Our Dark Past with Anime YouTube | Trash Taste #10
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- What's up you naughty Neanderthals. Welcome back to another episode of Trash Taste Podcast. I am not gonna stop doing these. - How long are you sitting on that for? Is that like- - Like two seconds. - No. - I bet you have a fucking script of just going through the alphabet. - Excel sheet. - Exactly, I'm like, I have to make an alliteration somehow. So let's just pick a letter and just roll with it.

Well, welcome to Trash Taste, the show where we talk about a trash taste and everything else in the world. I'm your host for today, Joey. And as always, I'm with Connor. - We're doing this now. We're properly doing this. Okay. - Hello. - So, this episode, I thought we would maybe talk about something. I don't know if it's gonna get a little too personal. We'll try not to go too personal route, but you know, to go back to the whole thing about how we first started talking about anime and how we got into anime. We've already done an episode on that. - Yeah, we've already done our origin story.

how did we meet or how did we make our first, I don't know how to say it, anime friend? Is that a thing? - I don't know. Okay, so I have a question for you guys to start this off because we talked about our anime origin story, like how we got into anime. - Yeah.

when you guys were anime fans, did you have any friends in school or anything? Or how did you guys deal with that? 'Cause I was a closet anime fan. I was a complete closet anime fan. - For all of school? - But yeah, I think that's a British thing though.

- I got rinsed for playing video games. So like imagine if I came out and was like this, I like this. - I like anime too. - This is my new thing now. - I like these drawn to DT. - Can you believe I got mocked for playing video games in school and now it's just like the accepted pastime, right? I got so much shit for that. - That's weird because in my school, video games were quite normalized. Was it just your school maybe?

- Did you? - No, no, I got rinsed in my school as well. - Really? - Unless you were playing FIFA or COD. - Which I was and I still got rinsed. - What? Like I would be sitting in my room in university playing some RPG, hoping that nobody opens the door to discover the fact that I was playing JRPGs or any other kind of video game. - I think if I came out saying that I was a massive JRPG fan where I was playing "Persona 3" or something, then yeah, I probably would have gotten beaten up.

- I got so much shit for playing RuneScape and I still to this day, I think I love RuneScape. I remember some videos popped up in my recommended recently and I had a great time watching them. - Because in my school, I think my group of friends, we were more so than not, I guess like the nerdy group of friends. - Yeah, I was too. - So a lot of my friends from high school got me into games like RuneScape, like StarCraft.

other just like land games, like Civilization, like those games back in the day. But when it came to anime, I think I had a really tough time because I was literally the only Asian kid in my school. - Oh no, same here. I was the only Asian kid in my school as well. - With like any amount of Asian blood. Like I'm not even like full blood Asian, but it's just like, oh, this boy's a little bit oriental. He eats rice, what the hell? Yeah, so I think I was a closet anime fan for, man, I wanna say like,

majority of my high school life. But then my group of friends who got me into like Starcraft and RuneScape, I was like, okay, you guys are nerdy enough. Maybe I can try and convince them to watch something. And I convinced one of my friends to watch Ava. - Oh. - So I was like, okay. - Why Ava? That's not really the gateway anime I would think of. - I don't know, maybe because I was recently rewatching Ava. And I thought, okay, this is probably normie enough.

- No. - That they can maybe get into it. - Recommending Ava as someone's first anime, that could go one of two ways. And there's gonna be no middle ground, either he's gonna think this is amazing and he's a fan for life. - But the thing is, I didn't want to get them into like Naruto or One Piece or Dragon Ball to start with, because we all know,

- If your gateway anime is One Piece, Naruto or Dragon Ball, that's all you're gonna be talking about for the rest of your career. - Hey man, I don't know man. I mean, I got in through Naruto, but I mean, I remember the point when- - You got out. - I got out. - There was the point when I would only watch Shonen and I know exactly the exact phase you're talking about. And then you figure out that,

huh, there's other things outside of Shonen that are pretty cool in this medium. And some people, I guess, just never figured that out. - I feel like Naruto fans are like the British with food. It's like, no, no, no, potatoes is all we need. Spice? - What is it about, what is it about, like, it's not obviously not all Shonen fans, but a lot of Shonen fans who are, as you said, like get into say Naruto and then just exclusively talk about Naruto.

- I wanna know what their mentality is with anime, where it's like, do they just think that everything that's not Naruto is just hentai? There's like, no, no, no, there's no in between. It's either Shonen or just like straight up R18 shit. - They're like, what is this high school romance shit? I don't wanna fuck.

I wanna feel one emotion and that's hype. - Shoujo? Is that a type of shounen? - It must be the thing of like, I get it 'cause it's hype as fuck, but they just must want hype their whole life.

- Just being like a crack addict, right? Like you only wanna feel that high you get from crack. - It's like steroids just for the eyes. - There's the same people who are like, "Yo E3 is crazy this year." "Every game, every game, I'm hyped for every game." And then they don't play any of them. They play like the next Modern Warfare. - Yeah, but then the moment there's like a bad news article about the game that just came out in E3, they're like, "Yeah, I knew it was shit the whole time, the whole time."

- Yeah, no, so like my anime friend, I got, so there was a group of them. It was like me and maybe like, I'd say like six or seven guys who I used to like really, really closely hang out with in high school. And I got one of my friends who got me into like StarCraft.

I got him to watch Ava and I wanted to try that just with one person. I didn't want to like bring in a whole group of people. - Hey guys, group viewing. - So I kind of was just like, okay, you, watch Ava. And he was like, okay, I'll give it a go. And he was kind of meh about it at first. - I like anime and I was like at points like kind of like- - Yeah, and that was the moment where I was like, oh, gateway anime are important. And Ava is not that.

- Always Death Note, you can never go wrong with Death Note. - Yeah, so I think that one friend, he watched Ava and then he eventually found Death Note and One Piece. And those are like the two shows that he heavily gone into. So I was like, okay, then maybe I can try it out with the other boys. Hey, watch Death Note, watch One Piece. - The other boys. There was boys before us, Joey, what do you mean? - These were the OG boys. Do you know what the name of our like, this is gonna be really cringy, but we had like a group

- What was the name, Joey? - We were called HBK because we were, did you guys ever play handball in school? - I think that's an Australian thing. - I think that's an Australian thing. So in Australian schools we play handball, but not like the Olympic sport handball.

school grounds handball. But usually most kids in Australia stop playing handball by around like sixth grade. So it's very rarely you go into middle school, high school and play handball. We played handball all the way until high school graduation and we were the only ones. And so from nowhere, we were called HBK, which is the handball crew.

- Crew with a K, of course. - And it was just out of nowhere. One day, just the other boys in our year just saw us playing handball and they were like, "HBK." And we were like, "What the fuck does that mean?" And then we later found out it meant handball crew. And normal people would be like, "Oh, that's fucking cringy." But we were like,

- Hell yeah. - I think handball is something I've only heard Australians play in their school. 'Cause I've seen obviously he's seen handball in the Olympics and everything like that. - When we had like a British team, I'm like, when did they play that?

- But it's completely different to the Olympic sport. So when I saw handball, 'cause I'd always known handball as that thing that you play in school where it's like four white squares and you kind of like, it's basically just tennis but with your hand and a tennis ball and in really confined space. So when I saw handball the Olympic sport, I was like, what the fuck is this? This isn't handball. - No, it's really interesting to hear you say going back to the anime,

conversation that we were having because I didn't even make my first anime friend till I started YouTube. - Really? - That was years after I started YouTube. So I didn't start talking to other people who liked anime until the age of the internet where I literally started talking to other people who reviewed anime. Because back when I was in school and especially when I was in university, I did everything I could to keep it under wraps.

- Even in uni? - Even in uni. - Really? - It was like top secret confidential. If you find this out, I'm gonna change my identity or something like that. - I remember someone walked into my room of me watching "No Game, No Life" in university. And it was the moment of like, how do I explain what's going on here? 'Cause it's one of the bad scenes as well. I'm like,

- I have a really similar story. So in uni, first year of university in England at least, we have this thing called freshers week where you basically go out every night and get pissed. - Very, very drunk. - Get very, very drunk and just go clubbing. - Sounds awesome. - Yeah, so me being the socially awkward nerd that I was back then, I would still try to go out as much as I could, but I mean, it can get tiring.

Six or seven days of just pure clubbing every day, man, that shit gets to you. - It's a lot, man. I don't know how people do it. And then people would like look forward to it the next year. - I know. I don't know how, I feel 30 already in this one week of freshers. So this one night I was just in a club and I wasn't even that drunk because I'd been drinking five or six days before that. And so I was just in the middle of this dance floor and I just had like this epiphany.

I'm having a shit time. I'd rather be watching anime right now. Like I was just that one guy who just danced in a club and just had the, this is shit. - That's literally every time I go to the club. I'm like, I need more drinks. - So instead of getting more drinks, I'm just like, you know what? I'm gonna fuck off and go home and watch some bloody anime. And I didn't tell anyone that I was fucking off back home.

So I go find myself. - You're that guy in uni. - Yeah. - I'm the lone wolf, don't talk to me. - I just wanted to watch some anime and what the fuck am I doing in a club when I could be watching some big fat animated, which is exactly what I did. - You can put that on a t-shirt. - I go back to my room.

And as you do in uni, unlike Americans in England, we have our own private rooms. So we don't- - Yeah, the thought of having to share a room is some, I'd go fucking insane. - Yeah, exactly. So I have this room all to myself. And as you do, I take off my trousers because

As a guy, you're just more comfortable in your boxers. - The jeans are too restrictive. - You just are, okay? Jeans are way too restrictive. So take off my trousers, start sitting down, turn on my laptop and put on the episode of "Monogatari." - The toothbrush? - Huh? - The toothbrush scene is it gonna be? - No, no, it was the shower scene with Sandra Gahara. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - So it was like episode two and I was really getting into this.

- What do you mean getting into this? - No, no, 'cause it was "Mortigatori." It's a good series. - Okay. - It's a good series. - How sober are you at this point? Like fully sober? - I was like a little- - That point where you feel shitty? - I was like a little bit tipsy, but I was just having a good time because you know when you haven't watched anime in a while and it just feels good to watch anime after that anime drought? That was just,

Oh man, this is just a nice break from all the drinking and clubbing and socializing and all that stuff. And as soon as it gets to the shower scene, I just hear this door creak open like. And then I look around and then one of my flatmates is just staring at me and I turn around and it's just me and my boxers watching and all he sees is just Senjogahara's massive tits on screen taking a shower. And I try to eye him up to be like,

this isn't what it looks like. And he eyes me back saying, oh shit, this is exactly what it looks like. - You should have asserted dominance and maintained eye contact. - And then he just closes the door and I'm just like, okay, I'm moving to China now. He knows my secrets. And then he just never spoke to me again. - I have a way worse story than that.

- I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not

I was closeted for a while, but I kind of was like, I need to get out of the closet. So I need to try and convince my friends that this is an okay thing to watch. - You need to make a YouTube video saying I'm coming out. - Yeah, I'm coming out.

- So the one friend that the guy I first experimented on, he- - Why you gotta use this terminology, Jerry? - I was experimenting. - He's just like light Yagami being, planning every step being like, "Hmm, okay, if I show them this anime, maybe they'll like that." - It's like maybe one of them will like get into it. And sure enough, one of them got into it. So I was just like, "Keikaku dori."

- So he just, my one friend, he really, really got into anime. I'm talking like him and I would come to school every week and we would discuss the episodes that just came out like the night before. Like him and I were like full on like anime buddies. And one night we were drinking at a friend's place. And obviously, you know, as you do when you're in high school, you get really shit faced, right? - Of course.

and I was staying at his place and I had like missed the bus home and everything. So I was like, all right, I'm just gonna crash at yours. And it was just him and I, and we were like, we should watch some anime. Like, you know, just why not? Let's just watch some anime. And I don't know how it came to it, but we were just kind of scrolling through, just looking for something to watch. And he's like, you watch this now, you watch this now. And I just kind of slowly turned to him just as a gag. I was like, you ever heard of Kiss Sis?

- Oh no. - And he's like, "No, what's that?" And I'm like, "We should check it out. We should just watch one episode just for shits and giggles. Let's watch an episode of Kiss Sis." So imagine me and my friend sitting in a room, just six feet apart because we're not gay.

- Just bonding over an episode of Kiss 6. - Just bonding over an episode of Kiss 6. - This sounds like every incest moment happens in like porn. - And it was worse because we didn't, I don't know how long he was standing at the door, but his little brother.

standing at the door, just watching us watch Kiss Sis. And we were like into it too. We were like, "Oh hell yeah." - This kid sound like Mike Wazowski. - Mind you, we were very drunk. So we were like, "Who's your favorite?" And he's like, "Oh man, they're both really cute." And just full on like, you would've thought we were like making a reaction video. We were like full on commentating the entire thing.

- And what was supposed to be just, you know, just for shits and giggles, just one episode of Kiss Kiss. We binged the entire series in one night. - What? - Yeah. - Oh my God, did he enjoy it? - He loved it.

- And that was the moment where I was like, this guy's a kid. - Don't go home with Joey drunk. He'll try and show you shitty. - Oh yeah, no, I've done that all the time. - I like the fact that you had to wait until he was alone and cry. - Yeah, because these other boys were like discussing, you know, how good the alabaster rock in one piece was. And I'm like, I don't think these boys are ready for Kiss This.

- These guys are like level one thief and these guys are like level 10 mafia boss, right? So I was like, let's experiment with the mafia boss. - Joey's like the sensei who sees the hidden potential in that one student. He's like, I can teach you the way. - I sense it in you. - You're ready to learn. You're ready to upgrade. So did he...

- So did he enjoy more of that kind of show afterwards? - So then that was the point where we basically, him and I, we found out that, we found out from each other that we're into those kinds of shows. We're okay with that. - We're just into each other. - We were just into those kinds of shows. - We just kissed. - Yeah, because after we finished Kiss Sis, we were both just like, I just gotta let you know, bro, now that we've had this fucking like journey together that,

"I'm like secretly into these shows." - Every single moment of this story you're telling could be like a coming out to each other. - Oh yeah, yeah. - And he was like, "Dude, I'm kind of into these shows." And then from there, and from there- - Are you doing this on purpose? - Dude, I'm kind of into it. - Mike's like, "I'm a head out." - Mike's just had enough.

