Podcast

Not discussed, but Danganronpa (the game) is awesome, so it’s okay. (Pixiv)

Thanks to Xumbra for editing the whole podcast this time, and of course thanks to Stilts for hosting yet another podcast. Sorry I wasn’t in on this one guys, but our lovely writers Kairi, Zephyr, and Guardian Enzo should keep you company!

  Participating Writers
  Time Index
  • 00:00 – 03:45 – Introductions and Opening Song – 「Shape My Story」 by Anna Yano (Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu OP)
  • 03:45 – 17:40 – Uchouten Kazoku
  • 17:40 – 36:40 – Shingeki no Kyojin
  • 36:40 – 47:00 – GATCHAMAN Crowds
  • 47:18 – 54:27 – Blood Lad
  • 47:32 – 66:17 – Assorted Show Shoutouts
  • 66:17 – 66:45 – Intermission Song — 「有頂天人生」 by milktub (Uchouten Kazoku OP)
  • 66:45 – 108:10 – Gender Roles in Anime
  • 108:10 – 121:05 – Defining a RandomC Writer’s “Best Anime List”
  • 121:05 – 145:10 – Thoughts on the Fall Season
  • 145:10 – 151:43 – Shoutouts and Outro – 「終わらないメロディーを歌いだしました。」 by Mikako Komatsu
    (Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyoubi Insert Song)

Bloopers

  • 00:00 – 26:11 – Bloopers
  Listen to the Episode
Summer 2013 Retrospective Podcast | Duration: 151:43 – 96 kbps [flv:rc_podcast_11.mp3 350 0]

Download 160 kbps (136 MB)

Summer 2013 Retrospective Podcast – Random Bloopers! | Duration: 26:11 – 96 kbps [flv:rc_podcast_11bloopers.mp3 350 0]

Download 160 kbps (23 MB)

 

68 Comments

    1. Just finished listening. It was just as awesome as I expected! 😀

      Is is bad that my favorite part was the gender roles discussion though? lol.

      Lastly: I love Kairi’s voice (and yawns)! It’s so refreshingly upbeat, loud, and energetic. And it’s a good singing voice! And so, I think that Kairi and Stilts should do a duet for the next podcast!

      I eagerly await~

      Shiiro
      Reply

    4. Kairi! You have some of my love for singing. Unfortunately, I don’t have some CAGE for you.
      Does Xumbra have them CAGES?
      Wait… Stilts wuvs Xumbra. So did Stilts put him in a CAGE? Why am I typing “CAGE” in uppercases???
      Will I get banned for talking so much about them CAGES? D:

      MrRei
      Reply

  3. You know I was thinking, it would be helpful if you guys broke down the podcast into separate audio files rather than just one 2 hour long file. I mean sometimes I refresh my firefox and forget I am running the thing and it resets back to the beginning and I can’t really skip ahead…

    KoroshiyaKi
    Reply

  6. love the podcast, funny and interesting. you chose to speak about the most refreshing and intriguing anime of the summer (:
    well, the fall season is already here, so I really look forward to your covers.

    thedarktower
    Reply

    1. Ah, sorry. I was on the line of thinking that people could check out the tags to discover the artists. Will do next time!

      P.S: did not directly use zerochan (I usually danbooru), was in a rush and relied on Google search :P.

      Zanibas
      Reply

  11. I went to look up 2007 shows after while listening to this podcast… OMG has it already been 6 years?! I honestly feel like it hasn’t been that long since I watched these shows. Damn you guys are young -__-‘ makes me feel so old… I discovered RC back in 2005 (woot! Been on this site for almost 10 years lol) and I would watch anything from the late 1990’s to current. Comparing to that “era” of anime to the present, I do think that anime back then were a lot more creative in terms ideas and plot. Maybe it’s because everything was new to me then, but I feel that I could never go wrong when I picked up a show. Lately, I’ve been dropping a lot more shows than picking up =S That might be a personal experience, but shows like Shakugan no Shana, Clannad, Kanon, Darker than Black (yes, even Shuga Chara)… all of them seem to be better than what I’m watching nowadays T_T to all those getting into anime now… but you should really try and watch older series too.

    Great podcast guys! I’m sad that you didn’t talk about Rozen Maiden but at least Enzo got that plugged in ^^ It’s really underrated this season (and I really blame the first episode for turning people off -___-‘) but it’s also not for everyone so I think people should just watch it without expectations and it might pleasantly surprise you.

