AAA 758: Do It For the Ecchi Lovers
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And after the podcast today, we're going to do a hentai episode where we're going to talk about, we're going to find out if hentai is the number one searched term on Pornhub for the 43rd year in a row. Yes, before hentai was even invented, it was number one. So you can go there. You can also go to patreon.com if you want to help out the show. We do appreciate it. We love all of you. And we hope you enjoy this episode. And now let's get it started.

Studio Satellite, come on. It's a master class in animation. You know, this podcast over the years has set itself up as a leading voice in the industry of anime podcasting spheres. It has this high standard that it holds itself to. And when you pick just like Google, it brings us down to the barrel. I'm sorry. Listen, someone has to stand...

If I had a soapbox, I'd stand up on it, goddammit, because someone needs to stand up on the soapbox for all the ecchi lovers out there. For all the horny men in the world. For all the incels. For the people who love anime but don't want to admit that they love titties. That's who I'm representing. I will be your champion. I absolve you. Get ready. You're about to

Welcome into the 758th episode of the Anime Addicts Anonymous podcast, where our sole mission is and always has been to make your anime addiction worse.

We are broadcasting live on Twitch.tv and YouTube. If you want to check us out, you can do so Sundays at 5 p.m. Eastern. I am your host, Mitsugi, and I am joined by, she is covered in chocolate chips, her pancake-y flesh. It's, oh, it's Pancake. How are you? Hi. I'm doing wonderful. Even better because I'm with two very sexy men, Andrew and...

And Raggedy Doctor. Hi, boys. Hello. Kicking ass and taking names. Well, I'm just taking names. What's up? What's up? So that intro implies that one of the three of us is not sexy. Well, when Andrew was in the hobby addicts, I had to observe. The man is cheeked up. He does not skip leg day. It's very impressive.

Oh, I have great legs, by the way. I am proud of my legs. You are fucking cheeked the fuck up. Cake by the ocean. Yes. Cake by the ocean. Oh, yes. I also have a really nice ass, but I already knew that also. Just saying. Thank you, though. It's nice to hear it. It's still nice to hear it, though. Thank you. All right, everybody. We have an absolutely ridiculously packed episode today. Unbelievable. But first...

If you want to follow us on social media, you can do so on X. We're on TikTok. We're on Facebook. You can find us pretty much anywhere. We're on Discord. You can go to our very special Discord link, aadiscord.com. Take you right to the Discord and the merchandise store, which I'm told is backed up. There's just too many orders. But if you want to get some of these hot piping items, aashop.info. Don't let Caroline down. She makes all these items by hand. Unbelievable.

That's true. She's locked up. She's working her to the bone. My fingers hurt. Oh, well, now your back's going to hurt because you just pulled landscaping duty.

All right, on the episode today, we are going to do the winter picks. You don't like eating dog shit? Well, that was kind of appropriate. Interesting. Okay. The children love eating dog shit. We're going to do the winter picks. We got the whole rundown, all of our selections from the winter 2025 season. We will be revealing from top to bottom what our selections were. So what anime was number one on the list? Well, by God, you're going to have to find out just in a bit.

We're also going to review the two core, Very Shonen, Golf Anime, Rising Impact, which I am sorry that I put you both through, but I really didn't think it was that bad. Oh, we'll circle back to that later as to whose fault this is. Well, and here's the best part. He said both of you because he told me not to watch it. You were never going to get through. Listen, listen. He was like, don't watch it. You'll hate it.

Listen, Mitsuki's mom came in town. She's still here. And Pancake was not getting that 26 episodes watched in one week. I also hurt my back cleaning a drain. So it's been a week. Yeah. Yeah. She was pulling landscaping duty. That's right. Yeah. That's right. She didn't hit those quotes quick enough. And we're also going to talk the Sonic movie, which we will begin with a debate about whether or not it is anime. Yeah.

So we'll get to that in just a second. But, you know, I'm not even going to ask you. It's time for big news of the week. It's time for big news of the week. Can you try to do that voice for me? Just like her real quick. Me? I want you to say what she just said in that voice. Let's fucking go. How does she do it? She goes, whoa. It's time for big news of the week.

I'm making news of us a week. It's just like that. Shut the fuck up. Oh, you like that. Okay, thank you. You may proceed. So all of us went really, really fast yesterday. The Sonic movie. So, okay, here we go. Sonic the Hedgehog. It's got multiple anime on my anime list. Is Sonic the Hedgehog anime? Sonic the Hedgehog is anime. Sonic the Hedgehog, the movie, is not. Correct. Are you sure?

Yes. Aren't there a whole lot of Japanese people in those credits? Probably the loosest on our previous discussion on this is what qualifies as an anime. I feel like if I don't think it's an anime, then we're really stretching it. I'll put it this way.

When it goes to Japan, then it's anime. So the Japanese version of this movie is anime because that's what they'd call it. Probably not, but I'm giving you a bump. That's like trying to say that this new Mufasa film is a Disney animated movie when they're fucking real ass looking lions. Is it a live action of anime? Is it a live action adaptation of an anime? Yes. Yes. Perfect. That's great. So the movie came out, Sonic 3.

And Pancake and I, I don't know if either of you saw it yet, but Pancake and I saw it yesterday. It's doing really well. It's not the highest grossing of the three yet at the moment, but it could be. It did $62 million in two days in the U.S., which is pretty good. It's quite far ahead of Mufasa, which I think everybody seemed very surprised about, that the Lion King would not be able to keep up with Sonic, but Mufasa only did $35 million. Yeah.

It's not grossing quite as much as the second movie, but it's better off than the first movie was. And I personally think that this was the best of the three Sonic movies. I think that narratively it was the best, and Shadow is so good in the movie. He's so good.

That makes me excited. I haven't seen this yet. I loved the first two, and I love Sonic Adventures 2, the video game, with Shadow in it. So I was super pumped for this. Did you hear that? Sonic Adventure 2? Yeah. Did you hear that?

I'm not the only one. Escape from the city. We'll make it through. Yeah, you'll love it if you like Sonic Adventure 2. It is very... I don't know. It has kind of that vibe for it. It has a little bit of outer space-y stuff, too. I'm sorry. Hold on. I don't get the Sonic Adventure 2. It's a video game that features Shadow. No, no. I get that, but there's a whole look there where...

Pancake looked at you like, he says Sonic Adventure 2. Let's unpack that for a second because I don't get the joke. Couple-stody joke. Let's go. Oh, you don't understand? He's never played Sonic Adventure 2, and it is the best one. It came out on a man. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Every time a Sonic game gets ported to the PlayStation, I play it.

And I platinum it pretty much too. But they just haven't brought Sonic Adventure over. I never had it on GameCube. We weren't a big GameCube household. We maybe had 10 GameCube games and that was about it. So the GameCube was the first console. My parents would not allow me to have video games because I was a chick. But my little brother... Oh, I feel so old now. My little brother...

That was his first console he got for Christmas, and that was the game that came with it. So we played a fuck ton of Sonic Adventure 2. Wait, so you're unaware of the greatness of that is the song Live and Learn. No, Live and Learn. Yeah, I know it. No, he knows the song because I have a Sonic playlist on my phone for him.

Okay. At least. And in any event, so regardless, the Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations game just came out and they've got like half the levels from Sonic Adventure 2 in there anyway. But did you think it was the best of the three? I wholeheartedly agree. I think it was definitely the strongest one. Let me put it like this. If you go on Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 98% by the viewers and it has a 90 or something like that from the critics. I mean, pretty much universally, everyone thinks this movie's great.

Well, and we went with a group of five people that age ranges from, you know, 28 to 76, right? Yeah, my mom's 76, yeah. Every single one of us of the five loved the movie and thought it was great and can't wait for the next one. Yeah, it's got an 86 from the critics, 98 from the fans. And I'm very excited about this because as a big Sonic fan that was around before anybody cared about Sonic when it was just a game on the Sega...

This is laying the groundwork for 20 more years of Sonic. They are now grabbing... So our one friend had to... She was super excited that it was good because her little cousins or nephews or whatever, her brothers, they love Sonic and they're way younger, right? They're kids. They're 10. They're little kids. So this is paving the way for 20 more years of the franchise. You're going to get...

a solid fan base for both gen alpha and gen Z. You're going to get better video games because this is a cash count out. They're going to have better video games. You're probably going to get more Sonic TV shows and the movies are getting some serious pool with actors. Now. I mean, shadow was, was voiced by Keanu Reeves, which is pretty cool. I didn't think his performance was overly great, but it's shadow. He just has to sound emotionless and brooding. And I think Keanu Reeves has a perfect voice for that. Yeah, he did good. He did a good job. Um,

I thought this was Jim Carrey's best of the three movies. He was very heavily involved in this movie. Robotnik was more of a main character in this movie than really he's ever been. And Jim Carrey had a couple really funny, like, goofy scenes that he just nailed. It was really good. He's like Robotnik times two in this movie, right? Yes. Yep. And they have the best fourth wall break scene.

I've seen in a long time in this movie. Oh, yeah. What does he say? Oh, we shouldn't spoil it. Yeah, I'm not going to spoil anything. Go watch it. You'll enjoy it. Your whole family will enjoy it. Yeah, I think this movie was very consistent in tone with the other ones too. You still get a lot of your silly humor that's mostly like puns and Sonic acting goofy. Some actual better than... Probably the action was better in this movie than the prior two, I think. Like I said, I think Jim Carrey was...

His comic relief was better, I think, than in the prior movies. And I thought the opening was great, too. The second movie had a great opening where he's disassembling the car or whatever as it's driving. And in this movie, there's a pretty good fight scene between Shadow and Sonic and Knuckles and Tails, and it starts right at the beginning. Yeah, it was...

It pivots from a silly scene with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles camping to a full-on battle with Shadow in the span of just a few minutes. I don't know. The pacing was very strong. And Knuckles is great. Oh, and don't walk away before the credits are over because they're doing the Marvel thing now where they'll put a 90-second video in there to tease the fourth movie, which is happening.

you definitely, the crowd went crazy during the snippet for Sonic 4 that was at the end of the movie because a character was revealed to be in Sonic 4 that I won't tell you, two characters really, I won't tell you who they are, but people were very excited. I have a guess. I have two guesses. I'm

I guess I have not seen it. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm guessing one of them. I will just simply raise my finger up if you're correct. Nope. Do not even do that because we do not want to spoil for any of the listeners that are watching. They can see this and this is live. So no spoilers, but I do want to throw out my guess to prove my superiority. I'm going with it's

Rouge the Bat and Amy are my two guesses. So you think they're just going to like burst in girl power style? That's my guess. I mean, it's a while that Amy and Rouge haven't shown up yet. But then again, they did trickle in Knuckles and then they didn't trickle in Shadow. Well, they actually brought in Tails and Knuckles at the same time. I like how they're doing it nice and slow. But those are my guesses. I read an article where the director or the executive producer said that he envisioned...

Everybody wants to do this now, and they're all trying to do it with everything. But they said they want to do a whole cinematic universe for Sonic now, the way that they did for Marvel. They want to have TV shows, movies. So I don't know. We'll see. They're not making that kind of money off of these, but they're estimating that the movie will make up to $400 million in the U.S. That's what they're saying.

Which could put it near a billion globally. I don't think it's going to hit Mario movie numbers, but it could be a pretty impressive movie profit-wise because it was only $122 million to make. Yeah.

