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matt0044 · 2 years

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I’d like to talk a bit about my journey with Fairy Tail.

A while back before the dark times of the Tumblr purge and whatever fresh hell 2016 wrought upon us (well before 2020: the sequel literally nobody asked for), I picked up the Fairy Tail Manga out of curiosity based on what the vibe was at the time. It had an interesting style to its artwork with cool and hot looking characters. Figuratively and literally.

Yet... I didn’t think it was worth committing as a long runner. Even so, it left enough of a good impression to later on pick up the Anime. I’ve had moments where if the Manga seemed cool but lacked a certain “pizzazz,” I’d check out the Anime to see if its presentation was anything more noteworthy. So as a gift, I asked relatives to pick up Parts 1 and 2 of FUNimation’s release on DVD.

#LongLivePhysicalMedia :P

I put it off quite a bit since it seemed like the sort of “smut over substance” kind. More on that later. That said, I finally hunkered down when I had nothing but time on a family vacation and figured that I’d check out the first arc I read in the Manga. Needless to say... the presentation was more grabbing.

Strap in, guys. This is a long one.

Viewing Anime dubbed, many titles that stuck with me were released by FUNimation Entertainment pre-Crunchyroll often on DVD. As such, I was acquainted with their go-to voice actors at the time. Some may dislike the “only 12 voice actors problem” but I’ve always like recognizing familiar faces. Or voices in this case.

The male and female leads, Natsu Dragneel and Lucy Heartfilia, would be played in the English version by Todd Haberkorn and Cherami Leigh Kuhn respectively. These two got my attention previously in FUNimation’s English dub of SGT Frog where the script’s comedy really let them flourish as a goofy alien invader and the teenage girl who has to put up with their antics.

Here, that dynamic shone again but with more dramatic nuances to them. Todd Haberkorn captured the lunkhead in Natsu with a rough voice I once described to a friend as a more reigned in take on Joey Wheeler’s New York accent. Cherami Leigh captured Lucy Heartfilia as this mostly normal teenage girl thrust into a family of wack-jobs, being the straight-man and our audience surrogate. We share in her largely having the one brain cell on her team.

From there, I decided to at least see through the first twenty four episodes. The series was pretty unapologetic in being a Battle Shonen Anime after Erza and Gray became a part of their team. You had your cackling baddies with elite members for each hero to square off with. You had over the top battles that promised much collateral damage as episode one had. You had fine figures for the female characters with a fair amount of man candle for the girls too.

You also had an unironic sense of sincerity that took the Power of Friendship seriously. Speeches that pontificate the strength in bonds. Heroes grandstanding against their foes by proclaiming their friends as their source of strength. Villains mocking the mere concept at their peril.

This is everything that Anime has been parodied for and then some but Fairy Tail means every word. Any title these days would have a few characters rolling their eyes at the cheese, reflecting the adult audience members.

Christ, imagine if Joss Whedon wrote it…

Yet Fairy Tail was most earnest about it to the point that power ups often come from emotions. The characters uplifted each other unapologetically even after busting their chops. They might fight but slight one of them and you might as well have started a war you can’t win. Whenever Natsu made his proclamations, I never doubted that he meant every word of it.

It’s this sincerity and commitment to found families that endeared me to it. That they’d be able to take in anybody looking not just for work but a place to call home.

The Phantom Lord arc was what cemented this for me and made me a fan for the long haul. This was where Fairy Tail as a whole guild was affected well outside the five man band we were use to. The hall is wrecked, Shadow Gear is crucified and father figure Makarov loses his shit.

This leads to them warring with Phantom Lord with Lucy as the center of it all, her family being loaded and her father hiring Phantom Lord to bring her back at all costs. Rather than ditch what would be seen as a liability, Fairy Tail looks out for one of their own even when Lucy can do a thing without her keys.

As Erza put it, they’d have to kill them first.

It put Lucy’s character into perspective for me. It’s easy to write her off as the “useless female lead,” there to look pretty and call out the male lead over their machismo. But kicking butt doesn’t make you a Fairy Tail member. I mean, some mission don’t even involve a big bad to fight. No, Lucy is a member of Fairy Tail because she bears their emblem and has proven that she’d do the same for them if remotely capable.

And she does.

After the fighting, Lucy returns to her estranged father on her family’s estate where it initially seems like she’s giving herself up to spare Fairy Tail another inter-guild war.

But no, she gets herself all dolled up to tear it all apart to declare to her father that, under no uncertain terms, will she be coming back. She found friends who literally just went to war and lost their guild hall for her and saw to it on her own terms that she’d have the final word about it. It’s honest fitting that she tears up her own clothes when her lewd moments tend to involve that happening against her will.

Of course, this “all hands on deck” arc also let lesser known characters display more dimension to them. Elfman Strauss seeks to be the man he wasn’t when he killed Lisanna. Cana, the jaded drunk, gets as fired up over Natsu when it comes to defending the guild that practically raised her. Makarov, well, he speaks volumes. Literally too.

This impressed me with how characters who seemed like cardboard cutouts were more than their quirks. They didn’t need full blown story arcs to explore their life’s story contrary to what certain naysayers seemed to imply. I especially loved how it packed in a lot of story details that’d have a ripple effect down the line yet kept it coherent.

There was also the reoccurring specter of Zeref as early as Erza’s debut arc. It made for a very intriguing myth arc where it was clear that there was an endgame being set in motion. I hope to get into One Piece but it’s length and uncertain endpoint is more… daunting in comparison.

Perhaps the female cast was what caught me off guard. For one thing, Fairy Tail’s Team Natsu alone had its girls out number the boys once Wendy and Carla came into the fold as their Sixth Rangers. Even then, Erza was the one calling the shots on their game plans and would be temporary Seventh Master.

The secondary cast had Mirajane, Cana, Juvia, Levy amongst others. But they were more than just eye candy. We’d get deep dives into their damaged pasts and current growth as people. Fairy Tail’s founder was just a little girl. I know that Battle Shonen has defenders who argue against the “Useless” accusation. There’s a video that actually venerates Orihime Inoue from Bleach very well.

That said, most who claim a female lead is useless comes from how our focus is mostly on the male characters. Especially when it comes to battles, be they small scale or boss fights. In many cases, it’s out of love for the character and feeling like there’s more to them that the author doesn’t capitalize on.