    Cherrie
    Reply

    1. Lol you reminded me how Omni first made a post in RC.
      I was looking for anime summaries and etc and bump on the old site.
      The post was something like:

      “Oh I going to make an anime blog”

      I was like “…ok”

      I ignored it and went to other site.
      But after I bumped on it again while searching for “latest anime pictures with summary” during the late 2007-2008, I was like “WOH I didn’t expect this to evolve”.

      Man! I’m getting old.

      †sooɹɔ†
      Reply

      2. I watch subbed anime, so screencaps are taken from subbed episodes using BSPlayer. I then use Photoshop to resize them. The images themselves are hosted on ImageShack.

        PS. This page is best viewed using Firefox.

        Oh god.

        Zanibas
        Reply

    2. Just a thought,but I think it’s because lots of us anime viewers now are watching so many shows a season. When people are new to anime they’re watching the best or above average anime of those years, but as we get deeper into this medium of entertainment we’re watching a lot of the shows that are airing throughout the year. This way we’re coming from watching shows that are the cream of the crop, but to shows that are just above average or shows that are fun to watch weekly yet are still not that good.

      Another thought that just came up is that, when coming back to old shows that I watched when I first got into anime, I noticed something. I seem to be enjoying some shows less and some more. As we grow older, our tastes change and that may affect enjoyment. For example, when I first watched FLCL when I was barely a teenager, I didn’t enjoy it at all, but now, I’m really into it. In contrast I used to really enjoy harem anime like Maburaho, but now, though it’s fun to watch once a while, it really isn’t something I put much of my time into it.

      dytianquin
      Reply

      1. I’ve actually watched a lot of 2007 shows when I go back and read the previous season previews. Just in 2007 Spring as Enzo mentioned, I saw: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Hayate no Gotoku! (uh… well most of it lol), Seto no Hanayome, Touka Gettan, Claymore, RomeoXJuliet, sola, Darker than Black II, Lovely Complex and Lucky Star. Of course – I’ve had like 6 years to watch 2007 anime so I obviously didn’t watch all of them as they aired but I think I’ve seen more than what’s “popular” or AOTY worthy. From that sample size alone, I’ve enjoyed more in the past than I did in the 2013 Spring season.

        Obviously I agree that it depends on taste too… but I still think that 90% anime I’ve enjoyed in the past, I still enjoy now. If I recommend an anime, I’d gladly re-watch it with anyone who wants to see it. Unfortunately the list of anime that I’ve enjoyed enough to recommend to others is shrinking every year =X

        Cherrie
        Reply

      2. I think dytianquin is broadly right, even if ya might not be correct in Cherrie’s particular case, and 2007 could also have been an amazing year. Like I said on the ‘cast though, I’m fairly optimistic about the state of anime, because I find shows I enjoy a lot every season, and besides I’m happy we get such enjoyable things to watch at all! We could easily be getting nothing.

        Stilts
        Reply

    3. oooh…I discovered RC because of Kanon 2006. I remember when Omni stopped blogging and I thought that this site was going to disappear but, look! things have changed and now there are many writers

      Zein
      Reply

    4. I’ll gladly take the likes of Shin Sekai Yori,Chihayafuru,Uchouten Kazoku,Zetsuen no Tempest and Hyouka over the titles you listed , then again that might be due to me finding those titles overrated

      totoum
      Reply

  12. Visual Novel adaptations tend to have more bland lead characters in Harems/Reverse harems because of the routes, however when you look at Light novels they tend to have more of a character. It has more to due with the mediums in that without the visual aspect they need a better character for the female to bounce off or else they become dull since they are being relayed to you through the main character rather than the visuals.

    The thing that is probably the most sexist about anime/manga is the news that we are given about it over here. It’s such a narrow scope of media that refuses to acknowledge that there are a lot of female otaku, almost as many as male (hell, shounen jump’s readership is half female) and yet they get little to no coverage. There are loads of news stories about the buy a boyfriend service / host clubs, male idols, Comiket events, etc. that just aren’t sensational in the same way here because they don’t play into the outrage. You can say that males aren’t sexualized as much, but if you look at the largest doujinshi event in the world Comiket the biggest section is Yaoi/BL. It is the entire first day of a three day event, the day after is everything else regardless of male/female targeting and the last is company sponsoring. We like to look at anime, but that’s just not the medium their sexualized media is most prevalent in at the moment, it’s hardly representative of their influence in the industry overall. Hell there’s even been numerous jokes that the entire industry moves to the tastes of teenage girls.