- Mike's like, "I gotta get the fuck out." And yeah, so from that point on, I kind of was, I became a lot more open with like my- - My trashy taste in anime, right? - Joey's like, "Yes."

- I'm hentai sexual. - Are you purposely picking words to do this? - No, no. - Stop this. - I am writing, look, yaoi writers, this is free real estate, all right? Like go for it. But yeah, but that was the point where I slowly realized, oh, if I'm closeted, then yeah, I'll obviously have a lot of fun, you know, just kind of enjoying this medium for myself. But there's a whole other enjoyment when you get someone else into it as well. - I remember the first time I was able to have conversations about anime with other people and that was just,

- It was so liberating for me that I had spent all of these years enjoying this medium, but have literally nobody to talk to it about. And then I made YouTube videos to be like, okay, if I can't have anyone to talk to it about, I'm just gonna talk to the void and hopefully someone will listen. And I remember having some of the first genuine conversations online, 'cause it had to be online back then about shows that I liked. And it just,

- I just felt free. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - 'Cause yeah, I don't know who your first friends in like the anime YouTube sphere was. For me it was probably Holden Reviews and the people from "Potaku" going way back then. - I think mine might've been Misty. - Yours is Misty? - I think. - I don't even know, I mean, except for the one in jail.

- I don't think there's anyone else that I would categorize like a lot of them were just like fleeting, you know, mutuals. - Yeah. - I'd say you guys probably the first proper friends that I made outside of that first, you know. - Yeah, because it was strange for me because I'm the complete opposite when it comes to my friend circle on YouTube where you would think that I would be very quick to bond with other AniTubers once starting an anime YouTube channel. But weirdly enough for like the first two years or so,

I was only friends with gaming YouTubers.

- Yeah, that's also because I was doing a lot of gaming stuff alongside anime stuff. And I think it honestly might've been Misty that was the first like proper AniTuber. And that was when I discovered this entire community of AniTubers. I was like, oh my God, I'm not the only one. There are other people who do this stuff as well. And then that's when I kind of drift away from more of the gaming stuff and focus on what my channel was actually about. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I remember, I realized we get comments sometimes that are like me listening to the podcast and it's like that guy

sitting next to me. - I love that theme, it's so good. - 'Cause I remember I was doing my A levels, I remember listening to PodTaku actually. - Oh really? - I remember I used to listen to it. Yeah, I would do my, I remember I have this distinct memory of you guys arguing, I don't know for what, but I was doing my math. - We argue over a lot of things. - Yeah, I was doing my math A levels, I was, and I remember just listening to it and I was like, man, man, I wanna like be in that, talk to them. - I wanna have friends, man. - I wanna like talk to friends about anime 'cause I never, even at that point when I was like, what, like 17, I still had no one to talk to about anime.

And I didn't really make friends until university, but I got banned from my anime club Facebook group 'cause they were talking about like "Hell Singer Bridged." And I was like, "Oh shit, I voiced in that." I said in the comments, I was like, "Oh yeah, I voiced in it." And then they banned me. They thought I was lying.

Because they were like, why would someone in our university first year be voicing in Helsingbridge? And then I went to the club and I explained, it's like two months later I went. I happened to go there anyway. And I was like, yeah, can you unban me from the club? I don't know why you guys banned me. And they're like, oh, we don't know. I'm like, I know you fucking know why you banned me.

- We can't have someone having clout. - I was in that group for like a year and I made one comment about that. I got immediately banned. Fuck you Swansea Anime Club. - They were just waiting for the fucking ban hammer on that. - They were like, nope, no clout in this club.

- So you joined the anime club in your university then? - I joined, I paid the two pound a year membership and then all they did was watch Ghibli movies and like that's all they did. - I joined the anime club in my university, it was the biggest mistake ever. - It's weird 'cause it's like a mixture of like,

It's a mixture of people who like don't really care about anime and like one or two people who are way too into it or into really different niches. So it kind of felt like, I don't know, I couldn't really talk with, none of them watched the same shit I watched. And it was the same with gaming. Like the gaming club in my uni was like supposed to be gaming and it was "Orge of Magic: The Gathering." - I mean, it's the type of game, isn't it? - It's the type of game, but you'd think a gaming club. - Yeah, they're diversifiable. - Yeah, yeah. And I was like, well,

Guess I'm not joining any clubs in uni. Brony club it is.

- I was gonna say like, I made a whole video on it like a while ago, but I joined the anime club. There was one anime club at Sydney Uni and I joined it and I went to one of their events, just one. And it was a screening and it was off "Paprika". I was like, okay, it's a screening and it's of a non-Ghibli movie. Okay, whoever's picking it must know anime. - They have taste. They know something outside of just Miyazaki. - I know, I was like, okay. And I wanted to watch "Paprika" 'cause I hadn't seen it yet.

And so I went to it and the club wasn't that big. It was maybe, I'd say 40 people in this room, which is quite small club for especially Sydney Uni. And I was like, okay, these people all seem to be excited about this movie, let's watch it. And this is the one thing I hate about anime clubs. And also this is the one thing I hate about cinemas in the US is that

- They love to fucking commentate on what's happening in the movie out loud. - I cannot stand that. - I can't fucking stand, I can't stand, especially US cinemas. It's something about US cinemas where it's like, if there's like a big epic, right? Like say you go watch fucking Avengers or something. And something massive happens or some, you know, whatever. There's always like at least 10 or 20 people who were just like,

- And they just go off about like, they give like their like fucking rotten tomatoes review on the spot. - I feel like I'm 80 years old whenever I'm on one of those screens. Cause I'm just like quiet down. I'm trying to enjoy the film. - I'm like, can you shut the fuck up? I'm trying to watch the movie. - There's like special occasions, you know, where it's kind of warranted like watching "Endgame". All right, I get it. You can shout. I watched "Pro Man" and "AX", insane. The hype made it amazing. You know the worst thing was,

One of my exes I went to the cinema with, we've never watched a movie in the cinema before. And I was like, all right, cool. And then she was one of those people, didn't know that. 'Cause how do you know that? That's not like on a Tinder bio, right? And then she like shouted during the first five minutes and I was like, okay. In my head I'm thinking, all right, let's not make this a reoccurring thing. And then like two minutes later she shouts again and I'm like, please, please don't do this.

"Please, I'm British, you can't do this. "I can't be seen with you "if you're making a commotion in public." And then that's how I realized that it wasn't right for me. - That's why I like Japanese cinemas, man, because like it's- - No, okay, okay, go ahead, go ahead. - Oh, no, no, I know how you feel about Japanese cinemas.

- All right, go ahead. - There's a part of it that I like and there's a part of it that I don't like. The part that I like about it is that people aren't fucking shouting their Rotten Tomatoes reviews during the movie. - No one says anything. - No one says anything. - I like that. - I like that too. 'Cause especially if it's a movie that you need to immerse yourself in, like fucking "Paprika," for instance, it's like, I want it to be just quiet and I wanna get into it. But the bad thing is that I went to go see the "Konosuba" movie

which is easily one of the funniest anime movies I've ever seen. But I felt really bad laughing out loud because I was literally the only person laughing out loud in the cinema. And every time I was like,

- I don't think that was supposed to be funny. Did anybody else find that funny? - I've had similar experiences in Thai movies or going to Thai cinemas where I remember watching "Your Name" in Thai cinemas. And I don't know if it's just a cultural difference, but there would be times when they were laughing and I would be like,

- Why is this funny? And then there'd be a really funny joke and then I'd be the only guy laughing. I'm like, am I the asshole here? Do I just have a really weird sense of humor? - I know, I felt so bad because I was like, is anyone genuinely not finding this movie funny? Like, am I the only one? Yeah, I hated it. - I've been going to the cinema at least before COVID. Like I was going like pretty much every week.

And like, there's some of things they do great. Like I know I showed you guys this in the cinema. - Yeah. - That when you get buy popcorn and the drink, they give you this tray. - Yeah. - And you're like, oh, that's cool. And then you realize you can put it in the cup holder and it sticks. So you have a whole tray that's in the cup holder. It's fucking genius. - Yeah. - Now I don't have to hold this shit.

- You don't have to put like fucking greasy things. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Put your popcorn on your tray and the person next to you can have it, whatever. Amazing, right? Amazing. And then the thing that I hate, oh, also yeah, no noise. The only time I've ever seen them make noise in a Japanese cinema, right? I was watching the movie and it was about a bomb that was gonna go off in one of the Olympics, right? - Yeah.

it's this police officer's accused. Anyway, they go to his house to search his house and they ask him, do you have any guns? And he's like, yeah, I have guns. And he shows his like under his mattress and he has like a hundred guns. And the whole cinema goes,

Every Japanese was like, "Whoa." - Meanwhile, if they show that in the US cinema, you know there's like- - Yeah, watch out for your arms. - Weak sauce. - Second Amendment, yeah. - Weak sauce. - I realized I said that. And then also one really annoying thing, right? When the movie ends, right? The credits come. All right, see you guys, I'm off.

Japanese cinemas, you cannot leave until the credits are over. And some of these credits go on for like 20 fucking minutes. And I'm like, the first few times I was like, you know what? I'll respect the culture, I'll wait. Now I'm just like, credits, I'm going, fuck you guys, I'm not waiting for credits. - Caveman brain activates again.

- I don't care about the seven people who did costume design. I'm sorry. Like I'm not sticking around for that long. - And then like, I'm the asshole who like in front of a hundred thing is like, all right, see you guys. Walking like, I don't give a fuck. I'm not waiting 30 minutes. - Yeah, I found that aspect cool because you know, obviously the people who go to the cinemas, they respect it. They're like, okay, I want to know who did and who worked on this movie. But as you said, I think the Japanese like film industry is aware that people have to stick around to the credits.

how do we like extend this as long as we can? It's like a YouTuber trying to extend a video to 10 minutes, right? It's like, how do we extend this credit to 10 minutes to get that mid-roll in? This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case on your phones.

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is very helpful. So secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com/trashtaste. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com/trashtaste. And you can get an extra three months for free. That's expressvpn.com/trashtaste. Thank you to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this video. Back to the episode. - I don't know, like I used to be the same where I would think why the fuck would anyone stay when the credit's rolling? I don't give a shit about this. And then I remember I did it

for a movie that just blew me away. I think, I can't remember the exact name. - "Poor Blot"

But I remember most recently I did it after watching "Your Name" and "Silent Voice." And it's actually just a really nice feeling just to like absorb everything you just watch and just sit there in silence. I don't know when a movie- - Sometimes I can agree with that. - Yeah, when a movie like hits really deep, I can't, like we're doing this again, we're doing this again. - Oh my God. - But when a movie affects me that way,

- There you go, you got it, you got it buddy. - Then it's just nice just to absorb everything you just watched instead of just being like, all right boys, I'm off. You know, I'm off that, that was movie good. I'm going. - Movie good, I go. - No, that's the one thing I appreciate about some film credits, right? Like, you know, if it's like, I really enjoy watching, you know, the toy story credits because they do the, you know,

the behind the scenes bloopers real shit. Like that shit's fucking cool. But when it's a black screen,

it's just white text scrolling for 10 minutes. - Which it often is. - Which it often is. Then I'm just like, I mean, you guys know we have to stick around for the credits. Can you at least make it entertaining in some fashion? And even isn't it the worst as well when the credit song is just like, I'm not digging this credit song at all and I have to fucking sit here and listen to the whole goddamn song. - I'm too lazy for that. I just leave and then I watch the after scene credit on YouTube. - Yeah, but you can use the Gaijin card, right?

- Yeah, I mean, no one really cares. Sometimes when I do it, the Japanese will be like, "Whoa, we can do that?"

- And then they'll get up too. I noticed- - Follow the white man. - They're like, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. No one's stopping him. - Yo, yo, he just cheated the system. - What, what? I never thought you could do that. - When I do it, I notice I'll get a few looks and then I'll be like two or three people who stand up and go as well. I'm like, yeah, join me, join me. It is freedom, so.

- It's like the trust system that Japan runs on, like buying alcohol. - I'm slowly breaking that trust system. I don't know, I've just, the more, I don't know, I say the older I get, the more I have less time, the more I just don't appreciate shit that wastes my time. And I'm just like, nope, I'm not waiting for your credits, goodbye. - Speaking of gaijin card though, have you guys ever used the gaijin card in like funny situations? Should we explain what the gaijin card is?

- Sure, you probably all- - Go for it, Jared. - Go for it, Jared. - I mean, I'm sure everyone knows what the gaijin card is, right? But basically the gaijin card is, gaijin means foreigner in Japanese, but playing the gaijin card basically means you get away with shit that Japanese people wouldn't be able to get away with in Japan, but they forgive you because you're supposed to be like a mindless foreigner. - I mean, I try not to actively like

take advantage of it. 'Cause I feel like it's not fair of me to like use, you know, being a foreigner, you know, 'cause everyone goes through the same struggles, right? Life's hard enough. But I mean, there's some stuff like, apparently you're not supposed to eat and walk here, right? - Yeah. - Yep. - I do that. If I have like 10 minutes to get to my train and I haven't had breakfast, I'm grabbing that sandwich and eating it. Like I don't throw my shit away. I don't make a mess. So I'm like, you know, it's fine. - I always wonder that, then why is it that a lot of convenience store food is so perfectly packaged for on the go?

on the go. - Right, right, right. - I know. - And it's like, but you can't eat it on the go though. - Onigiri, that's basically a rice sandwich. That's meant to be eaten as you're walking along, but no, you can't eat while you're walking. - No one gives me looks or anything or anything like that, it's just a...

I'm told I'm not supposed to do this, but fuck it, I'm gonna do it anyway. But there's stuff I wouldn't dare do. - I like doing the reverse gaijin cut. I like playing the gaijin cut and then immediately after I've committed the act, just bust out the Japanese. It's just like, "Psych, reverse uno." - Can you give us an example of a situation? - So an example of a situation, I'm trying to think what would be, I mean, something like that, right? Like not allowed to eat on the go, like not allowed to eat on the train, for example, where,

as you said, like sometimes I'm busy and sometimes I gotta get something down before I catch the train. So I would eat on the go and people would kind of just be like, whatever.