Oh, it's definitely going to be profitable. And it's only thing that's going to prevent it from making tons of money is that there's actually a bunch of pretty decent to good movies out at the same time as it now with Mufasa, Wicked, Gladiator. So it's not going to like it. It's not like they released it in February. There's nothing and it's just going to wake all the money. But yeah, anyway, we're moving on, I assume. Yeah, Raggedy. Over to you, Raggedy. Speaking of money and people who are...

losing lots of money probably despite what they're What they're claiming is Crunchyroll so Crunchyroll is having more and more problems I think every time they're in the news. We just keep seeing more problems so Bloomberg put a very interesting expose they interviewed 18 current and former employees

from Crunchyroll anonymously to get, I guess, more of their real opinions. So Sony did buy

Crunchyroll for 1.2 billion back in 2021. And supposedly, right, looks like a success. They've tripled to 15 million subscribers. But if you talk to the employees... Wait a second, wait a second. Can we stop there real quick? I don't want to interrupt you, but I do kind of want to because it's important. Go for it. You just said they bought it for 1.2 billion in 2021 and they have tripled the subscribers since then?

Yes. That's fucking insane. That means Crunchyroll had no fucking clue what they were doing prior to getting bought. Oh, that was pretty obvious. There was that much more money to be had? God, Sony, man, they just absolutely made out like a bandit. Holy shit.

Wow. Okay. Continue. Well, Sony was smart in buying Crunchyroll, but the failures start to come in when they merged with Funimation, which we've talked previously about how like, you know, loss of these digital copies of things and loss of these shows when they merged, they just didn't re-up them, things like that.

And something interesting I found in this article was that the Crunchyroll employees were very explicitly anime fans. For those who somehow don't know, Crunchyroll originally was a pirate site back in 2006, right? It was very...

anime fan driven site. Is that not common knowledge? I did not know that actually. Oh, did you not? Oh yeah. I don't think so. Yeah. No, no. Crunchyroll had a really like, they are, they, they, their foundation has always been a rickety until the Sony buyout is, is very true. But, but Raggedy is correct. So, um, just to like hop in and hear a second. So I was, uh,

At one of the anime conventions, one of their people that go to anime conventions was talking about just in general the work ethic at Crunchyroll. And it is really a fan-driven business. So essentially, one of the things she was saying to the panel was that one guy basically was a user of Crunchyroll, and he hated how one of the things was working. So he just...

on his weekend, recoded like one of the like street, like one of the things just to make the whole viewing experience better for himself and then just like pushed it into production and for the rest of everybody. That's the kind of people we're dealing with, which doesn't always make for the quote unquote best business people in terms of profits. But I think in terms of

There's always some goodwill there, but they are not the best business people, if we're being honest. Anyway, Raggedy, please continue. Well, but I guess jumping off of that, right? One of the quotes from the article was that the Crunchyroll employees used to joke, at least we don't work at Funimation because Funimation had more of a reputation for not being as good of a workplace. And it sounds like after the merger, some of the...

Worst things from both companies have been what's merged together. Are you gonna share? Well, I might. You have to. Give me the fucking tea. Well, so, for example, some of the executives... So right now, the Crunchyroll executives that were there before the merger are gone. Chief Executive Officer Colin Decker, General Manager Joanne Wage, Wage, however you say that name, they left a few months after the merger. They've been replaced by the former leads of Funimation,

Those executives write off a lot of anime as quote-unquote kids cartoons. They're very resistant to hiring candidates who describe themselves as fans. So basically the people who made up the Crunchyroll work base is gone. What?

Vision for the future of anime is proven to be not the best. Right. So I talked about how they tripled. Well, they've talked about how they've tripled their subscriber base right to 15. They're looking at, you know, 25 by 25. They want 25 million subscribers by the end of 2025. It's looking like they're going to fall short of this. And it's because they just picked a catchy number to make.

There's no real reason why they think they should get this. The board of directors wanted it. Some fat cat had didn't want to report up to an even fatter cat that he wasn't going to get another 15 minutes. Wasn't going to get another 10 million. That's how it always is. He'll apologize. He'll apologize later when they don't make it blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, and to kind of delve into some of the things they've done to try to do this, that have been proven to be not the smartest move. So they try, they've been trying to expand more into India and,

But the way they've been doing this is by charging $1 a month for their service, which has not, you know, economically does not make a lot of sense. And then when you look at the market in India, you need to dub in three different languages to get,

It's Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil, I think, were the three that they were doing. So that's a lot of extra cost with not a lot of return. Are those languages all widely spoken in India? India has tons of languages. It's hot. Depending on the region or even the town you're from, most people in India know Hindi, but the other two, I can't. So why not just do Hindi then? Because then you're... There's...

You can do Hindi. Most people will know it, but there are some people, very few, that don't know Hindi. Okay, so what? Part of the problem is that they're not thinking through this business decision. They're paying for dubbing for these extra languages under a service that they're undercharging for. And that's only one of the things I would dub as a failure. So the undercharging thing in other countries is not actually...

technically bad business practice. That's actually a very common one. So like games will cost different prices, which is why there's region blocking for buying certain things, right? But like so like Steam games that cost like $50 here are probably like $20 in India, but that's like meeting their base where it's at.

The dubbing in extra language is probably not necessary. If they kept it to one, they could probably save some money. But you're showing a pattern of like misappropriations. Yes, exactly. The other probably the biggest problem, the two biggest problems. One is actually I'm saying I have three. One is the failed foray into online gaming.

So last month of all of the games that Crunchyroll has sponsored, except for one of them, the rest have bought in less than $5,000 each. Oh my God. It's been an abject failure.

One of the more popular ones, Princess Connect Redive, has been shut down. They had One Punch Man World, which would have been a really smart push to get people to be interested in Crunchyroll, except for the fact that they lost the rights to Season 3 for One Punch Man to high dive.

Or sorry, to Hulu, not Hive Dive, to Hulu. So you put all this money into this game. You lose the connection to the anime. And then they, again, stop updating it, stop putting things into it. So that's the video game problem. Then you have the merchandise problem. So they bought Right Stuff, which is a merchandising retailer.

Except the problem is Sony says, ah, no etchy stuff for your merchandise. You got to cut that shit out. For real? So, Raggedy, what you're telling me is the fourth point on your list here for this ad read where it says some executives write off anime as kids cartoons, they said, and resist hiring job candidates who describe themselves as fans. That is where the problem is.

Oh no, agreed. Actually, the bigger problem is honestly like this is and everything you're saying here is emblematic of the issue is that Sony has bought Frenchyroll, Funimation and Rightstuff.

and has basically not taken the strengths of any of those companies to make an even better product. They've actually, so like Crunchyroll, the RightStuff store doesn't exist. RightStuff had an entire merchandising infrastructure. Crunchyroll store was weak on merchandising and that infrastructure. So they have a whole merchandising wing. And what do they do? They roll it into the shitty Crunchyroll one.

Okay? Instead of utilizing the much better, much better race stuff. And then they took away the boobs. Yeah, on top of that. What are the anime fans are buying, Holmes? So, and then with Funimation...

There's a lot of things that Funimation did. I couldn't tell you what it was, but at least UI wise was a much better UI in a lot of ways than the Crunchyroll UI. And they didn't take elements of that to make their streaming better. It's just like they're like, well, Crunchyroll exists. And you know what? Crunchyroll is good enough.

And it could have been so much better. Like all of these mergers weren't like, oh, no, it's the end of the the anime industry, right? Like these are all like, oh, that's actually pretty cool because now you can make this better. Oh, that's pretty cool. And but they just didn't do it. And like you said, it goes back to those executives basically not understanding business. You know what?

I don't want to catch a terrorism charge, so I will keep myself quiet. It's okay. I'll catch the charge. I'll lay the blame at someone because it was mentioned in the Bloomberg article, so it's not my fault for naming this person. Marcus Gerdman has been a point of contention for a lot of these people as a big issue. He is a senior VP over at Crunchyroll. He is relatively inexperienced for anime content.

like the anime sphere itself. He worked more on like live action Netflix stuff. So he has experience in media, but not so much in anime. And he specifically has apparently pissed off both Toei and Toho, which are huge, huge,

pieces of the anime pie, right? Like he pissed off Toei at San Diego Comic-Con with how they did the One Piece display, which maybe it's petty, but you have to understand, again, where your bread's buttered a little bit, which makes sense now that Crunchyroll is paywalling some One Piece stuff or how they, when Dan De Dan goes to Netflix as well as Crunchyroll, how they suddenly stop advertising Dan De Dan because they're being kind of petty about it.

I think we need to get Marcus Gerdman some, his own personal big tit cat girl waifu. What do you think? It sounds like Marcus Gerdman is not going to be a senior VP for very much longer. And he should enjoy his last time being a senior VP. And when you have a name like Gerdman, I don't know what to tell you. I hope you get Gerd, I guess. I get Gerd.

But that's it. That's what I got. What if we're pronouncing it wrong? What if his last name is actually Gertie Man? Does that make it better? That's for sure. Look at Blankus. He's such a Gertie Man. I just can't imagine them saying that like anime merchandise can't have, can't be adult in nature at all. Like there's no ecchi fan, no ecchi merchandise. I mean, everybody knows that the ecchi anime figures sell for like 10 times what the regular ones do.

Do you even figure Bukake? I mean, come on, honestly. Well, how can you piss off Toei? That's a big mistake. Actually, that's not as hard as you think, honestly. I know, but I feel like all he'd have to do is do a good display and kiss some ass.

Oh, yeah. It's easy to... It's actually easy to lose favor with Japanese companies in my experience. Kiss ass. Well, I mean, you've got... I'm going to presume, but you've got an executive at Crunchyroll talking to...

Talking to a Japanese company and maybe they don't understand all the cultural stuff that they need to be aware of when they're doing business overseas. But you would expect that they would know because they're in the business. But we got to move on because we're really fucking long. Sorry. Mine will be quick because it's just an announcement. Dawn to Dawn, second season announced for summer 2025 and will be starting in July. Yay! To no one's shock at all.

We're not caught up, but it's so good. It's so good. All right. And Andrew? I haven't watched it yet. So my bit of news, and I don't know if this is in the news break also. It feels like it might be, but I am still going to say it anyway. It's not. Adult Swim is ending the Toonami Rewind block, not Toonami in general. That's still happening.

But the Toonami Rewind block was essentially a block that they created to do. I think it was like Monday through Friday at like 5 to 7 p.m. And it was just showing all the shows that were before the Toonami reboot back in like 2012. And that ran and this ran for a couple of years, I think, or at least a solid. What was it? It feels like it ran for a couple of years.

It ran for a couple of years. Anyway, it was fun. They were showing Naruto, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, but the Kai version. But yeah, it just feels like we're...

I if this is happening, it might be that they're trying to preserve to Nami, but it also feels like there's a chance that we might not have to know me in 2026. So keep watching to not meet guys. I can't because I'm in Canada. So but yeah, and I have great memories of it. So of that original tsunami block whenever I visited the United States. So yeah, it's a it's a

It's unfortunate, but hey, I was hoping that they're doing it just so that they can keep Toonami running for much longer, but who knows how much longer that will run given what happens. But everything's a cycle, so maybe we'll just another 10 years get another good April Fool's joke. And that is my news. Toonami was my childhood. Yeah, me too, for sure, 100%. For a lot of people, yeah. But, you know, it hasn't been really...

I don't know, has Toonami ever really been the same since when you raced home at 4 o'clock or whatever from school and plopped down in front of the TV for two hours or whatever? Like, no, probably not. Tom? Steve Bloom? Tom? Tom the robot. He means, wow, who knew Steve Bloom has a nice voice? Wow. I don't know who that is. You do, too. Steve Bloom would talk you out of your panties. I don't talk to people out of my panties. I don't even have panties.

Not anymore. Steve Blum took them. Yeah, they're gone. All right, let's do our winter shows. So we have done our selections for the winter. This takes a very long time, and I can already tell we're in big trouble. No, we got this. So I think we just need to rotate through these and blow through them. I'm assuming the ones that you highlighted in pink you're going to pull up for me. They're literally all the ones you picked.

I figure those are the ones I'm covering. So the way that this works, guys, is that we will be announcing all of these. We will do an impression on every single one of these. We'll watch three episodes roughly of each of them, and then we'll decide if we want to do a review on them or not. Most of them won't get picked, but in the end, we will try to pick the best shows for you. So the first anime is Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms. Pancake, this is one of your picks.