    All we get to see are the handpicked extremes that they want to show taken completely out of context and given just enough information to make it look how they want it to. It honestly pisses me off that we as westerners bent anime and manga into the same “Boys club” that Comics and Video Games are in when it isn’t even remotely the case and is completely disrespectful to the female otaku.

    Korrange
    Reply

  13. Culling the heard… Interesting… Robotics;notes… Meh I’m not sure whether I would call it underrated. The ending was very poor, which was a shame because everything else was amazing. A better example would be Gurren Lagann.

    J_the_Man
    Reply

  14. I’m surprised none of you guys watched Love Lab this summer,turned out to be pretty hilarious,and this is from a guy who almost never watches “cute girls do cute stuff” shows.Of course,it was more than that(worked best when the two main girls interacted with the guys to be honest).

    MgMaster
    Reply

    1. I watched it, as did Zephy I’m pretty sure. We were actually going to talk about it as one of our topics, we just went way overboard with Shingeki and ended up cutting it. It was good! With that weirdly good animation and pro boke & tsukkomi routines. I enjoyed it : )

      Stilts
      Reply

      2. Shingeki is the most important anime in terms of broad-based demographic reach in a decade, probably. Overboard? Yeah, but I think it’s appropriate for an anime podcast to afford a show like that more time than it merits on pure quality alone.

        Guardian Enzo
        Reply

      2. Don’t worry too much 😛 It’s only a very, very minor issue. It’s really not my place to complain since you guys provide such good content that’s completely free for the anime community! I just wanted to point it out to you guys :p

        dytianquin
        Reply

      2. So my hunch was incorrectly correct… I used to have an anime-loving friend from West Virginia. The way you pronounced “harem” was something I would suspect she and others from the south would pronounce that word based on that accent.

        J_the_Man
        Reply

      3. Hmm, no, I just pronounce everything English that I’ve never heard by the rules of phoenetic Spanish mixed with English. Spanish is like that; everything sounds the way it’s spelled. Which helps a ton with speaking Japanese, I’ve been told I have pretty good Japanese pronunciation.

        Kairi
        Reply

  19. @ Xumbra: can you check on the title in both the main and the blooper reel that are in the dl link? I saw them both titled “Spring 2013 Retrospective…” on my media player.

    info600
    Reply

  21. When the podcast got to the Gender roles, I really wanted to skip ahead but I forced myself to listen through it. I know it’s culturally unacceptable to disagree (at least in the states) but I don’t agree with the perception that the sexes are equal (not genders that’s sociological construct). What I’m not saying that men are superior, or women are superior but that the sexes are built physically different, men have an appendage that facilitates the fertilization of the ovaries, while females are built around the carrying of the embryos to birthing and carrying for young. Men have a Y chromosome that is much more subject to mutation than the double X chromosomes of females. Men tend to have a much sturdier frame than the more flexible female frame.

    So when it comes to actual gender roles we see these physical differences in the sexes come to light more often, and as such stereotypes or tropes are created from the observations that we have seen in the past and present. These can be seen in cultural caricatures of men being much more violent, or women having more empathy. But trying to equalize the formula seems to ring hollow for me, I mean I’ve studied feminism but I guess I prescribe to belief that there really isn’t equality in life except for that we all equal (ish) in that we all will die eventually.

    I see that maybe the way forward is that in Anime make characters that would act like real people in real life. We all have fears, we all opinions, we have wants and desires, faults and strengths, and incorporating that in Anime would be good. But calling out Harems for what there designed to be (that of a highly sexualized male sex dream come to life) seems I guess a little over the top.

    I know I’m going to get flack for writing this if not from the writers at least from some one else, but I’m going to put it up anyway. If you disagree, or have something to say to my probably vague and idiotic points go ahead, I look forward to a discussion.

    Tempest
    Reply

    1. Remember that “equal” and “identical” aren’t the same thing. Men and women are different, both physically and due to culturally imprinted norms, but we are equal, at least in the eyes of any sufficiently modern human. We all have the same rights, responsibilities, and are deserving of the same level of respect. I don’t think you’ll find anyone arguing with you if you say women tend to be shorter or men have a Y chromosome. Those are just facts.

      Basically, in this case saying the sexes aren’t equal is intrinsically implying that one or the other is superior. It’s a semantic matter, but words are important.

      Regardless, to anyone else responding please remember to keep any further discussion confined to anime in particular. We don’t want a gender war to erupt in an anime blog’s comments, lol

      Stilts
      Reply

  22. So I’m the one who talked with Zephyr how the anime industry doesn’t have something equivalent to an impactful indie scene unlike with the video game industry.