But then what I like to do just to fuck with people is I like to, I finished the food and then just 'cause I love seeing people's reactions to this. I finished the food and then I pretend to get in a phone call and I just talk in Japanese as loud as I can. Because seeing the confused faces of Japanese people being like, "Is he Gaijin or is he not Gaijin? "I don't even know anymore."

- My favorite fucking pastime. - I've done the exact same thing, but just when I'm in Thailand. And you know when people gossip about you in their native tongue, they don't know that you understand them and you just wanna flex on them to be like, "Bitch, I know exactly what your motherfucking saying. You better watch yourself, motherfucker." - Oh, dude. I've had so many experiences like that, especially when you're outside of Tokyo where they're obviously not used to the foreigners.

I was in a supermarket once with my sister. We were like really, really young. We were maybe like, I was maybe like nine or 10 years old. And we were just in the aisle that has all like the snacks and stuff, right? Because Japanese snacks are like the fucking best. And we were just picking stuff out. And there was this kid probably around the same age as me who was just like staring at us.

from like down the aisle, obviously because we looked foreigner, right? He'd obviously never seen a foreign kid in his life. - Kids stare a lot here. - Yeah, so he was just staring and then his other friend came up and I could clearly hear that they were like, "Oh, look at these fucking foreigners." - Those nine year olds learn xenophobia fast. - Yeah, legit. They were like, "Oh man, look at these foreigners. They look so weird." You know, something along that line. And I heard everything and I'm just like, "Oh, you fuck."

- Prepare for my backhand. Prepare for my nine year old backhand. - I've never decked a nine year old before, but today could be the day. - I've never clotheslined anybody, but man, you guys are just perfect distance. So just to fuck with them, I was like, oh, my nine year old mind was like, I'll show them.

- So out loud to my sister, I said in Japanese, I said, "Have you finished selecting which one you want?" And I think my sister quickly picked up on it too because I think she overheard it. So she was like, "All right, I'll play your game." And back in Japanese, she was like, "Yeah, I've almost finished." And then she busted out this really like specific Japanese reference. And from my periphery, just,

I'd never seen like a nine year old with like a pogchamp face in my life, but it was just like, they were like, what? You would have thought these kids would have seen like the face of God. Like, they were just like, oh my God, what the fuck is that? And just to fuck with them even further, when we finished selecting our shit,

I purposely went towards the kids. And as I passed by, I busted out a Sumimasen. And that was just like the finishing blow. Like that might as well, I just clothesline them with my words. - You're having a Death Note-esque encounter with these kids. - I fucking Keku Kudori'd the fuck out of them. - That's so much more like passive than what I think I used to do as a kid. - Joey slam dunked nine year old with Japanese and language.

- I remember we used to go camping every year in France for like three weeks. Dude, I was okay. You're gonna think, wow, Connor, you're a violent fucking 11 year old. - Okay.

I fucking spent all my time in the arcades. I remember this one time, this kid had been like taunting me. His French kid, I fucking hated him. He'd been taunting me for like days. And I'm playing metal slug, right? And you know how you put like two credits in, they can press the credit button? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's like, oh, 'cause I'm playing and I put another one in for me when I die. This asshole, this 11 year old bitch,

comes along, presses the just start credit button and then walks away. And then I immediately just turn around and just fucking smack him in the face. I got in so much trouble. I had like an angry French dad shouting at me at like, I'm like 11, right? And I'm like, this is his dad fucking shouting at me 'cause this kid's crying. I'm like, I'm gonna finish my game.

And then I'll deal with this. And my dad had such a fucking go at me. - You were that Xbox kid, weren't you? - I was definitely like- - That pent up, raving kid. - I was such an angry kid. I have no idea why, but I'm glad though, 'cause now I just like,

just can't even get angry. - To be fair, I'd be pretty pissed off too if some random fucking kid came up to me and did that. - Yeah, when you're like 11, right? This is also, my parents didn't give me much money and I would always use it on the games, right? So to me, this kid had just taken like the only money I was getting for like that whole trip. And I was like, oh no. - Oh no. - Dude, we all know like to an 11 year old, like three, like two or like three credits on Metal Slug is like the equivalent to your mom's credit card. - I fucking love Metal Slug, man.

I was like, man, that kid took my credit. - No, I can totally understand why you got angry. I just thought, man, there's a few steps between taking someone's credit and smacking someone in the face. - He'd been giving me shit. This kid had been giving me shit 'cause he was at a campsite. He'd been giving me shit for days. I was like, I'm done, dude, I'm done. I'm fuming.

I just straight up punched it. I got so much shit for that. And then like two days later, the same kid who I punched had a black eye. He came while I was on my other fucking game, just pulls out the plug.

And I fucking chased him, but he ran off. - Did you? Oh, I was hoping that you would've given him a knife. - I was gonna fucking kill him, but he ran off. Motherfucker just pulled out the plug whilst I was mid-metal slug. I'm so angry. - Wow. - Yeah, man. - I don't even remember, this is gonna be a weird question, but when was the first time you ever punched someone? - Bro, I got in so many fights in school. - Was that the first time you ever punched someone?

- Did you not fight with like, oh wait, do you only have a sister? - I only had a sister. - Oh dude, I have three brothers. - Dude, if I punched my sister, I would, my dad would, my dad used to say this one threat, it's like a legit threat. Where like, if I did anything like bad in public, he'd just like grab my ear and just whisper at me like, "I brought you into this world, I can easily take you out." My dad won't remember that, but I specifically, like to an eight year old, that's like,

- Parenting 101, man. - Me and my brothers, so we had three brothers, right? So it was WrestleMania, like fucking constantly. - Oh yeah, I bet. - We must have fought, I must have been in fist fights like three days of the week. - Was it actually fist fights or was it like- - Oh yeah, it got to the point where we would actually start like full on punching each other. - Jesus. - Yeah, yeah. We hated each other. I love them now, I love you guys. Back then it was like fucking, 'cause oh God, there's so many fights. But yeah, my dad had this thing, we called it like, he's probably gonna kill me if I say this,

he had this thing called the murder stare. And like, you know when you started fucking up and he would look at you and you're like, he's like, bro, you're one step away from like losing everything. - I will end you right now. - It was the look where he was like, don't do it. Don't do one more thing. I'll end you.

- Love you dad, by the way. - I was an only child, so I had never had to grow up with any siblings, never had to share anything. But yeah, that was, I had a fairly uneventful childhood because of that, I think. - In 2020, we call that privilege. - I got bullied so much in school, so I just started just fucking punching everyone back. - I guess, yeah, if you get bullied at school, you probably have like a lot of pent up rage, right? - Yeah, I mean, after I started punching,

back and actually get in fights. People just left me alone. 'Cause they knew if they would go for someone else who wouldn't fight back. - Yeah, exactly. - Should have just challenged them through a chess game. - I should have man, that would have definitely worked against kids. - You should have challenged them to a chess game and then the moment you win, you just punch them in the face. It's like double down on it. Double check mate. - Oh my God, dude. Oh shit, dude. There was so many fucking times

and fights as kids. I'm mad it was so bad. I don't know what stories I could tell if you want any. - I'm just trying to think like when was the- - Did you ever punch anyone in school? Like full on punch someone? - Yeah, I have.

- For what reason? - Because this kid- - It's always dumb as fuck in school. - Yeah, it's because this kid in my high school was giving me shit. Like he was the bully of our year. But the thing is he was that one bully that, you know how some bullies are kind of like popular with the kids that they don't bully? This kid, because he bullied everybody, like every single person, everybody fucking hated this kid.

And of course, eventually he made the rounds and the next target was me for whatever reason. But, and obviously going to a high school where it's a 99% white boys and I'm the only one with a non-white bloodline. - Of course. - He's going for blood. - Yeah, he's going for the low hanging fruit essentially. So he would say all these like horribly racial slurs at me and stuff. And just one day he got, he was just really, and I didn't mind the racial slurs. It's when he got up to my face. - Oh, I hate it when people do that.

- I hate that so much. - There's a difference between a bully shouting across the playground at you. - Yeah, I don't mind that stuff. - Which is fine, right? Because that shit's easy to go. - But respect my personal space. - The moment you cross into my personal space, that's when the hands come out. And I never punched anyone in my life up until that point. And I was like, okay, there's only one way that this kid is gonna stop.

- And in my head, I was like doing a Kaiji episode where I'm like, if I punch him, I'm either going to die

or I'm gonna come out of this alive. - Joey's like death noting every action. - This is like the total opposite of the way I used to think about it. I was like, just punch and figure it out. - Oh no, no, no. I was always the person who was like, okay, what's gonna happen if I go down this route? It was like a visual novel, right? It's like punch or not punch. And it's like, I don't know. I don't wanna get the bad end, right?

So I was like, there's a very good possibility that if I punch, I'm going to just like bat it, just came over. And I was like, but this kid was just relentlessly just like shouting in my face and just, you know, like, and then the moment he started like pushing me around as well, that's when I think I just snapped. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

and just knock this kid in the chin. Like I brought the fucking Bucky move on him. I just fucking knocked him in the chin and he fell down on the ground and he just kind of walked off and then nobody in my year fucked with me. - That's good. - That was like, okay, oh, all right. That was the good end. - You got the good end. - This is why like when, you know, I'd never recommend like fighting back

'Cause it can normally like, it can go like two ways, right? One, you can get your kick, like beat the fuck up. Or everyone else will wanna challenge you. Everyone will think, "Oh, you think you're hot shit? All right." - That's like the start of a fucking anime. Oh, the nerd fall back. - God of high school? I don't think so. - Dude, there was kids that used to like spit on each other in school. That was the stuff that bothered me the most. Like, you can call me shit, don't spit on me. What the fuck? - Yeah. - I hated high school.

- Did you guys have this? I don't know if this is only an Australian high school thing, but the last year of the 12th grade, like literally the day before graduation, I forgot what it was called. I think it was called like year 12 free day, where basically the 12th graders for the last day of high school, they can just run around the school and do whatever the fuck they want. - I think we had something similar in our school. - Yeah. - What? - You guys didn't have this? - I didn't have this. - But like our school took that free day literally.

where some fucking crazy shit would happen. Like we somehow, it started off quite innocently, like putting lube all over the stair rails and stuff like that. - Why are kids getting lube? - And another one was going into one of the teacher's offices and filling his entire floor with cups full of water. So that he couldn't like go into his thing like that. And then it got too far.

when one of, I think it was like a group of boys, they got one of the teacher's cars and I don't know how the fuck they did it. I think it was driving a mini. So it was like relatively small car. And they somehow put the car on top of one of the school buildings.

- Like on the roof. - What? - I mean, that's too far, but that's just sounds impressive. - That's impressive. Honestly, the engineering involved. - What are the logistics behind this? - This kid's going past. - I wasn't there to witness it, but imagine just walking to school and you're walking along the school wall and you just look up and there's just a car sitting there. I'm just like,

- How did that get there? - This must have been in like the news or some shit, no? - No, no, no. This is quite frequent. - That sounds like a scene from some American- - Frequent? What do you mean frequent? - This sounds like a scene from some American high school movie that you watch and you're like, "This is so fucking stupid. This will never happen in real life." - I don't know if my high school still does it, but- - That's newsworthy in the UK, I think.

- That would be, yeah, of course, fucking hell. - No, even the girls' schools would go crazy like that as well. - What the fuck? - Because it was the last, last day of high school, right? So it's like, do whatever the fuck you want while you can. Because after this day, you have adult responsibility. So it's like, it's the Miley Cyrus effect, right? It's like, just get all that shit out of the way once the contract is ended and you're good to go, right? - But like I said, he must've learned some good skills from being able to fucking get a mini on a school roof.

- How would you do that even if, it wasn't like a multi-story building. It was like a demountable. So it was just like, just getting it up. But still, still. - Did like eight of them coordinate this lift? Like how did nothing go wrong? - I wasn't there to witness it, but it was awesome just staring across the school grounds and just seeing a fucking mini on top of a demountable. Yeah, that was crazy. - How do you convince kids to join? Yeah, so we're gonna go lift the teacher's mini.

It's like, I need like five boys who's in. It's like, all right, let's fucking do it. - Yeah, speaking of like high school, why is there so many high school anime? You know what I mean? - Wow, that transition gone. - I was just like mad. - Holy shit, he's on it. - I'm fucking on it. - What's the deal with high school anime? - What's the deal with high school anime?

- No, because that sounds crazier than any fucking high school anime I've ever heard of or fucking seen. - I don't know. - There's some crazy high school anime out there. - It's either one or two ways. It's either like the most vanilla. - Did you guys have like school festivals in your high school? Like how they have in Japan? I think that's only a Japanese high school thing, isn't it? - Bro, in Japan, they make school look so fun and British school is the most depressing shit on earth. - Oh no. - You don't do anything. - You guys are here telling your high school stories. I don't remember, I remember fuck all from high school. - All I remember is bad.

- See, people always say that. I think I'm like the 1% that actually had a good time in high school. - I think I had a good, I liked my friend group a lot, that I had those four of us and we were all really close, but stuff that happened in school was just always awful.

- Like what? - I don't know, I got in so many fights as a kid. - Oh yeah, I mean, I guess you- - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like there was one time as well, this is one story I remember and this like drove my blood like through the roof, dude. - Yeah. - So there's a day in the UK, I don't know if you do this in Australia where like the kids who are coming into high school get like two days before the, like in like June before September starts. - Yeah. - Where they get to just come and see the school. - Yeah. - And my little brother was coming up, right? - Oh, like an orientation. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was like showing my little brother around and one of the guys just,

the bullies just comes up to me. And while I'm talking to my little brother, just slaps me in the face.

- What? - Just slapped me in the face. And this is already, I'd already been in like multiple fights at this point. And me, I get slapped and I'm like, all right, it's go time. - The hands are coming out. - I'm like, you slapped me first. I'm not gonna get in shit now if I beat you. And then yeah, I started fighting him and then I- - In front of your little brother? - This is so fucking weird to me. Like, in what world is this just- - He literally just slaps me. - Does this thing just happen? - Literally just slaps me. And then I'm like, wait there.