I picked it because it had a cute picture on the front. That's it? Yeah. I looked at the genres and it looked more up my alley and it had cute characters. Well, it's a... It's a high school anime. It's a high school rom-com, so I'm going to thank you. We're starting off really great. So, you know, you better watch out. You sleep in the same house as me and I can do things to you while you're sleeping. I hope so. Okay.

But yeah, no, that's literally it. Basically. Do you even know what this anime is about? I read it, but I couldn't tell you. It's just some, you know, teenage character antics rom-com situation. I skimmed it. It's about a girl who's like irresistible to almost everybody. Yeah. And then a guy joins the school who's impervious to her charm and she'll be like, oh my God. Yeah. I want him because I can't have him, blah, blah, blah. And then they won't do anything. They won't. Yeah, it's not going to go anywhere. It's just going to be fun to watch. Yeah. Okay. And next up.

I'll take this one because I will, I'll take the bullet for my fellow Shonen Showdown co-host because this was a Lady Emery pick. It's Bang Dream Ave Mujica, which is just a spinoff for Bang Dream focusing on one of the other bands. It's a girls band show doing girls band things. If you like this genre, you're probably super excited. If you're the rest of us, you're glad it's on the bottom of the list and will probably be voted off.

Probably. So the next one here on the list is... So one thing you guys need to know is that when I picked my animes, here's what I did. First, I filtered off all the rom-coms and dramas, pretty much. Then I picked all the ecchi shows first. So here we go. Giddy up. Someone's got to represent the ecchi. I mean, come on. So The Daily Life of a Middle-Aged Online Shopper in Another World is the next selection...

And I will say that this one was selected exclusively because the themes are harem and ecchi, so of course. And it's about a guy who goes to another world and just as he's getting ready to die in some forest somewhere, he realizes that he has complete access to online shopping with a single click. Didn't we already see this anime? I don't think so.

It's an isekai. You've seen this animal. No, but wasn't there one where this guy could Amazon shit recently? There was a vending machine one. I think you're thinking of Sunny Boy with the girl who had the ability to Amazon stuff with her cats. No, he was isekai and he cooked food.

And he could order it online. Maybe you're right. Honestly, probably. What haven't they made an isekai out of yet? Well, true. But in normal Mitsuki fashion, if you look at the cover, it's got several cat girls. Black haired protagonist. A black haired protagonist and a bunch of cat girls. The fridgie.

Nobody is going to vote for this. You're going to be the single vote. I'll vote for it. This fails the Fridgy misogyny isekai test. There's one guy, only women. It's going to be bad. Or great. All right, what's next here on the list? Oh, my God. This has got to be an isekai. Look how long the title is. Andrew, you want to take this one?

Oh, my mic isn't muted. Oh, yeah, sure. I left my A-rank party to help my former students reach the dungeon depths. This one was picked by... By Mason. Why would he pick this? By Mason. Because he had a bad roll, that's why. He hates he's a guy. I'm surprised this was even on his list. It had to be pretty high on his list, honestly. It couldn't have been that far down.

Yeah, I can't even find it on my anime list, to be honest. So I couldn't even tell you what this anime is about. It's probably about a person who... It's about a red mage who left his adventurer A-rank party. Oh, I found it. After he's being mistreated as a handyman, which we saw already before in an isekai and ridiculed for years, he just leaves. And so...

But he's also the strongest ever. Also fails the Andrew misogyny isekai test. So it's probably going to be bad. Yeah, he's a red mage and discovers that he has extraordinary magic and skills. But Mason had this... Where did Mason have... I don't even see this on Mason's list. That's got to be an error. Mason, like, wasn't his role like before last?

I don't know. I think Mason played some games. I think Mason fussed with this document a little bit. Oh, this is an outdated one. That's fall 20. You gotta go to a different tab. Yeah, this computer keeps bringing up the wrong fucking thing. I'll put it this way. It was number six. He picked the number six. Come on, Mason. This isn't

This is not the strongest season for anime, if I'm going to be honest. So I feel like I feel like by the time he filled out his list, so many things were put down that it didn't matter what he put. And I think that's how he filled out his list. But I'm just mind reading Mason here. He hates it. I know. I think he just didn't care. I think he put down whatever because everything else he wanted to pick was probably already. So he was like these three I really want. And then just random.

Probably. That's more or less what I did also. Oh, come on. I at least put the Iku Iku Succubus hentai on my list. Come on.

Raggedy, the next one is you. That's right. Number 17. I picked EmekuMD. Oh, you would. That's right. That's right. Welcome to my world, bitches. I mean, so the synopsis for this is basically...

House, if anyone's seen House, right, it's mysterious diagnoses and medical problems with the added twist of there's also murder. So it's the Sherlock Holmes meets medicine, but a little more real than the previous versions that have been done over here with House MD. So no skateboarding? I didn't say that. Oh, okay. Yeah.

But I don't know. I'm excited for this one because it is definitely very different. The problem with this is going to be the problem with most mysteries. It's purely going to be based on the strength of the writing and the mystery. And it can only be as smart as the person who's writing it. And I'm hoping that they're real smart because if so, it will be pretty good. It

It depends. Honestly, I think I disagree with that assessment. I think it depends on how good... It can either depend on how good the mystery is or how good the characters are. I think if the characters are really good, it can offset what the mystery is. And if the mystery is really good, it can offset how bad a character is. But I find what the mystery shows. Because I think of it this way. Detective Conan, I'm not going to say he's a genius writer, but that guy has basically written the same murder, I feel like, 100,000 times at this point, given how well Conan's been running. So...

It depends on the characters, but I also want, this was, I think high enough on my list. I was also interested in watching this because it felt like something different in the anime landscape, at least in regards to the rest of the season. All right. Yeah. No, I mean for sure. Andrew, while you're up, I think is this next one was yours.

Is this next? Oh yeah. Tasselkari Hotel. So basically my philosophy when I was picking anime for this list was that the anime that I wanted, which is later down on the list, was already like in most other people's top two. So I said, screw it. I'll just pick random other anime just so we're not stuck with a whole bunch of sequels. And this is one of them, Tasselkari Hotel. I think it's based off of a game and it's sort of, it's,

The vibes that the synopsis gave me was this was sort of like, oh my God, what was that? Death Parade, but not exactly. But like Death Parade, but if it was set in a hotel that always is at twilight, which is this is a hotel that's always at basically it always looks like twilight all the time. And it feels like it's sort of like a liminal space between life and death. And apparently people are brought here and when they're taken to their rooms, their rooms have

have objects that are linked to memories of their lifetime. And I think it's about people trying to remember who they are before they pass on. But I didn't get anything crazy. I didn't look at any PVs. The image looks...

Like, it doesn't tell you a whole lot either, but it looked like something different. It felt like maybe this might be like a death parade, but maybe a little bit more serious, which is weird to say. Or it could be just like another death parade, but with like a different aesthetic. And that's the hope I'm basing this off of and what I'm looking forward to when I picked Tatsukari Hotel. And it didn't look and it wasn't an isekai that had just one dude with like 50 million women in.

So that helped. I don't know shit about Fuck, but it does sound a little thematically like High Bunny Renmei, but we'll have to see. Next up. Oh boy, you have to say it. You have to say every single one of these. Okay. So many of them. 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You Season 2, which is just the second season. Which is just season two of Gotta Catch Them All girlfriend style.

Love to see it. But in this one, didn't they actually get kind of aggressive with him? Is this the one that had the episode by the pool where they were like... Yes. Yep. And the mom. Oh, yeah. And the mom. And the mom. This trashy-ass comedy gets closer to romance than any of these other romance shows.

It's rom-coms don't... Here, this is how it goes. You gotta get in there. Ecchi and Shoujo will have romance. Rom-coms will not. That's just how it goes. Well, some people would say, oh, but the romance isn't just the sex. And I'd be saying, yeah, but you have to at least acknowledge that you would like somebody to have romance.

Oh, in the chat, somebody said, I'd hate to see that Valentine's restaurant bill. Fuck all of that. I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. Oh, yeah. And also the melting pot, 100 girlfriends, 20 grand. We also had somebody recognize your background. Not as Chernobyl. Oh, wow. That's not nuclear fallout?

But as Drum Island. So gold stars in the chat. Gold star. Good for you. I got to change that for next time. Let's go. Stump them. All right. We're now on the second round of picks. We're almost there. I guess we're not quite on the second round. So next one is Fate, Strange, Fake, which is another entry, another, another, another, another entry in the Fate series.

I actually watched both the episode zero and episode one of this. Has anyone else watched this yet or just me? No, of course not. Fuck no. She said fuck no. Wait a second. Wait a second. Why fuck no? You're saying you don't like fate? I have never watched any fate. Oh, you are. Do I have a newbie button in here? Where is my newbie button? Little babe in the woods. Where is it? I don't have one. All right. But-

So Fate Strange Fake is a spinoff from the Fate series. Same kind of Holy Grail war shenanigans that they always come down to. It looks cool. The action scenes are going to be great. It's going to confuse the shit out of you because that's what they all do. But I'm still here for it.

So I am excited, but I don't know if it's going to necessarily be worth a pass. We'll see how the rest of the season shakes out. Our next one's definitely going to pass. No, it won't. I'm going to pass it. Not if you want to remain married. Well, you know what? Maybe it could teach us something because our next one on this list is My Happy Marriage Season 2, which is Bland Girl. No! God! No! God, please, no! No! No!

Playing girl with supernatural powers we found out at the end of season one. We're super hot, man. Is she going to wear that fucking blue dress again? Hell yeah. You're never going to keep this man in that blue dress. But we got season two coming. We're all going past it. We're all going to like it. I tell you right now, you ain't coming in here in this club with them shoes. What's wrong with my shoes? More blue dress, please. No, we don't want that. Why would Netflix...

Want this to be made again. Because we like it. Literally everything gets a second season except the Cowboy Bebop show and Velma. No, Velma got a second season. Oh my God. Velma got a second season? How? It had like a one on IMDb. Like a one. It got hate watched. It got hate watched into a second season. What? It sure did. Oh my God. Wait a second. Fuck this. Where's my fucking drop? Where's my drop?

God, if I, listen, all I have to say is this. I am so glad now that I can kind of pick and choose what reviews I want to do because there are so many anime on this fucking list. I don't want to come anywhere near. This is one of them. Oh, it's going to pass. It's not going to pass because look, this anime sucks balls. Me and

Marie and Caroline, I think are all slightly invested in the story up to this point. You have your taste. And yet neither of you is there. It's neither of your picks. It's our boy. I haven't seen a single fate anime, but by God, my, my happy marriage is passing the sequel. People are going to be on that review. So I don't have to watch it.

Oh my God. Jesus, help me. All right, this one is actually yours, Pancake. That was supposed to be mine to do, but go ahead, you can do this one. And then, after My Happy Marriage... Do you even know what you picked? Yeah, this one is about ice skating. Oh God. Medalist.

Are we ever going to get real sports? Ice dancing, first of all. Ice dancing, ice skating. About a dude who wanted to get in figure skating, and then he's old, and it's too late, and now he's following his true solo skating dreams. What? Who's this six-year-old girl on the cover? I'm not sure. Look at this. This is giving me the weird vibes. It's not a solo.

It's his partner for figure skating. You come closer to your mic, Raggedy. Yeah, you sound far away. Sorry about that. You still sound far away. That's weird. Why does this little girl in the leotard look like she is younger than... She's about as old as a character from My Neighbor Totoro. Because she is...

probably like 10 years old at most. But Pancake said it's about a man trying to live his dreams of being an ice skater or some shit, and then all I see is this little girl. I think he's skating with her, but he wanted to be like a solo skater. Yeah, he wanted to be a solo skater, and then he said, I can't resist them seven-year-old thighs. Well, so I think the main character is the little girl.