    (Full disclosure: My hobby lies in video games and I focus a lot of my time on its industry and culture (along with the games themselves, of course) and as a result I don’t watch nearly as much anime as I used to 6 or 7 years ago. Though I still come back for anything interesting and good. Hopefully my insight into both industries, from a gamer’s perspective, can shed some light on this subject. I probably will garner the ire from the RC community as someone who’s speaking out but is not very invested in anime, but here goes. Prepare for a long read.)

    As some of you may know, in any medium, there exists an indie scene that is largely ignored or unknown but still contribute a fair amount of creativity. They’re not exactly bound by the demands of the market and are generally an area for more experimental ideas. For books, we have fanfiction or web novels. For manga, we have web comics. Film? Indie films. Video games? Indie games. You get the idea. There is inherently less risk in making new content for these industries because of lower overhead or widely available (usually free) tools.

    I am of the belief that an indie scene that can lead to a thriving anime industry (more in its creativity and less in its economics), much like with video games, where if I were to compare, goes through some of the same problems that plagues the anime industry today (but that’s a story for another day). Looking at this from a gamer’s eyes, indie animation studios totally exist, but not anywhere near the capacity as indie game developers due to the inadequacy of available animation technology and methodology that makes independent content creation less about experimentation and more about generating a product for sale.

    Animation as a technology has not changed all that much in the last decade. We may have more CG, but most of it is still hand-drawn and still requires a large team of animators. The problem is that anime needs a lot of manpower if they were to release anything of visual quality in a timely manner. Due to this reliance on numbers, they will inherently rely on ideas and tropes that will sell regardless of the effort they put in as long as it ticks the boxes in a checklist to make back the overhead.

    This adherence to such a model is toxic to the industry and will do more to stifle creativity than any other medium I can think of because of the amount of effort needed to make just one anime series in comparison to books, film, video games, etc. Make no mistake; it takes a lot of time and effort to make just one game with a team of 4 devs (one programmer, one sound guy, one art guy, one designer), but something like Unity Engine and free or cheap standardized tools eases the process, but is still not a cakewalk.

    Right now, I don’t think there exists an industry standard on animation tools in the form of an animation program suite that can capture the look and feel of 24fps, hand-drawn anime, with CG thrown in if one so desires. (Flash is flaming hot garbage). Like Photoshop was to the photography and graphics design industries, there ought to be an analogue for anime. Having such a program suite shared amongst all the studios would not only serve as a very powerful archiving tool, it would make anime creation many times more efficient than it is now. Ideally, everything would be digital (with the ability to scan in hand-drawn storyboards, frames) and can be instantly shared to anyone who has a computer (and a tablet), propelling the industry to 2013 standards of content creation.

    Now, the next step would be making this program suite intuitive to use with easy to understand documentation so that even the average person with any interest in creating animation can use it to make their own stories with a much lower barrier of entry.

    However, I have to make clear that this doesn’t the address the situation of the anime industry being a largely product-based industry and is hence still reliant on the fanatic audience to purchase DVDs/BDs and merchandise. This will at the very least introduce a new audience who never had the tools or financials to create their own anime in a market that sorely needs new blood and ideas. By introducing new creators into the market can we start addressing a question that is largely glossed over by current anime studios: “What market can we capture?” How they can capture a new market if they don’t try tackling new subject areas? This problem is only cemented by the fact that the purchasing audience is very small, quite insular, stubborn to change, and can often become vitriolic as a defensive mechanism to any change, which they see as an attack on their hobby (gamers out there, this sounds familiar, eh?). The only answer is to not only just cater to them, but to somehow grab the attention of the audience at large with something new.

    The hope is that these new creators will flex their brain muscle to make things that other large studios dare not touch due to low sales. These amateur animators might make a hit short and garner the attention of the public and make them turn heads and maybe even get hired to make an original full-fledged anime series, but alas I feel this is just a pipe dream with the way the industry is stagnating. It is also compounded with the fact that contrary to what people make think here, anime is actually not THAT big in Japan in terms of the size of the paying audience, certainly not compared to the gaming industry there.

    I don’t think an industry standard in anime creation alone would solve anything; it has to be combined with fundamentally changing how the industry operates financially and that is also a pipe dream.

    Solace
    Reply

  23. I just want to say to Kairi that your Japanese pronunciation is astounding. After reading some comments I also saw that Spanish is your first language– must be awesome being trilingual and speaking all without being greatly accented.

    Jel
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *