual hook of the series. Possibly it didn’t matter at the time as Shonen Jump was still selling like hot cakes, and they take their time and assume familiarity with the source material.

The animation varies from good – the opening shot of Botan – to rough around the edges – there’s some weird proportions in some shots, but nothing too outrageous in either direction. Having seen other shows directed by Noriyuki Abe (Ninku, Flame of Rekka, GTO, Bleach), it feels recognisably his show, but at the same time I can’t say why. There’s something there, but’s not big and flashy enough to be obvious.

An enjoyable enough first episode, but I have One Piece to scratch this particular itch, and I wasn’t able to give Hunter X Hunter my full attention, so I can’t see myself going back to this.

OK folks, the deadline for my 1994 post on the Golden Ani-Versary Blog is fast approaching, and here I am still talking about 1992 on this blog. It’s time to knuckle down and watch cartoons. Let’s get back on the horse with Sailor Moon.

The big show of 1992. And 1993. And 1994.

We recently talked about this as part of our Magical GIrl podcast, and as I mentioned there, even in the first episode, you can see why the show worked so well. Visually, it contains touches that put the current inheritor of it’s mojo, Doki Doki Precure, to shame. For example, the sequence where Luna walks over the roof of a car, and the way the cat’s reflection distorts with the curve of the roof, is attention to detail that you just aren’t seeing today.

The monster of the week is genuinely creepy, both in design and movement, with more of a horror influence than the tokusatsu gimmick monsters of the week that Pretty Cure has. Doki Doki’s monsters almost seem like something out of the middle of a Kinder Egg in comparison to the soul consuming monster in this episode of Sailor Moon.

In contrast with the horror, there is also some well executed humour. You can definitely see the creative team connection between this and director Junichi Sato’s previous show Goldfish Forecast. The skeleton cutaway of Usagi above, appears as a single frame gag used as she comically hurts her knee on her front door.

The final thing that really struck me from watching it alongside five other magical girl shows, is the everygirl nature of Usagi. As I mentioned in an earlier post, even before they get superpowers, the Doki Doki heroines are already aspirational characters or fantasies. Usagi though is a cry baby klutz who’s not particularly academically gifted. 

She feels more like an identifiable audience surrogate than a lot of magical girl heroines, and that strikes me as being a big part of the show’s success.

In this first episode there is little evidence yet of the innovations it is most famous for, namely the Saint Seiya and Super Sentai influences it brought to the genre. We get a Sailor Venus cameo, and in a clever bit of casting both Luna and archvillain Queen Beryl are voiced by Keiko Han, who had previously voiced Athena in Saint Seiya (both Luna and Athena are responsible for assembling the heroes of their respective shows). When we get to the opening episodes of 1993 and 1994′s sequels, these influences will be more evident, both in Sailor Moon itself, and in other shows being broadcast.

Because I am going to tell you.

I am now watching three of the four TV Asahi Sunday morning kids shows on a weekly basis, Kamen Rider Wizard, Doki Doki Precure and most recently, Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger.

A curious thing that has happened recently is that all three, within weeks of each other, have dealt with idea of a superhero’s secret identity and the most usual reason given in US superhero comics for having one. Namely, to protect those around you.

Spider-Man’s excuse for keeping his identity secret is he feels that if people knew, villains would target his loved ones. Plenty of other heroes have a variation on this, but Spidey’s is perhaps the most archetypal in this regard.

One aspect of this choice that Spider-Man rarely deals with head on is guilt over constantly lying to his friends and family.

In episode 2 of Doki Doki! Precure, Mana thinks she should keep her identity as Cure Heart a secret from her best friend Rikka, for pretty much the same reasons as Spidey. Only her case it’s from advice given to here by magical cute animals who turn into magic cell phones. However, straight away the lying affects her friendship, so she ignores the advice and reveals her identity. Friendship is saved and no one is placed in any danger.

Later in episode 4, we get a different take on secret identities, more in line with a superhero like Batman, where we learn Alice (Cure Rosetta) is using her family’s wealth and influence to ensure no one captures their transformations on film. It’s not so much to protect family and friends as it is to ensure their effectiveness as superheroines.

Alice is very much Batman, right down to the faithful butler.

Meanwhile over in the newest sentai show, Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, the first episode ended with 4 of the 5 heroes refusing to reveal their identities to one another. In episode 2, the focus is on the Blue and Pink Kyoryugers and why they hide their identities. Blue, 32 year old handyman Nobuharu Udo, keeps his hidden to protect his sister and his niece. Like Mana, by the end of the second episode he’s learnt the error of his ways and now his niece knows he’s a superhero (they still keep it secret from her mum).

Amy Yuuzuki (Pink) on the other hand, is trying to keep up the pretense of being ladylike in front of her butler, rather than the badass martial artist she really is. Like Blue and his niece, by the end of the episode, her butler is fully aware that she’s a dinosaur summoning superhero.

From previews of episode 3, it looks like we’ll be dealing with Green’s reasons for keeping his identity secret, his disapproving father.

And talking of disapproving family members, the current arc of Kamen Rider Wizard deals with Beast trying to keep his superhero identity secret from his disapproving, over protective, grandmother. This has strong echoes of the Peter Parker / Aunt May relationship, though Peter Parker never pretended that Spider-Man was actually Spider-Woman in order to throw his Aunt off the trail.

And I’m pretty sure that Aunt May never offered to be turned into a monster and fed to her nephew to save his life. Which is where this arc appears to be heading.

As I said at the beginning, it’s curious all three should hit similar notes within weeks of each other. It makes me wonder if there was some sort of network or studio note to have something to discourage the kids watching from keeping secrets. Or they all liked the ending of the first Iron Man film. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

I will say that watching all three of these shows together has really made me appreciate them more, as you start to see elements and influences they share.

Greg Driver & Gary Hedges join us again, this time run down our favourite robots from anime and manga. And one thing that isn’t either. And one robot that’s technically a cyborg, despite the only rule being no cyborgs.

WARNING: this episode contains a DBZ discussion that may have you shouting at your generic mp3 playing devices. All I will say is stick with it.

Plus, Tomorrow’s Nadja is once again our WEEKLY RETRO RECAP. Will it be the first show to go beyond two episodes? Download and find out!

Everyone guests on this episode of Dynamite In The Brain. Well not quite everyone, but we do have Gary Hedges, Greg Driver and Niall Flanagan on board to talk 1991′s CYBER CITY OEDO 808. The violence, the swearing, the vampires, the swearing, the robots, the swearing, it’s all here on another bumper episode of DITB.

As a counter point to this outpouring of 1990′s OAV excess, this week’s Weekly Retro Recap is episode 1 of TOMORROW’S NADJA, a tale of an orphan finding her way in the Europe of the early 20th century.

All this and we totally forget to mention that we’ve been at this podcast lark for TWO YEARS now.

Debbie Crisp joins us once more to talk about a Warner Home Video animation anthology, this time it’s the animated spin-off from the Matrix Trilogy, THE ANIMATRIX. Cast your minds back ten years to when our disappointment in the sequels was somewhat lessened by this collection of animated shorts set in the world of the Matrix.

Plus, this week’s WEEKLY RETRO RECAP is the first episode of SAIYUKI RELOAD.

Oh and here’s the Drive animation that was mentioned on the podcast.

So I am starting with the 2013 Pretty Cure show, Doki Doki! Pretty Cure. I’m already watching Kamen Rider Wizard, and plan to start the new dinosaur filled Sentai show, so why not complete the Sunday morning superhero triumverate with Pretty Cure?

The cold open kind of reminded me of Sailor Moon S’s apocalyptic opening. Mainly because I watched that episode a week or two ago. At first I thought it was a flash forward, but by the end, I was going for flash back.

There is a chubby cartoon baby fairy in the opening credits. Is this series going for a Chibi Devi/UFO Baby/Mama is a 4th Grader gimmick, where a young girl has a baby foist upon her?

Watching magical girl shows after having watched some tokusatsu superhero shows casts them in a new light. I liked that apparently they have such shows in the world of Doki Doki, and characters sort of know what to do when presented with a transformation device because of them.

The theme of the villains is selfishness, and because I am watching Kamen Rider OOO at the moment, reminded me of the Greeed. Both in the gimmick and how they have squabbles.

Having watched the first episode Sailor Moon for the podcast recently, I am struck by the exceptional nature of the heroines’ day to day lives even before they get super powers. The first Pretty Cure (the only other one I’ve seen any thing of) also had this with the heroines being the best at sport and the best in academic pursuits.

Here you have the student council president, her secretary, a super rich girl and a girl who is pop star AND comes from another dimension. There isn’t really the everygirl heroine of Usagi here, instead they are either aspirational or fantasies. I suppose with the “transform into your fantasy job” element of the Pierrot shows not present in the heroic forms you can move that element onto the girls themselves.

On a completely different there’s a character in the first episode who gives our heroine AIda Mana, the trinket that allows her to transform, and I cannot tell if his line reading of the shows English language catchphrase “MY SWEETHEART” is deliberately creepy, or the actor is reading it phonetically.

That aside, it’s been enjoyable so far, episode two in particular had a really fun gimmick for its monster. Almost felt like a Kinnikuman villain in that it followed the inanimate object turned animated idea to a logical and comical conclusion.

To counteract the magical girl shows from last week’s episode, we are joined by Niall Flanagan to talk 1983′s movie adaptation of GOLGO 13. The world’s most famous stoic assassin in a classic from the 90s anime boom in the UK.

Plus the usual UK anime releases, WATCHUWATCH, the Weekly Retro Recap featuring Airmaster episode 2 and a game we like to call FINAL SCORE.

So listen, and find out why this episode could have been called “ALL ABOARD THE GULLIBILITY EXPRESS”…

It’s finally here, the episode in which Anthony is forced to watch MAGICAL GIRL SHOWS. Spanning six decades of magical girls, can the man from the North-East’s fragile machismo stand the onslaught of “girly” anime? Find out on a special episode of DITB!

Featuring: Sally The Witch! Meg The Witch Girl! Creamy Mami! Sailor Moon! Pretty Cure! Jewelpet Sunshine!

Related Links:

How Many Attacks Do You Need Dude?

Meg The Witch Girl Carnage

Complete with the tape that held the badge onto the cover.

Ghost In The Shell was about to debut in the cinema, and so it gets the cover this month as part of the hype for that. Also it allows the magazine to indulge itself in all things “cyber” even more than usual. The four pages GITS gets is pretty dense, with the last two pages full of side bars packed with words in teeny tiny fonts.

Regular column Cyberdrome runs down other “cyber” films including The Net, Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days and Virtuosity. Only Hackers and Strange Days get the thumbs up. Similarly, the column Short Cuts covered various “cyber” anime and abused the word cyber something awful. Finally, replacing Dirty Pair, we get an Appleseed side story as the new comic this issue, alongside the continuing Akira and Striker (aka Spriggan).

On a less sci-fi note, there was also a feature on The Cockpit OAV based on Leiji Matsumoto’s Battlefield manga.

There was next to nothing anime related in the news, as the Xmas period was light on releases. Apparently a company called CD Vision had high hopes for VCDs and were going to put out Akira, Ninja Scroll, Appleseed and Streetfighter II. That was about it. Streetfighter II topped the Virgin Megastore anime charts.

The most interesting thing I found flicking through this issue was an advert for a Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct comic, as I had totally forgotten that Space Precinct had existed, let alone that it had a comic. And a sticker album. And action figures.

A last minute scheduling clash meant we were left guest-less and couldn’t do the planned topic. So we put a call out on twitter and Facebook for question and topics and you, the listener, came through for us. So episode 77 includes discussion of diverse topics like Ghost In The Shell Arise, Cats, Moomins, kigurumi, embarrassing moments and much, much more.

Over at the podcast we have a new episode up, about a variety of topics including Ghost In The Shell Arise, Moomins and Cats.