So he's the coach. He's the main character, but it's to help her get a medal. She's coaching her. I don't know. That's what I got the impression of. The synopsis is not very good. I don't want to be a hater, although it is a lot of fun.

But can we get some sports anime about sports that people give a shit about? I like skating. Do not even have the argument with me that anybody actually gives a fuck about ice dancing. People love it in the Olympics. I will bury you in statistics. We like to watch the... Well... Look. It's gotta be maybe 30th. Summer Olympics, we like to watch the freaks flip. 30th globally.

And in the winter, we like to watch the Freaks skate. Yeah, for one day. And then the rest, and then the other four, and then the other one, 300, and the other 365 days times four, literally no one cares. It's not going to be Yuri on Ice, but let's just remember, Yuri on Ice was a thing that existed that took the whole world by storm.

Let's just be honest. Are you saying this is the new Yuri on Ice? No, it's definitely not going to be the new Yuri on Ice. Are you sure? Yeah, they are too young and they are not sexualized. And there are no sexy gay boy butts in the onsen this time. These are little girls. I know it's not going to be Yuri on Ice. I'm very sure. I really hope so.

it's not gonna be Yuri on Ice I was just saying Yuri on Ice as a counterpoint to Mitsuki's argument before we could I mean Yuri on Ice for an anime that everybody loves so much you sure didn't get a whole lot of content that's because of poor management of the companies and they were afraid of gay stuff I just I wonder if like Yuri on Ice was basically like a cult hit in the states and everywhere else in the world no one cared

Oh, no, no. The executives are the ones who ruined Yuri on Ice, right? They kept on pushing it out. Yeah, it's the company that ruined it. They're not like KyoAni that was like, we're okay with our gay boys, a.k.a. free. Anyway, but we should move on. Yes, indeed, yes. I'll take this one, I guess. This next one is another anime I have absolutely no interest in at all. It was picked by Lady Amory. What is Lady Amory doing?

Picking shows she loves. She's smoking that ganja. Yeah, well, me too, I wish. But the Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2, an anime that I already saw Season 1 of and gave it a very mid 3 out of 5. It's coming back after a while. I mean, it's been four years. A little longer than four. Four and a... Five years since this one came out before. But it's back. The story about the mysterious...

that lives in the Japanese toilets of high schools, I guess, the urban legend. So Hanako-kun, the ghost of a young girl who haunts the school's bathrooms. So fantasy, supernatural comedy show coming your way. I thought he was a ghost. He is. You said she. Well, Hanako's a girl. Yeah, that means flower child. Well, that's nice that you know that off the top of your head like that. Well, of course, yeah.

Wow, I'm so... Do you even shabu-ru with a nihongo? Oh my god. Hana is flower, Ko is child. Exactly. See, I'm taking you to Japan in like four days and you don't even know that much. True. How the fuck am I going to get you in? Sumimasen! Yeah, sumimasen!

Watashiwa Andrew-desu. She's just going to dodge and smash her way through customs. Sumimasen! This next one is actually one of mine. This is so funny. I'm picking these shows and I go, I'm going to pick all the ecchi shows. I do that. Then I said, I only got a few because there aren't really that many ecchi shows. Then I picked every show that had Catgirl in the synopsis.

And I get Behe Neko, the elf girl's cat, is secretly an S-Rake monster or in Japanese. Do it in your girl voice. I'm not doing it in the girl voice. Do it in the girl voice. No.

I didn't want the Jojo voice. I wanted the girl voice. Yeah, okay, so after dying in a fight against forces of evil, Knight is shocked to discover that instead of being reborn as a hero, he starts his new life as a behemoth.

One of the most powerful monsters in the world. The only problem is that a baby behemoth looks an awful lot like, wait for it, an adorable cat. And from what I saw in the trailer, gets paraded around, wedged in between this ridiculously busty elf girl's tits, whose name is Aria, and her tits are titanic. Look at them. Look at those mammaries. I like that they put the buttons on her shirt where they place them. I mean, yeah.

Yeah, it's just because that's why I picked it. I admit it. Okay.

You complain about how the One Piece characters are built? Look at this motherfucker. This character is unbelievably typical of anime compared to One Piece. No. What? Look at that waist to tit ratio. What? That could be Nami right there with the wig on. I saw a One Piece character today with three chins all done out in little points like a fucking upside down mountain. Oh yeah, Frankie. Frankie, and you're going to tell me that that is more normal than this shit? This is just a big titted elf girl.

Yeah, but she got proportions like them One Piece girls. She could be a One Piece girl. She could go sail the seas. Are you especially shocked by seeing big tits in anime? The Crunchyroll executives are. You'll never see this thing sold. Yeah, this won't be streaming. This is a high dive anime right now. Sugoi Elf Opai. Thank you, Sajenther. That's very nice. That was your contribution for the day. When I die, I hope it's being smothered to death by this elf girl's breasts. There, I said it. I said it.

So Mason's next pick. Yes. Yes. Mason's next pick. Oh, God. Mason's next pick is Flower and Asherah. That's a pivot. Oh, it's a pivot. It's about a girl who lives on a small island who likes reading to the island's children. Very wholesome. Very different than the last anime. God, why? Could anything sound more boring?

A girl lives on the island and reads to the children. Oh, good. That's what I want to watch for four hours. Andrew's yawning already. Exactly. God. Andrew's just ready to take you out back. Is there more to that? Like the stories come to life and start ravaging the island or something?

No. Her grandpa dies. Oh, my God. She joins a broadcasting club and has lost her first with her broadcasting club members. Very...

You know, it's very cute girls doing cute things, it sounds like. Wait, what? That is... Very Mason. Not? I don't think that's what it is. It says it's seinen, it says it's a drama, but I read that description and I don't know what else to make of that. Look, I'm just making fun of everybody today, and in fairness, Mason didn't get a good roll. He rolled a three on the d20, which is not good. I'm pretty sure I stole one of his top ones. Well, so Mason...

Second worst role? That was the worst. No, you had a five, Raggedy. You had a five. Oh, okay. Second worst, okay. So, yeah, this was number four for Mason. I'm just going to say, in Mason's defense, he probably just picked this one randomly because, as you said, Andrew, so many of these anime don't look too good.

Honestly, this probably might be a sleeper hit. I feel like I'm more willing to... I'm surprised I missed that one. I might have put that on my list if I had seen it. I don't think it's that terrible. By Studio Bind, the studio that has pretty much only done the reincarnated as... What the fuck show? What was that show with Rudeus? Jobless Reincarnation. Jobless Reincarnation, which Mason also hates. I love you, Mason. Long time. What's next?

So next is one of my picks. This is Can You Keep a Secret? Which is a rom-com. But in a twist, this is a couple that's actually a couple. At the office, right? That's right. The com of the rom-com is that they are trying to keep their romance a secret from their coworkers, but they are so...

goddamn in love slash horny that they get into all sorts of wacky hijinks that might expose their secret relationship like making out in the bathroom why can't they just pound before they go into the office yeah why not they can't just pound it out then you wouldn't have a show let's be honest they're not even gonna probably kiss until season two or three so uh they kiss in the trailer

Do they kiss in the trailer? Blast theme. It doesn't mean it's in the anime. That's just there to throw you off. I am hopeful, okay? I am hopeful. I want an adult. It's a rom-com about adults who are in a relationship, so I am hopeful. I like that you're hopeful. I can't wait to see the scorecard for this season with everybody on there. Andrew, this one's yours. This next one.

Yeah, so I chose the Red Ranger becomes an adventure in another world. So essentially, this one feels like it's going to be a little... Well, this one passes my misogyny test. I was about to say, does this even fucking pass your test? Oh, yeah. Like half the image is not women. It's a guy. There are multiple guys on this. My misogyny test requires that there be at least one other dude on the poster. The bar is low. My misogyny...

Oh, it is. Whoa. Like if it's just one dude and only women, that show is most likely going to be terrible. You know what? If there's at least one other dude, there's a chance. I'm going to subscribe to this rule too. I like that rule. If there's at least two sausages at the party, we're good to go. Yeah. The two sausage rule.

Minimum two sausage rule. Once upon a time, we had a rule like that. It was something like, if the ratio of female characters to male characters is more than four to one, you're going to have a terrible anime. More often than not, yes. The two sausage rule. I like it. The Andrew two sausage rule. So this wraps in a few things I like. So it wraps in SuperSense. SuperSense.

Super Sentai. I was going to say if you're going to do it a third time. Uh, so Super Sentai, which is Power Rangers for people in the West, when it's the original source material. So it takes in like that hero show and it moves him with his powers. And it looks like his robot to, uh,

an isekai and then playing with that world so it's taking like one fantasy world and moving it to a different type of fantasy world so i think that there's a lot that they could hopefully do with it and i feel like they might go with a lot of the over-the-top ridiculousness of it i find like when they bring a lot of super sentai or like um common writer or tokusatsu hero shows to an anime medium they tend to do more interesting things with it in that medium um

and tend to be more meta or satire-y, satire-y, r-r-e-y, ugh, with it. So that's why it was one of the high...

pretty much high on my list as well um i think it's i put that as my number one pick uh because well one a few of the other stuff was already going to be taken for sure but i also wanted to like this looked like it would be fun to watch and obviously i'm the super sentai guy of this podcast obviously now so i obviously have to take it sentai just sounds like a dirty word to me

It just means task force. I know, but it's just... Sentai just sounds like something very like... That's because it rhymes with hentai. Get out of here. Yeah. Well, and sensual... Listen, listen. Sensual sounding and tai just makes... I know you're all worked up, but we're going to do the hentai episode later. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll try to cool off. We got a few more of these to get through, okay? This next one is... Well, I'm just roasting everybody today, you know, honestly. So...

This anime will probably end up being great because it's MAPPA, and it's going to have a girl boss in it, so everyone will love it. But Caroline can't torture me anymore with shows that I want to watch because I'll just pick the ones I want to see. Zen Shu is a story about Natsuko who starts her career as an animator and is just so amazing that she instantly becomes a director.

Which in Japan would literally never happen. And her first anime becomes a massive hit and social phenomenon. She becomes really rich. She's becoming genius, all this. And the next project is going to be a rom-com movie themed around her first love. It's probably going to be great. I mean, I don't know. It's a very artistic cover. It's Studio Mappa.

It's MAPPA, so there's a good chance. Yeah, it's probably going to be at least decent. It's going to look good. It'll at least look good and be decent because, I mean, they've got their freaking animators chained to desks. Mm-hmm.

It's also an original, which is nice to see. Yeah. I was going to say, you kind of have to have this on your list if you want to support original anime. Yeah, I would say if you want the studios to get any money from the production committees, they're going to have to do original shows because that way they own the IP, but this is also MAPPA who's

Probably the most abusive studio in the industry right now. I don't know one of them. Well, maybe they won't be as abusive if they get more money. No, they will be. That was a joke, right? Listen, there's a lot of executives that need a lot of their bonuses paid, okay? All right. Daddy's got a whole lot of pachinko to play, okay? So that'll probably be good. Free the Mario Brothers. I'm probably not going to want to watch it. Who wants to take this next one, which was probably the most...

This next one was probably the most demanded show on the list, but I think probably because everyone punted on solo leveling. But go ahead and I don't know. I'm just going to say Andrew.

Yeah, sure. This was actually going to be high up on my list. But by the time I got to making my list, pretty much like half the people had it at their like number ones. And I'm like, well, we're definitely watching this. Sorry. The moment I saw this is I think it was Raggedy's number one. The moment I saw that as his number one, I was like, OK, we're definitely watching pretty much whatever is number one. We're pretty much watching. Let's go for some shows that are going to be interesting. But this was actually going to be pretty high up on my list. And this is Sakamoto Days. It's basically a story about a hitman who runs a

convenience shop, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And basically all the crazy characters that come back into his life or through his life from his hitman days. That's the impression I got from like the brief preview trailer I saw ages ago. And it just seems like it's going to be like a wacky fun time with some like probably some murder at some point, which, you know, that's pretty awesome. Raggedy, I don't know. You feel like you have something more you want to say about it? It's Shonen John Wick. How could you not love it?