You wouldn’t think Hiro Mashima would be able to write woman any better than his contemporaries with how they often feel straight from his DeviantArt phase. Seriously, I respect the dude for being unapologetically horny but it felt like some moments had their wires crossed so to speak. I mean... I prefer the Anime for having Erza in her underdress during her torture session in Tartaros.

Yet I’ve found one of my favorite characters in Wendy Marvell, a young girl with severe self-esteem and abandonment issues to content with. All voiced by Brittney Karbowski that gives her that special rasp to her prepubescent performance. Who says dubs can get little girls right, huh?

Erza Scarlet is a red-head bombshell who pulls off a win against implacable odds yet I know that comes from a childhood of suffering, one she’s still recovering from. Colleen Clinkenbeard gave her a commanding voice, one that elicits fear and respect yet also a warmth for her fellow guildmates.

They take their lumps like their male contemporaries do in battle with it rarely feeling like they’re ever sidelined for the sake of one dude getting all the glory. Natsu might’ve faced Master Zero of the Oracion Seis but the others had to destroy the other Lacrimas at a precise moment with him. He might’ve gotten a hit in on Hades but it was a group effort to even get him in range while the Exceeds got to their foe’s power source at that moment.

These guys know their teamwork.

I continued to follow FUNimation’s release of the series. With my organized watch list, I would often divide the series and rewatch from the start before getting to the new arcs. First, Edolas capped off part one. Then, the Dragon King Festival capped Part Two off. Finally, before my Dad passed away, I had finished up to the Tartarus arc and waited for the Final Season.

As of April 1st 2022, I finished the Alvarez Arc and almost clapped my hands when Natsu and Lucy defeated the Acnologia. It took the Buu Saga’s Spirit Bomb ending and made it better than ever with all of Fiore, filler or otherwise joining in Meldy’s emotional link.

As of April 30th 2022, I watched Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry. Not a conclusion but served as a good emotional send off for me. I… do wish it was a filler arc in Final Season if only because it’d be a fun romp just before the all out war. Sorry to ramble but I just wish there was more to enjoy.

I know that the Century Quest Anime is something I’m gonna be all over. Be that as it may, the original story was a journey I never knew I needed. There were bumps along the road with my allergies and constant colds yet I soldiered on, never giving up once.

Like a member of Fairy Tail.

Also... was I suppose to hate the Alvarez Arc? Because that ending was classic Fairy Tail. And Lucy orchestrating the final gambit to cripple Acnologia so Natsu could get the final hit in? YES! GOD DAMN YES!

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nahasproxy · 2 years

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Date a live episode 1 dub online

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Not only is turf war starting to escalate on the streets but even his new girlfriend has been murdered. Shido Itsuka, who used to be a normal high school student at Raizen High, meets the first Spirit, Tohka, and awakens his power to 'seal the Spirit's power'.

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The young boy has his way with things and very well knows how to bring things under control during tense situations.īut then comes a time when Makoto tries to get his hands on way more than he can handle. It revolves around the life of Makoto, a hip 21-year-old member of the renowned G-boys gang.

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The series is an urban and stylistic drama that unfolds in one of the coolest districts of Tokyo, Ikebukuro. The original ‘Ikebukuro West Gate Park’ draws its inspiration from a widely popular live-action television show of the same name. Anime viewers from Australia and New Zeland can stream the anime on AnimeLab. You can stream ‘Ikebukuro West Gate Park’ Season 1 on Funimation with its original Japanese audio and English subtitles. Where to Watch Ikebukuro West Gate Park English Dub Online? Its opening theme, “Needle Knot,” is performed by The Pinballs, while its ending theme, “after song,” is a creation of Innosent in Formal. When it comes to its music composition, it has been done by Daijirō Nakagawa and Ryuuichi Takada (monaca). ‘Ikebukuro West Gate Park’ anime series is directed by Tomoaki Koshida and its script is written by Fumihiko Shimo. Thirty years up to now, the Eurasian continent was devastated by a supermassive. Comedy Harem Mecha Romance School Sci-Fi.

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Season: Spring 2013 Type: TV Episodes: 12 Censor: Censored. The first episode of ‘Ikebukuro West Gate Park’ premiered on October 6, 2020. Show Action / Anime / Comedy / Romance / Science-Fiction (4 seasons, 38 episodes) created in 2013 on AT-X, with Marina Inoue (Tooka Yatogami), Nobunaga Shimazaki (Shidou Itsuka) and Shizuka Itou. Status: Completed Studio: AIC PLUS+ Released: 2013 Duration: 23 min. Now, the future of the world rests on his courting prowess, as he seeks out Spirits with a view to attraction them.Ikebukuro West Gate Park Episode 1 Release Date: When will it premiere?Ĭreated by Doga Kobo Studio (‘ Gabriel Drop Out,’ ‘ How heavy are the dumbbells you lift?‘), ‘Ikebukuro West Gate Park’ is a novel adaptation. Nonetheless, there is a third celebration that believes in saving the spirits: "Ratatoskr," which surprisingly is commanded by Shidou's little sister! Kotori forcibly recruits Shidou after the battle, presenting to him one other methodology of dealing with the hazard posed by the Spirits-make them fall in love with him. Rapidly after, he turns into embroiled in a skirmish between the girl and the Anti-Spirit Workers, a ruthless strike drive with the target of annihilating Spirits. He discovers a mysterious girl at its provide, who's revealed to be a "Spirit," an otherworldly entity whose look triggers a spatial quake. Season 5’s first volume debuted on September 3 of this year. The show’s last part was shot on May 14 and was created by Alex Pina and produced by Vancouver Media. The remaining five episodes will be available on Netflix starting December 3rd. When an imminent spatial quake threatens the safety of Tengu Metropolis, he rushes to keep away from losing her, solely to be caught throughout the ensuing eruption. 2 is the fifth and final season of the Spanish TV series. Shidou Itsuka is a seemingly widespread highschool scholar who lives collectively along with his youthful sister, Kotori. Since then, these quakes have been plaguing the world intermittently, albeit on a lighter scale. Thirty years up to now, the Eurasian continent was devastated by a supermassive "spatial quake"-a phenomenon involving home vibrations of unknown origin-ensuing throughout the deaths of over 150 million of us.

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bluescarabguy · 7 months

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A rant on the localization of EVANGELION

(Reposted from Twitter)

Gonna start my REBUILD OF EVANGELION rewatch. After some thought, I've decided I'm gonna use my FUNimation Blu-rays for movies 1-3. Even putting aside script changes, the Amazon redubs were not produced under good conditions and thus seem like they'll be of lower quality.

