Neo's review - Podcast 25

The AAAPodcast crew review anime, it's only fair someone review the Podcast. So before further ado, here is my take on Podcast 25 (to be taken with a large grain of salt ).

First of all, I'd like to apologise to the crew - I have missed Episode 24 and am downloading it now . A review will be forthcoming as soon as I have listened to it.

Pronunciation: I felt the crew were again mumbling and rushing through the Japanese names (especially series title). Personal impression, of course, and YMMV. The rest of the time, their words were very clear (except for the giggling fits). I think it might also help newcomers if the English translation of the series title(s) were given after the original Japanese title(s).

MD Geist: the "series" was originally meant to be a single OVA and the sequels were co-produced by CPM starting in 1996. In fact, if viewed by itself OVA #1 is a nice if simplistic bit of storyline: An Earth colony is in the middle of an internal war, one side develops the MDS (Most Dangerous Soldier) programme which produces a soldier code-named MD Geist ("Geist" being "ghost" in German, again). Geist has been programmed to be the ultimate soldier- obedient, strong, fast, ruthless, etc... Following a monumental F-up, Geist is sentenced to death but this is commuted to cryostorage as the higher-ups are loathe to waste their MDS (just in case). Geist is shot into space until the government figures out what to do with him.
A few years later (and at the start of the OVA), the war still rages on and Geist's module - long since forgotten - finally falls out of orbit. Geist emerges and the OVA proceeds. While geist was in cryosleep, the opposition created a doomsday device which will (when activated) use bio-material to create weapons which will go and "harvest" bio-material for the device... etc... Von Neumann at its worst. Geist meets up with a group sent to stop the countdown on the doomsday machine. After nearly everybody dies, the leader of the Expedition and Geist arrive at the controls and turn the machine off. Geist turns around and kills the last member of the expedition and turns the device back on. Why? Because combat is what he was made for, and this machine will provide him a reason to live. Could have been better made, but the central storyline was quite nice. And then they screw it up with the sequel.

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon ("Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon"): mention was made of Serena's Japanese name, "Usagi". Sadly, this was not taken any further: her full name is Tsukino Usagi - a pun on "Tsuki No Usagi" or "Moon Rabbit", referring of course to the Japanese legend of the rabbit on the moon, perpetually pounding rice into flour for rice-cakes (which is why the moon is white, btw). It should be noted, however, that none of Usagi's starting friends become Sailor - it happens the other way around; she befriends the girls who are discovered to be Sailor Scouts.

Queen's Blade: Mitsugi mentions that something should happen to the losers of each bout. For an example of just that, you may (or may not) want to check out "Variable Geo" or the sequel "VG Neo" - in the first, the losing contestant is publicly stripped of her clothing; in the sequel the ante is upped and the loser is publicly raped.

Mention was also made about the voice acting being bad in Vampire Hunter D. I'm afraid I must disagree with that - I find most of the english-language dubbing to be grating. However, all rules have an exception, and in my case that exception is "El-Hazard: The Magnificent World" (the original OVAs, not the subsequent TV re-imaging). The voices were well done, to the point where I personally prefer them to the Japanese VAs... and Jinnai's maniacal laughter was definitely better in the english edition, getting worse as the series wore on.


Overall, another most enjoyable podcast and I'm looking forward to the next one... or to number 24, when it's finished downloading.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rewatch some Juuden-chan.

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Boring ol' fart. Watching Anime since 1975. According to AniDB, has only watched 6.67% of all available anime - working hard to make it 10%.

I am liking this idea in implementing your own opinion of anime that is already reviewed in the podcast. Just saying I am looking forward to these enlightening reviews from a vetaran anime lover such as yourself Neoculture. To put it short and Cliche' "Good stuff Keep up the work".

bakuhasu wrote:I am liking this idea in implementing your own opinion of anime that is already reviewed in the podcast. Just saying I am looking forward to these enlightening reviews from a vetaran anime lover such as yourself Neoculture. To put it short and Cliche' "Good stuff Keep up the work".

For the record, I'm a big fan of AAAPodcast and would not in a million years even dream to attempt what they are (fairly successfully, I might add) doing. However, I sometimes hear something I disagree with and feel the urge to voice a counter-opinion For example, in episode 23 they mentioned "Dance In The Vampire Bund" and Mitsugi felt it would be an "assassin of the week" series. Having read the manga, I can only hope the anime sticks to the (occasional) assassin + major behind-the-scene scheming and plotting that features in the manga.

We don't mind open criticism. It's fine, but...did you just try to defend MD Geist? That anime is like a seizure and the stroke all wrapped up into one horrible fit of pain and despair.

Perhaps we can try to be more clear pronouncing the Japanese. All of us speak at least a little Japanese, particularly myself and Chiaki so I'm sure that shouldn't be a problem. You mentioned that was should use the English translations. Sometimes I do, but a lot of the stuff we are covering now is current and really can only be found by the Japanese title. That is why we don't bother offering English translations. Some can be found in English, some can't.

Mitsugi wrote:We don't mind open criticism. It's fine, but...did you just try to defend MD Geist? That anime is like a seizure and the stroke all wrapped up into one horrible fit of pain and despair.

I'm lucky in that I only ever saw the first OVA back in early 90's before CPM ordered extra footage and a sequel. Having said that, it suffered from the typical dysfunction which beset OVAs in the 90's and ultimately led to their demise (and the rise of the 12-13 episodes series format) - it had a good story concept which should have taken a movie's length to tell (say 90 minutes) but instead it got rammed into the typical 45-minutes format of the OVAs of that time. When watched with this in mind, it's actually not that bad (on par with, let's say, Vampire Hunter D).

And then CPM decided it was popular in the US, wanted more of it and f*cked it up even more.