Yeah. So this is going to be, I think it's going to be a fun watch. I'm not going to say anything, but like, I think, I think most people are going to enjoy this one. Um, I'm, I'm looking forward to it because it looks like it's going to be a stupid fun comedy, uh, that,

And it's done by TMS Entertainment. So who knows? They sometimes turn out some really good looking stuff and some really not so great looking stuff from my memory. So this hopefully this hits more of the it looks really good. And it's not like what was that show about the house husband show where the house husband. Yeah, that shows. Yeah. Where it's just basically an animatic show.

So I'm hoping it's going to, it looks like it's going to be more fun and animated. So Sakamoto days is going to be, I think, I think like a solid show, honestly. And I think it's the, of all,

It's the highest not sequel on this list, on my anime list as well. So that's also another reason probably why it was going to get picked. So I'm actually looking forward to it as well. You know what I'm looking forward to? Speaking of convenience stores, is I am looking forward to the look on Pancake's face after I feed her a potion from Japan. No. Yes, it's happening. Not again. I'm going to drink it and I'm going to film it and we're going to put it on the Discord.

You did that once already. For those of you that don't know, in Japan, they sell these little vitamin drinks in the convenience stores that I like to call potions because they're really small. And they usually don't taste very good, but Japanese people like them, and they do tend to have stuff like ginseng or whatever. He made me drink a B12 one, and it was one of the worst things I ever tasted in my life. And then I drank it happily and was like, oh, so Natsukashi. This is Konohagia Natsukashine. Anyway, whatever. All right, so moving on.

I think you should grab this next one. It's your favorite. What is Otaku Cop's problem? I'm just going to roast everybody. So for this is fucking ridiculous. I am going to make a phone. Get his ass on the phone.

No, seriously. Call his ass. I'm going to put his ass in through this. I'm going to unplug the soundboard. We're going to hook up your iPhone. We're going to interrogate him because damn. Okay? What the fuck? First, first, he picks My Happy Marriage Season 2. And if that wasn't bad enough, from a Mitsugi perspective only, because everyone else was like, oh my God, I love it.

Really? Apothecary Diaries Season 2? You want to watch 20 former episodes of this Barney bitch? Her color palette is identical to Barney. She looks like Barney. She's a reverse Barney. Okay? Oh, Taco Cop, this is from Raggy Doctor. Thank you for taking the bullet on this one because I'm super excited for it. What the fuck? You love Mau Mau that much? Yeah. This anime was so boring. I don't know. I had a fun time with it. It's so long.

Oh my god, long anime and me? But they don't do anything on this. All they do is talk and then she goes, oh yeah, I'm 14 but I know everything in the world so let me just go find this medicine on this mountaintop and I'll brew it into a tea and it'll cure your cancer in five minutes. This was in four people's top twos. I understand that. That doesn't mean I can't roast. No, but this was in more people's top twos. Actually no, it's about the same amount as Sakamoto Days. Only because everybody pointed on solo leveling, but okay.

What do you mean punted? Solo leveling is the top anime of the season. The game has 50 million downloads. I disagree with this assessment. There's nothing on this list that can even come close. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I disagree with the reasons I think you're making for this assessment. Look, I understand I'm the only one that didn't like Apothecary Diaries, but...

I am also sitting here on this podcast and I'm going to talk some shit if I want to. Okay, I have not seen Apothecary Diaries. You haven't seen it? I'm just...

Why would I watch that? You're just fucking, oh, you just want to poke the hornet's head. He's just staring at it. Yes! Why are you surprised? Do you see how fucking bald I am? I lost all my hair through rage. And I will unleash it upon you, brother. Let's go. And you know why I have this full, luscious head of hair that isn't long because I cut it? It's because I'm a manipulative little bitch.

Do you have secrets hidden in your hair? Is that what you're trying to say? Yes. Don't pull your glasses down on me while you say that. Pancake, this next one better be good. The next one is great because it's a shoujo called Honey Lemon Soda.

And it's about a girl who was bullied in middle school because she froze up talking in front of people. And then she meets a boy and he pours juice on her. And he's got lemon colored hair. And chaos ensues. Wait, what? It's a show joke. This is what I heard. This boy pulls this girl's hair because he likes her. And then he goes, you're a smelly face. And he pours orange juice on her. And then that was all. What? It's a show joke.

It's going to be fun. It was high up on my list as well. I don't think it's going to do anything innovative, but I think it's going to be a fun, solid show and

And we'll know pretty early on if the characters are fun characters. And if they're fun characters, that's pretty much going to make the show a good watch. And it's JC staff, so it's going to look pretty... It's going to be pretty solid with the animation on top of that. I just want it to make me feel cozy in the evening, and I want to watch it and watch these high schoolers fall in love. That's all I want. I have no problem with showing it. Not that anybody gives a fuck what I think, but...

I have no problem with shoujo. I mean, if it's good, it's good. We watched that show about the deaf girl, the signs of affection or whatever. It was fine. So to me, it's fine until it proves itself to not be. So I think My Happy Wedding is probably a shoujo too. I don't know. They'll pull that up and look at that. I'm not sure. And I thought, ooh, My Happy Wedding. Like they're actually getting married. My Happy Marriage. Oh, whatever. Whatever.

They're a husband and wife. No, they're not. They're not married in that show. They didn't get married yet. I don't think. Raggedy's looking around like he's thinking. Are they my happy engagement? Who gives a fuck? Let's keep going. We're really long. All right. Honey Lemon Soda. It's got a very cute title. You'll probably love it. I'm happy. All right. Great. Anything that makes my wife happy. All right. So this next one is the actual number one of the season.

Which is number two on our list. Which is number two on the list. And it is indeed the number one most tagged anime on the list by 60%. So it is on my anime list. What's number two as tagged? Apothecary Diaries, followed by Dr. Stone, followed by Sakamoto Days, followed by My Happy Wedding because... Marriage. I am going to come across this gap. So help me, I will hit you with my ring hand.

All right, so solo leveling, we all know what this is. A Rise from the Shadow. So this is season two of solo leveling. I mean, I don't even know how to... Does it even need any pretense? I'm not going to read the synopsis. It's a very typical sort of dungeon crawly... What is it? Based on a... Based on a... A manhwa. A manhwa. Solo leveling season two. Very, very popular. You'll end up... We'll end up watching it because...

If we don't pass it, the listeners will. There's no doubt about it. And the first season has an 8.3 on my anime list, so you can just expect it. Which is high. Yeah, so. More than it deserves. It was fine. I thought the action towards the end of the season kind of was going crazy. The only issues I had with solo leveling was that the power scaling was really quick for only 13 episodes. He went from being a nothing to being like a literal god in a matter of like an hour. And I was like, this is crazy. But yeah.

I'm still waiting for reincarnated as a sword season two. Where is that? That's what I want. It's coming out. It fucking needs to enter. I think don't do this to me. Raggedy. Where's my next season to my vending machine? I Sakai. Yeah. That's what I want. Where is season two of a East Sakai harem in the labyrinth of another world? Where is season two of sign of affection brought to show? No one cares.

Where's my season four if I was reincarnated as a slime? I haven't seen season three yet. All right, and the number one anime of our picks list, courtesy of Mitsugi, who wrote a natural 20. Suck it. That's right. I'm going crazy today. I'm fucking unhinged. All right. Is Uubelblot an ecchi show? My studio's satellite about a black...

let's see when the wielder of the black sword draws his dark blade all who stand in his path and will be torn asunder i currenzel i love when they put all this like german in here the mysterious young boy who carries the black sword will battle at the battle end the only the shocking tree whatever he gives a fuck if you watch the trailer it's it's a ton of action it's very broody very angsty lots of hot girls i mean what are you shaking your head no at me andrew

Studio Satellite, come on. It's a master class in animation. You know, this podcast over the years has set itself up as a leading voice in the industry of anime podcasting spheres. It has this high standard that it holds itself to. And when you pick shows like Google, it brings us down to the barrel. I'm sorry. Listen, someone has to stand...

If I had a soapbox, I'd stand up on it, goddammit, because someone needs to stand up on the soapbox for all the ecchi lovers out there. For all the horny men in the world. For all the incels. For the people who love anime but don't want to admit that they love titties. That's who I'm representing. I will be your champion. I absolve you. See? I love you, Mitsuki. I think you need to go take a shower. You didn't see that coming, did you? So this is going to be...

Interesting. But we should probably go to the news break. Before we do that, Andrew, it does pass your test. There's more guys. It's not an isekai. My test is specifically for isekai. What? That's such a narrow test. There's a lot of dudes. There's a lot of dudes on this cover. This is not an isekai, though, so it doesn't matter. My test is specifically for isekais.

I see like mostly dudes on the cover. There's only two girls. Oh no. A good test, but tests for a specific thing. If you test it for too many things, then it just broadens the test and it doesn't make it a good test anymore. Yeah.

It's supposed to be my isekai misogyny test. It's an isekai misogyny test. I don't apply it to all the anime I watch. That would be silly. It's the IMT. Wouldn't it be so boring if I just put solo leveling and all the random run-of-the-mill shit at the top of the list? And then the anime at the bottom.

would have been this anime. But instead, it would have been like just some random high school drama number 14. I think I randomly put this on my page too. Instead, you get Ubel Blot, a wild card, ecchi, harem, dark, brooding fantasy. This could be your next Dark Schneider. Bastard? Yeah, it could be Dark Schneider. You never know. And with that, we're going to get you to the news break, friends, before my husband goes off on another tangent. I'm sorry. I'm on fire today.

Andrew. It's time for you. It's Andrew. I'm just showing off for Andrew, okay? I saw his cheeks. And I saw his cheeks in the hobby addicts. The cake was good. And I'm showing off a little. What do you want me to do?

Well, it's delicious just like this in-show weekly trivia question. Which of these names from the King Arthur stories does not appear in Rising Impact? Arthur, Gawain, Lancelot, Merlin, or Percival? Find out after the news break. I'll take you to the place where you can't live without your feelings.

♪ When I'm driving you ♪

Hey, anime addicts. Mitsuki is here to bring you your anime news. We have lots of new anime adaptation announcements here, including some sequels. The second season of Romna 1.5 is going to be getting a second season. It's already in production, apparently, according to Netflix. The 12th and final episode of that new Romna 1.5 television series ended with the announcement. So if you're keeping up with the TV anime that's on Netflix now, you'll be able to... Well, you will already have known about this news.

Produced by MAPPA, this new series is going to be continuing to adapt Rumiko Takahashi's romance comedy manga, which began airing October 6th on Netflix. So if you're a fan of Rom the One Half, there's more coming. You'll probably know that the original anime is well over 100 episodes long, and it is probably going to have, potentially could have 10 seasons of anime, so I don't know how far Netflix will take this, but...

Unsurprisingly, Rom the One Half is going to be continuing where it left off. Next up, another new second season, Skip and Loafer is going to be getting a second season, and it's already in production. This was announced via the official website of the Skip and Loafer anime series. Misaki Takamatsu's original creation is going to be continuing with PA Works, the anime studio that was behind the first season.

So if you're a fan of Skip and Loafer, which I know that a lot of our listeners are, including a lot of the hosts, you're going to be getting another season of that. I don't believe that this article actually discusses the release date of the second season, but the first season adapted in 12 episodes back in the spring of 2023. So you've already been waiting quite a while for a second season, but at least at long last, you will know that you'll be getting a second season of Skip and Loafer eventually.

Next up, well, Jump Festa happened, and there have been a couple big announcements from Jump Festa, and so we're going to go through these right now. Toei Animation's One Piece anime that everybody's been sad about because it's been on hiatus in Japan since October has been confirmed to have a new time slot for the first time in 20 years in Japan, which is wild.