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Long time readers may remember when I attempted to do daily reviews of each and every episode of the television series Urusei Yatsura. I failed, due to some real life events that needed taking care of and then discovering a neck injury that kind of put a damper on the whole blogging thing for a while. And too many Ran episodes.

Anyway, I am trying to pick up where I left it, but this episode did not make it easy for me.

A previously unrevealed trio of gardeners in Ataru’s class love their tomatoes a little too much and when Ten burns all but three plants to the ground, they bury the young alien up to his neck as punishment. Vowing revenge, as he tends to do, Ten builds a device (from a shop bought kit for good boys) that can increase mass of objects. Then, when the class is in school on Sunday to do an extra test, he buries the entire school. 

Taking the usual couple of minutes to descend into a Lord of the Flies style breakdown of civilised behaviour, the three gardners fear that the rest of class 2-4 will eat their tomatoes and arm themselves. The end result of all this is a teenager wearing a giant tomato mask tearing up the school with a chainsaw. Meanwhile, Lum builds a device out of Ataru’s Game and Watch (nicely dating the show rather specifically) to reverse Ten’s, but it goes to far and the episode ends with the school now floating above the ground.

There are two main issues I have with this episode. First of all, the three gardeners look like they’ve walked in from another manga, but not in a good way, like the Mizunokouji siblings. They frequently have weird proportions and movements early on in the episode, especially jarring when the regulars look pretty much on point, sometimes in the same shot as these one shot characters.

Secondly, it takes a long time to get going. I know they are trying to do the burning passion of youth parody again here, but it’s been done a lot better before in the show, and here it drags. Once the chase round the school scenes kick in, it’s a lot of fun, but you have to slog to get there.

Beatles Watch! After failing to pinpoint what I thought was a Beatles reference in an earlier episode of the Studio Deen run, I am on the look out now. There was a really easy one to spot here as Onsen Mark’s English lesson was him reading the lyrics to “Yesterday”.

Screenplay: Toshiki Inoue

Episode Director & Storyboard: Naoyuki Yoshinaga

Animation Director: Yuichi Endo

I remember hating Excalibur #18 when it came out in 1989. In general I wasn’t well disposed to any non-Alan Davis issue of the comic anyway, but the lengthy “Cross Time Caper” storyline had already shown signs of coming off the tracks and this issue was full of super ugly, off-model, inconsistent art.

At the time I did not realise that this issue, and to some extent issue 19, was intended as a parody of anime. In particular Speed Racer and Dirty Pair, actually only Speed Racer and Dirty Pair. What artist Dennis Jensen was apparently doing was portraying Kitty and Brian turning into anime characters the longer they stayed in the alternate Earth they’d ended up in. But only them, not the rest of Excalibur. And apparently only the “Lovely Pair” looked like anime characters in this world, as the evil anime Jamie Braddock looked like evil normal Jamie Braddock pre-lobotomy.

Nowadays I can appreciate the Cross Time Caper as a whole, as I’m not waiting a month between issues and getting annoyed the lack of plot movement. Nevertheless, Excalibur #18 is still a horrible comic.

When you had Bret Blevins working at Marvel at the time, having an artist who inked Carmine Infantino in the 70s draw your anime parody seems an odd choice. A clue to why it’s so sloppy and all over the place may lie in the inker credits “Dan Adkins & Co”. Never good sign when there are multiple inkers, even less of a good sign when there’s no space to list them all.

Ignoring the horrible, clunky art, the story is a mess too. There’s some barely comprehensible plot with Meggan’s powers behaving oddly around Rachel’s Phoenix powers. The whole “my powers are behaving strange” is one of my least favourite superhero plots and here it gets two issues worth of story.

And the villain is an alternate reality Jamie Braddock which means… Reality Altering. Claremont really likes that power, I wonder if him giving Jamie that power was another “can’t use Jim Jaspers” work around like the Adversary? Plus the comic is Claremont at his most verbose, possibly attempting to hide the art with as many speech bubbles as possible.

A rotten comic. Thankfully #19 had Rick Leonardi on it, who I hated when I was 14 years old, but what did I know, I was a teenager. Rick Leonardi is awesome. Go get his work on Cloak & Dagger, it’s pretty neat.

I’ll leave you with more of Claremont’s homage to the Dirty Pair from #18.

1) Lupin III Volume 4 & Volume 5 99p each

These may have been the bargain of the year, two out of print Lupin manga for less than a pound each. I have had no luck in repeating this feat since then.

If you have patience you can get some really cheap Blu Rays of films that are actually worth watching on eBay too.

9) Nintendo DS Game Scrabble £3.75

Probably the most value for money item I got this year. Played this a lot on various train journeys and have become a better scrabble player as a result.

When Yuri and Ken wish that Mary Bell, the flower fairy from their storybook, could help their parents’ florist shop, their wish comes true. Mary Bell and her seelie court assistant, Tambourine, allow the family to hear the flowers voice and so help them emit “friendly beams” better. However she overdoes the magic and soon the whole town can hear the flowers…

Well, this is certainly the first episode of a magical girl show. In that it goes in hard with shilling the toys that come from the show. In other ways it distinguishes itself quite well.

The first thing that strikes you is that it looks a lot better than most of the TV anime from this era. As well as decent production values, it has strong character design. The original character design was from Kenichi Ohnuki (Major), with final design from the possibly pseudonymous Shigenori Kanantsu. I say possibly pseudonymous as there is no other information about them, they worked on no other show, and one of the episode directors, “Koichiro” was also a mystery. 

Once we get to Mary Bell herself, there’s definitely a different feel to her as a magical girl. She has some similarities to the “visitor from a magic kingdom” magical girls, but there’s an undeniable dose of Mary Poppins in there too. The biggest nod being the Mary Bell story book featuring children with the same names as the children from Mary Poppins. She comes across as a magical girl as some sort of humanised deity, sent to solve the problems of mortals, rather than having been sent to Earth to learn how to be a human, a better person or some such.

That’s added to by the fact that Mary Bell already existed in the minds of mankind through that story book. She’s a mythological figure for some people, in the first episode an elderly woman is thrilled to meet Mary Bell, because she always knew that Mary really existed since she was a little girl.

The final element that sets it apart, at least with this episode, is that there are two songs in it. Not just image songs, but songs sung by characters (albeit flowers) in the course of the story. 

All in all, it was a pleasant surprise. Despite understandably feeling dated and a little sedate in the wake of Sailor Moon’s popularity and it’s many imitators/followers, Mary Bell still manages to feel distinct and finds it’s own furrow to plow. And then plants flowers in it.

(cover art by Wil Overton)

While Babel II is the cover story, and there’s a pretty good article on the OAV series, the big thing here is a Go Nagai interview. Conducted at the San Diego Comic Con, it’s a pretty good potted history of his career straight from the man himself. And of course, it being Manga Mania, somehow manages to get a mention of Buichi Terasawa’s CD-ROM in there.

The third article was on Sol Bianca, which only warranted a single page and kind of had the vibe of “well if you like these other things, you might like this. Maybe.”

The Ghost In Shell movie’s UK screenings were announced. I went to see one of them at the Odeon West End cinema, it was not the greatest cinema experience, as it was not the greatest cinema. Also making the news was Koji Morimoto’s music video for Ken Ishii’s record Extra. Patlabor 2 was coming out on VHS, as was The Cockpit.

RecontamineTed 1995, a convention held at the Birmingham Grand Hotel, was mentioned in the news items. This is likely the first I had heard of it, and it would prove to be my first convention.  Angel Cop 5 was September’s best selling anime tape and there was another reader’s poll. I may have even sent one in, such was my fervour for anime at this point.

In the columns, Cyberdrome was mainly about ChibaMOO, where you could pretend to be a cyberpunk on the internet or something like that. Animatedly Yours covered the changes being made to Dragonball as it hit US TV screens, and Megabyte gave the SNES version of Doom 90%.

Julie Davis’ Manga Files covered Go Nagai & Kenichi Sonoda and Peter J Evans covered Astro Boy in his Screen Gems column.

Pretty good issue, certainly an improvement on a lot of the Manga era ones I’ve discussed so far.

Kroll Show 1 – A really strong first episode for Nick Kroll’s sketch show. What fascinates me is how many of the sketches operate on different levels. For example The Sex In The City For Dudes sketch starts as pretty much what you’d expect to be, but eventually starts parodying itself as the musical stabs get more and more ridiculous.

Dan Vs. – Started watching this, the later episodes seem better paced than the early ones, but Curtis Armstrong’s performance as Dan is fantastically rage filled. So rage filled in fact, watching more than one episode at a time is a little wearying.

Problems – Also started watching this thoroughly strange sketch show from Australian comedian Sam Simmons. It is strange.

1994 – Here is the shortlist of shows I am planning on bringing up in my Golden Ani-versary contribution. There’s one more I am 50/50 one, but can you think of any other notable shows from 1994 I’ve missed? (Just TV, no OAVs/Movies)

• Magic Knight Rayearth.
• Macross 7
• G Gundam
• Sailor Moon S
• Little Red Riding Hood ChaCha
• Blue Seed

Top 100 Lists and the like – While looking for indicators of what were big 1994 shows (both then, and from the vantage point of history), I was trying to find any more recent Top 100 Anime lists than the TV Asahi 2005 one that were actually worth looking at. I did not find any. I did however find the 100 Anime Recommendations list that animestyle.fm is very slowly producing.

It got me thinking about trying to create my own top 100. I got to 35 titles I’d include without any further thought, and then realised I’d have to rewatch a lot of the stuff from the 90s that I’d not seen in years. For the curious the 35 are in alphabetical order:

• Akira
• Baccano!
• Cowboy Bebop
• FLCL
• Gag Manga Biyori
• Giant Robo
• Gunbuster
• Gurren Lagann
• Interstellar 5555
• Kemonozume
• Kuruneko
• Letter To Momo
• Lupin III
• Mind Game
• Mononoke
• My Neighbor Totoro
• One Piece
• Panty&Stocking with Garterbelt
• Paranoia Agent
• Patlabor
• Ponyo
• Porco Rosso
• Poyopoyo
• RE:Cutie Honey
• Read Or Die
• Redline
• Samurai Champloo
• Sexy Commando Side Story: Amazing! Masaru
• Spirited Away
• Summer Wars
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
• The Tatami Galaxy
• Tiger & Bunny
• Tsuritama
• Urusei Yatsura
• Wolf Children

Currently heavily weighted to the last 10 years as you might expect due to memory and quantity of anime available to watch. The question is can I be bothered to rewatch some of things I really ought to in order to make such a list? Or get around to watching some things that are sitting on my shelf right this second for the first time?

It’s a podclash as we are joined by Secret of the Sailor Madness (aka Niall Flanagan and Dwayne Moloney) to talk about the first nine episodes of 2012′s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure television adaptation, the arc known as PHANTOM BLOOD. And for the spoiler adverse, we arguably spoil most of those episodes, so there you go.

Plus all the regular stations, namely UK Anime Releases, WATCHUWATCH and WEEKLY RETRO RECAP, which this week is episode one of Please Twins.  To wrap things up we play a round of the popular game, JOJO or NONO.

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FIND OUT FOR YOURSELVES HOW DELIGHTFUL WE ARE, HERE

I really like Marvel’s Excalibur. Well, I really like bits of Marvel’s Excalibur. Namely any issues that have the involvement of either Alan Davis or Warren Ellis. There’s some real bleak periods, particular the section between the time when Davis was writing and Ellis took over. But the gap between Davis dropping out as artist and him returning to take over the comic contains a lot of odd stuff. Three of those odd issues are Claremont’s then swan song on the title – a story called Girls School From Heck.

It is possibly the most Chris Claremonty Chris Claremont comic in the career of Chris Claremont.