From what I can glean, Amazon initially only planned to dub 3.0+1.0, and the redubbing of the first three films (maybe due to rights issues, maybe due to Khara mandating new, "more accurate" translations be available for all) was a last-minute effort. This, combined with COVID likely causing most of the recording to be done from home studios, the sheer amount of time between the third and final films, and the aforementioned script, leads to all the returning actors from the Rebuild dubs just generally not sounding their best.

It's really bizarre how one cultural misunderstanding has led to Evangelion as a franchise going from more or less one semi-consistent English presentation to a complete mess. FUNimation made an effort to have the Rebuild films sound consistent with the ADV dub by bringing back Spencer, Keith, and Grant. It's a bummer that Winn Lee and other still-working actors from the old dubs weren't brought back, but the transition was still smooth. They applied this same approach to Rebuild 3, and then a cultural misunderstanding of Japanese theatrical audience etiquette vs American anime convention audience etiquette lead Khara representatives to believe FUNimation was mishandling the localization of their product. So they forced them to completely redub it with a new, "more faithful" script. I assume contractual agreements meant they couldn't just take the film to another licensor.

Then, Anno goes dark on Eva for several years, FUNi's license to the Rebuild films expires, the show and old movies are still in limbo. Netflix picks up the rights to the old material. Khara decides they want to completely reset how the series has been depicted in English. They commission a new dub with a totally new cast and using their new translation. This new dub is now how Khara wants Eva to be presented.

But then...Rebuild 4 is finally happening. For whatever reason, instead of just going with Netflix again (maybe Eva didn't do as well on streaming as they wanted and so they passed on the rebuilds, maybe they didn't want to deal with dubbing backlash again, maybe Khara just decided to open a bidding war for the most money and Amazon won), they have Amazon handle it. Amazon clearly thinks that they're just gonna dub one film, and either they initially think one film is the whole deal, or that they're just gonna license the FUNi dub. So they go for consistency with the older dubs and re-hire Spencer, Keith, Grant, and John Swasey as Gendo. And hey, they even bring back Amanda Winn Lee for Rei!

Except now Khara wants them to redub EVERYTHING with their new script, because FUNi "messing up" their work is what started this mess in the first place. So they take their new cast (which is lead by the OG cast) and redub films 1-3...entirely defeating the point of hiring the ADV/FUNi leads for consistency with the previous films.

I'm taking no sides as to which cast I would have preferred to have for these new dubs. But all of these actors from both casts are mostly in LA either way. It just seems clear that if re-dubbing the entire film series was always the plan, then Amazon and Khara would have just hired the Netflix cast, giving Evangelion a completely consistent presentation across the entire franchise with both the "improved" translation and new actors. Instead, now we have:

The ADV/Manga dub of the show and EoE

The FUNimation dubs of Rebuilds 1 and 2, lead by the ADV cast

The FUNi English premier dub of Rebuild 3, done in the same localization style as the first two, now lost to time

The final FUNi dub of Rebuild 3, with the same cast but using Dan Kanemitsu's "more accurate" script

The Netflix dub of the show and EoE, with Dan Kanemitsu scripts and an entirely new cast

The Amazon dubs of the Rebuild movies, using new Dan Kanemitsu scripts but the same lead actors as ADV/FUNi

Which means yes, Rebuild 3 specifically is literally "the same, but worse" between FUNi Blu and Amazon. It's an identical script and the same lead actors, but an entirely different supporting cast and the returning actors having to word-for-word repeat ...their performances almost a decade later, locked in their houses due to Covid and on a time crunch.

#anime #evangelion #voice acting #dubbing #mecha #rant

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lord-radish · 9 months

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I'm super tired so I'm not gonna be able to articulate this well, but the Amazon Prime dub of the final Evangelion movie is absolutely buttfuck insane from a casting perspective.

So Evangelion began in the 90's, and it made it over to America where it was dubbed and released in like 1998 or something. You have names that would live on in infamy - Spike Spencer as Shinji, for one, but also Amanda Winn-Lee voicing Rei and directing the movie dubs for End of Eva and Death & Rebirth, Allison Keith as Misato and Tiffany Grant as Asuka.

I say infamy because Shinji is traditionally seen as a very whiny character, with the general trend seeming to be that Megumi Ogata's original performance is much preferred. Amanda Winn-Lee also added some incredibly unnecessary sound effects to End of Evangelion and contributed to a commentary track that some of the real picky Eva nerds have dubbed the "Commentary of Evil" (which I personally liked). Tiffany Grant and Allison Keith are pretty well liked to my recollection, with points going to Tiffany Grant for being able to speak German; Asuka is part-German, and she speaks in German a fair bit through the show. It's fantastic casting.

You also have Josh Swasey as Gendo Ikari, though that role was actually recast a couple of times. And of particular note are these three characters named Aoba, Maya and Hyuga - they're bridge crew who have an expanded role in End of Evangelion, but who aren't major players in the show. One of them, Aoba's VA Jason C. Lee, is married to Amanda Winn-Lee.

So the show ends in like 1996, with a remastered compilation movie and a theatrical finale to the show releasing in 97 and 98 respectively. Those get dubbed and released around 2002. And that's it, that's a wrap. Everyone moves on.

In 2007, a sort of revival/sequel-ish sort of thing releases. It's the first movie in a quadrilogy of movies that aim to retell Evangelion.

The rights to Evangelion had been acquired by Funimation after the original company went bankrupt. Knowing that Evangelion is a bit of a sacred cow to anime fans, they spring on the cast: Spike Spencer, Tiffany Grant, Allison Keith and John Swasey return as Shinji, Asuka, Misato and Gendo.

A point of contention, however, was the voice of Rei.

Rei is a hugely popular character, both in Japan and in the English-speaking fandom. Amanda Winn-Lee did a great job voicing the character in this sort of creepy, sad, half-whispered falsetto. But in the five years between projects, she'd had a son with Jason C. Hall who was born with Down Syndrome and required a lot of care. She'd retired from voice-acting in order to raise and support her son.

So those other four voice actors became the only VAs to come back for the sequels - still a pretty big get. Brina Palencia took over as Rei and gave it her own spin, and you can tell that everyone has been recast but it's fine. Then the second movie comes out, it's great, dub is fan-fucking-tastic.