'Cause I was like thinking like, I gotta show my little brother I'm not a pussy, right? He's my little brother, he looks up to me, right? Like I gotta show him that like I'm not a bitch, right? 'Cause if you see me get slapped, I'm like, oh, sorry, sorry. He's gonna think, wow, my brother's kind of a wimp. What's up with that? - This sounds like a fucking in-betweeners episode or something. - It is, because then it turns into a fucking tournament arc where then all his friends the next day were like, oh, well we wanna turn now.

Jesus Christ. There's one time, and this is probably the one where I felt most bad, is that this guy came up to me, he's like kind of chubby, and I thought, what are you doing? What are you doing, man? What's up with this? He pushes me once, and I was like, all right, fine. I grab his head and just fucking knee him.

Bear in mind, okay. I do not condone violence in any sense, but- - But I loved it. - I was such an angry 13 year old 'cause I was getting bullied since like- - You were 13 when you did this? - Yeah. - What the fuck?

- You weren't even in high school, you were like middle school. - Maybe like, no, not like 13, like 15, 14, maybe 15. - Yeah, still. - 15, yeah. And this guy didn't, I never had a problem with this guy. I didn't realize why he was doing this to me, but I think I pissed off one of his friends and then he, you know, was trying to act big. I don't think he actually wanted the fight. He was just pushing me around, but I was like, fuck it. Anyway, so I did that and he just dropped and I was like, oh no.

- Oh no, I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble. I didn't even think I did it that hard. I just thought I saw it in a movie once, it looked really fucking cool. - I saw Bruce Lee do it once, I can do it too. - I thought he would. - Who gets hurt by getting kneed in the face? - He was slurring. So he pushed me and then I think he was going, think I was gonna air for a push and I just went like, "Dude, shut up."

And then he just like dropped for like five seconds. And I was like, oh shit, are you okay? And he was like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. And I think he was so embarrassed that he didn't tell anyone. - Right. - And then he came in the next day, two black eyes. - Wait, how did he get two black eyes? - How wide is your knee?

- So we came in with two black eyes, didn't tell anyone, but all my friends knew what happened. No one said anything. It was like that one week where I had like three fights, right? No one did anything for me. The rest of my school life, it was great. Everyone was nice to me. - You had more fights in that one week than I think I have in my entire life. - I think I had more fights in that one week

than anyone else. - This was like fight club. - It was. - In my school, it wasn't about getting into fights. It was about who did you know? Like if you're cool with X person, if you're cool with that person, people don't fuck with you. - I don't know if it's 'cause it's like a small town thing. Like my, and like the, it was,

- It was such a small town thing where like the teachers often like forgave the shitty behavior 'cause more often than not all the teachers were friends with the kids' parents, right? So it was kind of a thing of like, oh, don't do it again. Don't do it again. - You need someone in the face. - Every single time it was like, don't do it again. Don't do it again. - There wasn't like a proper punishment. - I mean, you know, it is what it is, right? I don't really care now. I dealt with it myself. - Did you go to a boys school? - No.

- Oh, okay. So maybe that's the aspect of it, right? Because I feel that boys will be more willing to get into fights if it's a co-ed school because they're trying to like impress the girls. - I never wanted to. I just wanted to play my games and be left to it. - Yeah, but it just seems like fucking fight club. - Honestly, honestly, man, it was fucking awful. I joke about it, but I remember hating it when I was- - I probably fucking hated it too if it was that ruthless. - Yeah, yeah. - And then I remember there was like one guy who would like,

He didn't wanna fight me. He didn't wanna fight me 'cause I think he knew that he'd get hurt. So he would just, like I said, he would spit on me. And anytime I tried to like fight him, he just run away. So what can I do? It's like that one asshole who like kites amazingly. It's like, come to me. - He's torn games like on point. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then he just kites you. - He was just kiting me. I'm like, stop, stop. And then he would run to an area with teachers, right? And I can't fucking,

punch him in front of a teacher. - He'd make a fucking amazing ADC main man. - Yeah, yeah, I know, damn, he'd make a great, this is why I'm a jungler, man. That's why I run in, man. I just, me fight, don't think. But like, no, I wouldn't, okay, if any 13 year old, 14 year old kids don't fight, it's not a good solution. - It's not worth it.

I mean, I was just lucky that I was freakishly strong for a 12, 13 year old as well. That helped a lot. - Yeah. I don't know, 'cause for me, I've always gone through life being like, okay, physical interaction is always like my last choice. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I have that now, but as a kid, I felt like it was my only- - You weren't the hard way. - Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that I was angry as a kid, 'cause now I have like zero anger at all. Like I never get angry about shit now. And I'm so glad that I just got that shit out, you know?

I don't know if that's how anger works. I don't know if the society is not sure about that. - But I feel like, 'cause I've dealt with so much anger in my past, right? I've been able to like really like, I don't know. - It's like you filled your anger quota of life. - I think so, I think so. - It's like I'm run dry now. - I genuinely think I have there.

Like, I don't know. - You just got out of the system now. - I get like mildly frustrated at things like any good British person would, but I never get angry at things. - Mildly frustrated is just the British, that's just the default British emotion. - Yeah. - Anything can mildly frustrate you and that's just the way we've just grown up. - I'll be angry about shit now, but I'll be like angry. You know, like I play it up 'cause I like just shouting.

- Yeah. - But then Garnt is like the chillest man on earth. Like Garnt is impossible to get mad. I've never actually seen you mad. - I mean, that's the whole monk thing, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Do you wanna talk about that? - Oh shit. - Oh fuck. - Have we talked about that in the podcast? - Oh, okay. I guess I gotta tell the story now. - That was a smooth transition. You see that boy? - I'm probably gonna go to the toilet before.

- He needs to Zen up. - Damn, that was... Am I watching an anime right now? Damn, son. - What are we talking about today, Joey? - We're talking about two particular series that Book Walker is releasing on their website. I don't know if you've heard of it, Connor. I'm sure...

- You've heard of it, but there is two series. There's one called a temple, which is about a temple. Surprise, surprise. - With a monk. - With a monk. Perfect segue into the next part of the show. But also the other one is, which I don't know what the English title is. - Why the hell are you here teacher?

- I've seen episode one of this show. My goodness gracious, that is not Christian, but I'm so glad I can read it on Book Walker in the comfort of my home. - Yes, 'cause on Book Walker, the manga is completely uncensored. You get full nips and everything if you've ever thought about getting with your teacher. 'Cause that's basically the show, okay? That's basically the manga. - I need no more.

- But you might need more because the other manga that they have is Tempuru, which is illustrated by the same guy. No, sorry. Yeah, illustrated by the same guy who did Grand Blue. You know Grand Blue? - I do know Grand Blue. - Yeah, so illustrated by the completely same guy, just different writer. But essentially as the name suggests, it's about this kid who has these really dirty thoughts, but he wants to be a good Christian. So he basically goes to a temple to get rid of his,

horny on me and Christian thoughts. But the problem is, is that he becomes a monk at a temple that is full of hot women. - That doesn't sound very monkly to me. - Did that happen to you?

- Mom, I wanna be a monk, I swear. - This was the real reason I became the monk. - Hoping for that scenario, right? - That sounds pretty good, I'm sure. - Yeah, yeah, but like the thing is, because it's illustrated by the same guy who did "Grand Blue", the type of comedy is exactly the same as "Grand Blue". So if you love the like really vulgar visual comedy that really made "Grand Blue" funny, like "Tempuru" is exactly the same way. And the added bonus is that it's way more hot girls in "Tempuru" than "Grand Blue", so. - Guys, I'm getting some breaking news from Book Walker here.

Both "Tempuru" and "Why the Hell Are You Here, Teacher?" are exclusive to Book Walker until August 13th. You can read half of volume one of both titles for free. Free, gentlemen, free. Or buy them for 50% off. Can we keep that, Adri? Yes! And lastly, volume two of "Why the Hell Are You Here, Teacher?" comes with a Book Walker exclusive colored booklet.

And in brackets, they've said here, extra edgy gentlemen. - Extra edgy? - I don't know what that means. - I don't know if my penis can handle that. - How can it get extra edgy? - What's the extra-ness in the edginess? - It's that the skin is colored this time. It's not just black and white. - If that sounds remotely interesting to you,

- You can check it out in the link below. Thank you to BookWalker sponsoring today's video. - If you want more sponsor reads like that, please actually go check out these books. They are actually amazing. And we love doing these silly ad reads. And if you like it, please go support them. Show them that these ad reads work. Thank you.

Back to the video. - So yeah, it's a little known secret or it's a little known fact that I've been a monk in my life, but I've not just been a monk once, right? - Just saying that is so cool. - To me, this is just part of Buddhist culture. So in Buddhist culture, normally when you want to give your family like good karma, everyone in my family has been a monk like twice in their life. - Oh really? - Once when they're a teenager and once when they're like an adult. So you become a monk

like once when you're like a teenager, we call that being a nin. And then there's, you become like a full monk when you become an adult. And that's when you kind of hit like your early twenties. - Okay. - So yeah, so normally a lot of people just do it for like one or two days because we believe that it's good karma. I remember when I was about 12 or 13, I was a monk for two weeks.

And then afterwards, when I was about 22, 23, I was a monk for a full month. - Geez. - Yeah, yeah. - 'Cause you told me stories about how you were a monk for an entire month, but I never knew that you did it twice. - Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, to me, it's just not part of like being a Buddhist and, you know, trying to get, I was trying to, I was that good little Asian kid. I was trying to give like my family good karma and everything. But I honestly, I honestly like rep the experience 'cause it was,

I'm not joking when it was literally the life-changing experience for me. - Oh yeah, I bet. - There was me before being a monk and then there's me after being a monk because normally people just do it just to impress their family and just give their family good karma. But I told my mom, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go all the way. There's some temples that you go to that don't take it as seriously

And then I went to a fucking hardcore temple where, you know, we didn't have any technology. We had to, okay, so here was my daily schedule. Okay, so I would have to wake up at around 4:00 AM

- That already sounds like torture. - Have to be ready, have to be completely ready by five. And we didn't have any beds. We had a concrete floor and one little pillow to sleep on. - Oh my God. - And we had like the thinnest blanket in the world, which wasn't so bad 'cause it's Thailand. But sometimes when you're sleeping in the middle of the forest, 'cause there would be times when we just go out to a temple in the middle of the forest, it can get fucking cold there. The temperature drops to about two or three degrees sometimes.

And like, you just have this like tiny little blanket on a concrete floor to keep you warm, right? So we'd have to wake up at four, get ready by five. And then we just be like meditating and praying for a good two, three hours every day. And then afterwards we would basically go out barefoot, go to like whatever village or whatever area around the temple. And people would just donate the food to, we would carry like these little baskets

on our necks and people would come over and they would donate food or whatever they wanna donate 'cause we believe that if you give to a monk, that's good karma as well. So the food that we got donated, that's what we would eat. So we would walk around for a few hours. - For the entire day? - Yeah, for the entire day. - Did you get a lot or was it like just like enough or?

- You get what you're given, right? You had no choice about what you could eat. You could eat basically what you were given. - Did you ever get anything like super nasty?

- I mean, it's- - I guess in the mindset you're not like picky and like, oh, really a Snickers, really? - No, because the whole point of being a monk is that you live- - You don't care. - You don't care. Like you eat to survive. - I guess if you're caring about that, that's like- - No, no, that's the feet and the point of being a monk. So you get what you're given and you live the simplest life you can possibly live and you basically eat to survive and you get one meal a day.

And you gotta be okay with whatever you get given. So we would eat at around 11 to 12 o'clock and that would be our first and only meal a day. It was easier when you're a kid monk 'cause kid monks you get two meals a day. - Okay, yeah.

But when you're an adult, when you're more grown up and burning through more calories, nope, you gotta survive on one meal a day. And afterwards, there was no cheating. So after that, you couldn't have any milk or any liquids that had calories. You could only have water or some kinds of fruit juices. And that was it. And yeah, it was very...

I don't know really how to describe the experience. 'Cause imagine if you just take every distraction out of your life and you just live the simplest life possible. You don't eat to enjoy your food. You don't really get the pleasures in life, but at the same time, you just kind of, you're okay with everything. 'Cause you have to be okay with everything.

I remember for the first week of being a monk, it's fucking hard. It is so fucking hard to reprogram your brain to not only be like, okay, how do I distract myself with my phone? How do I not check Twitter? How do I not watch YouTube videos? How do I just be okay with my own thoughts and just, and, and,

It's so hard because your brain, nowadays your brain constantly looks for distraction. - Needs something, yeah. - It constantly needs something to distract itself.

the first week I was just, you're kind of like a drug addict, right? - I see a tweet, give me a tweet, please. - I'm sitting there trying to meditate and my mind's just going at a million miles an hour. I haven't watched TV in a week. I haven't seen a screen in a week. It's very, very difficult. But the more time you do it, the more you kind of, you realize that, oh,

These are all just distractions. You can be completely okay with just yourself and your own thoughts and just doing the simplest things and life activities. And then when I got to that point, I kind of just had time to just reflect on my entire life. 'Cause what else are you gonna fucking do

when you have nothing to do, but literally think back about everything, every decision that you've made in your life and the way your mind works. You know when you're sometimes you're like lying in bed at 11:00 AM and your brain reminds you about that. - It's like shitty things. - About that embarrassing thing you did when you were 12 or maybe that time when you punched a fucking kid in France. - I'm like, damn, I got him good. - So just imagine your entire day just being that, just being like,

I wonder if I made the right choice at this point in my life. And then what happened to me was that I kind of just reflected on every little decision that kind of led me up to this point in my life. And what it made me, what it forced me to do was really think, huh, am I really happy about where I am now? Like what's my life gonna be like when this monkhood ends? And I was at a really bad point in my life

before I became a monk, which is kind of why I've really wanted to commit to the facts of being like, if I was gonna be a monk, I'm gonna go all the way. - Get the full detox. - Yeah, get the full detox, you know? 'Cause I've seen some temples, you walk in and they have like a flat, like a 50 inch flat screen. And I'm like, this doesn't- - The monk channel only. We only have the monk channel. - This doesn't seem very monkly to me. I don't know about that.

- Except PayPal donations. - You turn the TV on, it's like a live stream of like a different temple and then like praying and shit. - Yeah, exactly right. - Nice, nice content.