Part 1 alone contains the following:

• Nazis
• Gender-switched Heroes
• Margaret Thatcher being mind controlled by Mesmero
• The gender switching, bondage gear wearing Nigel Frobusher version of the Vixen.
• Teenage Kitty Pryde being held and kissed by the headmistress of the all girls private school she’s been enrolled in (this may be on artist Ron Wagner, as the dialogue doesn’t match the picture.).
• The School is a St Trinian’s parody.
• Courtney Ross (really her facist extra dimensional double Sat-Yr-9) spying on Kitty playing hockey. This is following up an old subplot where Kitty was being groomed by Courtney. For what, we never really found out. Of course it was full of lesbian subtext in Claremont’s hands, less so under Davis. Maybe someone realised it was coming across a little creepy having an adult appear to be trying to seduce a teenage superhero?
• Kitty’s clothes getting torn playing hockey.

Part 2 adds:

• Gratuitous swimwear scene with Nightcrawler and Rachel
• Excalibur being mind-controlled
• Kitty doing martial arts.
• Use of obscure Chris Claremont characters, here it is Major Debra Vavara Levin and a Russian spy who apparently we are supposed to recognise, but doesn’t get named (it’s Colonel Alexi Vazhin apparently). Also: they show up solely to foreshadow a story in a different comic.

Part 3 adds:

• The recurring Dr Who reference that is Brigadier Alysande Stuart.
• The creepy incestuous Nazi twins known as Fenris.
• Meggan transforming into a ludicrously jacked body builder version of herself. 
• People walking in on other people undressed (in this case Meggan and an American Football team).

I’d forgotten those last two were Claremontian tics until going through this again. The most obvious example of the jacked up transformation is the barely comprehensible Polaris loses her powers storyline that happened in Uncanny X-Men. 

These are pretty mediocre comic books, no where near the lows the book would reach, but following the initial Claremont/Davis run, they were not good enough.

Finally, if you want to check out a blog dedicated to investigating one specific tic/fetish of Claremont, I recommend Chris Claremont: Mindcontrol Central, where you can learn just how much Chris Claremont loves mind control. This post is amateur hour compared to what’s going on over there.

Cooking Papa had been running in Weekly Morning for seven years at this point, and this first episode does feel a little like you are meant to have an idea about what the deal is with the show already. It doesn’t go into any great detail explaining who the characters are, it just tells a sweet story about the son of the family befriending a shy girl and the titular papa having to solve a problem by cooking. You get a pretty good idea of what Kazumi Araiwa, his wife Nijiko and son Makoto are like from seeing them interact with other characters, without it ever spelling out what the series’ hook is.

That hook is as follows, with Nijiko so busy as a journalist, Kazumi working only a 5 minute moped ride from home, and most of all, because he loves to cook, Kazumi cooks for the family. But he keeps it hidden from his colleagues, because apparently in 1992 it would be career suicide if they learnt how good a cook he was. Or that his wife doesn’t cook for him. One of the two, maybe both. Thankfully this doesn’t result in any sort of hackneyed farce nor is it particularly drawn attention to in the is episode. While Kazumi isn’t so sell assured as to tell his collegues, you don’t get him panicking that they are going to find out either.

The other, presumably recurring, characters are a little harder to get a feel for in ths first episode, mainly because there’s so many of them. Despite that I can recall a lot of them, there’s the classmate with the hots for Makoto, Makoto’s weird looking friend, Kazumi’s bumbling junior, a chorus of office ladies, and his boss who wants to eat the lunches that Kazumi’s “wife” made had made for her husband.

It’s not especially funny, and for a cooking show, there’s really not a lot of technical food talk in the episode’s story. The characters though, are so nice and above all, normal, that it’s a pleasant watch.

I think the more exagerrated look of Kazumi and Nijiko, him with the enormous frame and giant chin, her with the thick coke bottle lenses, actually make them seem more normal than if they had a more standard look. People are kinda funny looking more often than they are drop dead handsome or beautiful after all.

Given that it is/was aimed at a young audience, it also makes them look more like parents than just manga characters. Makoto on the other hand is quite blandly designed, making it easier for a young reader to identify with him. Of course, those kids who read it back in 1985 now probably look more like Kazumi or Nijiko. That being said, I see from wikipedia that the characters have aged over the series, with Makoto about to pick a university in 2009. Presumably they have slowly aged, rather than Makoto being held back multiple years.

There’s a live action educational cooking sequence post credits, but it wasn’t fansubbed and Astro Fighter Sunred’s cooking instruction parodies had ruined these sort of things for me already.

Tochi Ueyama’s manga is still running today, and there was a live action TV show in 2008. And Cooking Papa buns in 2012.

Well, this was a really well made first episode of a kids TV action anime. Lots of unsupervised adventure, comedy, mystery and a police car that turns into a robot. Earth is visited by a hostile UFO, and the main character Seiji Takasugi runs the gamut of emotion from being exicted about a UFO, happy that school gets cancelled because of the UFO, terrified when the UFO turns into a hostile robot that attacks his town, to being totally stoked that he has a
transforming police car robot that he can order to beat up the evil robot.

The episode builds nicely as what seems at first to be a typical day for Seiji, slowly turns weird and dangerous. Then it gives you some robot action, and finally it leaves you with enough mystery to make you want to come back for the next episode. What’s the deal with spooky girl in Seiji’s class who listens to nature, and who are the aliens orbiting Earth that sent the UFO?

While the opening animation is pretty great, it turns out that it’s not writing cheques the show can’t cash. The animation in the episode has some nice flourishes here and there, telling the story well. And you can definitely tell the human characters are based on some Toyoo Ashida designs. 

This is the first of these 1990′s shows I’ve been watching that I really wanted to watch the next episode of. Which is a pretty good endorsement I think, if not that, then the HUGE nineties anime shoulder pads that the villain has surely are. And if that’s still not enough for you, the ending theme features dancing giraffes in sailor suits.

There was a much longer version of this post but my blog ate it. Here’s what was going on in Issue 27 of Manga Mania, cover date October 1995.

This issue contained the most Manga Mania article in the history of Manga Mania, “CONFESSIONS OF A CYBER DUDE“. It was an interview with Tony Takezaki conducted by Tony Luke. There was also a huge news piece on all of Tony Luke’s projects. You’d be well and truly hammered if you were playing the Manga Mania drinking game with this issue, that’s for sure. Tony Luke.

Titles covered in the news included Babel II – The Beginning, Street Fighter II The Animated Movie, Madox-01 and SD Double Feature. Only one of these would turn out to be a massive hit.

As well as the “Cyber Dude”, there were features on Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and other fighting games turned into TV/Film, plus a profile of Ironfist Chin Mi creator Takeshi Maekawa.

Kekko Kamen was number 3 in the Top 20 anime charts, behind Akira and a volume of Angel Cop.

The Megabyte and Cyberdrome columns seem especially out of date with news of the Virtual Boy, the Apple Bandai Pippin, Iomega Zip Drives and Virtual IO I-Glasses.

Trish Ledoux weighed in again on the sub vs dub debate. Thank goodness that never rears its head anymore and there never arose a subset of fanatical dub fans that out-nutter anything sub fans did in the 90s. (Pretty sure I made that joke last time it came up in one of these recaps).

And finally Peter J Evans continued to taunt the readership with shows he’d seen and you hadn’t – this time it was Captain Harlock.

Mangirl Episodes 1 & 2 – Hadn’t realised this was a series of shorts when we talked about it on the podcast. As it’s only 3 and a half minutes and on Crunchyroll, I checked it out. It’s not a scathing satire of the manga business, but has some funny jokes and drawings. Instead it’s actually somewhat educational about the process of launching a new manga magazine. The biggest thing going for it is that it gets the right sort of pacing for a short. It hits beats and jokes in the right rhythm that you’ll never mistake if for a full length show sliced up into small chunks.

Senyu Episode 1 – Something I did know was a short, but missed seeing it go up on Crunchyroll, this was exactly as I excpected. Namely a silly RPG parody with plenty of jokes. I wasn’t expecting a Wooser cameo though, and I am mad at myself for never thinking of one of its jokes in 20+ years of playing RPGs. It’s a pretty great joke at the expense of a hoary fantasy cliche.

Inferno Cop Episodes 1-3 – It is not the best anime. It is not the worst anime. It is the purest anime.

Ayacon - If you’ve ever been to a previous Ayacon, but have fallen out of the con-going habit, you should consider coming to this year’s. It’s the final one, so it’d be great to see loads of familiar faces for a real end of an era for UK anime fandom. I don’t think there’s ever been a UK anime con where they’ve consciously said – this is it, this is all you’re going get. They either fizzle out or keep plodding on. This is the best UK anime con with the best events at the best UK con venue SO DO IT.You won’t get another chance.

Well this isn’t quite the episode we intended it be, as we both managed to botch something. Nevertheless it is still AN episode of Dynamite In The Brain.

As a follow up to our fourth episode (!) we talk about the first seven twelfths of the second season of Gag Manga Biyori and the Jump Festa OAV that acted as a pilot for the ongoing series. In far more detail than you could possibly want.

Plus, the usual round of UK anime releases for the coming week and the DEBUT of our new feature the WEEKLY RETRO RECAP. Or possibly WEEKLY RETRO REVIEW depending of if we can remember it’s name on a weekly basis. It’s our replacement for dedicated reviews of entire TV shows from ten years ago. First up is episode 1 of .hack//Legend of the Twilight, will it be back next week or will it have been replaced?

Find out on today’s flu-ridden episode of the show the lazy call DITB!

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“I would seriously of given Renge either a different voice or give her a permanent mouth gag”

“out of all the characters Renge is my least favorite “

“Renge’s voice literally gave me a headache.”

“I agree that Renge’s voice is super annoying”

“the only one i find annoying is renge”

“renge and mina needs to either stfu or go die somewhere”

“the girl with big boobs and renge is annoying to me”

“Renge annoys me with her voice”

“the annoying one you mention is probably Renge”

“On the grossly agitating side of things we have Renge, a scratchy voiced, annoying little brat who, instead of bringing comedy, brings torment”

These people are all wrong. If you don’t like Renge Inui, you don’t deserve to watch the Air Master anime in the first place.The anime character design of Renge is best served by the fantastic ending theme animation where she has the most goofily rubber limbed walk cycle.

Other reasons why Renge is great:

• She was doing the cobra strike gimmick years before Santino Marella.
• She can do pressure point martial arts. LIKE KENSHIRO.
• She owns the worlds tiniest cat. THEREFORE SHE IS BETTER THAN KENSHIRO.
• She looks like she belongs in an entirely different series. Possibly a series from the Beano or Dandy.
• Her character design changed, not between chapters, not between pages, but mid-page (!) in the manga. She jumps in the air in her original design and lands in her more familiar one, losing about two foot of height in the process.
• She dresses up like a Teru Teru Bozu
• She isn’t dull like her two friends in the show whose names I can’t remember.
• She exclaims the words “SAKIYAMA KAORI!!!” better than anyone else in the show.
• Unlike most “looks younger than they actually are” anime characters, no one is cranking one out to Renge Inui.

In the 19th century a brother & sister stole massive amounts of gold from the magistrate. This pair promptly escaped from the magistrate’s palace to the Edo underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as an oddjob man and ornate chopsticks crafter. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, drop five coins in the shrine and make a wish and you can hire the EDO-Team.

On first impressions Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman is not the poor man’s Lupin III. It is the rich man’s A-Team. 

In recent years we’ve seen a return of shows with the A-Team‘s model of a team of specialists engaging in less than legal activities to help the downtrodden or defeat the powerful. Shows like Burn Notice and Leverage for example. From its first episode Bakumatsu Gjinden Roman seems to fall into that niche more than steal/double cross/arrest/escape antics of Lupin and the gang.

Roman’s gang isn’t a clone of Lupin’s gang either. Lupin is distinctly lacking in the areas of masked dog, old man inventor or German doctor who has invented zombies. 

The show even has the secret conspiracy back plot of a Burn Notice going on. Presumably this will draw heavily on the historical setting as it goes along. Or maybe not, given the crazily anachronistic dream sequence Roman has. And the fact that he turns into a superhero at the end…

It’s not the most fun you can have with an Edo period anime (a personal favourite is Oh Edo Rocket), but it’s got some solid TMS animation, Monkey Punch designs and a decent gimmick. For me that’s enough for now.