The issues start with the third movie. Funimation would spice the scripts up a little bit, throw in some banter or play with the wording to better communicate what was going on - as localisations are wont to do. They produce the 3.0 dub and screen it at a few anime expos in 2014, and... silence. For two years.

The story goes that Studio Khara - the studio making these sequel movies - had guys who were at these showings, and they picked up on laughter and reactions from the audience that didn't really fit in with the mood they were going for. What happened was that Studio Khara felt that the dub wasn't in line with the end product, and they scrapped the entire thing in order to work more closely with Funimation.

The dub definitely loses a bit of its bounce, but everyone's still there. The English dub releases three years after the movie originally launched in Japan.

The second hiccup happens when Evangelion comes to Netflix in 2019.

Khara scraps the ENTIRE cast.

The new dub was... polarising. I don't know how the actual performances were received, but people weren't happy about how much they toned down the gay subtext between Shinji and Kaworu. It was a much clunkier affair, similar to Evangelion 3.33, with the same in-house Khara translator working on the script. I haven't seen it, and I don't doubt that the cast did a good job - I feel like Casey Mongillo is cool y'know. That being said, I'd been hearing Spike Spencer as Shinji since I was 12, so I wasn't interested.

So since 2013, we've had a polarising script that was delayed for years, and we had a poorly received redub for Netflix. And the question looms: what's going to happen to the fourth sequel movie?

Studio Khara personally chose the Netflix cast. They made the decision to scrap the Funimation cast, comprised in part by some of the original English voice cast, and to do it themselves from scratch. That wasn't a popular move. Now you have a movie that's coming down the pipe, release date unknown, that caps off a 10+ year long movie series and ultimately, definitively, brings the Neon Genesis Evangelion series to an end.

So what in the name of fuck is going to happen? The sequel movies haven't been redubbed by the Netflix cast yet. Are they going to do the final movie with the Netflix cast and leave the first three movies untouched? Are they gonna dub over the first three movies in the lead-up to the final one and have the Netflix cast ostensibly become the definitive English voice cast?

Finally, the final movie is announced and details start to drop about the localisation.

Amazon Prime Video is releasing the movie. The voice director for 3.33 and the Netflix dub is doing the final movie.

EVERYONE FROM THE 90'S DUB IS COMING BACK.

Okay, caveat - not everyone. The woman who voiced Ritsuko Akagi retired in 2004, and some of the VAs have died since. They also replace a bunch of the Funimation cast with brand new actors for some reason.

But I'm talking Spike Spencer, Tiffany Grant, Allison Keith and Jason Swasey - those four original voices who'd gone from the original show to this final movie.

I'm talking Amanda Winn-Lee, the original VA for Rei Ayanami, who hadn't voice-acted in years. I'm talking Jason C. Lee as Aoba. Brett Weaver as Toji Suzuhara was just showing off at that point.

They didn't get *everyone*, but you've gotta understand that the people they got back were huge. It's like if they got the original voice of Skeletor to be Skeletor in a revival of Masters of the Universe. It's like if they had a cameo from Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in Doctor Sleep. And the other cast, like Aoba and fucking Toji, are like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It fucking owned.

The worst part is that I didn't even realise it was Rei's original voice until the end credits. I just fell into the rhythm of the movie and pogged at the credits, though hearing Aoba for the first time I was like "wait holy shit, did they get him too?!".

I don't support Amazon, but I've gotta say that the dub of that final movie was a Hail Mary. Clunky localiser aside, it was a fantastic movie in general and I really appreciated that Spike and the other long-standing VAs got to finish out the series. Again, these guys had been with the franchise for over 20 years at this point. It was a really good feeling.

#neon genesis evangelion #evangelion

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otakusmart · 1 year

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How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Season 2: Release Date and Details

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Season 2 is almost here. Based on a light novel of the same name, the series' first season came out on July 4, 2021, and was a hit among anime fans. Later, it was announced that the anime would be receiving a second season, which started airing on January 9, 2022. The anime is animated by JC Staff, a reputable studio that has produced several popular anime series like Danmachi, Food Wars, and Edens Zero. Takashi Watanabe directs the anime series, and Gō Zappa writes the script alongside Hiroshi Ōnogi. Akiyuki Tateyama is responsible for the music composition, and Mai Otsuka designed the characters.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom season 2: release date

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Season 2 will run from January 9 to April 3, 2023, with 13 episodes that will air every Sunday at 1:30 AM JST. How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Season 2 is set to be an exciting continuation of the anime series, and fans can't wait to see how Kazuya Souma will continue to rebuild the kingdom in the upcoming episodes. The TV anime series will be licensed by Funimation and available for streaming on its OTT platform. While there is no official confirmation for the English dub, it is expected to be announced soon.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom season 2: plot

Once an ordinary citizen of our world, Kazuya Souma suddenly found himself in a completely different realm. He was quickly hailed as a hero with a daunting task: to save an entire kingdom from impending doom. But Kazuya's approach to heroism was different from what anyone had in mind. Instead of leading troops into battle and spilling blood on the battlefield, he sought to use his intelligence, strategy, and modern-day knowledge to revolutionize the kingdom and bring about lasting peace. The people of this new world were skeptical at first. Still, as they witnessed the incredible advancements that Kazuya's unconventional methods brought about, they began to see that perhaps there was another way to save their beloved land. And as Kazuya continued to work tirelessly, they realized he might be the hero they needed. He gathers talented people from across the country to help get the country back on track. He uses knowledge from his past life to improve the country's economic situation and takes down those with corrupt intentions. Read the full article

#HowaRealistHeroRebuilttheKingdomseason2 #HowaRealistHeroRebuilttheKingdomseason2releasedate

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mangamanhwaorg · 1 year

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Bungo Stray Dogs Season 4 Anime Reveals Cast

The staff of the fourth anime season based on Kafka Asagiri and Sango Harukawa's Bungo Stray Dogs manga revealed on Tuesday three returning cast members for younger versions of characters. The staff also revealed a visual for the fourth season's first episode, which is based on "The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency," the series' third light novel volume. Manga Manhwa News

The new season premiered on Wednesday on the TOKYO MX channel, and it is also running on WOWOW, Sun TV, TV Aichi, KBS Kyoto, and BS11. The anime is streaming on the dAnime Store in Japan at the same time as Tokyo MX, and subsequently on other services in Japan. Crunchyroll is streaming the anime as it airs in Japan.