April 6th, the anime is planning to continue at the very late time of 11.15pm Japan time. So, people may not know, but anime tends to be on TV pretty late in Japan. So, you will be able to continue to watch your One Piece anime here in the spring. There's also apparently a lot of stuff in the works. So, Oda was talking about the future of One Piece, and he wants to take the series...

even further than it ever was before. So he says, quote, we're going to be doing the manga, the anime, the movies, and the live action all very seriously as he wants to take One Piece to new heights. Also teasing that there's a lot of new content in the works, including movies and live action series as well. So, quote,

One piece alive and well with a very energetic and ambitious Oda at the helm. Also at Jump Festa, you got some My Hero Academia news. So we know that My Hero Academia Season 8 is going to be coming out at some point here. And now it looks like the long-awaited Vigilantes anime spinoff by the same creator of the manga is going to be getting an adaptation as well. They're also expecting this to be happening in the spring of 2025. So you are going to be getting...

that My Hero Academia spinoff by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Bitten Court, who's doing the art for the story, is going to be getting that adaptation at Studio Bones. So if you're a big fan of My Hero, well, you got lots of stuff to celebrate there as well. This was Mitsuki and this was your anime news break. And now it's time, yes indeed, to get back to the podcast. My friends are annoyed because they think I have forgotten their actual names.

I just call them my senpais and kohais now. I threw a tennis ball at my cat. I was so caught up in the moment and thought, maybe I could capture her. And then we could go on adventures together. I purchased a motorcycle just so I could pretend I was Onizuka. I answered the phone with Moshi Moshi. My poor cat. I may actually have a problem. It's time. It's time. It's time.

Hello, I'm Mandy from the Anime Addicts Anonymous. Do any of these symptoms sound familiar to you? Do you have 8,572 waifus? Do you struggle with having the theme song put a tag on site and stuck in your head? Even though "Jäger" is the only word you know, then you may be experiencing anime addiction.

If you are experiencing anime addiction, then you should visit our website, aaapodcast.com. At Anime Addicts Anonymous, we have dedicated ourselves to making your anime addiction worse. Worse? Yes, worse. Because the real world just plain sucks.

So many resources await you. For just $5 a month, you will have unlimited access to our Hobby Addicts episodes. You will also have access to our hentai episodes, where you can watch a hentai along with us and hear our commentary. Give our after-party episodes a listen, where you can hear us struggle to talk about our boring lives outside of anime.

That $5 will go to helping us spread anime addiction throughout the world. Yes, it is time for you to make your anime addiction worse.

Welcome back to the p-p-p-p-podcast. Oh, get it? Get it, son? We had an in-show trivia for you when we left. Which of these names are from King Arthur's stories? Which one does not appear in...

Let me try that again. Which of these names from the King Arthur stories does not appear in Rising Impact? Arthur, Gawain, Lancelot, Merlin, Percival. Trick question, bitch. They're all in there. Oh, wow. How do you like that? Yep. All right. Goodbye. Goodbye, MD Geist. By the way, it was pretty funny to see Yujiro or whatever from Baki pull a straight up Geist. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but there's that scene in Geist where the chick tries to

Like, she's trying to have sex with him, and he's just like, get out of my bed. He just pushes her off the bed. Good Lord. Crazy. Crazy. Oh. God, I love Bucky. All right. Well, it's time for mailbags. That guy's a straight JoJo character, by the way. It's time for an almighty anime mailbag. Anime. Anime. Anime. Mailbag. Bag. Bag. Bag.

All right, if you want to leave a mailbag, it's aapodcast.com slash mailbag. It's not real hard. Get in there, write a mailbag. We'll read it on the show. You can submit all sorts of stuff at that URL, so make sure you read through it. Make sure you just, you know, and we want some hentai mailbags too. I asked for them last time, didn't get very many, so it's like, nobody wants to talk about hentai. Okay. Listen.

The number one searched porn term for like 40 years in a row has been hentai. So all of you online, they're like, I don't want to put a hentai mailbag in. They'll know that I watch it. I already know you watch it. Okay? Everybody watches it. Okay? Jeez. You can't submit them anonymously. You could. We just want the questions. Yeah. You don't have to leave your name unless you want the recognition. But hey...

I honestly don't have a follow-up line for that. Never mind. But it's my turn to read the question, even though this question is for Mitsugi. So, Mitsugi, I need your expertise. I took a taxi while in Japan, and the driver was distracted when a light turned green. Me, MD Jabroni, the person who wrote this actual question, being the anime addict that I am, said, Ikuze! In my best Gai-sensei impression, which I did not do because I don't remember that.

While it worked and he started to drive, I've always wondered if it was rude to say it like that or not. Thank you in advance. Believe it! That was from MD Jerbone. Yeah, it was probably rude. I mean, first of all, ikuze is going to be super informal. And it's also combined with the te form of the verb, which is a command verb. So you're basically rudely asking him to get off his ass and go, basically. Yeah.

Plus, contextually, I don't know that it really makes sense in Japanese because things don't translate one-to-one very well from English to Japanese. So if you're trying to tell the guy to go in his car, he's going to be like... There are lots of words in Japanese that mean driving a car, like unten suru, right? So you, like... I'm not really sure what the right word would be to tell him to get off his ass and go through the red light, but he probably just thought you were a stupid foreigner, to be honest. Yeah.

But my question would be why or perhaps where did you even take a taxi in Japan? I don't think I've ever needed a taxi in Japan ever. And I've not only lived there, but traveled there for fun like a bunch of times. So this must have been like mad rural. You must have been like BFE. But yeah, thanks for the mailbag. Either way, MD Jabroni, most dangerous. Yeah. All right, Raggedy. How about this next one? All right. This one is from...

Pull up or put out? I still think your mic is too low, by the way. Oh, no. I'll make it louder. Move that sucker closer to your face. All right. So this is from Pull Up or Put Out. As a new listener trying to get started into the backlog of Anime Addicts Anonymous podcast episodes, I was wondering if...

you, our host, had suggestions on which episodes would be best to start with going backwards. More or less, I'm asking if given the opportunity to make a best of collection, which episodes would you each include? I could go on to list criteria that I think would qualify them, but I'm more interested in what you think would qualify and which ones you would suggest. Thank you so much. Love everything you guys are doing. Happy to be here now, even if it's late.

So, yeah, I mean, I have a few. The the first presidential debate episode we did jumps out at me. That was a long time ago. The I think that some of the round the horn episodes have been good. Some of which Andrew Andrew was also on most of them, I think, actually.

But yeah, I wanted to ask you guys. I think all of them. Probably all of them, yeah. I wanted to ask you guys, though, because you guys were all fans before you came on here with me, so I'm sure you have favorite episodes. I have a few. I have, and I got their numbers, too, so for our mailbag writer, he can go to them. I have 489 Anime Jeopardy. It's actually the second one. I couldn't find the first one. I couldn't figure out which episode the first one was on. Can I host that?

The second one was Icy Rose, maybe? Or the first one was Icy Rose. I can't remember which, but they were both very good. If you can figure out which one the first one is, listen to that one too. Then there was the Ghibli countdown on 570 and 571. 593 has the Dairy Queen shenanigans for Caroline, which was its own sort of organic phenomenon.

What was that? She never had Dairy Queen before, so we ordered it for her. Yes, that was a good one. How do you go through life never having Dairy Queen? It's wild, man. Wild. And then any of the anime Oscars or Razzie episodes are always a favorite.

And then my, I guess a personal one for me is episode 603, because that is a little bit of AAA history. It's my first appearance on the podcast. And also it's when Mitsuki and Pancake announced that they were engaged. Oh, that's so fucking cute. Where's my aw drop? Come on. Don't do this to me. So a few of my highlights.

So, yeah, fuck what Raggedy said. Don't listen to any of the themed episodes. They're like the worst. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Honestly, the themed episodes are fun episodes that you can pretty much watch at any point in your backlog. So you can just pick them up and watch them. So I think those are good jumping out episodes. One of the things I actually did when I first started watching, and to be fair, I'm like...

first year listener I feel like. But one of the things I would do when I wasn't watching weekly or if I wasn't listening to every episode is that I would go to the episodes or if I left for a bit, I'd go to the episodes with an anime that I had watched that I wanted to hear their opinion on.

And I would go listen to those episodes. You may or may not love us. Maybe not. I mean, after that. But I think it's a good way to just go, oh, see what they thought about this. And it also sets your expectations for a lot of what the hosts would go through. I think Mitch will always I think most of the what what is what episodes are no longer available. The first 50. Like the first hundred. They just sounded like shit. Yeah.

Well, they sound like shit now. I don't remember them sounding like bad when I listened to them back in the day. They're on the website. But

Yeah, but like obviously by today's standards, the audio is definitely much more improved for sure. But yeah, so that's what I recommend. Find animes that you've watched and you just want to hear opinions on and go to those episodes. You can go either just to the review or you can listen to all the context around it. And I would say like distill your your topics out that way and be more selective. I wouldn't go through the whole let's just watch everything because that's not feasible.

And if you do go back and do this, I wouldn't mind if you cut out the audio from some of those episodes and send it over to me because Caroline's done that segment a couple of times where it's like, you know, this year in AAA history. I always thought those were kind of fun going back and listening to something that happened like, you know, seven years ago and just to see what the hell we were talking about. So let's do this review of Rising Impact. So this one got passed by me on episode 740, which is not that long ago, to be honest. This is a summer 2024 anime episode.

It's on Netflix. I watched the dub. So I'm sure Raggedy watched the dub. I watched the dub. I watched bits of both. Honestly, I started with the dub because I didn't have a choice. And then I watched the sub for a bit. And then partway through, I just said, I'm going to watch the dub, especially when we get to the fact that there are

Not just Japanese characters in the show. Hilarious. Yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah, so let's see here. This anime is a Leidus anime, which Leidus, besides having a funny name, God, do they have anything that doesn't suck? Just see here. Maybe this. They got a few things. Tomo-chan was pretty okay. I thought that was fine. They've got a season of Magi.

That's pretty much all. Yeah. Yeah, so a boy named Gawain is living in a remote area of Japan with his grandfather, and he just wants to play sports and, quote, make the ball go far. This is my own synopsis. I refuse to read another synopsis off my anime list. So, honestly, he thought baseball was the best way to do this until he discovers golf. Everybody knows you hit the ball way further in golf than you do in baseball.

So he's instantly obsessed with golf and is a natural talent, so much so that he is invited to attend a prestigious golf academy, which I think is called Camelot Academy. It's been a while. It is called Camelot Academy, yes. It's been quite a while since I saw this. From here, the show enters shonen territory pretty hard, featuring a lengthy golf tournament that is pretty typical of sports shows. You know, they power up, sort of. They get superpowers. You've got people chipping it in from, like, 300 yards. You know, stuff like that happens often.

So, but I would, as to my recollection, most of the second half was just the golf tournament. Yes. So this is based on a manga. So I'm going to ask Raggedy first, because he's the shonen addict. What were your expectations? Come on, let's hear it. Well, so as I alluded to earlier, I know you passed this, but you probably don't remember this. I am the reason that this even made it to your impressions list.

the you had a run like what about this one yes i think there was a run of shows that i was like what about this one what about this one uh and this was one of them so i i was expecting uh kuroko no golf i wanted kuroko no golf and this this did not disappoint in that fact it's very pure pure shonen for all the good and all the bad that comes with that

All right, Andrew, let us have it. Yeah, so basically, I'm going to be honest. It's like, all right, we're watching Rising Impact. I'm like, you said golf. I'm like, ugh. You said two chords. I went, ugh. And you said Netflix, and I went, ugh. You know what?

It surprised me that I didn't hate this. I didn't actually hate this. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be. But for the most part, yeah, no, like I said, my expectations were just like, uh...