This episode introduces us to Kyosuke Nitoh, a young man with far too much energy, a unhealthy love of mayonaisse and a catchphrase about turning a pinch into a chance that he is going to ram down your ears. He is so full of shonen adventure energy he makes Shunpei, the series’ clown, seem positively sedate in comparison.

He is also the series’ secondary rider, Kamen Rider Beast.

The effect is somewhat similar to the arrival of the super-serious Kamen Rider Meteor in Fourze, but in reverse. Here you have a cartoonish superhero, suddenly appear and shake up the tone of the entire show. It really has a completely different energy with his arrival. The sense of reversal also plays out in the episode’s story. Up until now we’ve had Phantoms trying to cause despair in humans, here a Phantom is the one despairing. The Manticore Phantom (a great guest appearance by Soichiro Akaboshi), sent to turn Kyosuke into a Gate, repeatedly hits the brick wall of his optimism and becomes more despondant as the episode progresses.

Finally we get the reveal of how Beast completely flips the premise of the show so far on it’s head. As the Phantoms prey on humans, Kamen Rider Beast preys on the Phantoms, devouring them and the mana they contain.

Now, obviously there’s more to this guy than a Joseph Joestar in a mask (he borrows Joseph’s “you’re going to say…” schtick at one point), as his hunger seems to only be satiated by Phantoms, so what happens when his food source dries up? Is it in his interest to allow new Phantoms to be made? But for now it feels like the show has been given a much needed energy boost in the form of BEAST.

Here is the oft-mentioned Elven Guyver, “The Bionoid” from AD&D 2nd Edition game setting Spelljammer. Created by Newton Ewell, as pretty much all the anime influenced Spelljammer monsters were. Though oddly not drawn by him.

I picked 1994 because it is one of the void years where nothing of great note emerged in TV anime. There were three shows I could see myself talking about, less for themselves and more for what they represented. A fourth show is in retrospect noteworthy, even though it meant little at the time, but beyond that I was wondering what to cover. I didn’t have TV ratings at hand, all I had were hazy memories of what was popular on the VHS fansub scene a couple of years later. By the way if you do have 1990s TV ratings available please let me know, as that would be hellaciously useful.

Then I remembed that the Animage Grand Prix existed. Not only do Animage keep a record on their site of the winners of their annual vote on the best of anime, they also have the top 20 and number of votes cast. This opened things up and I’ve now got eight shows to talk about in 1994. I won’t spoil the surprise, but I will say one gives me the opportunity to bring up Hanna Barbera’s Fred and Barney Meet The Thing.

In the meantime let us look at the top tens for the three years I’ve already covered to some degree here.

May 1991 Grand Prix

Full results on the Animage site here.

Coming as it did in May 1991, this mainly covered 1990 anime. Nadia being top didn’t surprise me. The strong showing for Mashin Hero Wataru 2 did, along with the other two shows cut from the same cloth – NG Knight Ramune & 40 and Grandzort. Perhaps it shouldn’t have done given it’s many imitators. I think the lack of coverage/licensing they got in the UK/US makes them seem more obscure than they were. The TV movie Like the Clouds, Like the Wind, I had never even heard of, but I am now curious about. 

May 1992 Grand Prix

Full results on the Animage site here.

A big drop off for Wataru, presumably his votes ending up with Cyber Formula, which while not a Wataru clone, certainly shares some of the same energy. Otherwise no big surprises here. But it did remind me that Raijin-Oh got licensed, no one bought it and thus no more than three volumes came out. Anime Midstream, the Crusader Video of the 2000s.

May 1993 Grand Prix

Full results on the Animage site here

The year shojo struck back. Wasn’t surprised to see Sailor Moon walk it, but high showings for the new Minky Momo, Mama Is a Fourth Grader and Yadamon did raise eyebrows. Mine in fact. DBZ and Ranma are fading now, and you can definitely see a pattern of the thrill of the new wearing off for former big winners as Cyber Formula drops the same way Wataru did when it came to an end.

I guess that means I better do some more 1992 posts. We’re touching on Sailor Moon in the podcast soon, so I think it might have to be Mama Is A Fourth Grader next.

When creatures known as the Greeed reappear on Earth after 800 years of sleep, one of their number, the disembodied hand Ankh, allies with the itinerant Eiji Hino to battle them. Given a belt and three magic medals, Eiji transforms into the superhero Kamen Rider OOO. Meanwhile a mysterious organisation run by the cake loving Kousei Kougami seeks the same medals that the Greeed do leading to their paths crossing with Eiji and Ankh.

Kamen Rider OOO was the 2010-11 installment in the franchise and the most recent that had Yasuko Kobayashi (Kamen Rider Den-O, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) as head writer.

It shares a number of elements with Den-O, notably that of possession and the theme of human desires. Ankh possesses the body of the detective Shingo Izumi, altering his appearance just as radically as the various Imagin possessing Ryotaro did in Den-O. In OOO though, the possessee themselves does not play such a significant role, though similar to Den-O he does have a sister who does. 

In Den-O, the creatures known as Imagin travelled back in time and grant a human a wish in return for part of their history. In OOO it is a little less voluntary, as the Greeed open up a slot in a human, insert a medal as if it was a vending machine, and from that human’s desires a creature called a Yummy is created. 

It’s different enough to not seem a rehash, but similar enough that you can see a through line in the themes of the shows.

Tonally it’s definitely operating in a murkier moral area than Den-O, and while the laughs are there, they aren’t as plentiful as Den-O’s. Ankh is firmly in the anti-hero mode, and even seemingly pure hearted Eiji has a few missteps even the early episodes I’ve seen (such as trying to trick the detective’s sister into thinking he’s on a secret mission, rather than near death and being kept alive by a monster’s floating hand). 

At the same time, it is a show with a restaurant run by a constantly cosplaying woman, a hero who carries a spare pair of boxer shorts on a stick, a man who ices plot exposition onto cakes, vending machines that transform into motorcycles and a heroine who has comical superstrength. So it’s not super serious either.

That is probably enough Kamen Rider to keep me going for the time being, but if that changes I’ll let you know.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with the last of my Kamen Rider posts.

Hello and Happy New Year. This is our 2012 in review episode with guest Bradley C Meek. We recorded this early in December, so it is entirely possible that some things we say now look foolish. I guarantee that some things we said looked foolish then. There’s also probably some things I meant to edit out at the time, but I can’t remember what they are, so they are definitely still in there.

All I know for sure is that my backing the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime in this podcast was totally proved right by episode 10 containing the greatest scene in television history.

Plus we play another game of “When Did People Give A Damn About…” that we forgot to play in episode 72, making this probably the biggest episode of DITB ever~!

Enjoy, and we’ll see you next week for the first episode of DITB 2013 proper and our all new feature THE WEEKLY RETRO REVIEW…

Kamen Rider Den-O

The exceedingly unlucky Ryotaro Nogami, finds himself possessed by a creature from the future called an Imagin, and mixed up with a mysterious woman and time travelling train. All this leads to him becoming the superhero Kamen Rider Den-O and battling other Imagins sent from the future to destroy the past. 

After reading the claim of its star Takeru Satoh that Den-O‘s success was due to its comedic timing, I decided that Den-O was going to be the next Kamen Rider I should check out. He was not wrong, and I made the right choice.

So effective is the show in its use of comedy, I am now 20 episodes into the show and we are still have yet to meet the archvillain of the show or get a real explanation of why the Imagins are attacking the past. And I don’t care.

Instead of using drama to bring you back episode after episode, the show is funny. A big part of its success in doing this lies in with the two lead actors.

Takeru Satoh’s character Ryotaro Nogami eventually gets possessed by four main Imagin, with each one altering his personality and appearance when they possess him. This means Satoh plays five different characters (in fact more than five given that he’ll occasionally get possessed by other Imagin), and it’s a credit to him how well he differentiates between them all.

The other lead actor is Seiji Takaiwa, who normally is the suit actor for the main Kamen Rider. However in Den-O, as well as playing Den-O, he also plays the main Imagin who possesses Ryotaro, Momotaros. With all the main Imagin living on the time travelling train, DenLiner, this means he has significant screen time each and every episode. As fantastic as his performances are as the various Kamen Riders he’s played, Momotaros really makes you appreciate just how good he is. The physical acting he does with a costume with a fixed mask, is on another level. Combined with voice actor Toshihiko Seki as Momotaros’ voice, it’s the most outstanding performance in all the Kamen Riders I’ve seen so far.

The rest of the cast is no slouch either, the other Imagin are funny, the secondary Rider has a tendancy to have childish tantrums, you’ve got a couple of goofy suitors for Ryotaro’s blissfully unaware sister as recurring comic relief in the real world, and the staff of the DenLiner are oddball too. Finally, you have Hana, the mysterious woman acting as the straight woman admidst all these silly characters.

This is definitely my favourite of the Kamen Rider shows I’ve seen so far, and I’m hoping it keeps up that standard even with the unplanned cast (and plot) change that it apparently has later on in the series. 

At first I thought that watching three Kamen Rider shows at the same time would be enough for me. Curiousity got the better of me and I made the mistake of looking at the staff on the show. When I did this I discovered that Yasuko Kobayashi was the head writer. I had never heard of her at this point, but looking at her credits I noticed that she is currently head writer on the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure TV show. Now that I knew she was writing the two television shows that I most enjoy watching at the moment, I got greedy and decided to check out another Kamen Rider show that she’d been responsible for…

The forward thinking ecological city Futo is facing corruption at the hands of the wealthy Sonozaki Family and the Gaia Memories they distribute to turn men into monsters known as Dopants. Protecting the city is the superhero, Kamen Rider Double and its dual secret identities of detective Shotaro Hidari and his amnesiac partner Philip.

The main secondary writer on Fourze had been Riku Sanjo (Beet The Vandel Buster), and he’d been the head writer on the 2009 Kamen Rider series, Kamen Rider W. In addtion it had been W that Fourze‘s Kazuki Nakashima had first written for Kamen Rider. So that was enough to get me to check out this part of the franchise next.

Now while Fourze was airing, I definitely noticed that some fans of the franchise didn’t like that this children’s show was being aimed at children. The first two episodes of W kind of gave me an idea of why that might have been, featuring as it does a murderer and the death of the Dopant at the end. This sort of bleak outlook was lacking in Fourze at first, and even at it’s darkest felt more optimistic than this. 

Not that W is unremittingly bleak, there are still plenty of gags, mainly from the interactions with the new landlord of Shotaro’s detective agency, Akiko Narumi (the daughter of Shotaro’s dead partner), the various wacky informers Shotaro has around town, and the two police detectives (one of whom is comedian Takeshi Nadagi).

The main things I’ve liked in the series so far have been the Rider design and the Sonozaki Family.

The Rider design is my favourite of the shows I’ve seen so far. It doesn’t feel over designed and the gimmick of two people controlling one body is reflected well in the design and suit acting. Its Rider Kick is kind of weird, but overall the look and concept feels very elegant.

I like the Sonozaki Family in part because they remind me more of Fourze‘s Horoscopes than they do Wizard‘s Phantoms. They are humans who are deliberately creating/turning into monsters rather than creatures from beyond preying on humanity. That in turn makes them easier to relate to as villains, plus you get the opportunity to have them move among the heroes more easily. Plus even the family cat turns into a monster!

The main things that made me move onto a different series were the monster suits and the fact it’s not all that funny.

For some reason, the monsters don’t feel like they are all coming from the same place. It makes sense with in the story in that each is based on an exhibit in the Sonozaki’s museum, but I wish there was a bit more visual unity. 

The humour in the show gets pretty tired, as it resorts far too often to Akiko bonking Shotaro on the head with a shoe, Philip hiding in his room or Philip becoming obsessed with whatever the clue in the story. I suspect if I watched it weekly that might not be so obvious, but as it was it was enough to sent me in search of a funnier Kamen Rider show…

Kamen Rider Wizard

Magical creatures called Phantoms force humans into despair so that more of their number might be born. Protecting humanity from this fate is a survivor of their ritual, Haruto Sohma. Possessor of the Wizardriver, he transforms into the magic ring wielding Kamen Rider Wizard.