New cast members include:

Akio Ohtsuka as Genichirō Fukuchi

Makoto Koichi as Teruko Ōkura

Takehito Koyasu as Nikolai G

Takeshi Kusao as Mushitarō Oguri

Yuuki Kaji as Saigiku Jōno

Yōhei Azakami as Tecchō Suehiro

Shōya Chiba as Sigma

The returning main staff includes director Takuya Igarashi, series script supervisor and writer Yoji Enokido, character designer and chief animation director Nobuhiro Arai, and the animation studio BONES. The main cast members Yūto Uemura (Atsushi Nakajima), Mamoru Miyano (Osamu Dazai), Sumire Morohoshi (Kyōka Izumi), Kensho Ono (Ryūnosuke Akutagawa), and Kishō Taniyama (Chūya Nakahara) are also returning.

SCREEN mode perform the opening theme song "True Story." Luck Life perform the ending song "Shirushi/°C."

The first television anime adaptation aired from April to June 2016, and Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired in Japan. The anime's second 12-episode series aired from October to December 2016, and Crunchyroll again streamed the series as it aired. Funimation and Crunchyroll released the series on home video with an English dub. The anime's third season premiered in April 2019, and Crunchyroll and Funimation both streamed the season.

An anime film titled Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple opened in Japan in March 2018. Crunchyroll began streaming the film in September 2018, and Funimation began streaming the film in June 2019.

Yen Press is publishing the manga and novel series in English. The manga launched in Kadokawa's Young Ace magazine in December 2012 and is ongoing.

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jelilimic · 2 years

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marshmallowgoop · 2 months

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dereksmcgrath · 2 years

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On today’s stream, a live-reading of Chapter 3 of the new manga series Ginka and Glüna–or, is the title Ginka and Luna? We’ll get to that…

A recording from YouTube is above. Read along as well: an initial script for today’s stream is below.

An updated transcript will be shared later.

Intro

Let’s get started. Today is September 25, 2022. This is Sunday Morning Manga. I am Derek S. McGrath, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m here every Sunday, 11 AM EDT on Twitch and YouTube. You can read my writing on Tumblr and WordPress, @dereksmcgrath, and email me at [email protected].

If you like what you’re hearing, consider a monetary contribution. Putting together this stream takes a bit of work, and your tips help pay down costs for setup and subscriptions. You can tip me Ko-Fi, ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath. Thank you for your consideration.

Today’s Manga

On today’s stream, a live-reading of Chapter 3 of the new manga series Ginka and Glüna–or, is the title Ginka and Luna? We’ll get to that point in a little bit–so if you would like to read along, open up the chapter on the Viz web site.

Accessibility and Links

Links to this chapter and other content from today’s stream are available on my web site, dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com. There’s also a script for today’s stream and all images–without a transcript to the live-react, because it’s live and it’s not transcribed yet. If you have recommendations for how I can add live-captions to these livestreams and more quickly add captions to the YouTube recordings, please email me at [email protected].

#JustAMeeting

With that out of the way, let’s start with a postscript, continuing conversations that started on this livestream in previous weeks.

And we’re back to my Labor Day weekend discussion–the one that only partially recorded. If you would like to read my earlier thoughts on why unions are necessary in both education and the animation industry, you can find the script to that incomplete livestream on my WordPress, dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com.

As I have said about the value of unions in education and animation already, I’ll try not to repeat myself–and turn to recent developments.

As many of you anime fans know, the final season of Mob Psycho 100 and its English-language localization and dub from Crunchyroll has hit a major roadblock. I’ll try to summarize this as concisely as possible, so please forgive me if anything I say is not as accurate as it should be–you can read more about this situation at Kotaku.

But what happened is this: Kyle McCarley, the English actor who provides the voice of the titular Mob, put out a YouTube video announcing he probably wasn’t going to be brought into the final season, due to a proposal he made to Crunchyroll. At this time, the Mob Psycho 100 dub is not a union dub; McCarley is doing union work. He was willing to do this non-union work if Crunchyroll would agree to a meeting to discuss the potential of someday making their dubs union work. That’s a whole lot of caveats there–”agree to a meeting to discuss.” It was just to have a meeting to discuss the idea. It’s the difference between committing to eating at a certain restaurant and actually eating at that restaurant: you’re not agreeing to anything, you are just discussing the option. Crunchyroll refused but, according to McCarley’s video, had not said they were not casting him again.

That is, until much later in the day when Crunchyroll put out their statement, announcing that, to proceed with near-same day premieres of the original Japanese and the dubbed English releases, they would coordinate work out of their Dallas (Funimation) branch–which would require re-casting of some roles–not naming McCarley’s role as Mob, but now making that plural as opposed to one role.

Look, full disclosure, it’s not like I don’t have criticisms of Crunchyroll.

I think the merger with Funimation is not helping customers, after the merger Crunchyroll put more content that was typically free with commercials now behind paywalls.

And, sour grapes on my part, I’ve reached out twice for positions at Crunchyroll–one time reaching out to someone who was actively looking for people like me, and they never replied back despite, I think, my suitability for the position, and the second time a formal application to their job site, where they couldn’t bother to reply that I didn’t get the job, leaving it to me to find out with a random tweet by the new hiree announcing they got the job–which, honestly, looking at their resume, they were so better suited for the position than I would have been.

And extrapolating from my personal experience applying at Crunchyroll anything about what the actors are going through is silly: I wasn’t auditioning for an acting role, it would be like comparing how a candidate for a position on the board of directors at a fast food chain is treated compared to someone who is applying to be the cashier–and not to disparage cashiers, but I’m the cashier in this equation compared to the voice actor.

But even as it’s silly for me to extrapolate from my personal experience to remark about McCarley’s treatment–sorry, I do see a connection. And it goes back to what I wrote during Labor Day weekend earlier this month: you can’t sit here acting like unionization within animation is not important, just as, for my main line of work, unionization in education is just as important. And it’s my experiences seeing how poorly people working in education get treated that has me cheering on McCarley.

Let me explain where I’m coming from. I teach rhetoric. I have worked in marketing. I have been a social media manager. And all of those give me a mostly unique combination of skills to evaluate how Crunchyroll is screwing this up, and how McCarley is a master class in rhetoric that is going to appeal to fans like me who, sorry, have gotten screwed over by corporations and bosses who refuse to just be honest and direct with employees, especially in academia. I would say more about all of that, as pertains to why McCarley’s situation and my own situation should reinforce why you should support unions not only in animation and acting but also in education–but this is a livestream primarily about Japanese comics and related content, so I’ll tell my “why you should support unions over universities and academic corporations” another time.

