Yes indeed, I shall be departing for Singapore first thing tommorow morning. Luckily, that means you can get this episode two days earlier! Huzzah!
It's almost half the length of our previous episode due to time constraints and the lack of any real big news in the anime world.
Shootin' The Breeze
For the most part, we discuss my upcoming trip to Singapore and Alex shares his experiences with both Singapore and Malaysia. We also discuss how Buddhist & Shinto Monks on the street asking for donations are NOT genuine and are just beggars in suits.
I also discuss "Shigeru Mizuki's Yokai" figurines that are for sale at the moment. I actually bought one the other day, it includes a Yokai figurine, a card describing that Yokai and little leaflet talking about Mizuki San's new DVD chronicling his revisit to New Guinea!
Wait a minute Mr Postman!
Our good chum Jake, whose an equally good sport, replies about our naughty little joke last week followed by a reply from David Lee, who pasted this link which details the upcoming Spring Anime Season for 2007. Seeing as the always great Anime Genesis is covering this, we just talk about the upcoming Mecha Titles.
Without a doubt Kissdum, Engage Planet is the Mecha Show that has us the most excited. The animation looks stunning and one of the deities of mecha design, Shoji Kawamori has returned to his Macross roots in mecha design and churned out some very impressive designs.
Idolmaster Xenoglossia on the other hand, seems to feature all the cliches that Alex hates. I mean, combining a property based off some cutesy idol game with Mecha!?
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
We are cautiously optimistic about Gainax's new Mecha Show. It has all the features of parody which might be fun, unless it really is just a run of the mill Mecha show.
Heroic Age
Probably the second most anticipated show for us. The animation and mecha look great, and it's mixed with Greek Mythology to boot! Alex probably won't watch it if that cute little critter in the trailer catches his eye though.
Kishin Taisen
is notable for the fact that pretty much ever deity in mecha creation has a hand in the mecha designs in this show. But the story scream cliche. There wasn't even a damn mecha in the trailer though! Each mecha represents one country in the world and Japan just had to chose a 14 year old boy and girl.
Benu, of Anime-Genesis fame whilst kindly offering some help, showed us this amusing picture of our "live news feed". Apparently, there's some pro wrestler called Hentai, thus he turned up in the feed!
WatcherAngel also sent us a reply about our 300 rant, our Rapeman review and probably one of the best questions we've been asked. The question being about what the exact difference between an "Oni" and "Youkai" is.
I stumble through a reply which I'm sure the great Obakemono project can say better than me! Suffice to say, that Youkai can be best termed as Mythological beasts, thus Oni would indeed fall under the category of Yokai.
On a sidenote, several Yokai are in fact related to Chinese beasts. Word of mouth and the "importation" of Buddhist brought some of the imagery of these critters to Japan, though the Japanese version naturally changed over the years. Oni is such a beast.
Review: Cyber City Oedo 808
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_City_Oedo
In my opinion, Kawajiri's best. The quintessential Cyberpunk Anime and a great example of the dying "Hard Cyberpunk genre." As you know, we are also avid Ghost In Shell fans, but as one reviewer said it best "Ghost in the Shell may be Cyber, Akira may be Punk. but when I think of cyberpunk, I immediately think of Cyber City OEDO 808.
An absolute classic which marks the "orgasm" of the age of OVAs.
Also check out the wonderful wonderful fanpage for Cyber City Oedo.
http://www.oedo.net
Wrapup
Well, we're both in a hurry, thus the completely non anime related music I tacked on at the end. I'm off to Singapore, so farewell my pretties!