Following on from Fourze came this show, the current and ongoing incarnation of Kamen Rider. What it lacks in the sheer enthusiasm stakes compared to Fourze, it makes up in… Well, no, it hasn’t made up for the comparative lack of snowballing excitement, but it does have a few things going for it.

One thing is that it has a very Kamen Rider-esque element that Fourze and other shows kind of half-arsed, namely motorcycle stunts. Other Rider shows I’ve seen might do a courtesy nod towards the idea that a Kamen Rider rides a bike. Maybe they use it to get from A to B, ride through the occasional inexplicable explosion or have it part of some cheap CGI effect. Wizard though has had some sequences with some significant physical stunt work involved, giving the biker element of the character more weight.

The acting on the whole feels stronger than Fourze did, and while not as riotously funny as Fourze could be, the show has its own sense of humour, which is often surprising in its subtlety.

The big problem I have with the show so far is that each individual story (typically two episodes long) tends to feel really low stakes compared to Fourze and other Rider shows I’ve seen since. With the Phantoms trying to drive a single character to despair each time, there is rarely much in the way of collateral damage or sense of danger to mankind as a whole. Plus, as they have failed every single time in their attempts to create a new Phantom so far, there’s not much in the way of stakes being raised as the show progresses.

That is going away a little in recent episodes, as gradually it is becoming clear there’s possibly different reason for everything that’s happening that the Phantoms themselves are unaware of. Hopefully with the introduction of the secondary Rider, Kamen Rider Beast, next week we’ll see things escalate a little faster.

The one big speed bump early on was in sequences where Wizard would go into the mind of the victim to fight the emerging Phantom. Said Phantom would not be a man in a suit like the ones encountered in the real world, but instead a dreadfully cheap looking CG monster. Thankfully they don’t use them for every story, so it turns out to not be that big of a problem.

It was however enough to leave me feeling a little disappointed with Wizard early on, so I decided to check out what other Rider shows some of the Fourze writers had worked on, which led me to tomorrow’s Rider…

Kamen Rider Fourze

Gentaro Kisaragi transfers to Amanogawa High School and is determined to make friends with everyone there, even the students and staff who are turning into horrifying monsters. Thankfully there is a secret school club fighting the monsters, who turn Gentaro into the superhero Fourze and restore friendship to the school.

This is what got me to watch a Kamen Rider show. Specifically, it was down to the fact that the show’s head writer was playwright, director and anime screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima (Gurren Lagann, Oh Edo Rocket). I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything related to Nakashima that I’ve seen, and was interested to see what he’d do with a venerable franchise like Kamen Rider. The show was directed by Koichi Sakamoto, who had spent much of the last 20 years working on Power Rangers and associated shows.

This mix resulted in the main setting of Amanogawa High School being a strange hybrid of American idealised TV high schools and Japanese TV idealised high schools. It’s a stew of Saved By Bell-style California TV high school, anime cliches and Ishinomori superheroics. This often results in something resembling a live action cartoon, complete with cartoon sound effects and visual effects.

This was totally my cup of tea. The acting of the teenage cast was highly variable, often breaking down into what can only be described as gurning, but most of them got better as the series progressed, and some were pretty good from the start. It really benefitted in the middle part of the run from a really good guest star in the form of Soran Tamoto playing that segment’s arch-villain. Also around the same it had escalated the visual quirks and gags to the level that the show is likely to be remembered for. For example, early in the show the filming of the 3-2-1 countdown to transformation is quite sensible, but slowly it begins to put more and more OTT cuts and reactions into the sequence.

All in all it was a lot of fun and felt like a show that was very much of the time, in that its hero Gentaro Kisaragi feels somewhat like Luffy from One Piece in his mix of enthusiasm, friendship and bone headed stupidity. 

More importantly, I had been hooked on Kamen Rider shows, and so stuck around for its replacement…

how to be an anime? I have no idea. Check with films such The Pagemaster where people get turned into cartoons. Watch out for dip though if you pull it off.

how many girls in pokemon get tied up and gagged? Not which girls, not which episodes, but HOW MANY! You should probably take a long hard look at yourself when you need to know what quantity of your weird fetish you will get from a seemingly inoccuous source.

how beautiful is the rain alfred? My name’s Brian, not Alfred. And the answer is not very.

how much the golgo 13 1993 slot machine worth? Is this it? If so, $40 apparently.

how much nudity does the last queens blade episode have? Too much/Not enough (delete as applicable)

how to spy on girls naked? Take all your clothes off is probably the starting point.

how to sugar bunnies? Take bag of sugar. Pour on rabbits.

what does a typical otaku look like? 

what is the anime that was on tv where the cop is a robot? RoboCop: The Animated Series

why is spelljammer awesome? Space Penguins. Elven Guyvers. Space Beholders. Elven Mecha. Space Hippomen. 

Here it is, our second XMAS SPECTACULAR~!

Debbie Crisp and Gary Hedges join us to once again review Xmas musical fare from the world of anime (and tokusatsu). And then we all assemble around the old Joanna for a festive sing song.

All this plus the usual stations of UK anime releases and WATCHUWATCH.

00:17:00 – Xmas Anison Armageddon

00:59:00 – Xmas Karaoke

Check our facebook  page for full versions of the songs.

No episode next week, but will be back in the New Year with our run down of all that was good in 2012, so see you there.

Marill Christmas Everyone!

Bradley C. Meek joins us to look forward to next years new anime shows. Warning: there might occasionally be references to events in next week’s episode. This is because we are power ESPers and definitely not because we recorded our December episodes out of synch.

Here is the Idolmaster video I mention on the show.

If you haven’t listened before here are some choice episodes from this year:

Episode 35 – The Cat Returns Grace Chan joins us to review the only Studio Ghibli film we’ve discussed on the show. A fun example of the earlier, less structured version of the show.

Episode 37 – Ninja Scroll Niall Flanagan of Secret of the Sailor Madness joined us for the first part of our NINJA MONTH. Also contains Anthony’s Beyblade modification tale.

Our Live Episode A bodged recording of our live “Anison Armageddon” from Kitacon with Niall, Gary Hedges and Leon Everett.

Episode 47 – Pokemon Heroes Ebbie aka BizarreJelly5 joins us as we get thoroughly confused by a Pokemon movie.

Episode 50 – We run down our Top 50 Anime Ever! list and, more importantly for the shape of the show, we have our first game – Play Your Giant Combining Robots Right

Episode 59 – Interstella 5555 – Debbie Crisp joins us to talk Daft Punk’s anime movie, and we start to discipline ourselves with weekly episodes.

Episode 69 – Leeds Film Anime Day – Greg Driver joins us to talk Leeds Film Festival’s Anime Day.

You can subscribe on iTunes or through RSS.

For our final 2002 themed episode, Aaron Long joins us to talk the Lupin III special from that year, Episode 0 -First Contact and a play quick game of “Lupin? Or No Man!?”

I’d write more, but I am in the middle of editing the Xmas episode that drops in two weeks. You’ll hear then why it needed editing…

A talking ginger tom causes trouble for his owner. No, not the fat lazy Monday hating one. Nor that delinquent one who likes to terrorize the neighbourhood. This one is called Mikan, likes getting liquoured up, playing the harmonica badly and keeping a crayon scrawled diary.

This show suffered in my eyes due to Chi’s Sweet Home, Poyopoyo and Kuruneko. Compared to those more recent shows it feels too long and too slow. There is funny material in there, both in terms of the situations and the drawings, but it moves at such a languid pace. This first episode is all set up, but there’s not all that much to set up. A ginger cat moves in with a family, and the son discovers it can talk (and likes a drink). That is all that happens in this half hour. Poyopoyo manages more than that in 3 minutes.

I also checked on a couple of later episodes and they had similar pacing concerns. Episode 20 had Mikan turning up to Tom’s school, and it captured the horror a child might have of a pet following you to primary school quite well, but could have lost about half the running time. Episode 21 was more a melodrama dwelling on Mikan’s past before he met Tom, a definite reminder that Miwa Abiko’s original story was a shoujo manga running in LaLa in the 80s rather than modern gag strip comics I mentioned earlier.

That being said, it’s still watchable, and a fine example of an early 90s show that never got any attention during the two anglophone anime booms of the nineties due to timing and format (it did get Spanish, Catalan & Polish dubs).

Notable names who worked on it include its director, the late Noburo Ishiguro (Legend of Galactic Heroes, Macross, Star Blazers) and character designer Noburo Sugimitsu, who’d work with Ishiguro in a similar capacity on Tytania.

We get back in the DITB time tunnel and set the co-ordinates for 2002. Only this time Anthony has left Brian on his own as he’s too busy playing videogames to talk about this adaptation of Kiyohiko Azuma’s manga. Or a least that’s his excuse, possibly he thought AZUMANGA DAIOH was too “girly” for his tastes.

Never fear, for we have the inimitable GRACE CHAN as our co-pilot on this week’s exciting trip back to the anime of the recent past. Plus: Boy bands! Mountains! Twitter suggested topics! All this and more on Episode 70 of Dynamite In The Brain.

NOTES:

Here’s the comparison image we discuss on the episode:

And here’s the “In The Midnight Hour She Cried Moe, Moe, Moe” post that is mentioned.

It’s here, the day we went to Leed International Film Festival’s Anime Day 2012. And then recorded the podcast a week later due to Brian leaving his laptop in a completely different town. And then put it online yet another week later because we  always have one podcast in the hole.

But enough of the saga’d history of this episode, lets get into it. Greg Driver joins us to talk about the cannibalistic little tyke ASURA, Mamoru Hosoda’s tale of single parenting in the countryside, WOLF CHILDREN, Tiger & Bunny’s cinematic debut, TIGER & BUNNY: THE BEGINNING, and finally a double helping of bloody medieval melodrama, BERSERK THE GOLDEN AGE I & II!

It’s a bumper serving of DITB, so check it out!

Lewis Smith joins us to talk the final Mamoru Hosoda film in our countdown to Wolf Children, 2009′s SUMMER WARS. And a whole bunch of other stuff in between! Bleach! Clouds! Dinosaurs! It’s all here in another fun edition of your ever lovin’ DITB.

Bradley C Meek joins us to talk about all the old anime he’s been watching and the next Mamoru Hosoda film in our countdown to Wolf Children – THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME.

Then Brian tries out his new mixer for a game of NAME THAT TIME TRAVEL TOON TUNE. It sort of works, but will work better once the rest of the leads we need arrive from Hong Kong. Hopefully in time for our Xmas episode and the terrible plans we have for it.

Today we continue our look at Mamoru Hosoda’s cinematic output, with special guests Niall Flanagan and Aaron Long. Following Digimon, the next movie should have been Howl’s Moving Castle, but instead we got the sixth One Piece movie, Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island. Which may or may not be sort of about the process of failing to make Howl’s Moving Castle. Whatever it is, it’s still a great film!

All this and a rousing game of Play Your Long Running Shonen Franchises Right!

The Mamoru Hosoda interview Brian mentions on the podcast.

Brian’s guest appearance on Secret of the Sailor Madness

Aaron’s Youtube Channel

Happy Halloween! We’re back with a spooky edition of Dynamite In The Brain, as we talk Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Well not that spooky as they are really just Westerns dressed up with vampires and super powered mutants. But look, they have Vampire in the titles, so they qualify as default Halloween fodder. Next year: NYANPIRE.

Oh, and Brian went to MCM Expo and complains about that self inflicted dumb decision.

If you listen to my podcast or follow me on twitter, you will know that I was excited for this show. A show based on a 2007 Minna no Uta music video by Uruma Delvi, about bean headed bugs that bite bottoms. The show follows 10 year old Bottom Biting Bug XVIII and his family and friends in 5 minute bottom biting based adventures.