Let’s go through those three job titles I just said–I teach rhetoric, I have worked in marketing, I have been a social media manager. Let’s go through these three jobs as pertains to this McCarley/Crunchyroll/Mob fiasco.

Job one, rhetoric: McCarley is giving a masterclass on the three main aspects of rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos–in other words, logic, ethics, and appeals to emotion. Go watch his video again. He lays out the logic–it’s just a meeting, if you do the meeting, then you get to keep this actor popular with the fans who are used to his voice in this role, the meeting has no promise attached to form a union it’s just a meeting. And that phrase, “Just a meeting,” got trending on social media. McCarley and the fans are killing it at getting the appeal of the fans on their side. That is tapping into the ethics: you owe people a fair wage, and the trade-off is just a meeting–it would be unethical to refuse the meeting. And it’s appealing to fans’ emotions: they love Mob, and McCarley is tapping into that love to appeal to their good feelings around that show: you like Mob, you like what is familiar, you want to keep the people in those roles being paid fairly with union benefits and protections, so you should want just a meeting. Whether that will matter, when people are going to turn to Crunchyroll for legal access to anime, that is dubbed and subbed well, remains to be seen.

But, onto jobs two and three, marketing and social media manager…Oh, boy, Crunchyroll stepped in it here. How do you announce your decision to potentially recast characters so soon after McCarley put out his video? I know waiting until the episode premieres to reveal a new voice would also be a problem, and you’re hoping people will just forget that happened between now and the new episode premiere–but I would argue that, as unethical and cynical as this is, I would keep up the mystery to the last minute, about whether McCarley is back in the role or not, because either way, Crunchyroll would win at this.

Let’s say you keep McCarley–you say nothing about that, let people watch the new episode, boom, you hear him, the fans cheer, all is good.

Or, you re-cast Mob, don’t rehire McCarley, people don’t know this. This hinged on whether McCarley comes out and says he’s not playing Mob, that it’s official–but, maybe people still doubt that’s really true, maybe he can’t tell the truth, maybe there’s a last-minute surprise. Crunchyroll stays quiet, they put out no English-language trailer, they are forcing people to tune in for the premiere. People tune in for the premiere–and are surprised to hear the new actor, they try not to get upset with the scab, they get upset with Crunchyroll instead–but hey, Crunchyroll, people already paid their subscriptions to hear this, they are talking about you and your show, it’s publicity, you don’t care, you got their subscriptions, you got their money, you aren’t giving it back, yay capitalism. I mean, come on, this is basic marketing: “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” especially when the yearly subscriptions are non-refundable.

I’ll wrap up this topic with this point. As I said, I have a long story about my own involvement with certain universities and academic corporations that were just being trashy. Not every corporation is trash. But my experiences working for them almost always have me sympathizing with the labor more than the bosses. So, it is really hard for me not to look at what Kyle McCarley and numerous actors in animation and especially anime dubbing go through and not take their side on this issue. I say this loudly: it’s just a meeting Crunchyroll–so schedule one.

But that doesn’t address what you can do. Should you stop subscribing to Crunchyroll? If you think that will help, I bet seeing their subscription numbers nosedive would help–if and only if you included a politely but sternly worded message why you are unsubscribing, that you want actors paid well, and that you will pay those actors directly in their autographs, Cameo accounts, convention appearances, and s on. I have seen people advocate for filing troubleshooting complaints and replies to social media accounts–which, I understand that inclination, but that seems like a gut reaction with little benefit: the reports will be read by staff and social media managers, not Crunchyroll decision makers, not if those employees don’t complain up the chain of command to their bosses.

What do I think you should do? Crunchyroll has email addresses for information about press, company information, and partnerships: write to [email protected] and [email protected], explain that you are a subscriber–and that you want your money going to companies that are pro-union, pro-actors, pro-safe remote recording options, pro-benefits, pro-royalties, pro-reasonable pay for reasonable hours, and that you will consider what Crunchyroll does next before you ever consider renewing with them, watching with them, reading their site, or buying from them. Be polite, be steadfast–and for the love of God, do not send threats, for Christ’s sake, you know that shit doesn’t work and just puts you in trouble, get your head out of your ass.

Again, #JustAMeeting.

About Today’s Manga

With that serious stuff out of the way, time to take a manga seriously. This is the live-reaction to Chapter 3 of the new manga, Ginka and Glüna–which, yeah, last week, I mispronounced it.

So much for reading comprehension on my part: the translation note said how to pronounce it: it’s “Luna,” with a silent “G.” I admit I am not familiar enough with the original Japanese, which in Roman lettering spells her name as “Ryuna,” so I imagine there is both a pun I’m missing (seeing as the Moon is prominent when we first meet Glüna), and a desire to create near-alliteration or near-identical characters in Ginka and Glüna’s names.

But for now, why don’t you pull up the new chapter now at the Viz web site, viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/ginka-and-gluna–that’s “G-L-U-N-A.”

So, what is this series about? The summary on the Viz web site is as follows:

“A wannabe magician meets a magical snowman that changes her life!”

…I think she’s pretty adept with magic for a wannabe, but what do I know.

Let’s go into more detail about the plot and who are main characters are:

We are first introduced to Glüna, a young orphaned girl, living alone on a frozen mountain-top. Her only companion: a magic spell book that she is reading. Her evening reading is interrupted by someone breaking into her cabin: it’s a walking, talking snowman! This is Ginka, a powerful magician who lost his body and has put his soul inside the body of the snowman that Glüna built outside–and now he’s eating her food and has broken down her door. To pay her back for her kindness–and the lost food and door–Ginka offers to train her in magic so that she can escape this frozen mountain, see the world–and maybe help Ginka reclaim his lost body and get out of this walking melting snow body.

The series is written and illustrated by Shinpei Watanabe. The Unofficial Weekly Shonen Jump Twitter account says that Watanabe has published other works under other names: these works include Fumetsu Reikon Honebi-chan and Tsugimagi no Makkai, both for Jump Giga. They also wrote Peko Peko no Yamai in Jump. And–this really surprised me–they were an assistant to Kei Kamiki on Magu-chan: God of Destruction, which…God, that is a good series to work on. I loved reading Magu-chan, I already thoroughly enjoyed Ginka and Glüna after just its first chapter, I saw similarities to Magu-chan early on–more on that in a moment. So, learning they were Kamiki’s assistant just makes me more enthusiastic about this series!