- So it forced me to just reflect on my entire life and it forced me to really think about what I wanted to do after my monkhood had ended. So it was truly a, I don't wanna say fucking, it was a spiritual journey and I really just discovered myself. - I mean, I think in this instance you can because it genuinely sounds like it. - It kind of was, I don't know.

- That's like me when I go to the toilet without my phone. I'm like, I am free. - Because people have talked to me about how they've had similar experiences when they just shut off social media and everything like that. And I'm just like- - You don't even know. - Bruh, you don't even know.

- Get on my level. - Yeah, get on my level bro. Like you didn't have any board games. You didn't have any cards to just play around. All you just had was just yourself. And I can't really convey how alien that is because it was alien for me as well. - It's a part of me that just a vision, like, you know, 'cause as you said, the only thing you had was just yourself and your mind.

And all I could imagine was just a monk gone just sitting there and just thinking up a funny jokes. - I'm gonna roast these noobs when I get back. - Good roast. - Oh no, no, no. That's totally happened as well. When I was a monk, that's when I thought about, hmm, there's a series I wanna make called Anime in Minutes. - Are you serious? - No, no, no, I'm totally serious. I'm totally serious.

- That came to me when I remember the exact moment 'cause I was just walking around, walking around one of the Thai villages and it just fucking came to me 'cause I remember last, not last week, but a few weeks ago I talked about being zen on the fucking toilet and shower. So that was, that's kind of like, I kind of sometimes when I'm just walking and I'm just, you know, just,

zoning out. Sometimes I've reached this point when a lot of ideas just come to me and it came to me when I was a monk as well. And I had, I got a lot of video ideas and a lot of ideas when I was a monk. - Yes, Eromanga Sensei. - Which, which, which,

- It was these ideas when I was a monk that have developed to me, like to my comeback on YouTube where I figured out, okay, if I'm gonna come back on YouTube, how was I was gonna come back on YouTube? But yeah, this has been a very closely guarded secret because there are some YouTube, some very old YouTube clips where I'm just wearing a beanie.

And nobody knows why I'm just wearing a beanie. And it was because I had just finished my monkhood and I was just completely bald. - What if they just took it in a really dark direction? It's like, oh no, the cancer treatment. - How do you sign up to be a monk? Is it like a Facebook group? You're like, I wanna be a monk. - Maybe. - Do you just rock up and be like, yo, let's do it. - Yeah, I mean, you just turn up to whatever temple you want to become a monk at. - They just accept anyone?

And they're like, okay, you go to the head monk and you request to be a monk. And they ask, okay, before you become a monk, you need to make sure you have no outstanding debts. You basically, you've gotta give up all material,

connections to the world before you can commit to becoming a monk. And you'll have like this interview where you're like, okay, if you're gonna become a monk, you gotta make sure like, yeah, do this, do this, do this. - You know what would be a really cool idea for this channel is if like us three somehow went to like a temple here and just like experienced it for like a single day. Wow, our Jesus is already on that shit.

Hey, if you guys would like to see that. - Monk episode when? - Monk episode, like Garnt can be like head monk of trash taste and just fucking like. - We have to shave our heads. Did you realize that Jerry? - Shit, I just noticed that. - I can do it all over again. - I can commit to that. I know you can't, you got long hair. - I can't commit to that. I'll just wear the beanie. But like, I don't really talk about it, but now that I am, I do like highly recommend that kind of experience or just,

doing that kind of experience. 'Cause you don't notice how distracting life is. Like you don't realize that as soon as you wake up, you got things to occupy your mind. You got your job or you got, the first thing you do is you check Twitter or you open up nights and you don't,

You don't know how crazy your mind can be sometimes until you literally remove every distraction, every commitment that you need to do from your daily life. And you just have nothing. 'Cause it's just a void, right? You're just giving your life a void. And because you give your life a void,

it fucking changes you. I don't know. I don't know how else I can describe it. - No, I totally get that. Like back when I was still doing YouTube stuff, I went on this like camping trip with a few of my friends and we went to this area that had absolutely no reception whatsoever. - Oh, Wales? - Yeah, we went all the way to Wales. No, we were just in the butt fuck middle of nowhere in Australia with no reception and we would just went camping. And because there's no reception, I couldn't check anything.

I couldn't even message people. - This is like a light version. - Yeah, it's basically just like a dieting, a diet version of it. But I kind of had like a similar experience with that, but only like for that one day. And I remember the first couple of hours, I fucking hated it 'cause I was just agitatorily, I was getting those, you know, like drug addicts, like, "I need to know who liked my tweet."

But after a while, like when it hit around midday, I eventually was like, you know what? This is actually really nice. The world is beautiful. - That's why I love going to the cinema. Like it's a, no one can like be like, why didn't you answer your phone? Like in every other situation, like, oh, you should have answered still. In the cinema for some reason, I was like, understandable, have a nice day.

You ignored my texts for three hours. Understandable. - You just did like a void, right? - It's great. Like I love it. You just literally ignore the world for like three hours and just have fun. - Yeah. And that's why it frustrates me when the void gets pulled back to reality when someone in the back is just fucking shouting. - Yeah. - And just be like, oh yeah, I forgot this is reality. I hate it. - Hell yeah. - No, 'cause especially now, I think,

- I don't know, the internet I feel like has reprogrammed my brain in a way. - Oh, definitely. - I don't remember, I don't know if I just have ADHD because I didn't always feel like I was this easily distracted. - It's like subconsciously building patterns in your head though. - Yeah.

trained your brain to check Twitter constantly. And so you'll have that moment, and I'm sure you've all had it where you're like, you open Twitter, you close Twitter, and you open Twitter again, and then you're like, why did I open Twitter again? Like I didn't wanna open Twitter. - It's like I literally just refreshed my feet two seconds ago. - I didn't wanna do this, I just didn't. - You check Twitter on your computer and you realize there's nothing to check. And then you close it and then you immediately check it on your phone. - Why am I doing this? I wasted 10 seconds.

- It's the same concept as going to the fridge, seeing nothing there, closing it, sitting back on the couch and then five minutes later going to the fridge again. It's not like food's gonna magically appear in the fridge. - So, I mean, it was an awesome experience for me. If that's not something for, if not, it's not an experience for everyone. - The question is though, would you do it again?

- I would do it again possibly, maybe not to this extreme because I feel like I'm in a lot better place in my life. I'm a lot more privileged now. No, I mean like not just that, but like mentally. I'm in a lot better place in my life as well.

So I don't feel I would need to go to that extreme again, but would I want an experience where I just kind of just remove myself from the world and just give myself- - Just like a short detox. - Yeah, yeah. It's like a detox from the mind is how I feel it. And I highly recommend people doing that. It sounds really cheesy.

because people will always think of that, some crazy Californian. - Gap year. - Or like going on a gap year. - I took a gap year to Thailand and became a mom. - Exactly that, right? I was just like, shut up, dude. You probably went to the club every night. Like shut up. - Yeah, so that's why I don't really talk about it 'cause whenever you say, yeah, I've been a month- - It sounds pretentious. - It sounds pretentious. People give you that look to be like,

- 'Cause it makes it sound like it was like a vacation for you, whereas it was probably someone's life, right? - Yeah. - Or maybe it sounds like it because maybe some people think you just went through it just to brag about it like later on. - Yeah, exactly. - But the fact that you don't really talk about this at all.

- I never talk about this. - I remember I dragged you, I dragged that conversation out of you when we were like really drunk in Singapore like three years ago. - I think I just drunkly offhanded mentioned it. - I was like, hold on, you're a monk? - So were you ever angry before you were a monk? 'Cause I swear I've never seen you angry. What's up with that guy?

- I mean, I've been angry before. - I feel like you get mildly frustrated. Even when you're angry, I'm like, dude, I don't know if you're angry angry. - No, like being a monk just taught me how to- - Deal with it, process it. - Think about, or process it. Basically process everything, right? 'Cause when you just kind of empty your mind, part of the commitment we try to make is that we try to learn how we process our way of thinking and you gotta like,

- Okay, so the way I see it, it's kind of like a logic tree. And this is what happened to me when I was a monk where I feel certain emotions and you'd have to like logically think, be like, okay, why am I feeling this? How did this come? And then you kind of learn the roots of basically all your emotions and just anger. And then through that, I just,

on the fly, learn how to deal with my anger and just, I would find another route to be like, okay, before I get angry, maybe I could go, maybe I could try dealing it with another way, which is why I've rarely get angry. And I always, you know, some people get angry very easily, but for me,

It's not that I don't get angry, it's that I just have different ways of dealing about it than shouting or fucking dead to someone. - I just love shouting, man. I don't punch anyone anymore. That's old Connor. Old Connor's gone, new Connor, he just wears cosplays and shouts loudly. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I love shouting. - I love shouting. - When I shout, I fucking love shouting. - I don't know why shouting is so fun.

- So do you like purposely shout to just get like that frustration before it turns into legit anger or? - Sometimes if I'm like real angry some days or I wake up and I'm upset, I'll just go in the mirror and I'll be like, come on. - Yeah, yeah.

- I only see that in like movies. - No, do not do that shit. - I wouldn't be surprised if you're the kind of person who just like punches their pillow to get all the frustration out. But I just imagined you in the fucking morning, every morning. - All right, okay. - Like in the mirror, go, you got this Connor. You got this. - Okay, okay. - You fucking got this. - Okay, some days. - Actually, actually, okay. - Some days you wake up, right? You're feeling like, man,

I feel kind of shitty today, man. I don't know why, man. I'm kind of worthless, right? I get in front of that mirror. I'm like, you got this!

Okay, my neighbors probably hate me. Fuck it, I'm hyped. I'm ready for the day that energy rushes through you. - It's so monkey brain. - I feel like a 10 immediately. - It's so monkey brain, I love it. - I feel like a 10 straight away at the start of my day. - Question to you guys, how do you guys hype yourself up before a recording session

- For your videos. 'Cause there's gonna be a time. - Okay, no, okay, okay. This is the thing that changed. I think this is because you've just recently started doing it a lot, right? 'Cause I remember when I first started filming my face a lot, I fucking dreaded doing it.

- Oh yeah. - I did everything to avoid it. I would be like, I would shave like three times just to make sure it was perfect in my head. But really what I was doing was delaying it. - Yeah. - I'm like, oh my God, maybe I need to go and get the groceries actually. I should do laundry actually. Oh, it's too late to record. - Yeah. - Oh, I can't record 'cause I was too busy renovating my house. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now I just fucking turn it on and do it. I already think about it.

I don't really hype myself up. - I have a coffee, maybe a Red Bull if I need it, but that's about it. - Yeah, caffeine helps, definitely. But I don't really have like a do it phase. - I don't do that in the morning. If you're feeling down, man, try it. Next time, okay, next time you feel sad, right? When you wake up, 'cause it happens sometimes, man, you just feel shitty, just try it.

- You'll feel like an idiot at first, but then you'll be like, nice dude. - Aki's gonna clown on me the entire day, man. - I was about to say, Sidney's gonna be like- - I guess there's no one lives with me, so it's like- - Yeah, you can do it by yourself, but it's just- - Sidney's like, "Go on, what are you doing? "What are you saying, come on?" - Do it, do it, do it! Don't let your dreams- - Come! - Come, come, come!

- I realize I'm slowly forming a profile for me of just like a complete monkey on this podcast. - I think the only like hyping up I do maybe, you know, sometimes if, because I'm not going to even think about recording a video if I'm already not in that state. - Yeah, I've realized just don't film if you're not on the verge. - Yeah, yeah. So like before I used to, you know, have to be like, okay, I have to fucking record something. And then I would turn the camera on and immediately you hear, the moment you hear that record button, you're just like, fuck.

man, you don't wanna do it. You're like, "I hate my life right now." - It's like not today, but I didn't have a choice because I was uploading every two days or something. But with my current schedule now, I have a little bit more levity in that. So I definitely, I just know if,

I wake up in the morning and today's the day where I can just get something out. Because if I feel good already from the morning, then I'm like, all right, it's time to get that bread game as late. Let's fucking record like three videos. Just get that shit while the fucking hype train is running. - Sometimes playing hype music will get me in the zone. Some nice funk.

- Dude, like power of music, man. Like that shit can easily hype you up. - But how do you know what music to pick? How do you know what music to pick? - I let YouTube decide for me. - Do I go with slow beat or fast beat? - Fast song, happy.

- Your YouTube search history for music is just like an AI trying to understand what emotions are. - This is how my music tastes works and how I find songs. I like one song and then I'll just keep letting YouTube suggest me songs and I'll keep building. I never like actively look out for songs. I just let it suggest songs. - YouTube and Spotify recommendations were built for people like you. - Oh dude, they're amazing, man. - It's really fucking good though, man.

- I used to, I was die hard Spotify for like six years, maybe longer. And then I just tried YouTube music once 'cause I had it with premium. And I was like, holy shit, I think I like this more. - Oh dude, but I've discovered so much good music through Spotify. - I think you find a lot more on Spotify. - Yeah. - On YouTube you find a lot, 'cause there's a lot of songs that aren't official that you'll get on YouTube music, that are like remixes that will never be on Spotify 'cause they wouldn't be. - I don't really give a shit about the remixes.

- There's so many good ones. There's like one where it's like the mixed with like that 90 song by like Diana Ross or something. That shit claps man. I'll send you a link. - There's always the good anime remixes, right? - Dude, there's so many good anime remixes on YouTube that you're not allowed on Spotify. And like, 'cause sometimes I wanna listen to like Daft Punk, but I also wanna have, you know, that anime remix so I can do that on YouTube. Hell yeah.

- Dude, I've recently kind of gone into the rabbit hole of these insane like music remixes and not just like anime. Obviously, you know, the anime remixes, like everyone's seen the fucking "Renai Circulation" or whatever, right? But my friend sent me one the other day, which is fucking insane. It was "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire, remixed with "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne.

- You can remix that song with anything though. - Yeah, but it sounded fucking amazing. I was like, oh my God, I need more, I need more. - I have never seen an Earth, Wind & Fire remix, a September that has disappointed me, except for the Taylor Swift one that was terrible. - Earth, Wind & Fire, goes with everything. - The Wii Shop one, have you seen that? - Yeah. - Bro, that shit claps, bro. I can't do it, I'll get copyright claims.