And I was like, huh, I guess is the best way to put it. So yeah, nothing too, too crazy here. I didn't go in expecting to hate it, but I'm also like, I don't know how they're going to make golf interesting. And a lot of those questions do still keep coming up as I watch the show, because it feels like there's like a heavy suspension of disbelief that I have to deal with this show. Um,

But it's like a sliding scale. It's like, okay, I'm willing to go with you here. Okay, I guess I can go with it. And at some point I'm like, wow, I've literally just like said, fuck it, this show. I'm just going to fuck it. You know what? You do you. And you know, it wasn't the worst thing ever. So I was actually pretty happy about that. I recall that this was a pretty bad season. I don't think I expected much from this anime, honestly. I think it made it through just because I...

like sports probably that's probably the only reason i thought the character designs were annoying to look at i don't i still think they're annoying i don't think gawain looks very good i think he he looked better when he goes like ultra instinct later on in the anime but he just looks like a goofy little kid with like weird blushy spots on his cheeks i hate when they draw it like that so i didn't expect golf to be portrayed the way i wanted it to

Because at this point, we've already seen a few golf anime, and none of them are especially true to the sport. So I didn't expect much here either, but we'll find out. So Raggedy, what did you think of this show? Let's have a discussion. Did you like this anime? So I did, because this is right up, it's right up my wheelhouse. This is the kind of stuff I like. I...

When it comes to sports shows, a lot of times I prefer it when it's a battle shounen that uses the sport as a magic system. That's how I like to describe it. This fit very well with that. Mangaka for Rising Impact is Nakaba Suzuki, who did Seven Deadly Sins.

Which is very, very shonen in, again, both the good ways and the bad. And a lot of that stuff bleeds into here the way the characters act is very reminiscent of the characters from Seven Deadly Sins, except instead of, you know, fantasy bullshit, it's golf and sports. So it ends up being a little more palatable somehow in this than it was in Seven Deadly Sins. Yeah.

this guy is obsessed with King Arthur because everything he does has so much King Arthur stuff in it. Hold on. I want to interject here. He's not obsessed with King Arthur. He's obsessed with the aesthetics of King Arthur. Yes. That's what I was going to get to. Yes. It's all superficial. What is the aesthetics of King Arthur? Like, what does that even mean? The naming, the idea of like knights and, uh,

and all that kind of stuff. But it has it does not follow any of the Arthurian lore or legend in any way, shape or form. So like, well, let's look at like, right. So the main character is called Gawain and his main rival is called Lancelot. And you would think that, OK, there's going to be a lot of the other characters that have importance are going to be named Gawain.

you know, F the night tables, right? Cause at some point they meet the character called Merlin. I'm like, okay. So they're introducing it. And when you get to the Camelot Academy, sorry to interrupt here again, Raggedy, not the characters are named after any Arthurian characters, not the teachers, not the students, none of them. When you get to like other main rivals, none of them are named after, uh,

um except for maybe one i think it's not even i don't even think that's well so there are a few he does savor for like the big big people uh which makes which which makes sense but the problem is it doesn't like follow who it it's all set dressing is the point is that yes exactly it's all superficial i was hoping for a bit more with that which he does not give us um i i

Somehow ended up watching every golf anime of like the last decade this year. I watched all of Birdie Wing. I watched all of Tanbo. I've watched the Soriari Utility OVA. I've watched this. I've watched all of them. This was easily my favorite of all of those, but it's definitely not a true, true golf show.

If you're looking for that, watch Tombo probably. It doesn't look great, so you probably won't like it too much, but that is the truest golf show that's out there. This is more my cup of tea, which is, like I said, the Kuroko no Golf. Yeah, I will say at least they focused on golf in this. I'm thinking of Birdie Wing, but I didn't watch Tombo, but...

I mean, Birdie Wing was sort of about golf, but it was about a whole bunch of other bullshit that wasn't golf for a lot of it also. And at least this anime, it is a little Kuroko no Golf, but it is really about golf for the whole show. So I didn't like Birdie Wing very much. I just didn't think it was that... I wasn't interested in all the side stories they just couldn't get away from in that, but...

Yeah, and I do not understand the King Arthur thing. It's just, it doesn't make sense. You don't need to for this. It literally is just set dressing. It is just for the aesthetics, right? Like all of these characters, you would think if they were following even somewhat Arthurian lore would have, you would find like, okay, so Gawain, I guess I know what he's talking about. Oh, so-and-so and so-and-so. And so when some of the reveals happen and later on in the spoilers are like, oh, well,

That doesn't add up if you're looking at Arthurian legend. But at that point, I'd also gone...

I think they just wanted to name them Arthur and Lancelot and Merlin and Gawain and Tristan and Percival. Just because. Yeah, just because. And then you would... God, I can't wait until we get to spoilers. There's some really stupid things that I both think are really stupid, but I can't hate the show for either. But yeah, for the most part, when I went through the show, I watched most of this on...

I watched most of the I watched the most of the first season on the flight back from Orlando on my iPad. And I was like, OK, solid, solid show. It's nothing crazy. It's not doing anything super out there. I think it's funny, though, that they definitely condense a lot of things. And maybe this character comes in later. But like the person who shows them golf the first time, you feel like she's going to be a bigger character.

on more of the show. What was her name? But Kyria, Miss Kyria. Miss Kyria.

Miss Kyria. We think she's going to be more influential. She's there in the first couple of episodes and she's like sparsely there. And obviously the relationship is established, but it feels like it's supposed to be more of a more mentor-y kind of thing. But essentially after what, episode four or so, she sort of becomes like a background character. I feel like basically once he gets to Camelot Academy, which is pretty much like,

halfway through the show at the very latest. Yeah. So yeah, but otherwise, I think other than some moments, it wasn't like the show had a high budget, but it didn't look bad for the most part either. From my experience, it felt like there was definitely a lot of reused animation in a lot of the time, but it felt like.

It didn't feel like berserk. I'm walking this way, you know, kind of jerky motions. They hit it. They hit it. Well, they reused the animation and points where it made sense to reuse it. They did like the chibi fine thing, which I'm not the biggest fan of, but they used it in the right spots to smooth over that budget kind of stuff. I thought the sound design was great. It,

They, you know, they all have a lot of them have like their special shots or whatever. And each one had their own unique sound to it, which I thought was a nice touch. So it's even though it maybe wasn't like the most big budget show, they did put a lot into it in the right spots. Agreed.

Definitely agree. There was some super silly stuff in the show. I mean, I thought that the just anime just continues to impress me with the stereotypes of other cultures that they put in shows. It just blows me away. Wong Leon. Bruce, you mean Bruce Lee. Yeah, I just don't know. I don't know why I'm surprised by anime over and over again, but I just feel like the world is such a melting pot at this point with all the internet and high speed travel and all the other stuff we've got. It just seems like

Everybody's McDonald's-ified across the world, and you would expect that... Fuck, I don't know. You would do some fucking research about other countries where you make these insane characters. To be fair, this actually is based off of a manga that actually is from 2000, I think, too. Which is one of the interesting things about this anime is that I don't know why it exists. Because it's been almost... Like, the manga is complete. It ended back in, I think, like, 2005.

to maybe 2004 or something like that. It ended like 10 plus years ago. So all of those stereotypes...

makes sense given when it was made uh before really the globalization like it's fine but uh but that was another thing i was like when i was looking at the the manga right it finished back in 2002 hold on let me just pull up the adaptation of the i think this was his first this was his first work yeah

And I think the reason why does this show exist, it's because Seven Deadly Sins is a relatively big property for Netflix. So they're just kind of going through that treasure, like the trove of other stuff he's done.

That makes sense. It just feels wild from like because like the show basically the manga ended like 20 years ago, which is also another weird thing is like I don't know if they're doing a third season of this because this was obviously released as this is basically one season of an anime that they split into on Netflix. Like very clearly the division doesn't actually make any like it pretty much flows one right into the other.

even though there's a separated season that pretty much flows pretty directly. And I feel like there should be a third season coming because this thing is pretty much done and obviously how the show ends. But I don't know when they're doing that or if that's been announced, but it feels like obviously they should be making a third season.

Because the stuff is completed. Just finish it. It's also a huge cliffhanger at the end of the season. It's not really a huge cliffhanger. They pretty much leave off on a spot where it's like, we're going to do more. They very explicitly leave at that spot. Back to the point I was making, and that's fine. I like the discussion. You got the American Cowboys.

And this is why I watched it dubbed. Well, yeah, they sound hilarious, you know, and they address hilarious. Then you have the British people, overly British people, super British. And I didn't even remember. I think you guys mentioned a Chinese character. I didn't even remember them. There's two of them. Um, and his sister. So fucking funny. Oh my gosh.

But, um... Wen Li or something? Something like that. She's barely in it. I definitely thought the second core was better than the first core because I kind of just want them to get on with it. Like, I keep saying that I would be thrilled with an anime that was just a single golf tournament with characters, like, that are in, like, Hot Shots Golf. And they could just make the whole anime just the tournament and make, you know, a whole... With the media spectacle and everything. And so...

I like the, when they're getting around to the sports of it, I like this a lot better. And if you look at the scores online, the second season actually has a pretty good score. It's about an eight. So it's pretty good. Second season, first season, the first half didn't have anywhere near an eight. So it's very, I don't know. I think it's kind of a tale of two halves here, but I definitely think it started off a little slow. I think that they kind of entered the school and left the school real quick before going to the golf tournament.

but some of the characters in here are pretty good. I did want to, I did want golf that was a little more realistic to the sport, but we didn't really get that for the most part. And I found some of their, some of the golf holes to be goofy as hell. Like, like not only were there, were they unrealistically good, but there were, I just kept thinking these golf, like these holes, they look like, like extended putt putt courses or something. Like there's some really goofy shit there.

as far as the design of the courses. That would never really occur. You'd never see it. I don't know. It didn't bother me too much. Well, you guys seem very eager for spoilers, so you want me to hit it? Let's do it. I mean, we didn't do the recommendations part. I would recommend it to Shonen fans and probably, let's be honest, probably more of a kids anime. And...

Maybe if you like golf. I don't think it's amazing. I probably wouldn't reach into my bag of tricks for rising impact for most people. Maybe a small group of people. I would say, yeah. Oh, sorry, continue. I mean, if you love golf, maybe, but that would be about it.

Yeah, I don't even know that. I would recommend it only if you're looking for like a fun sports anime, to be honest. It's a fun sports anime. I don't it doesn't do anything innovative. It doesn't do anything crazy. It's just like a pretty solid sports anime. And sometimes that's just what you feel like watching.

You know, it's like there's like a million isekai. Sometimes I just want to watch like a very basic bitch isekai. And sometimes I just want to watch a very basic bitch sports anime. And that's like rising impact. And that's a good thing. You know, we can't always be eating creme brulee. Is that the, you know, sometimes you just want a good old apple pie. Oh, I love apple pie. All right. I keep thinking you guys already gave me the recommendation, but you haven't yet.

Yeah. I mean, not everything can be slam dunk. Something's got to be croquette in a basket, and that can be fun, too. So I recommend this for that type of person. Well, even in slam dunk, they had, like, there was an episode where it took them, like, two whole episodes to do a single foul shot. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. That's a pacing thing. It's the slowest free throw in human history. That's anime in the 90s for you. All right, let's hit it. Oh, my God.

I love anime in the 90s.

Okay. So I think I have actually a hot take differing from you too. I think the whole, yeah, I don't know if it's a hot take. I think the whole, I got hit in the head with a ball and now I have an awake awakened by latent superpower to be the best golfer ever was kind of fucking ridiculously stupid in the second half. It actually made me enjoy the show less because I'm like, okay, this is like, you, it feels like you really just pull this out of your ass. Um,

Like, really? I agree. I fully agree. I hated that because it goes so much against what Gawain's been doing the entire story about slowly getting better at all these other aspects of his game. Again, it's like, oh, he's the natural talent. He has the rising impact. He can launch the ball, blah, blah, blah. But...