It is even better than I was expecting.

The mixed media look of the opening reminded me somewhat of Koji Nanke, and effectively sets the show’s tone in 15 seconds. The stories have a relentlessly logical approach to an absurd concept. In the world of Bottom Biting Bug, there are a bugs whose job is to bite bottoms. It is a service industry that provides a way to pep up the individual whose bottom is bit. Taking this as FACT, the show then explores that absurd concept. How do you market this service? How do you get better at it? What are the hazards involved? ALL THESE QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED.

Furthermore they will find an excuse to segue into a sequence inspired by the original music video EVERY EPISODE. While your bottom won’t be bitten while watching it, your brain will not escape the earworm.

All in all a great addition to watching Poyopoyo on Crunchyroll when you wake up on a Sunday morning. And certainly better than any of the other new anime I have seen so far this autumn. 

Watch Bottom Biting Bug on Crunchyroll

Part 1 of our run down of Mamoru Hosoda’s motion picture work as we approach Leeds Film’s screening of WOLF CHILDREN begins with Saban’s cut and paste Digimon Movie. 2 parts Hosoda to 1 part Yamauchi, does this strange hodgepodge of THREE different Digimon movies work? Lewis Smith joins us to find out.

All this plus the week’s new releases, a WATCHUWATCH where Brian is free of the shackles from watching GITS, and everyone’s favourite quiz – HEY NOW YOU’RE AN ALL STAR OR NOT.

It all adds up to another great edition of DYNAMITE IN THE BRAIN*.

*if you can excuse Lewis’ slight mic buzz.

Bush Baby – Little Angel of the Great Plain, Mama is a Fourth Grader, Brave Legend Da Garn, Flower Magic-using Mary Bell, Teknoman, Sailor Moon

Yo Yo no Neko Matsumi, Ashita he Freekick, Chikyu SOS Soreike Kororin, Chirorin Mura Monogatari, Super Electric Robot Iron Man 28 FX, Cooking Papa

Crayon Shin-chan, Fantasy Adventure: Adventures of Puss-in-Boots, Energy Bomb Ganbaruger, Mabo-chan’s Visions, Animated Japanese History Series, Oi! Ryoma

Tomato-man and the Knights of the Salad Table, Sasurai-kun, Super Bikkuriman, Dick the Fairy, Lupin III: From Russia with Love, Yadamon

Oyayubi Hime Monagatari, Calimero, Dog of Flanders: My Patolasshu, Hime-chan’s Ribbon, Kaze no Naka no Shoujo Kinpatsu no Jeanie, Kobo-chan

Mikan’s Picture Diary, Papuwa of the South Seas, Space Oz Adventure, Super Zugan, Get a Grip, Tsuyoshi!, Yuu Yuu Hakusho

Shows Ending In 1992:

Hai Akko Deso, Oishinbo, Obocchama-kun, The Laughing Salesman, Goldfish Warning, Ranma 1/2 Nettohen

Yawara, Chibi Maruko-chan, Obake no Holly, The Two Lottes, Getter Robo Go, Emergency Departure Rescue Kids

Robin Hood no Dai Boken, Magical Taruruto-kun, Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, The Secret Garden, Little Ghosts There, Here, Where, 

Jankenman, Rajin-Oh, 21 Emon, Dear Brother, Math Fun, Jarinko Chie

Dodge Danpei, Kinnikuman: Scramble for the Throne, Magical Princess Minky Momo: Hold on to Your Dreams, Genji Tsuushin Agedama,  Burn! Top Striker, Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Marude Dameo, Ultraman Kids: Haha o Tazunete 3000 Man Kōnen

Shows Continuing Through 1992:

Sazae-san, Doraemon, Anpanman, Dragon Ball Z, Kiteretsu Daihyakka

Hopefully this format will make things a little clearer in terms of what shows were ending and what shows began in this year. Not to mention what shows continued to be the kings of anime.

Of the five that continued through 92 from 91, three are still going today (Sazae-san, Doraemon, Anpanman).

Unlike 1991, there’s some big things happening in 1992.

We had some big shows ending – Ranma, Oishinbo, Yawara all wrapped up.

There was one HUGE shows starting, namely Crayon Shin-chan.

There was also some other shows starting that would turn out to be big hits – Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho

There were some shows that (eventually) made their way into English via legitimate means – Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho, Tekkaman Blade as Teknoman

But apart from the Magical Girl and Robot shows (and Cooking Papa!) on the list, everything else was fairly new to me. Some were positively obscure - Chikyu SOS Soreike Kororin was an NHK environmental cartoon for which I had to get the screenshot from a grainy nicovideo clip, the image for Sasurai-kun is of the manga as I could find no image of the anime and a show like Get a Grip, Tsuyoshi! that ran for over 100 episodes has no english wiki page (though a licensed puzzle game for it does).

And finally, there was a rare pre-1996 late night anime in the form of Super Zugan.

I’ll writing similar posts to the 1991 posts on individual shows, and then I may return to this post to revise these comments.

It’s 2002 time again, and Bradley C Meek from Those Damn Cartoons joins us to talk about Haibane Renmei,  Yoshitoshi ABe’s tale of winged beings in a mysterious walled city.

Plus: a bumper WATCHUWATCH, a game of ANGEL OR NO ANGEL and ALTERNATE REALITY PLUGS!

Niall Flanagan from The Secret of the Sailor Madness podcast joins us again to run down our top 5 Hard Men and Women of Anime! Who are the meanest, toughest nuts we can name from the history of anime? Find out in the latest episode of Dynamite In The Brain!

Plus: Niall’s seen Tiger & Bunny: The Beginning, so we talk all about that again. We hope you aren’t sick of it, because there will yet another episode in about a month where we will bring it up again, as it’s showing at Leeds International Film Festival’s Anime Day.

Sazae-san, Doraemon, Anpanman, Dragon Quest, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Hai Akko Deso

Oishinbo, Obocchama-kun, Dragonball Z, Manga Hajimete Omoshiro Juku, The Laughing Salesman, Sally the Witch

Goldfish Warning, Parasol Henbee, Ranma 1/2 Nettohen, Yawara, Chibi Maruko-chan, Obake no Holly

The Mischevious Twins: Clare Academy Story, Trapp Family Story, The Two Lottes, Brave Exkaiser, Mashin Hero Wataru 2, NG Knight & Lamune 40

Idol Tenshi Youkoso Yoko, Getter Robo Go, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Moomin, Magical Angel Sweet Mint, Karasu Tengu Kabuto

Emergency Departure Rescue Kids, Robin Hood no Dai Boken, Magical Taruruto-kun, Edokko Boy Gatten Taro, Karakuri Kengo Musashi Lord, Peach Command Shin Momotaro Densetsu

The Three Eyed One, Pygmalio, Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, Cyber Formula GPX, The Secret Garden, Little Ghosts There, Here, Where

City Hunter 91, Doronpa!, High School Mystery: School of Seven Wonders, Jankenman, Metaljack, Shonen Ashibe

Rajin-Oh, 21 Emon, OH MY Konbu, Reporter Blues, Dear Brother, Math Fun

Lupin III: Chase Napoleon’s Dictionary, Jarinko Chie, Genji Tsuushin Agedama, Dodge Danpei, Kinnikuman: Scramble for the Throne, Magical Princess Minky Momo: Hold on to Your Dreams

Burn! Top Striker, I Am Chokkaku, Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Marude Dameo, Ultraman Kids: Haha o Tazunete 3000 Man Kōnen

(titles continuing from the previous year in bold)

Well, 1991 definitely had a lot more shows than 1990. Even taking into account that a few of these are holdovers that ended early 1991, there’s a lot more going on here.

However, is any of it memorable?

From looking at the TV Asahi survey from 2005, I noticed there wasn’t any new TV shows from 1980, 1991 or 1994 listed. If you look at what came out in 1980 there are some note-worthy shows, but possibly only note-worthy in retrospect. Things like Ideon, which flopped at the time, or Wonderful Adventures of Nils, an early Mamoru Oshii work, nothing new to set the world on fire.

Goldfish Warning fits into that niche in 1991. It’s notable now, because many of the staff moved onto to work on Sailor Moon the following year. If a Junichi Sato show is going to stick in your head, it’s that one, not its predecessor.

To be fair to Goldfish Warning, it has racked up 25 pages of pixiv fan art so it or the manga must have been doing something right to stick in people’s minds that much. Or maybe just one person who really likes drawing Goldfish Warning fanart. I don’t know, I didn’t look into it that deeply. Most of the other shows launched in 1991 that I searched for had 2 pages at most.

Other shows suffer the same problem but in the other direction. Dear Brother is over shadowed by the earlier Rose of Versailles. The World Masterpiece Theatre shows and their imitators are overshadowed by earlier, more widely praised work.

Some shows have simply fallen into obscurity. Even its co-creator’s new fame as AKB48 svengali, hasn’t stopped OH MY Konbu from being hard to find screenshots for. And I’m not even entirely sure when Math Fun ran or if that’s definitely a screenshot from it.

And of course, everything was being overshadowed by Dragonball Z.

All I know for sure is this: I want to see the Monkey Punch-does-Thunderbirds show that is Emergency Departure Rescue Kids.

Greg Driver and Lewis Smith from Structured Randomness join us to talk about 2002′s Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex. It’s cyborg procedural drama in the way only Masamune Shirow and Production IG can deliver. In earlier episodes Brian and Anthony both admitted to having found it boring back in the day – how will they find it in 2012?

PLUS: Lewis and Brian both saw the first Tiger & Bunny movie in London. Find out what they thought about it in this week’s WATCHUWATCH.

Links to things mentioned on the show:

Greg’s “crappy” Ghost In The Shell AMV

A picture of Steve Buscemi

An AMV Anthony collaborated on.

It’s that time again. The time to tell you what we failed to watch from the Summer anime season and what we will fail to watch in the Autumn anime season. Because we are too busy watching things for the podcast.

The difference this time is we are joined by Bradley C. Meek of THOSE DAMN CARTOONS. He’s got a fist full of WATCHUWATCH he wants to talk about and joins in with the fantastic new game “DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE GAVE A TOSS ABOUT…”

And Brian says terrible things about the presenters of Top Gear.

Debbie Collins joins us “One More time” for a “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” episode of Dynamite In The Brain. You’ll “Digital Love” it.

“Aerodynamic”!

That’s right we are talking the Daft Punk / Leiji Matsumoto film from 2003, Interstella 5555. Plus, a superhero filled WATCHUWATCH and a silly game involving Yahoo Answers.

Is there a story that has had as many different titles via adaptation than Erich Kastner’s Das doppelte Lottchen? Even the wikipedia page immediately switches between Lottie & Lisa and Lisa & Lottie. You (and I) are probably more familiar with the story as The Parent Trap, from either the 1961 or 1998 Disney live action films.

The final show to run in the World Masterpiece Theatre aping slot “Fudosan Anime World” (1989-1992, NTV), The Two Lottes was produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and directed by Kenji Kodama (City Hunter, Detective Conan). It is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. The story is relatively faithful, albeit expanded upon to fit 29 episodes.

The character design noticeably avoids the then current trends of Toriyama angularity, Nintendo SD and retro manga. The animation feels recognisably from TMS. Comparing it to the other TV anime I’ve looked at from 1991, it would be hard to argue that the animation isn’t well above what was merely competent TV animation of the day.

When you are dealing with a plot where two characters are meant to look alike, you don’t want to fall in the trap of “same face, different haircut” that some anime do. The Two Lottes avoids that handily and the other girls who aren’t Lisa or Lotte can be distinguished from them and each other. Similarly, the performances and animation distinguish the twins’ different personalities well.

Shuichi Seki (aka Junichi Seki) was the character designer. He’d worked on the previous show in the slot, The Mischievous Twins, as well as the then recent WMT shows such as Trapp Family Story and Daddy Long Legs. He’d been a big part in establishing the 80s WMT look designing on shows such Perrine Story (1978), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1980) and The Swiss Family Robinson (1981). In the UK we got to see his design work on Vicky The Viking, Dogtanian and The Wizard of Oz.