- The YouTube system's like, "Damn, that was too perfect." - That was kind of on pitch there, Connie. You wanna get off pitch there? - I've recently fallen into the rabbit hole of just listening to J-pop that

they sound like anime opening and endings, but they're not. - Like "Pokédex Stingray"? - Yeah, like "Pokédex Stingray". - I fucking love "Pokédex Stingray". - "Zutomayo", "Minami". - There's so many. - Yeah, it's like the rabbit hole, right? You discover one, then the algorithm's like, "Oh, oh, you like this? Oh, hello, hello, let me show you more." It's gone so deep, right, that recently I was recommended a video

which is kind of like a, it was kind of like a Vocaloid kind of remix, but I think it was original song, but the video had no title and the channel had no title. And then I click on it. - What? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not even like they have a space or something. No, there's just literally no character for the title. - Can you even do that? - Apparently you can. - There's a thing called like a half half space or something. It's a space that,

is technically a character, but it doesn't show up as anything. - Oh wow. - But you can't like highlight it and copy and paste it into the search bar. There's no interaction with whatever character they're putting down. - Right, right, right. - So the only way people would have got this is through recommendations. And the video has like 2 million views.

- It's fucking insane. It's a fucking good song. And then you click, I click on it. And then everyone's like, "Oh, welcome to the cults." - Join us. - "I see you have been the chosen one." And it's great because like, they're probably gonna kill me now because it was like, everyone's like mutually agreed not to talk about this, which sorry guys, I guess the entire fucking internet knows now, but I'm not gonna link to it. If you're part of the chosen one,

- Show me a message. If I see anyone linking it, I'm gonna fucking ban you. - You played me this at your house and I was just hoping one day it would pop up in my recommended. Still waiting, still waiting. - It's like the Illuminati, man. You just gotta wait for that. - It's a little crappy vocal, it sounds. Maybe it'll pop up, dude.

- No, but that's just the wonders of the algorithm. I mean, I have no idea how the algorithm works. Okay, going completely off topic here, but there's been one video of mine recently. - Oh yeah. - That's just been fucking getting recommended to everyone.

- I have no idea why it's an eight year old video that we've not talked about on this podcast. - So many people have tweeted us about it. I'm just like, wow. - Yeah, so there's been a video recently that's been circulating that's called- - Recently at the time of filming. - Yeah, recently at the time of filming. It might still be circulating. Talking about it, it's probably gonna start getting circulated. - That's definitely gonna get redeemed. - So I should probably circle back to the start of AniTube itself. You guys are about to get history lesson here. - Go on. - So, okay, so,

- Do you guys know who the very first AniTuber is? - I thought it was Mr. Anime. That was my preconception. - I'd be surprised if anyone watching this knew because that means you've been around for as long as me. But the very first anime YouTuber is this guy called Hards Anime Reviews. And he would be, he started in 2006 and he would basically make

he would basically make very basic anime reviews with like his camera was like up here. - The worst angle. - Yeah, yeah, the kind of like the worst angle you can think of. - The angle we all start at, right?

- He's now quit. It's funny because I tried to search him up and see if he's still around. And his first original channel got terminated as everyone's did back then when they were reviewing anime. And his second channel is called unironically, the hard mode.

- He called it the hard mode. And okay, if you search this up on YouTube, you have to search the hard mode, no space. Otherwise you're not gonna find it 'cause it's like that buried within the search algorithm. But the second AniTuber,

was this person called Mr. Anime. And he basically made his anime YouTube channel to compete with Hard, 'cause Hard was the only anime YouTube channel around, and then Mr. Anime was the second one. And he really, at the time, he really was one of the big faces of anime YouTube. And I say big, he had like a thousand subscribers. That's what I mean- - That's big shit though back in the day. - That is big shit back in 2006, 2007.

And then it was after Mr. Anime that there were like some other anime channels here and there, but those two are basically the founding fathers of Ani-chuu. - Okay. - We have them to thank for where we are now basically. - If people know the ending to the story, then you know how funny that statement is. - I know, right? So then after a while, I make my YouTube channel.

and I do my own thing. And the very, very first shout out I got was from a Mr. Anime video.

And it's still up. - Which video is it? - It's Mr. Anime. - Wait, is his channel still up? - Yeah, his channel is still up. - All his stuff's still up there. - You can view his entire history and everything that he did. - Wow, that's weird. 'Cause who's that guy recently who got prosecuted for like child pornography and they took down his channel like that. - Oh really? - Yeah, that Austin guy, the singing guy. Picture on screen. Yeah, I don't know. - No, no, no. - They immediately took down his channel. - I remember a couple of months ago,

a Mr. Anime video like popped up. - Wow, wow. - Just randomly, yeah. Anyway, yeah, sorry. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. So Mr. Anime, the first time he shouted me out was just, he made a video that I think it was called like the face of AniTube or Anime YouTube or something. And he just shouted out a bunch of OG anime reviews back in the day. - What? - Nice sounding guy. - What a nice dude. - So that was the very first boost in subscribers I got. I remember messaging him being like, "Oh, thanks a lot, man." Like that really helped me out. That got me like 300 subscribers.

Like, holy shit, that was a lot back in the day. - Yeah, that was a lot. - Yeah, I think that was the video that pushed me over my first thousand subscribers. - Nice. - Which was a big fucking deal. So I was really happy and I really respected the guy as well because, you know, he was,

- If not for him, I probably be less confident to do what I did on like to start a YouTube channel. - Right, right, right. - Give you big validation. - Yeah, yeah. And especially, no matter what, whenever you see someone bigger than you shouting you out, that's like a big pat on the back. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, I did well.

So I was like, and he messaged me back being like, nah, it's no problem, bro. Like, I just really like your stuff, you know, congrats. And he couldn't even pronounce my name back then. I think in the video, he called me Guy Gik.

- No, don't say that. Now they're all gonna call you guy dude. - The subreddit is just like new material. - It's free real estate. - New material, let's go. - I've dug my own grave. - Okay. - So that was the last kind of interaction I had with him until- - That was your first and last interaction. - Yeah, that was my first and last interaction. Back then the anime YouTube community wasn't, we knew about each other, but we didn't talk to each other that much. - It was still like the MSM days. - Yes.

- Yes. - Wow. - Yes. So there wasn't an easy way to talk to each other apart from back when YouTube had messaging, you know, remember those days? - Oh my God, yeah, remember those? - Remember when people- - YouTube DMs. - Yeah, YouTube DMs, which were slowly just phased out of existence, I guess. And just nobody remembers that you could message, you could DM people on YouTube. But one day,

I just woke up and I had this message from this other anime YouTuber who was called Aiko Arisaka 420, who's also like- - You remember that like- - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Jesus Christ. - I know the entire history of anime YouTube right here. And he was like, he asked me if I'd heard about this article that's being like linked around. And it was this article that was this police report

that basically just said, "Trey Sesler has been arrested for the murdering his family." I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, is this Trey Sesler, the anime man, the same Trey Sesler?" - The anime man. - I am Trey Sesler. - We got him out, folks.

- We got him out of prison. - God, oh my. Fuck, I've just blanked on his actual name now. All that's coming to mind is the anime. - Mr. Anime. - Mr. Anime, oh my God. I can't believe I blanked on the name mid story. - Why'd you have to out me like that? - Come on. - Yeah, yeah, I clicked on the article and he had his face and that was just a, just a, oh shit. - Yeah, yeah. - Is this real? Like how, I had,

- I had like 50 different emotions. - Yeah, I kinda know how you feel. - Just seeing because you don't know how to react to this because the more I read, just the more sickening it got. So the entire story was that apparently Trey Sessler, Mr. Anime had been playing around with his brother and they were playing around with guns. - As they did a lot on that channel. - See, he had a lot of guns in like his channel and everything, but you know,

- I just think Americans, guns, that's just what they do. - That's what British people think about. We literally think Americans just walk around being like, "How do you know?" - So he would just have guns in his anime reviews. I just thought that was completely normal, which, you know,

- 'Cause he was from Texas as well. He was from Texas. - Gunslinging Texas. - Yeah, exactly. So I was like, this is completely normal. This is nothing to worry about. - I bet there's a Texan watching this video with their gun just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Even now, even now, I see a Texan with a gun. I just think that's even normal, even after everything I've just about to experience. But I read the story and he was playing around with his guns with his brother. And apparently he accidentally shot his brother and he killed him.

And so he didn't, the official story that he gave was he didn't want his parents to feel guilt or his family to feel guilt about having their son kill one of their brothers. So he just, apparently he just thought might as well fucking kill them all, which is,

- Which is fucking awful. - Which is fucking awful, which is a fucking awful conclusion to come to. So apparently he kills his entire family and then it gets worse because the more information that comes out, the more we find out that he was actually not only

planning to kill his family anyway, but he was actually planning a Columbine style school shooting. - Yeah. - Right? - 'Cause I saw like this really good documentary on YouTube. I'm sure it's up there still. - It's called "Rainbot", right? - Yeah, I think so. It's basically covers the whole thing, but that's how I got all my information as well where, yeah, he was planning to do a school shooting and,

did he post about it online that he was going to do it or something like that? But he basically was on the way to the school and that's when he got arrested. - Yeah, yeah. No, 'cause he was planning the school shooting for way before he's killed his family. 'Cause I think how he thought was he killed his brother by accident, but he was always planning the school shooting

Anyway, he had it all mapped out and everything. So in between that, he accidentally killed his brother and killed his family and that's what outed him. But he was always planning this. And there's this really ominous video. I think it's the second to last Mr. Anime video that's on his channel. That's just called Mr. Anime is planning something.

And I remember watching that thinking, "Ah, he's taking a break from any tube." - He's planning a new review. - He's planning a comeback. But I don't know, 'cause he talks about anime in that video. So he might have been just purely talking about anime, but I'm like with all the information that we have now, he's probably planning- - Now that title is fucking scary. - It's fucked. That title was fucked.

And the more information that came out, the more I just didn't know how to process this. 'Cause how do you process the fact that one of the people you looked up to and respected just fucking killed their family and was planning to shoot up a fucking school? Like what'd you do with that? And that bothered me for like a year.

- For a while. And I remember this was the time I was at university and people were like, why does Garnt look like someone just died in his family or something? But I think the best way I can describe it is imagine if you live in a small town

And you may be like, you know everyone in that small town. You might not be friends with everyone in that small town, but you feel like this small tight-knit community. And then you find that someone in this small tight-knit community has done something awful. It's like something that's not like beyond words, beyond words awful. And then,

to try to process this. I made the video, which is being recommended now. - Now it's circulating everywhere. - Even though it's eight years old, for some reason YouTube decided, "Yep, people wanna see Garnt reacting to Mr. Anime murdering his family." I don't know how that came about. - It's literally on everyone's recommended. It was on my recommended. I think Connor said it was on his recommended.

I don't know why, like it's probably not monetized, right? - No, no, it's not monetized. - So it's just like, it just goes against everything about the YouTube algorithms. Like it's not monetized. It's about a horrible tragedy. It's about a very sensitive topic. It's eight years old. - I think I uploaded this before even like the monetization thing like started on YouTube or at least before I was monetized. Cause I was, I had like,

a thousand plus subscribers back then. So it wasn't massive. - I remember as well that I remember stumbling upon

a Mr. Anime video even like way before I knew about the whole like anime, YouTube sphere and everything because it was Mr. Anime's review on Gantz that made me wanna go watch Gantz. - Wow, this guy's got a bright career. - Yeah, and I was like, wow, this guy's like really fun. He fucking had, do you know how ghetto his setup was? He had like a webcam or something to record and he was sitting on his bed and he had his lap, it was like a notepad

- It was like an Apple notepad. - Yeah, it was like an Apple notepad of the script. And he was literally just looking down at the Apple notepad, just reading off the script. And then every now and then, I guess because he didn't know how to edit his videos. So instead he had a remote that controlled the zoom of the lens. - Oh, that's, I remember.

He controlled the zoom of the lens and he just started talking to the camera and then he just zoomed back out. - Yeah, no cuts. So he was like, I remember in the Gantz review, he was talking about, you know, the acid scene, right? In the Gantz anime and how he was like, it made me go. And then he stops and zooms in and zooms really far into his face and he goes,

And then he zooms out with a dead face and then just goes back to reading it. - Yeah. - And that was the review. No cuts, no edits. And I was like, yeah, I wanna watch this anime. - I mean, that was quality content back in the day of AniTube. I remember when I started coming out with my videos, I was one of the first to actually just use an editing software, even though it was just putting images over whatever I was saying. I was like, people were like,

- What? He's using Windows Movie Maker? Impossible. - But yeah, that's the story of the first person I ever interacted. - Man, humble beginnings. - Yeah. - It's so fucked.

- Yeah, but I recommend like as fucked of a topic that is like, I definitely recommend that documentary on YouTube that somebody made up. - Oh, it's great. - Because it perfectly goes through everything about it. And at the end of the documentary, I don't know how they got this footage, but there's this- - Oh, the police footage? - The police footage of how he's in like the jail cell and he's like doing the interview. That shit is so scary, man. And to think this is the guy who founded

basically what I do for a living. - I know, I know, right? - Like that's so fucking scary. - It's so weird 'cause I've had this conversation with a few people and we just think, man, there's a lot of shit that's happened in AniTube. - Yeah, right? - I think there's stuff that unfortunately happens in every community that probably we'll never find out. Some really fucked up shit that people have done. - Oh yeah, I mean, we've only recently found out about a lot of it, right? - Right, right, I mean, you know,

it's really unfortunate because we don't like to think that we know people who are like that but time's proven anything it's that

I've met people and been friendly with people who have done really fucking horrible stuff. - I never knew that one of my best friends used to punch kids in the face. - Hey, that's not bad. Those kids, they punched me first and then they used to shit. - Once you look up and respect a fucking serial killer school shooter, then it's all downhill from there, right? - Yeah, exactly. - I know how it feels to see a police report and be like, oh no.

- It's just a mess of emotions. First it's surely this is fake. - Yeah, 'cause you see it and you're like, I've never seen a police report, first of all. - Yeah, this could easily be doctored. - And then just seeing all the counts being slowly added and you're like, oh no, oh no, oh no, this is bad.