Throughout the show, he slowly gets better at putting and approach shots. And then it's like, oh, we're just going to magically make him better just to make it more interesting for the end of the season. I did not like that part. I liked it. Come on. It was like, I thought it was funny how his whole personality changes and he turns into like super brooding. But I thought it was funny. I mean, doesn't he put like his tie around his head or something and he...

Yeah, they bandage his head and it just slowly gets more and more blood on it. Yeah, yeah. And he's just like super just intense. And I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, fuck. Here we go. Oh, fuck. You know, and I don't know. I mean, it's dumb, but like the whole show was dumb by then. I mean, who gives a fuck what they did with that at that point? I mean, I mean, you're like...

At that point, you already had a character chipping it in from 400 yards 100% of the time anyway, so it was like, who gives a fuck? No, it was like 120 yards. Okay, whatever. But...

So like my issue with that is that it feels like I didn't I don't think I needed it. I think it would have been interesting for like a moment. But also it also ties into another problem I have with the show. And these are all crazy problems is that the character designs for the most part make no sense and are so inconsistent. Remember, Gawain is like eight years old.

Nine years old? He's like a third grader. Yeah, yeah. They don't give us age in here, but I think you're right. Yeah, Lebel is a sixth grader, right? Like, all of the... Lancelot is a middle schooler. Like, he's a seventh grader. But he's so cute. The...

All of these kids are 18 at the oldest, and it's really inconsistent because it's just like...

Leibel's like 12 and these kids have gone through all the trauma. And like I said, it's literally, it's all little bits of suspension of disbelief. And when you get to the end of it, you're like, oh, wow. You literally are just doing whatever you want. But like I said, none of these actually ruined the show for me in any way, shape or form. It's just really funny. So like the fact where he gets his head hit and he's bleeding and the

you know the other third grader percival and the american dude chucky or charles or james i forget what his name is it's both because he's charles but they call him chucky yeah and they're just like oh what do we do i'm like obviously they're fucking kids of course they don't know what to do when a guy is like a head wound you know it's like it obviously it it makes sense like

It actually makes logical sense that they would keep doing this. But like the whole like him being a golfing genius, I could have dealt with it for a couple of episodes. I did not need that to be the throughput until the end. It was still funny, but I didn't need it to be a throughput until the end. I like the individual moments of it. Like the shots were cool. His change in affect was interesting to watch. The only reason I don't like it is because then that becomes the whole reason that he was able to be

as close to Tristan. That's why I don't like it. Well, I thought it was fun. I mean, it's not necessary. We didn't need it, but... I mean, there was no other way he was going to be able to challenge the Tristan guy. He was too good. I don't think he needed to be able to. I think that could have made... So this is where I guess some of it comes like he obviously kind of rushes the story a lot through this. I think Tristan should have been more of a... more...

or end game boss, I think they try to turn him into an ally too soon. I think of a storyline because obviously, so you wanted him to stomp going's ass and then have a meet. I was okay with it and late meet in a later tournament.

Kind of like when he does the Lancelot. Because that's what happens to Lancelot. I'm okay with that too. But now you may never... Well, I guess they ended it on a cliffhanger sort of anyway. So it's like, you know, whatever. Not a cliffhanger, but a promise of... Sorry, I keep jumping in. But a promise of more, I guess. Yeah, because they're setting up the...

Arthur's round table with none of the named knights. Because obviously Arthur, spoilers, Arthur is Gawain's dad, obviously, even though in the lore he's supposed to be his uncle. So that's where I was just like, oh yeah, you do not actually are not following any of the lore here. That is fine. And he's also a

antagonist, which is kind of funny, who did some really fucked up shit, apparently, that nobody can talk about. I'm just amazed. I'm assuming this was a successful manga. Obviously, the manga is very rich and everything and very successful, but...

I mean, I'm surprised they can pull off a story with such dumb fucking character names. I mean, is anybody really buying Merlin, Lancelot? Like, people look, don't you just roll your eyes at it? I'm like, give me a fucking break. I mean, I think I got over it pretty quickly, but it was, that's about as bad as Dragon Ball naming their characters like Bread and all this other dumb shit.

I think he does it better in Seven Deadly Sins because he still pulls those same names, but they're less known ones. Like Meliodas, which is Tristan's dad in this, it's an Arthurian name. It's just much lesser known, so you can kind of get away with it. Here, this is his first run out. This was just he threw everything he knew at the wall, and I guess it stuck. I don't know.

Yeah, for the most part, the show is like I said, it's fun. I enjoyed it. I watched through it all. I finished it like I pretty much marathoned it and I had very little issue marathon. Me too. It's an easy one. Which is always a plus. Yeah. You know, and obviously you can skip ahead if you need to and all that fun stuff. But I do want to briefly say, because I know we're running long, I do want to get to the final scene when they're all taking off.

And from the plane, Quester, who we haven't talked about, Gawain's basically half-brother. Quester Phoenix. Who, of all people you think would have actually had a fucking Arthurian name, they fucking name him Quester. Which is like, what? It's a mystical quest.

until arthur himself came in i thought it was just like a translation thing where they didn't want to name him arthur like oh this is the arthur character obviously and then the real arthur shows i'm like wait a minute who the fuck is this guy then oh man but basically for no reason we find well obviously wang lian and his sister go and join arthur's competitive new uh

other school. And then all of a sudden Bridget, whose entire life basically has been dedicated to Quester Phoenix is all of a sudden being like, Ooh, time for you to miss me. And she just goes off to join the evil school, quote unquote, evil school. I thought that was pretty funny. I thought that whole like final sequence was pretty hilarious to be honest, where it's just like Arthur is creating his own evil school of evil.

competitive golfers and i'm just like that's just a fucking funny concept and i think to get to that i think obviously they want tristan to be a good guy unfortunately so i feel like his character gets a little bit ruined because of that but i feel like that whole sequence is just kind of ridiculous and i'm like i know where this anime is going and i'm kind of i kind of fuck with it to be honest like i'm kind of here for that shit to be honest he fucks with it i mean i i like i

Sometimes they show like kind of sidelines at side characters a little too much. And some of them are really or could be really interesting. Wong Leon seems like he would be really interesting. The stuff with Vlad Alisa and her sister could be really interesting, but they either they don't spend enough time on it because they're either spending more time on the main stuff, which is still fun, or because they're saving it for later. So it's...

So it's one of those things where I want more. I want to see more with what happens with them. But until something does happen with them, I don't know how to feel about it.

Oh, it's the common shonen problem of drop all of your initial secondary characters once cooler new secondary characters show up with awesome powers. It happens all the time in sports anime, right? So you start with like the first team and you get to know and love all these secondary characters. And then next thing you know, we're going to the national training arc where we get to meet all the rivals we met over the years.

the competitions, but we liked individual parts of them. Let's bring them all to make one super team. And then all of those initial characters are basically no

no longer exists. You kind of see it with the, what's her name? The Japanese girl who's into Lancelot. She basically becomes somewhat non-existent. So annoying. Or Yukio, whatever her name was. Yeah. Or, and you see it with like, what is it? Riser. Oh, he's gone completely. Yeah, he's gone completely. Plot Alyssa's story arc is actually like,

so superfluous, they kind of just solve it in the background. Yeah.

I don't even know why they brought it up because it's just sort of inconsequential into the whole plot. She's literally having her whole side adventure to the side, but she doesn't actually do anything and it just resolves itself. Honestly, I fucking love stuff when shows do stuff like that sometimes if the show is set up in such a... Like I said, the little bits of suspension of disbelief until you get to that final part and you think about it, I'm like...

oh, wow, that show made no sense, but it made all the sense. I also, this is the last thing I'll say, and I won't take a long time with it, but I think it's funny how these shows always fit in some section where like the main character loses their confidence and their power and they have to go through like the arc where they relearn, they refine their

You know, it's like, oh, this character, like in Major, it would be like, oh, this person got the yips and they couldn't, like, pitch. I think that happened at one point. And then it's like, you know, oh, so-and-so Gawain loses his power and he can't, you know, he can't find the rising impact anymore or whatever. And then it's like, but in this anime, he solves it in, like, maybe what, an episode and a half, if that. It came in one awfully quick. Oh, yeah.

Well, the problem is instead of having it be a long running issue, they just give the same issue to several characters. They give it to Gawain, then Quester, then Lancelot. Then I think someone else also gets the same problem where they just have the continuing confidence issues.

Tristan for like 30 seconds. Yeah, that's right. I feel like, yes, just to get to a little bit too. They all get it. It's it works well in this show because it's golf and golf is so much a mental game. So that part of it works really well. It's just by the time you get to the fourth person going through it, you're like, OK, I get what you're doing. We can move on.

So all in all, I don't need to say much more. This show's fine. It's just a fun sports anime. It's an easy binge. I blew through it in like one day. Literally, it was crazy. I was working and it's dubbed and it's easy to watch. Not a whole lot of depth. Boom, boom, boom. Finished. I think it was fine. The second half was much better than the first half. I'll probably end up giving it about a... Well, what did I give the second half? I've already put it on my anime list. I'm going to give it a three... I'm going to give it a three and a half. Three and a half.

strokes out of five you can't even do that in golf but fuck it uh i enjoyed it i'm also i think if i think about it uh i'm also giving it a three and a half uh shining road uh roads out of out of um

Out of five, whatever Tristan's ability is, falling stars. Is that what it was called? Falling stars? He never actually names it. He just says he can see the falling stars. Yeah. So obviously if...

I think all the abilities are named after what they do, right? So Shining Road, he sees a shining road to victory. And then we have, you know, Falling Stars. So it obviously has to be called Falling Stars. And then obviously Rising Impacto. So yeah, three and a half Rising Impacto, Shining Stars out of five Falling Stars. I think this show is a true adventure.

Testament to Shonen for, like I said, all of the good and all the bad. It has very much the, you know, the really big spectacle of Shonen, the fun, heart pumping kind of scenes. It's a super easy binge.

On the flip side, some of the sillier stuff, like the golf bullies, the endless golf bullies, and the people who were bad guys that become good guys that become bad guys again, back and forth, is there. So it is a true, true shonen for all it's worth, good and bad. Ultimately, I had a lot of fun with it. I would recommend it, but quality-wise, I'm going to say this is three...

weirdly named Camelot characters out of five. Truth. All right. Hopefully I won't have to see too many more Camelot casts. It's been a bunch of this already at this point. So I just want to side note it before we hop off. He literally drops the first friend he makes in Tokyo.

Like that guy basically disappears entirely. The guy that's getting bullied. Oh my God. Yeah. The first guy gets bullied. Gone. Gone. Well, who the fuck am I? Just funny. He was terrible at golf, but still. God. He was terrible at life. Good times. It was a fun show. All right. Yeah, indeed. So next week on the podcast, I carefully sidestep a heroines anime.

All of us do. We're all very good at this. So they will be reviewing... What the hell? Machinae, too many losing heroines. Machinae, losing... Yeah, too many. Is this even on our file? Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, there it is. Okay. All right, I'll be back for the next Shonen.

No one had any doubt. So, yeah, so that's our show for today, guys. Thanks for tuning in. We're going to be doing a hentai episode right now, so you won't want to miss that. Again, if you want to get that, it's aapodcast.com slash join or Patreon. So definitely, it's going to be a fun one because every year some of these adult websites put out way, way more comprehensive statistics on their stuff than you would ever imagine.

So... Yep. If you want to get those gooners, you got to know how those gooners think. Oh, and if anybody wondered where Pancake went, she went downstairs to be with my mom, who's visiting. So she was trying to be a good daughter-in-law. And she didn't watch Rising Impact anyway. I told her, I was like, you're never going to get through this in one week. You're not going to want to watch this shit anyway. So fuck it. All right. Well...

All right, everybody. Well, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Goodbye. Love y'all. Bye.