From the first episode, the impression is that it suffers a little from the attempt to stretch out the book. In this episode that is mainly evidenced in the long time it takes for the twins to meet and it becomes clear we’re not really going to get going until episode 2. I’m curious if they have to make characters stupider later on to keep the twins’ deceit going for 29 episodes. It’s entirely possible that parents are stupid in the book too, I have never read it, but based on this episode, you get the impression of them as fairly appalling human beings, even though they never appear on screen.

After the bumper blow out of episode 57, Brian and Anthony come crashing down to earth with a short episode about Makoto Shinkai’s 2002 tale of poor mobile phone coverage. Does it hold up ten years on? Or have the years not been kind to it? Find out in the latest instalment of Dynamite In The Brain!

We are joined by a bumper load of guests today. Returning to the Mayhem Moon are Ebbie from the BizarreJelly5 videolog and Leon Everett. And joining us for the first time ever, it’s DJ Snap himself, James Simmonds. They (and Anthony) all went to Amecon and they are here to tell you (and Brian) all about it. Plus, can they identify their own tweets in Brian’s new game?

You better listen to it before it goes out of print!

Today: Polar Bear Cafe Episode 20

In the second story from this episode, “Summer Festival“, Polar Bear and Grizzly jointly run a stall at the local Summer Festival with help from Panda, Penguin and Sasako. Let us ignore for the moment that four animals are working in the food industry. Polar Bear uses utensils and an apron. Sometimes he even wears a hat. For Ursus maritimus, he’s pretty good at hygienically preparing food.

Grizzly and Panda on the other hand…

Grizzly is put in charge of yakisoba, but is quickly annoyed at how slow it is taking. One of Polar Bear Cafe‘s themes is male pride/vanity and Grizzly’s usually manifests in a macho form of showing off. Throwing away his spatulas he decides to use his claws instead (there is a running gag of Grizzly wanting to use his claws to make things quicker). This means he puts his paws into the food, potentially contaminating it, and then due to his carelessness, he cross-contaminates the okonomiyaki that Polar Bear is preparing next to him.

This however, is nothing compared to Panda’s transgressions.

First he manages to spread the okonomiyaki sauce on himself. Which he then licks off his paw.

Then he squirts Grizzly in the face with salad cream.

Finally he sneezes all over an okonomiyaki. Truly a HORROR OF ANIMATED FOOD HYGIENE.

Thankfully at this point he is fired from his food preparation role, and presumably they binned all the food Panda had ruined. So in retrospect then, nowhere near as bad selling cakes that had a bearded alcoholic chick sitting in the mixing bowl.

This is both a show that started in 1991 and also one that that started in 1987. Which goes some way to explaining why it’s a lot better than most of the TV anime from 1991.

The first City Hunter anime aired 1987-1988, two years after the launch of the manga. It was followed, pretty much immediately by City Hunter 2. When that ended in 1989, there was a break of 3 months before City Hunter 3 aired. There was over a year between that show ending at this one beginning. However, if you needed a City Hunter fix there was a couple of OAVs in between.

All of these were directed by Kenji Kodama (Detective Conan) and produced by Sunrise, so there’s an argument that you can look at them as a holdover from Eighties anime trends rather than fitting into what was new in 1991. But there’s only so many spikey haired Toriyama clones one can watch in a row so consider this me treating myself.

In their fifth year of adapting Tsukasa Hojo’s manga, this is a very slickly made TV anime. There’s plenty of limited animation short cuts, but its strengths overpower any budgetary restrictions.

It’s biggest strength? Akira Kamiya. He is/was THE BEST, and he was perfect for the role of Hojo’s hero, the lecherous gunman Ryo Saeba. It’s hard to imagine anyone else being able to switch between stone cold killer, dapper playboy & goofball idiot and make you believe it’s all the same guy.

Another strength is in how it uses its soundtrack. It’s not afraid to let the soundtrack do the heavy lifting on a scene if needs be. I believe it’s just Tatsumi Yano on the music here. There are entirely still establishing shots in this episode that are boosted immeasurably by the soundtrack cueing you into the following scene.

When Tiger & Bunny prompted my look at the buddy TV show, I didn’t look ahead to the 80s and where the buddy show went then. One place it went was female/male buddy show with “unresolved sexual tension”. From US TV you had Remington Steele, Scarecrow & Mrs King and Moonlighting. From the UK you had Demspey and Makepeace. And City Hunter firmly fits into that trend with the relationship between Ryo Saeba and Kaori Makimura. It almost seems like the makers of Tiger & Bunny had set things up to do a version of that in the future with Barnaby and Kotetsu, but I wonder if the popularity will make them stick with the NC1978 era heroes for now.

Next, the final 1991 anime I will look at and another show from City Hunter ’91‘s Kenji Kodama…

It’s 8 o’clock on August 11th so that means it’s time for…

Third time lucky! We finally recorded an episode about 2007′s THE SKULL MAN and we are joined by returning guest Bradley C. Meek, who valiantly does the heavy lifting for a chest infected Anthony and hayfever ridden Brian. Plus: WATCHUWATCH, the UK DVD/BD releases and an exciting game of MUTANT, CYBORG or ANDROID.

All this and more in a brand new episode of DYNAMITE IN THE BRAIN.

Check out Bradley’s website THOSE DAMN CARTOONS and tell him what’s cute and what’s not.

Brian’s posts on The Skull Man from 2007 – 1, 2.

Anthony and Leon Everett take over the show to preview this years Amecon. The panels, the parties, the site, the sounds, it’s all here along with surprise appearances from Snoop Dogg, Cilla Black and a Scotsman.

Plus: this week’s UK anime releases and another round of WATCHUWATCH.

In the third part of our look at superhero themed anime, we look at the first six episodes of the dub of the Kinnikuman sequel, ULTIMATE MUSCLE. Currently airing in the UK on Kix, it also doubles as this months 2002 anime.

Plus, this weeks UK anime releases, a Dark Knight Rises WATCHUWATCH and we also watched some of the original 1982 Kinnikuman anime too.

NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got a news feature in bold)

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 4, Bubblegum Crisis 5 (dub)

East2West – Kekkou Kamen 2

Manga Video – Heroic Legend of Arslan 3, Project A-Ko 3, Angel Cop 5, New Dominion Tank Police 6

Japan News

Captain Tylor OAVs

Virgin Megastores Anime Top 20 

Top three were Space Adventure Cobra, New Dominion 8, Angel Cop 3

Reader Survey Results

It was a different time.

COMICS

Akira – Part 26

Striker – Part 2 (aka Spriggan)

Dirty Pair: Sim Hell – Part 2

FEATURES

Flesh and Blood – Julie Davis on Tokyo – The Last Metropolis and Zeiram.

Fist vs Freeman – Dave Hughes on the live action adaptations of Crying Freeman and Fist of the North Star.

COLUMNS

Cyberdrome – Lots on Doom, less on Descent, Hewlett Packard’s invisible toner and Spider-Man Cartoon Maker CD-ROM.

Animatedly Yours – Sailor Moon and Dragonball on their way to US television.

Get Animated – The final letter from future shading curmudgeon Paul “Otaking” Johnson, only he was using a different nickname in 1995…

MegaByte – Sega Saturn had arrived in the UK, and Playstation was due along shortly. Gundam on the Playstation got 70%.

Short Cuts – A robot size chart. Pretty sure they have done this already.

REVIEWS

One anime review. Arslan got 3 stars. This issue clearly came out during one of periodic stalls the UK anime market suffered.

In conclusion, if it wasn’t for the comics, this issue would have been pretty bad.

Remember that Batman OAV that came out around the time of The Dark Knight? Well we do, and we’re joined by Debbie Collins to talk GOTHAM KNIGHT and all things Batman.  So warm yourself up for The Dark Knight Rises with latest episode of Dynamite In The Brain!

PLUS: Anthony debuts a character, the week’s UK anime releases, WATCHUWATCH and game of BATMAN VILLAIN OR CONSERVATIVE PARTY MP?

NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got a news feature in bold)

Manga Video – Tokyo – The Last Megalopolis, Macross Plus 3, Angel Cop 4, New Dominion Tank Police 5

Kiseki – Fly Peek – Peek The Baby Whale

East To West – 8 Man After 2

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 3, Bubblegum Crisis 4 (dub)

Upcoming Japan Releases

Dirty Pair Flash II

El Hazard

Legend of Christiana

Slayers The Motion Picture

“New Century Evangelion” – a city under threat from the mysterious Apostles organisation is protected by a young girl and her robot! Sometimes these previews of Japanese releases are like a window into an alternate dimension.

Virgin Megastores Anime Top 20 

Top three were the Patlabor movie, New Dominion 7, Angel Cop 2

Other News

Channel Four to air Cyber City Oedo 808, Tokyo Babylon, Devilman and Doomed Megalopolis. I taped every single one off the telly at the time. Anecdotally it seems to have been a key point in growing the UK anime fandom at this point in time.

COMICS

Akira – Part 25

Striker – Part 1 (aka Spriggan)

Dirty Pair: Sim Hell – Part 1

FEATURES

First Love – Cathy Sterling on Love City. Mainly comparing it to Akira, which leads into the next feature…

Deja Views – A one page feature comparing KO Century Beast Warriors to Ladius, then losing it’s theme totally with some Macross vagaries before a flippant Guyver remark.

Short Cuts – A one page “comedy” feature about anime hair cuts from Dave Jerrom. Totally filler in the proud tradition of UK publishing.

Renaissance Man – Julie Davis on Yuji Moriyama, and the Project A-Ko sequels in particular. This probably helped cement Yuji Moriyama in my brain as the earliest Japanese animator I was familar with.

COLUMNS

Get Animated – Letters include complaining about a dearth of robot shows available in the UK, dumb questions and people saying how great the magazine is.

Cyberdrome – A guide to getting on the internet and what to do once you are there.

Mega Byte – Here’s your regulation reference to Buichi Terasawa’s Apple, as Hudson Soft were apparently planning to release Space Adventure Cobra Digital Comic in the UK. Anyone know if that happened? Panzer Dragoon got 89% in the review.

Animatedly Yours - More on versioning manga for the US market.

REVIEWS

Top rated release was Ushio & Tora Comical Deformed Theatre with 4 stars. Of course it was. Starting to see harsher anime reviews now too, with nothing else getting more than 3 stars.

“Staked through the heart and you’re to blame, you give genetically engineered monsters designed for fighting, a bad name.”

That’s right, it’s 2012′s anime adaptation of Masakazu Katsura’s bloody superhero manga. Our first of four superhero shows, we discuss this melange of Batman, Devilman and Iron Man. Did we love it or hate it? Find out in a new episode of Dynamite In The Brain.

I was out at the weekend so no Manga Mania Monday this week, instead I have grabbed something within arms reach, the Minami 7 conbook from 2001. Let’s take a look.

Editorial – begging you not to just sit drinking in the bar, but instead actually take part in the con. This fell on deaf ears as long time attendees eventually stopped paying for con membership and just turn up at the hotel and drink in the bar all weekend.

Advert for Rumi Vyse’s Tangerine Volume 10 - there’s still a website up

The Future of Anime In The UK – Predictions we can now point and laugh at from our vantage point of the future. SUCK IT THE PAST, THE FUTURE ROOLS.