- And I think that was the first time, 'cause I had a conversation with Aiko Arasaka, the anime review about how we should process this. And I remember him saying, "Yeah, I think he just, "he'll keep the memories of Mr. Anime like the same, "but it's just, he has to view Mr. Anime "and Trey Sessler as like different people." And I think that was the first time I had just

the entire process of having to view online personalities as different in person as how they portray themselves. - It's the whole thing of like separating the artist from the creation. - Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And yeah, it was more the fact that this happened in our small community as well. - Right, it's like happening in like the small back rural town, right? When nothing happens. - 'Cause I'm sure now in any tube, I'm sure there's some assholes somewhere out there. - Oh, there's probably someone doing some despicable shit. - That we don't know about, you know, but it,

- They weren't a figurehead in this very small community. - They weren't the fucking founding father. - The literal founding father. - The more you say that out loud, the more I'm like, oh. - The founding fathers tend to normally be sketchy characters. - How do we sell that the anime YouTube community is like this really cool thing? Oh, the founding father's a serial killer.

- That's a conversation starter, isn't it? - I like to think of it of, you know, it's one of those things that was gonna be started anyway, eventually around that time. It just so happened that he was the first or one of the first. - Maybe that's the reason why nobody used anime in the username until I came up because people, because I know for a fact that some of my early videos

man, those comments were just like the anime man. I thought that guy went to jail. Like they legitimately mistook me for Mr. Anime. - Who would mistake you for that? - Yeah. - Better run. - Rewind that.

- Flashback to five minutes ago. - Oh, Jesus. - Yeah, so, but like, you know, I obviously didn't know about that news until after I started my YouTube channel, because I think, what year was it that he got arrested? - I mean, it was eight years ago, I think. The only reason I remember this is 'cause the YouTube video that's been recommended is eight years ago. - Right, so it was like 2012, right, probably? - Yeah, something like 2011, 2012. - Yeah, it was probably just a really bad time then, because I started 2013, right?

It was literally right after it happened. And I didn't know about it until I started it and I had like a decent following and I was like, "Oh fuck, I can't go back now. "I can't change my name now." I should have, I should have changed my name. - So what was like the early years of anime YouTube like then?

- So that was over like what? Well, how long have you been doing YouTube before? 12 years, did you say? - Since 2007. - Okay, so how was the AniTube spear from 2007 to 2012? - It was like slow, right? - It was very slow. So before 2012, which is kind of like where I think you came along, the quality was,

- Not good. - Obviously. - As it is, but it was fun. I don't know. I kind of, in a way I'm gonna sound so boomer saying this, but I kind of miss old YouTube where kind of anything went. - You always look back fondly at the time when it was smaller and more manageable, 'cause it was more intimate. - Yeah, yeah. - You always look back at that.

Especially on YouTube, right? So I'm sure you all missed the time when you made like 1000, you can just talk to random people. You're like, wow, you're so cool. - I remember I made a video when I hit a thousand subscribers and I thought I'd made it. I thought, I thought- - Mom, I'm dropping everything. - Dude, I swear, like I've always said this to people, but the joy of hitting a thousand subscribers is almost comparable to hitting like a hundred thousand or a million subscribers. Because a thousand is just like,

- A thousand is like monumental. - It is because it's a number that is very easily like quantifiable, but it's also huge because like thinking like, wow, there's a thousand people who like me. Because once it gets to like a million, it starts to become something that you just can't really comprehend like physically. Whereas a thousand is like, holy shit, I'm popular. I'm fucking popular. - And back then it was just, it was,

as it grew into, it was all about doing anime reviews. And a lot of people had different styles. If you came in with an editing software, you were just, you were just- - You were the goat. - You were the fucking goat. - Look at this guy, get a load of this guy. - I remember when like Yezu Otaku and Tristan Glass Reflection came along and they used Sony Vegas to edit that video. - Shit. - And it fucking blew my,

- It blew my mind. - They used a paid product, damn. - Yeah, just some of the stuff they could get away with that I couldn't using like putting images on Windows Movie Maker. What the fuck? It was amazing. - You're basically a glorified PowerPoint. - But I think my favorite anime reviewer from back then was this guy called Grumpy G-san.

- I fucking love him. - I do not know this person. - He's so good. - Yeah, yeah. He's an OG and he doesn't make videos anymore. But what he do is that he do anime reviews, but he do it in like the middle of a desert in Arizona somewhere, right?

- He would review an anime while like hiking through the desert. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was like, he was basically pre Casey Neistat. - This sounds great. - Because what he'd do, he'd always start off his videos with him walking towards the camera.

- In like the middle of the desert. - Yeah. - So what he would have to do is that he would have to set up his camera, hike away off screen and then fucking hike back into view of the camera. It wasn't like he was hiking a short distance. He would be literally be like hiking over hills and mountains sometimes to get to the camera.

- How long was this intro? Like two minutes? - No, 'cause it was just like super sped up and you just see him walking towards the camera. So it'd be like a squirrel just like scurrying towards the camera. And he's like, "Today we're gonna talk about Berserk." - Dude, this sounds amazing. - And I love as well how a lot of his reviews, he always had like a place to go, right? So he would start,

at the front of the trail being like, "Today we're gonna talk about, you know, "Hunter, Hunter." And then as he's walking, he would talk about the show. And then usually the one I saw, I forgot which anime it was, but he was hiking up this mountain. - Yeah. - And I don't,

- He must've like perfectly timed this shit. Like he must've done the hike beforehand because the moment he got to the top was when he finished his conclusion on the show. - Yeah. - And he was just like, I've made it to the top guys and that's the end of my review. - Yeah. - I'm like, that's fucking awesome. - It's fucking great. - Yeah, it's fucking awesome. - Like thinking back, because thinking back, it was very different from what everyone was doing. We were just like, huh, old man reviewing anime. That's pretty weird. But thinking back, he was-

- A lot of his ideas were really cool. - It was. - It was kind of ahead of his time. - It was definitely ahead of his time, yeah. - And that's why he stands out to me apart from the guy who fucking killed himself, I guess. No, no, not killed himself, killed someone else. But yeah, it was kind of like the Wild West back then. I mean, all of YouTube was- - I mean, it wasn't the internet, the Wild West back then? - Yeah. - So if that's the first era, right, where you're like, 2007, 2012, what came after that? What's like the era?

What years are we talking between? 'Cause I'm interested 'cause I didn't start till 2015. So all of it before that is like. - Yeah, I'd say around about, I can't remember exactly when it was founded, but that was kind of like the wild west of YouTube where everyone was kind of doing their own things. It was a mess of different things. And then 2012 was kind of like where the AniTube community really started to form into this one conglomerate. And I think the big,

the big event that happened was probably Portaku. - Portaku was huge. - Yeah. - That was the first time I recognized anyone outside of you. - Yeah. - And I was like, oh, there's other people.

- Yeah, and I remember because I was already, so we had four original members. There was Holden Reviews, Jean who was originally called X Disturbed Jeans and Tristan, Glass Reflection. And I remember what started it was Tristan one day messaged me out the blue with the YouTube DMs being like, "Hey, do you wanna talk about this new anime season?" And this was before,

- This was before I'd even started watching seasonal anime. This was before the concept of, hey, you can watch anime weekly and be hyped for seasonal anime. - Yeah, 'cause I'm pretty sure you made a joke in one of your videos where it's like, why would I wanna come over the space of 12 weeks when I could just come in one big go? That was a joke you made and I remembered that. - I completely forgot.

- That's an amazing joke. - For some reason that stuck with me and I was like, that's a great example. I would like to come in one go. - I think about my thought process and my thought process is why would I want a 12th of an orgasm when I can just have one orgasm in one session?

- That's such a good joke, I love that. - Yeah, and so we made this podcast, which wasn't even a podcast. It was kind of just a recorded Skype call and we didn't know where to put it. So I made the suggestion to put it on YouTube because this was before like,

it was an audio podcast. It wasn't a visual podcast like this. So nobody thought that putting audio podcasts on YouTube would work. And I just, I was just like, well, we're YouTubers. So why not put it on YouTube, right? And yeah, it was, I don't like saying it like this 'cause it kind of sounds like it's like sucking my own dick or whatever, but I'd say like, "Portaku" was a big factor in shaping the anime YouTube community of that time. - No, absolutely. - Which I think it left.

as somebody who wasn't even interested in being an anime YouTuber, it definitely shaped, I think, how I felt about it. 'Cause at the time I was listening to PodTaku, like every week, I never even, I never wanted to be a YouTuber. It never even crossed my mind. But definitely when I got into it, I think a lot of the influences came from listening to that.

you may not have shaped the generation you were in, but you definitely helped shape the one that came after. - I mean, there's definitely a reason why even to this day, people who were around in the anime YouTube sphere back then. - We get comments about it on this. - Right, yeah. People back then still are like, "Yeah, remember PodTaku?" Like even people who didn't watch PodTaku knew PodTaku. - Yeah, I mean, it's still a big point in my life. PodTaku really, really was,

- I think back to PodTaku very fondly, even though it's like ended now and I've moved on in my life, it had a big part of shaping me as a person. And especially because PodTaku was the first ever friends I made that I could talk to anime with. That goes all the way back to the conversation we had at the start, but Holden and Jean were literally the first people I was able to bond over anime with.

And Potaku was kind of like my weekly, bi-weekly kind of session where I could just nerd over anime with people. - Just banter with your buddies, yeah? - Exactly. And apparently a lot of people looked up to us back then because a lot of people apparently didn't also have friends to talk to anime with, right? - That's why I listen to it. - Yeah.

- And so that really, I feel like that cemented the next era of anime YouTube before I think you came along. And I think that was kind of the era of YouTube where,

I think it was the last era where people could just make content without a monetary incentive in mind. - Right, right, right. - Because everyone, we did "Portaku" not because we weren't getting paid for it at all, for a lot of it. We basically made it because we just wanted to- - It was a passion project. - Yeah, it was a passion project. It was kind of like this,

but back then this was before we had any kind of monetization. We were just four mates who would just go on a Skype call and record the audio and just splice it together and upload it on YouTube. - And then I came in when the fat chicks started to roll in.

- No, but like, I don't think it's too much to say that, you know, this podcast included, there's a lot of anime podcasts now, right? - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - Big and small. And I don't think it'd be too far to say that, you know, PodTaco is probably the one who

probably got the train rolling in that side of attitude. - It kind of amazes me because like before this came along, before Trash Taste came along, you look back to some of the views and, you know, popularity of PodTaku and it still basically holds up almost

to a lot of the bigger podcasts that came after it. I mean, there's only a few podcasts I can think of that came after "Potaku" that- - Anime related. - Yeah, anime related that were able to do better with it in terms of views and stuff. And "Potaku" is like six years old now. So that kind of blows my mind. Do you wanna hear a blast from the past? - Sure. - Warning!

following audio may contain coarse language and other material that may not be suitable for a younger audience. Viewer discretion is advised. - That is screaming, dude. There's like maybe a couple of hundred people watching this right now who just cream their pants with nostalgia. That intro is like ingrained in my mind, man. - That your accent

- Warning is like, it's so 2012. - Also we may spoil anything and everything. So you have been warned. - If you go to my channel, the very, very first video is like a podcast that looks very reminiscent of the editing style of another podcast. - Oh really? - Oh really? - Yeah, it looks very, very similar with the cubes flashing up between. - Oh yeah, yeah.

'Cause yeah, did you edit all of them? - No, so originally it was basically between me and Tristan and Holden who had to edit most of the podcast. And so we basically edited the audio so they would sync up and we would remove a lot of like, when you have calls on Skype. - People talking over each other. - Yeah, people talking over each other and you have this really awkward pause where it's- - You cut it up smoothly. - Yeah, exactly. And then we were like, we wanted to make it a bit more visual.

but we couldn't just film ourselves next to each other. So we kind of just decided to go with flashing boxes. - Yeah, it works really well. - Yeah, yeah. And that was our way of just evolving the podcast. And I remember after PodTaku, we kind of added a few more people as well. - Right, I wanted to ask about that. 'Cause I was, as a viewer, I was so confused. There was just people like towards the end would just start joining in. And then I was like, JTaku? And I'm like, what is going on with all of this? - Was Jimmy on?

- Yeah, Jimmy was in the podcast. - It was so odd 'cause it just seemed like people were just cycling in and I was like, wait, this is not what I want. I want the boys. - I want the big four. - I want the big four back. As a viewer, I was so confused. I don't think you guys ever explained any of that. So I'd be interested to know. - Well, for me it was because the scheduling just got super hard. 'Cause like I said, we weren't getting paid for anything. So this was,

This was just us making time. And we got to a point with Portaku where we were having a fucking hard time keeping up with this two week schedule. So I wanted to, and it had been a while since Portaku started. So I wanted to spice things up and I wanted to see if there was like, we could get some chemistry with other people.

And that's when I brought on the idea of JTaku and adding more people and making a distinct brand of PodTaku is where we just talk about pure whatever we wanna talk about. It's kind of like a free flowing podcast. And JTaku is we're gonna pick a specific topic and we're gonna stay on topic. - Right, right, right.

And that was the kind of idea of J-Talk. It kind of hit everything 'cause it added some new elements to the podcast and it also made it so less of a load was on the original four as well.

But yeah, it's interesting to hear what you guys thought about it as a viewer perspective. - 'Cause I didn't watch every single one. And then I think I just saw like three Jay Takus and I was so confused. When I watch it, I'm like, who are half of these people? Like, you know, it's so strange. - And I think what,

It really worked at first. 'Cause JTaku did his job and then it got to the point when JTaku kind of even maybe became the flagship series. 'Cause if you look on the PodTaku channel, a lot of the most viewed videos ended up being JTaku videos. Like our most viewed video was one where we literally just talk about hentai.

- Nice. - Of course. - But that was back when talking about, hentai was like very hush hush. Nobody publicly liked hentai on Twitter or any shit like that. - Joey, allow me to introduce myself. Hi. - But yeah, so "Jay Taku" kind of became one of the flagship series 'cause it just got more views and the main, the original four people, it just became harder and harder for us to schedule.

schedule the original PodTaku podcast. And I think that's kind of what like helped

to an end. 'Cause I feel like that era of AniTube is defined by the start of "Potaku" and the end of "Potaku" because I think the end of "Potaku" really, it coincidentally coincided with a lot of the times when Joey really rose and people realized they could do anime content for money as well. Which just wasn't an idea before then. And I remember, I mean,

- Should I talk about the end of "Potaku"? - Go ahead. - If you want, man. - We can edit, we can edit. - Are we about to do this now? - It's up to you, bro. - Am I really gonna bring this up? - It's up to you, bro. - Okay, so I guess I've never talked about this, but we've obviously gotten a lot of comments about "Potaku" on this podcast. - I like how you just capped, "Comments!"