I had only read Chapter 1 before I announced last weekend that this series would be the next manga chapter live-reaction–because the first chapter was just that good. At 50-plus pages, it accomplishes what I love in a good pilot chapter, had the kind of character archetypes that I find appealing, reinforced how you can’t keep ignoring girl and women characters despite preconceptions about gender in the shonen genre–and it used one of the plot devices I hate the most, and it used it in a way that makes this story better!

I already summarized the plot that Chapter 1 covers–but it is those minor details that make the character archetypes so appealing. I already said that Watanabe was an assistant on Magu-chan, and, yeah, even before I knew that, it was hard not to see similarities between the series–not in artwork, but in the plot and the characters.

Both series are about young girls who encounter otherworldly creatures–and, hardly shocked by what they find, take it in stride, to the point that you wonder whether these characters are aware how bizarre this all is. The difference is that the world of Ginka and Glüna is a fantasy world, full of talking animals, souls inhabiting inanimate snowmen and dead dragons, spell books, and magicians.

And another difference owes to the personalities of our main heroines. Magu-chan featured Ruru, who was, not exactly passive, but someone who goes with the flow. In contrast, Glüna is an absolute maniac, full of potential contradictions that, hardly making for a poorly defined character, use those contrasts to enhance her character, and allow more opportunities to give her different types of stories. Glüna is a quick study when it comes to reading spell books and performing magic–but she’s also stubborn and headstrong. She doesn’t take no for an answer, but once someone explains where they are coming from, she is inclined to help them out while still holding onto her own set of ethics. She is as much a bookworm as she is someone willing to slice someone in the head with an axe. Basically, she’s Maka Albarn from Soul Eater–which, if there’s a character in shonen that you want your new shonen protagonist to be, it’s not a bad character model to use as inspiration. That’s not at all to say that Glüna is as nerdy as Maka–if anything, she’s more a Leroy Jenkins kind of a character–but that combination of smarts and combat skill helps satisfy readers wanting a character who is just as intellectual as she is willing to throw hands.

Let me give an example from Chapter 1 to show just how stubborn and smart Glüna is, and how this helps develop the rather two-dimensional Ginka more. In Chapter 1, we get a timeskip–

I know, I’ve said a million times that I despise timeskips in storytelling: they are typically a lazy way for an author to skip past a twist, then put that twist into a flashback, by which point your audience guessed the twist, which, if it’s underwhelming, is going to dull the audience, or is so obvious that you might as well have just told the story in chronological order and let the surprise of that twist shock your audience all at once rather than draining it of its potential energy over chapter upon chapter without just revealing it (see also how long it took to reveal Dabi’s secret in My Hero Academia).

This timeskip just works. We don’t want to sit through Glüna’s five years of training under Ginka: we want them to head out on their adventure! Second, Watanabe is able to have the best of all options with this choice. First, it’s in the first chapter, so we haven’t gotten so used to Glüna that having her transform from a little girl to a young woman isn’t as jarring–even though I do miss the adorable design to young Glüna, although young adult Glüna has a cool costume at least. Second, as the first chapter, even with 50 pages, we do need to pick up the pace, and chapter after chapter of Glüna learning all the basics of magic would get boring. Finally, as is more apparent in Chapter 2, it’s not as if Glüna doesn’t have more magic to learn, and nothing stops Watanabe from giving us flashbacks to younger Glüna learning magic under Ginka so that we see those first times she learned it, and how that magic actually tied into some deeper lesson she learned as a child, that then we see her putting into practice as an adult. (If only Naruto took more of this approach–because that timeskip was still annoying. If anything, the timeskip here is more like One Piece: we just want the character to be more powerful when they show up again, so just do that.)

But there’s another reason we get this timeskip–and it’s to develop the other titular character, Ginka–which, Lordy, he needs that that development. Whereas Glüna has personality in speech, action, and design as soon as she shows up, Ginka is harder to make work. Glüna starts as this pint-sized girl who still can swing an axe and conjure magic: her small frame and youthfulness belies her combat potential and advanced training in magic.

Ginka, however, just looks like Bayman from Big Hero 6, and the humor to his personality and design are harder to pull off in visual images, not without some added audio to it.

Ginka inhabits the body of a snowman. The comedic potential is that he is going to have a voice and mannerism of an old man despite this cutesy design. That gag can work–but, again, it is harder in a silent medium like a comic, and it is hard when Ginka, while capable of mobility, doesn’t really get to do much physical acting panel to panel.

Watanabe made a design choice that is a challenge to pull off, and it’s a little frustrating given where they previously worked. As I said, they were an assistant on Magu-chan–which has a similar conceit, where the big bad god Magu-chan is stuck in this tiny shriveled body, Yes, the later visual comics on YouTube gave him a very deep voice, but just his one eyeball was enough to demonstrate his anger at not being taken seriously, his lofty words but small size communicated the humor of contrasts that this little guy was so Napoleonic in his goals, and his immense godly power despite his small size made him a threat you risk underestimating.

If anything, it would be easier to get the gag to work if it was like, say, Alphonse in Fullmetal Alchemist, who is this big suit of armor but acts like a little kid because he is physically still young, or Guildenstern in Servamp, who is in a cute whale mascot costume–but swears like a sailor and is ready to throw down against other vampires. And even then, both of those characters were still limited in the comics: I only get so much joy out of Alphonse and Guildenstern because I listened to the Funimation/Crunchyroll dubs (#JUSTAMEETING, CRUNCHYROLL…) where you get to hear Aaron Dismuke, Maxey Whitehead, and Sonny Strait sounding so unlike what you see on screen as Alphonse and Guildenstern. Hell, I just brought up Sonny Strait–that voice should not come out of a tiny chibi creature like Ragnarok in Soul Eater–and yet, here we are.

But I got off-topic. The point is, Ginka is not working by his design alone in Chapter 1. So, Watanabe has to add some pathos to him. In Chapter 1, we get the five-year timeskip. Ginka says he has taught all he can to Glüna, she is now a full-fledged magician–and since she wanted to leave this mountain, she better go ahead and do so, as he turns his back on her and walks back to the snow. She’s confused. For how smart Glüna is with magic, we see that she is not good at understanding Ginka’s feelings–and not just because he is an unmovable smiley snowman face. And it leads to this hilarious seen where, so mortified by Ginka’s refusal to travel with her, she sulks…by drowning herself upside down in a ice hole in the frozen lake. (She’s magic, she’s fine, she’s not trying to kill herself.)