• Channel 4 purchase the rights to anime and air in on Friday Nights kick starting a bidding war between terrestrial stations for all the best anime. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN, SEE HOW STUPID YOU LOOK NOW THE PAST?
• More and more companies release anime on DVD. THIS HAPPENED. THEN STOPPED HAPPENING. THEN WENT THE OTHER WAY.
• BBFC ban imported DVDs. ARE YOU STUPID OR SOMETHING THE PAST, THAT NEVER HAPPENED. NEXT TIME GET YOUR MUM TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR PREDICTIONS.
• Not every anime fan will have an internet connection fast enough to download anime. THEY ARE FAST ENOUGH THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE TO DOWNLOAD IT.
• UK fandom will be swarmed with “newbies”. CORRECT, BUT THEY ARE CALLED NOOBS. GET WITH THE PROGRAM GRANDAD.
• Anime clubs will boom. THE INTERNET MEANS WE NEVER HAVE TO MEET ANOTHER ANIME FAN FACE TO FACE EVER AGAIN IF WE SO WISH. IT IS SO GLORIOUS HERE IN THE FUTURE.

WELCOME TO MANGA TOWN: Can Anime Save Japan’s Regional Economies - Probably not.

ANIME BIT BY BIT – An explanation of what DivX is and where to find anime online. These were the days when UK cons actively encouraged piracy.

Anime Shopping In The US – Greater Boston - I have no idea why this was thought a good idea for a conbook at a Southampton con.

Anime – The Next Step – This has a more realistic view of what will happen to Anime Clubs, in fact it gets it pretty much spot on in how mainstreaming of anime removes the necessity of clubs and the rate of release would lead to a crackdown on fansubs (this would happen to UK cons in 2005). It then proceeds to suggest that Final Fantasy The Spirits Within is the future of anime, thus blowing its Nostradamus credentials. YOU DID IT AGAIN THE PAST.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade - A review of Jin-Roh. A film that would not get a UK release for another 6 years.

Alcohol, Mundanes and Otaku Do Not Mix – First off, let’s draw attention to the use of the term “mundanes” in the title. Just horrible. Anyway, this article was some guy telling you how his yaoi got him in some bother with the rozzers.

Pokemon – Regional Variations – “Comedy”

The Letters Page – More “Comedy”

Afterword – Yet more “Comedy”

To begin the episode Anthony & Brian look back to episode 43 and the spring anime they said they were looking forward to. Did they watch them? What did they think of them? Then, having undermined their anime quality soothsaying abilities, they go ahead and pick what summer season anime they are looking forward to.

Yes, this is just the description of episode 33 with seasons changed. Don’t judge!

Cover this month was by Metin Salih

NEWS

Upcoming Releases (titles that got news feature in bold)

Manga Video – Project A-Ko 2, Patlabor the Movie, Wings of Honneamise (sub version), Space Adventure Cobra, Angel Cop 3, New Dominion Tank Police 4, Orguss 02 2, Legend of the Four Kings 11 & 12

Western Connection – Love City, Ushio & Tora 6

Anime Projects – Oh My Goddess 5, Bubblegum Crisis 5 (dub)

East To West – 8 Man After 3, The Adventures of Kekko Kamen 3

Upcoming Conventions

Anime Expo ’95 – 30 June – 2 July, Los Angeles – Guests announced were Koichi Ohata and Satoshi Urushibara. 

Anime America – 6 -9 July, Anaheim – Guest announced was Megumi Hayashibara.

Robocon 10 – 6 – 8 October, San Jose – Guests included Carl Macek and Arlon Ober.

Minami Anime – 22 July, Portsmouth – One day con at Portsmouth Hilton, two video rooms, a traders hall, a fan artshow room and a video programme that ran 10am to 10pm!

Japan News

Fire Emblem OAV

Shin Megami Tensei OAV

Virgin Megastores Top 20 Anime

Top three were New Dominion 6, Angel Cop 1 and Akira.

COMICS

Akira – Part 24

Silent Mobius – Part 5

Firetripper – Part 3

FEATURES

Speed – Yes that is the title of this Julie Davis piece on 8 Man After. There’s also a side bar on the 1994 live action 8 Man film

How to draw the manga way part 3 – No mention of Buichi Terasawa’s Apple this time! Instead some instruction on cel painting and animation.

Yeah, that was it, six pages of features total. I think they wanted to burn off two of the strips so they could launch two more with the price hike next month.

COLUMNS

MegaByte - Ultra 64 was on it’s way with a promised November launch in Japan and the US, no mention of the Europe release date of course. This was the way of things in 1995. The Story of Thor on the Megadrive got 86%

Cyber Drome – Yes, the fastly dated tech column was back. With a big piece on digital actors, no mention of Avatar yet, I think we have to wait until Cameron is linked with Battle Angel Alita before we start to see Avatar mentioned in the magazine.

Get Animated - Hey it’s the eternal when will we get some Ranma anime released in the UK question. There’s also a weird letter justifying next months price hike announced in this issues editorial. 

Animated Yours – Trish Ledoux talks “versioning” manga.

REVIEWS

Top release was Patlabor the Movie with five stars. Though bear in mind Kekko Kamen got four stars, as did every other anime reviewed release this month.

ADVERTS

In the inside front cover was this beauty of a time capsule of UK anime fandom…

Did anyone actually join this thing? If so, please elaborate in the comments below. I am curious about the Japanese cartoon fueled decadence depicted in the photos in this advert that could attract the presence of grinning, greedy, poisonous, bearded balloonist Branson.

Can you believe it? We made it to fifty episodes! And what better way to celebrate this milestone of podcasting that reading out a list? How about reading out a list of the TOP 50 ANIME YOU MUST SEE BEFORE WE SNEAK INTO YOUR HOUSE AND MURDER YOU & YOUR LOVED ONES IN YOUR SLEEP? (That is how you linkbait this sort of nonsense, right?)

Not enough friend listener, then how about if we told you this list was made by the guests from the previous forty nine episodes? Still not interested? Howzabout a LEON EVERETT? Whattabout a NIALL FLANAGAN from SECRET OF THE SAILOR MADNESS?

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? But that’s not all, there’s also a shout out from a TOTALLY REAL ANIME CHARACTER and a WHOLLY ORIGINAL game show.

If you don’t want to be spoilt on the list before listening stop reading here:

Here’s the list.

1. Cowboy Bebop
2. Ghost in the Shell
3. Evangelion
4. FLCL
5. Akira
6. Cyber City Oedo 808
7. Samurai Champloo
8. Lain
9. FMA
10. The Big O
11. Dragonball Z
12. Kino’s Journey
13. Naruto
14. Gurren Lagann
15. Urusei Yatsura
16. Mind Game
17. Patlabor
18. Slayers
19. Boogiepop Phantom
20. Higurashi
21. Macross
22. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
23. 3×3 Eyes
24. Devilman
25. Fist of the North Star
26. Redline
27. Rose of Versailles
28. Scryred
29. Bubblegum Crisis 2032
30. Eden of The East
31. Full Metal Panic
32. Golgo 13
33. Hidamari Sketch
34. Monster
35. Tiger and Bunny
36. .hack//SIGN
37. Escaflowne
38. One Piece
39. Perfect Blue
40. Star Driver
41. Aria
42. BECK
43. Dangaioh
44. Diebuster
45. Dirty Pair
46. Haibane Renmei
47. Lupin III
48. Shin Mazinger Z Shōgeki! Z-Hen
49. Clannad
50. Guyver

If you are going to call your opening theme 21st Century Boy you are building expectations you can’t possibly live up to. Is it really going to be one better than T-Rex’s classic? It is not.

Thankfully after the disappointment of the opening theme, we open the episode with some pseudo-news reel of metal beasts attacking various cities across the world. There’s some nice work here that, like the song title, sets the bar far too high for the rest of the episode. With all other cities destroyed, our villains decide to head to Tokyo. Future villains take note, attack Tokyo first, as you’re only giving them time to develop giant robots otherwise.

In Tokyo, we jarringly get what appears to be a clumsy homage to Captain Power with a computer simulation training sequence, and the animation quality drops off a cliff. Remember how cool and different the original Getter heroes were? Well they’ve been replaced by a bunch of poorly drawn blandies who’ve been over doing it with hairspray. Ryouma Nagare and Hayato Jin show up in the manga to give the newbies the Getter Robo rub, but they are notable by their absence in the anime.

The main strength of the episode is in its mixing of “realism” into the Getter Robo stew. The handling of the robot in this episode feels more like a “real robot” and the use of realistic helicopters as a support crew for Getter Robo juxtapose nicely next to the pure fantasy design of the Metal Beast. It makes the creature seem more otherworldly rather than the “oh, this sort of thing happens all the time” vibe of earlier Dynamic Productions titles.

Despite that, and tiny glints of visual fun (check out the style of the New York inhabitants in the first picture above), it’s not enough though to cut through the boring heroes and the overall sense of production sloppiness that the slack talking head scenes induce.

That’s a Kev Walker (ABC Warriors, Thunderbolts) cover up there.

Lewis Smith of the Structured Randomness podcast returns to Dynamite In The Brain to talk the 2007 TV anime, Baccano! Gangsters, thieves, alchemists, demons and immortals collide in this homage to American crime and pulp stories of the Roarin’ Thirties.

Plus: Brian went to the BFI Anime Is For Everyone weekend and find out how we’d improve Game of Thrones.

First of all, it’s a superhero story, and the story of the superhero starts in the 1930s. Which is where it starts here too. We’re told that the first being with superpowers (a NEXT in the parlance of Tiger & Bunny) appeared 45 years earlier. So around 1932, the year that Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster created Superman. Other key plot elements, such as Mr Legend (the first superhero) inspiring a young Kotetsu, Kotetsu and Barnaby’s age difference and the age of Kaede mean that it has to take place in the 70s on a practical level, if you are starting from the 30s.

However, even without those plot elements, thematically the Seventies is the right era to set the story in. Far more than being a superhero show, Tiger and Bunny is a buddy show. And the Seventies were the golden age of buddy shows. An era that started in 1969 in the cinema.

To cash in on the popularity of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the great Roy Huggins and Glen Larson created Alias Smith and Jones, a buddy western TV show.

The difference between this and an ITC buddy show that appeared a year earlier, The Persuaders, is the chemistry between the male leads. There’s a closeness in the friendship you don’t get from a Roger Moore and Tony Curtis playing millionaire playboys (though the anime Licensed By Royal does owe The Persuaders a debt). The Persuaders did have something that Tiger & Bunny inherited though, and that’s a bickering between two seemingly mismatched characters. The obvious source for this is in another feature film (and the original play and subsequent TV series), namely The Odd Couple.

You can’t really go to far wrong copying The Odd Couple‘s formula. Red Dwarf at its best was just The Odd Couple in space before it started thinking it was a sitcom about sci-fi, rather than a sitcom with sci-fi set dressing. 

So what happens if you take the chemistry of a Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid, combine it with the mismatched leads of an Odd Couple, and then throw in a load of action too? Well you get THE buddy show of the Seventies.

Starsky & Hutch, more than any actual superhero project, is the most obvious predecessor to Tiger & Bunny. It even has the fanservice. Did the open credits need David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser wandering around in just towels? No, but it certainly helped its popularity. If you have any doubt, please check out these samples of Starsky and Hutch doujins.

Adding to the need for Tiger & Bunny to be in Seventies, is the character of Lunatic. He’s definitely the sort of vigilante you started to see in superhero comics in the Seventies, most obviously in the Punisher. Moreover, with the gimmick of being part of the law enforcement process by day and vigilante by night, he also is a reflection on another David Soul role, namely that of the cop turned vigilante in Magnum Force. He marks both the darkening of “justice” in both comics and the wider pop culture of the Seventies.

The lack of resolution in Lunatic’s plot also reflects that it didn’t go away in the Eighties. Lunatic doesn’t surplant Wild Tiger’s version of superheroics, but at the same time Wild Tiger doesn’t end Lunatic’s vigilantism. Instead they end up existing side by side.

So where does Tiger & Bunny go from here, as they head towards their fictional 1980s? Well, I’m hoping that Kotetsu’s cousin from Greece arrives in Sternbild to team up with him.

BONUS: As I’d been sitting on this post since November, and I’ve still not figured out a segue to talking about The Professionals, which was basically Starsky & Hutch if they were UK television James Bonds and the main character was actually their boss, here’s a link to some recent-ish Japanese fan art of The Professionals.