- Comments, comments. - On this podcast and it was, I don't think anyone's really publicly talked about it. And to preface this, still love everyone on the podcast. I'm not about to talk mad shit or anything like that. The long and the short of it is that we came into some creative differences about which way the podcast could go. Because to me, "Potaku" is a bit of a,

was the defining podcast of the AniTube community as I have just said. And I really wanted to push that further. I wanted to, I wanted it to, I wanted Portakal to like evolve more. - Yeah, yeah. - 'Cause I saw the potential in how big the podcast could be because the problem was that we had trouble keeping up with our schedule.

And then we took like a seven month break or something like that. - It was very long, I think. - It was a very long break. - It was that long? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reason for that was basically,

- The podcast didn't really have a designated leader leading everything. So at the beginning of the podcast, it was mainly me and Tristan who were getting things done. - Chasing down people and stuff. - Yeah, I mean, Jean, love Jean. She was like the mother of the group, but she would come in and out because she was very busy with her real life. Holden, fucking talented as fucking talented guy, but it was, you know,

- I know I've told this to Holden before. If you tell Holden to do something, he'll fucking do it. - If you don't, he won't do it. - If you don't, he wasn't the type of person that would like push people to do it.

And I think he's changed now for the better. And I think PodTaku was definitely a big learning experience for him as well. So I think he's definitely grown as a person, but back then it was mainly me and Tristan who was pushing stuff to get done on the podcast. And Tristan started to get less and less involved because he started to...

transition doing anime reviews as a hobby to actually finally getting paid for it. 'Cause he just, he had opened his Patreon. He was the only one that was actively doing videos compared to all of us. - And that was at the time when Tristan was like

really at his peak as well. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - He was really growing at that time. - Exactly. - I remember his Patreon was a big deal. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. 'Cause he was the only one who had other commitments for his own YouTube channel. So he just had less time than all of us. And then for me, that was also the time when I got my job at the BBC.

So you see all these factors coming into play where the driving force of the podcasts just had less time to really make episodes. And people in JTaku, we were all good friends, but they weren't the original four. They weren't the OG four. They didn't really have the...

I'd say authority to really take over. - You can't really step in and be like, this is mine. - Yeah, exactly. So we basically took a seven month hiatus or it's a hiatus, but it was more of not nothing was getting done. - No one said anything in the group chat. - Nothing was really happening. - They left you on read. - And it was basically because we just didn't have the time. And what,

- What was the driving force for it to be revamped was I, that was the point when I wanted to return to YouTube. I was getting bored of my job and I was like, okay, first step, I wanna put all my hard work into Portaku and really revamping this 'cause Tristan's doing really well with whatever he's doing with his Patreon.

I saw potential for not only me coming back, but also pushing PodTaku into something even bigger and better than what it was. With help from trying to monetize it and just basically making it. - Have an incentive for everyone to turn up every week. - Exactly, exactly. And so it ended up being, I was the big driving force to getting PodTaku back on its feet. And that's why I got super, super invested in it because I was the one who was trying to get episodes done. I was editing a lot of them.

not because I wanted to be paid or anything, but I just wanted this to get back. - You wanted your passion to be up. - I wanted my passion to be back on the ground. And as soon as I felt it was kind of getting back off the ground, I remember Tristan coming to me and he was like, "I want it to end." You know what I mean? - Right, yeah.

Looking back now, I totally understand why he did. Because this is where I put it back to creative differences. Because he saw that we weren't getting as many views as we used to before the hiatus. And also the dynamic of the group was very different than when we started. Some people weren't getting along as well as at the beginning.

as they were at the beginning. So he wanted "Portaku" to just end there. He wanted to be like, okay, instead of just fizzling out, I want it to end here. And I really, really tried to convince him to be like, look, I know we're going through some very big issues now.

But I see potential in this. There was a lot of factors that I saw that could potentially have driven a lot of hype back into Botaku. Before we ended there, Jean had just left. - Yeah. - But she was gonna come back. We had scheduled that. We had also scheduled Mentaku 2, which is the hentai episode, which was like our most popular one. So I was like, look,

- We can do it, we can do the combo. - I really, really tried to convince him that it was too early to end. Because I totally agree with all the problems that the podcast had. If in order to survive and to go further, we would have had to make a lot of big changes and they could have very easily blown up in our face. - I guess it's one of those things where it's like,

you could try, but you could very easily fail. So it's one of those things where you're like, do I want to put in this work and I can get the guaranteed paycheck? - Yeah, why risk it, right? - I kind of get it, but at the same time, I'm like, as a viewer, I knew how big it could have been as well. Looking at my position now and I understand how it all works. Like, yeah, it could have been, I reckon it could have been so many. - Yeah, definitely. - It would have needed a lot of work and it would have taken a big risk and we could have failed massively. But for me as a person, I would rather,

- Right, right, right. - Then Wanda. - Yeah, then Wanda. And it got to the point when it was just this one clash, right? Of just, I thought it was too early to end it and Tristan wanted to end it. And it was unfortunate that, you know,

I say unfortunate, I didn't get my way. - He didn't listen to me. - I tried, I tried so hard. - There was a video that you guys all made when it ended, right? And I remember watching this and it was like one of those moments you're like, please say psych. Please say psych. - JK lol. - But I remember watching that video and it like, 'cause I remember the order was like you first and then it was like Tristan was last. - Yeah. - Tristan, I love Tristan by the way, just saying. But I remember watching it and I was thinking like, man,

it kind of seems like everyone was like really wanting to keep doing this, but then Tristan didn't almost as a viewer. - It wasn't like that. It was at the end- - As a viewer, I think that's the impression I got. I could be totally wrong, just an impression. - I mean, there was definitely a faction that supported my stance and there was the faction that supported Tristan's stance. - I mean, look, like as someone who creates now, I can understand both and I don't care about either.

- I mean, it's definitely a tough decision. Anybody in that position would have been like, ah fuck, do I take the risk or not? - At the end of the day, if his heart's not in it, his heart's not in it. - Yeah, exactly. - If you're gonna like drag someone along who doesn't wanna do it, you can't like- - So was there no option to just do it without Tristan? - I mean, we wanted to respect Tristan's wishes because there was the conversation of like,

"Should we do this without Tristan?" But it just felt wrong. - Yeah, that's understandable. - Because I wanted to leave the option. I asked Tristan, "Would it be okay if we continued "and then at any point, if for whatever reason "you want to return, the doors are always open." And Tristan was adamant, "No, I don't." And I understand 'cause this was his baby. - I get it, I get it, of course.

I don't feel comfortable letting my baby go and just seeing what happens. So that was kind of like the last straw, there was no going back from that. And yeah, that's basically how it ended. And it was after that, that I kind of lost a lot of motivation 'cause I'd put so much of myself into getting this revamped.

And it just felt like it was just all taken away and it was out of my control. And I learned a lot from Potaku with like learning, working on group projects and everything like that. And I should probably, and I wanna say, I'm not throwing shade at Tristan at all. We still get along great. - Yeah, we all get along with him. - Yeah, yeah, I love Tristan. - Rich stand up guy. - It was just a point where we just had creative differences. - It happens, man, it happens. - I feel that's a very normal thing. People, I've...

- What I'm trying to say is I've really- - People wanna demonize and like don't. - Yeah, I'm not demonizing Tristan. We just had a different way of approaching things. I still think back to Potaku and I still think, hey, I think it ended too early. And he obviously thinks the other way and he thought the other way back then. And that's basically what it boils down to. - This is how it is, man. - Yeah. - This is how it is. - Obviously we don't want anyone going and being like, "What the fuck, man? "Why'd you not believe in it?"

Like I said earlier, if your heart's on it, your heart's not in it, right? It's not gonna happen. - And I mean, can anyone really blame Tristan? Again, it's a fucking, I would have really been deliberating as well, right? - If I didn't believe in it, I'm normally someone who's adamant about shit, right? So I would be like, no, I don't believe in this. I would be like that.

- Yeah, exactly. So it's just how it is, right? - Yeah, I mean, I always look back to think, well, what could be? What could be? But that was just the end of an era and now we're in a new era and everyone's gone down the different paths. I'm really amazed to see what,

people are getting onto nowadays and it's fucking great. And I'm still, I still speak to all the cast members every now and again, especially when we get to meet at conventions. - Hey, bottom line is that at least there isn't a single member of PodTaku that went and killed their family. - That's a take. - Whoa, they didn't go down to Mr. Anime route.

- That's the silver lining. Can we all just say, that's the silver lining. - A few 80s outro where it tells you what we've all been up to. - The fucking snapshot. It's like, yeah. - Joey didn't kill his family. - Jesus Christ.

- Oh my God. - That's a fucking take. Oh my God. Okay, before we end it, right? I guess the way I see it, right? Is if you were still doing, you know, pot taku, Trash Taste probably wouldn't exist. - Yeah, that's true. - That's what I'm saying. I'm not trying to say, you know, that it's, you know, I'm glad that your passion project fucking died, but I'm glad that we have this, you know? - No, I'm very glad as well. Please don't kill your families.

- Just gonna throw that out there. - I'm British, how do I get a gun? - How do you do that? - Walmart? - I don't wanna have to make a tweet longer that's like, so about Connor. - Oh no. - My thoughts on Sea Dog V8. - Oh my fucking God.

- This is gonna be real ironic if you kill your family, Jerry, and then we come back. We gotta stop talking about kill, I'm so sorry. - That's two YouTubers with anime in their name who fucking did that. - It's a curse, man. - Like Mr. Anime, I mean the anime man, I mean both? - Yeah, it's like, oh shit. We should have seen the signs all along. It was in the name. - My God. - It kind of felt that when Pottaku ended that it kind of like,

it's like tearing down the Berlin Wall, right? - Yeah. - Just letting everyone fucking loose, right? 'Cause I feel like when a big pillar in a community kind of falls, right? It's just like a ton of people coming. - Free for all, right? - Basically, yeah. It's kind of like everyone's looking for the new like, all right, who's the person I'm gonna listen to? We don't really have that at the moment, I don't feel, I think we do. We have a few big people, but,

I feel that that's when definitely like you said, the new era just was like, all right. - Yeah, because back then it was all about doing anime reviews. And then I would say the content started to really like, it kind of like opened the doors to all different kinds of content. Like you were doing more vloggy videos and then analytical channels start to come along. So I feel,

- It was a coincidence that it happened during the end of PodTaku, but I feel like for our community, that was a big turning point. - Oh, definitely. - Yeah, absolutely. 'Cause I remember that was when Demo came along as well. - I think so. - It was near enough back then when you saw it. - And he fucking changed the game as well. - Oh no, definitely. - I don't think there's a single AniTuber that's on the platform right now and no longer on the platform who didn't look up to Demo.

in any aspect. - If you did anime stuff, yeah. - If you did anime stuff, Demo was just a name that came back. He's like the dad that went to go buy cigarettes and just never came back. - I'm glad I came into it when I did. I feel like I came into it at the time where it's perfect 'cause it was where I wanted to make the content I wanted to make. - I think you came at a perfect time because it was around the time when the whole anime, YouTube and thing really diversified itself in terms of its content.

people like you who did very unconventional anime content, it was very easy to like just slip in. - Yeah, it's great. I mean, I'm glad that it's gone to the point where we can make a set like this, right? 'Cause in my mind,

I didn't wanna do a podcast unless it was this good. Like I just, I have no interest in it. Like I don't wanna do audio. Everyone has an audio podcast. - This is what I kind of wanted to push Potaku to the direction of going. Like we obviously didn't live in the same place, but my idea was, hey, what if we all flew to a place?

recorded a ton of episodes and released it on a schedule. And we could do that on a periodic basis based on like whatever funding we could have gotten. But I'm glad that I have you guys now who- - Yeah. - It's taking me how long? - PodTaku 2.0. - Oh.

- I'm not the one saying that, all right? Fuck ton of people in that first episode were like, "This is just "Toku 2.0." No. I'm hosting next, so I'm just gonna do that intro.

- You have to do it now. - You have to do it now. - I mean, it's great, man. I mean, like you said earlier about the like ambition of it. I think us three really have like really great ideas of ways that we wanna make this not just a podcast, right? So really crazy. Like the Akibe video was just like, just the step in the- - I would like to say, I thought up of the Akibe video in the shower. - Shut the fuck up.

- Thank you to our patrons for supporting this episode. - You guys are freaking awesome. If you'd like your name on the screens as such and other bonuses, then make sure to support us over on Patreon. - Start taking more showers. It's super zen.

- You know what you can start doing? Following us on Twitter and the subreddit, which is always in the description below. Send us your memes, send us your gig in the showers anime zone memes. - Best thing about our Twitter is that one of us will make a post and the other two have to figure out who did it. - Yeah, like the fucking tier list tweet. I was like, wow. - He was poking fun at him and he was like, I don't know who did it.

- In my head I was like, which of these fuckers? - I signed up to make a tier list account just for that moment. Never made one in my life. Just did it for that. - I liked the commitment. That was good for the memes, man. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. But if you'd like to send us your memes, then the Twitter and subreddit always open. You guys send us some fucking dank ass memes over there. - I love the chess manga.

- Oh, the chest means blowing up right now. - Some of the images I've seen are fucking amazing. - You guys are too talented. - The fan art has been fucking awesome. - You guys have way too much talent to be making this stuff. Just saying, like, some of you, too good, too good. - Yeah, but I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and we'll see you guys in the next one. - We've been the Neanderthal boys, did we? - The naughty Neanderthals. No, no, the viewers of the naughty Neanderthals. - Oh, okay. - We've been the AniTubers who haven't killed their family.

- There is no way we're getting monetized this episode. - Worth it for the joke. But I've been your host Joey and as always my co-host Garnt and Connor and we'll see you guys next episode. - Subscribe to my YouTube channel. - God damn it.