It takes one of the talking reindeer in the mountains to explain–and here we get exposition, which, yeah, if we’re going to sit through this, Chapter 1 is a good enough spot. (How does this reindeer know all of this? …I don’t care, that’s how well this works, it’s a magic reindeer telling her, you just go with this.) The reindeer takes Glüna to a cave, where she can sense so much magic coming off of it. Inside the cave is an entire other world, a warped space of time and physical material–you can even see the remnants of a modern airplane in it. (YOU SEE THAT, FIRE FORCE, THIS IS HOW YOU DO YOUR RIDICULOUS POST-APOCALYPTIC TWIST, NOT WAITING 200+ WEEKLY CHAPTERS FOR A SURPRISE ENDING THAT IS JUST, WHOOPS, SOUL EATER PREQUEL, YOU NUTS.) In this cave, the reindeer explains, Ginka was in mortal combat with another magician. The cave itself contains memories of that battle, which Glüna re-experiences–which, I got to hand it to Watanabe, they know how to use a visual medium to justify how a character would have a flashback to something they themselves would not have seen, so Glüna just witnessing that fight through the magic in the cave’s memories–that works great. Glüna sees Ginka’s soul leave his body–and his opponent shatter his body, scattering its pieces.

The reindeer concludes that Ginka lacks enough magic to hold his soul to anything but this snowman, the snow of these mountains retaining enough residual magic, which will melt if he leaves.

That is great. We see Glüna processing all of this, too stunned to know what to do…

…until she knows what to do. Like, we flip from one page to the next, and she is suddenly bright eyes, a big smile, and a loud voice, shouting, “Oh, I know how to fix this–I’m a freaking magician!”

So, here, the timeskip works, because it is Chapter 1, and we want to get on with the pace of the story. In any other story, I would be furious. This is such trolling. But it’s Chapter 1. This is your pilot. You can do this! And it works! And it’s hilarious! We go from this super-schmaltzy discussion that, yeah, it works, it is compelling, it is emotional without being baseless–you can think through this logically and realize, yeah, that sucks for Ginka, and now Glüna has this difficult choice to make. But Glüna reminds you what kind of story you are reading: she’s a freaking magician, she knows this stuff frontwards and backwards, she can just make it so that Ginka won’t melt! That is incredible!

With that, she dashes, barefoot over snow–so powerful that Watanabe draws her with sketchy cross-thatching to indicate her speed, little craters forming where she leaps, hair blown back, white demonic eyes before she bounds up the mountain to where Ginka is–and leaps from the mountaintop to the top of the sky, before spiking Ginka down into the ground like a football, demolishing his snowman body.

…Whatever you are visualizing from what I’m describing, is probably not good enough. Seriously, pick up Chapter 1. Look at that art. Look at the angles, the mix of “above it all” and “worm’s all view” angles deployed, the ability to represent the toss, the impact, the running, the spiking.

The sun comes up. Ginka melts–and with a Jack Frost blow of cold air, Glüna reforms Ginka into his snowman form, as Ginka even does a flip forward and a one-fist into the air motion like he’s Super Mario. This artwork–man, it is just so good. How was Glüna even able to reform him? She says she understands the winter weather up here, so she just re-created the atmospheric conditions with magic. Like…she’s smart. I know this sounds like lowering expectations for a shonen protagonist, but do you understand how important it is to see a character actually being smart about something, and then making that character a young girl, a young woman, in that role? And it’s all from her training and observation that she saved Ginka. That works.

And with that, Ginka and Glüna begin their exploration of the world, to reclaim Ginka’s lost body.

Live-Reaction

Chapter 1 introduces all you need to know with a pretty brisk pace for 50+ pages, and it had me excited to check out what was coming up next. So, let’s stop holding off for so long and get to it: this is Chapter 3 of Ginka and Glüna. Read along to my live-reaction by visiting the Viz web site, viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/ginka-and-gluna–that’s “G-L-U-N-A.”

[A TRANSCRIPT OF THE LIVE-REACTION WILL BE PROVIDED HERE]

Contact (and Hire) Me!

Thanks for listening to this week’s stream of Sunday Morning Manga! Did you enjoy this new chapter of Ginka and Glüna? Please share your remarks in the comments section–I will respond to whichever ones I can.

And if you did like what you heard, then all I can say is: hire me! Borrowing a line from The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal, this is not only something I want to do, I consider it a job. I work in education: I run the American Literature I livestream Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 AM EDT on YouTube and Twitch, I’ve organized conferences, I’ve published on literature, films, and comics. I am currently seeking work in teaching, copyediting, research assistance, writing, or conference organizing. Job leads are welcome: please email them to [email protected].

And Ko-Fi tips are appreciated: feel free to kick in a few bucks at my Ko-Fi–the web address is ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath–no spaces or periods or underscores in my name.

Next Time: Halloween Month!

And thanks again for joining this stream, and if all works on my end, I will now direct you to another stream, the Black Comics Chat on Twitch.

I’ll be back next Sunday for another Morning Manga edition, where we enter October–and some special editions of the livestream. All through October, in addition to the live-reaction to a new manga chapter, I will talk about spooky works in comics and animation, not just out of Japan but from around the world.

One of these spooky works is a request from a contributor to my Ko-fi account, Ellak Roach, who asked me to talk about the American/European-produced animated film compilation about the works of Edgar Allan Poe: this is Extraordinary Tales--which you can watch free and legally online at Amazon Freevee (formerly known as IMDB TV).

If you have a request of something for me to talk about in the Sunday livestream, drop me a contribution in the Ko-fi tip jar–$1 minimum–and if it’s something I’m comfortable covering here and is pretty much the same kind of content warnings as anything else I cover here, I’ll consider it or talk with you until we find something I’m up for talking about. Halloween-themed suggestions are strongly encouraged–so make sure to get your $1 contributions in before next week if you want your Halloween content included in the livestream.

Next Live-Reaction: Witch Watch!

In addition to looking at the Edgar Allan Poe Extraordinary Tales film, there will be a live-reaction to a new manga chapter–and this one is also appropriately Halloween-esque, at least, if the name is anything to go by. I’ll be talking about Chapter 79 of Kenta Shinohara's Witch Watch!

Until next Sunday, I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.

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Series and Films Discussed

Ginka & Glüna

Mob Psycho 100 (#JustAMeeting)

Magu-chan: God of Destruction