What do you think of the opening song to Death Parade? Have you seen the music video?

February 24, 2015

It's fantastic, my favorite opening animation in a long time. It makes me happy; at this point it's also a fun reminder that it's Friday.

My only complaint is that the song deserves to be cranked up and heard in crisp, clear quality and whatever mix they're using for the show brings it down to this soft, muted level that kinda wrecks the energy of it unless you turn your headphones up. I was really pleased the band released that music video so I can hear it with the proper levels - it's so much better when it's turned way up and there's real impact in the sound. Fix the levels on the OP, Madhouse!

Liked by: Anime GX Haley L Nasch Yamamoto ActionZero Branko Burcksen Glitter Felix Rose Bridges

What would you do with a Death Note?

February 24, 2015

Burn it.

Liked by: Anime GX Haley L Nasch Yamamoto Rose Bridges invalidname

most oscar bait movies are forgotten in six months. What has given Forest Gump its staying power?

February 24, 2015

Best Picture winners definitely are not forgotten in six months, and Forrest Gump won.

The film was an expensive, lavish handjob for conservative baby boomers. It lives on thanks to their undying love of handjobs (and endless cable repeats).

Liked by: Anime GX Paul Chapman KitKatAddiction Rose Bridges

In FMA brotherhood, did you find it weird that Mustang still had to pay the price for human transmutation even though he didn't willingly do it? Many of the human transmutations in the show had characters loose something that strongly represented them sort of as a punishment, but mustang was forced.

February 24, 2015

Yeah, it's almost like that metaphor is completely compromised when that happens and it's no longer a parallel for losing part of yourself to obsession; instead it's just a "rule" for this fantasy mechanic.

Liked by: Anime GX Rose Bridges

I think you were, at least once, a guest on "The Greatest Movie Ever" podcast. What other podcasts have you been in and/or have you ever been interviewed?

February 23, 2015

Yeah, I was very happy to be on Paul's show, which is great, and even happier to be asked back. I love doing that show.

I haven't been on too many podcasts - a few A3K shows back in the day, sometimes I'm on the Beta Male Experience as a panel guest. Rarely am I ever interviewed, but there was one relatively recently: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/animation-interviews-podcast/id791044110?mt=2

They were very kind to me. I don't get a lot of interview requests, but I'm always happy to accept them when they do pop up. Who doesn't like talking about themselves? NO ONE. NO ONE, THAT'S WHO.

Liked by: Haley L Anime GX Rose Bridges Paul Chapman

Where is that Jason demarco interview?

February 22, 2015

Currently it's a folder on my desktop marked ANNCAST. The file is DEMARCO01.WAV. Once I'm done editing and producing the show, adding the theme music, the disclaimer, the outro, the metadata, the timecodes and the frontpage herald text, it will be yours, although then the file will be named anncast218.mp3.

Next Friday, is what I'm saying.

Liked by: Haley L invalidname

Has there been moments where your family bug you about following religious traditions like going to church every Sunday? How do you deal with that?

February 22, 2015

My family isn't religious and didn't raise me with any religion at all - they were hippies, so the attitude was that they'd let me make up my own mind about it. They facilitated my exposure to various religions, but never encouraged (or discouraged) me to pick one.

So no.

Is this the toy just for you, Zac? http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=FIG-KAI-8950&page=top

February 22, 2015

Oh man. Those are so ugly. But I'll probably buy a few of them.

That reminded me of the (terrible) Fifth Element toys NECA released a while ago, which lead me to see if any of those were on eBay, a search that turned up this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/191488262285?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

...which I promptly purchased, so an indirect thank you, ask.fm stranger!

Now that you've seen Kaguya, which animated feature do you think will win the Oscar and which do you want to win?

February 22, 2015

What will probably win: How To Train Your Dragon 2, which could still lose to Big Hero 6 although Dreamworks outspent Disney on the FYC campaign by a fair margin. It's an open race.

What I'd like to win: Eh. Last year was not a great year for animated films. I want Kaguya to win just so Takahata has an Oscar, but not because I felt it was a particularly strong film.

Zac ... I just saw The Grand Budapest Hotel ... It was my first Wes Anderson flick ... I need more man ... hook me up ... Which ones are the best ?

February 21, 2015

He hasn't made that many films - you could just watch 'em all!

But if you're only interested in the best of his work, go in the order they were made: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.

Those are all brilliant. If you feel like seeing his lesser work, Bottle Rocket, The Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited aren't terrible but they're clearly lesser films.

Liked by: Rose Bridges Mel

Ever been to Sea World? Any opinions on that attraction?

February 20, 2015

Yeah, a while back, the one in San Diego. I didn't particularly care for it - a zoo where the animals are made to perform, even if they're happy (which, famously, they are not at Sea World) doesn't quite sit right with me. We saw some show with sea lions where they were like, wearing hats and overalls and shit. Fuck that.

I mean, in the wake of Blackfish I don't have any intention of going back there, but the place already creeped me out.

Liked by: Anime GX Rose Bridges Zach Logan

What about your favorite Ghibli films?

February 20, 2015

Getting a lot of these lately.

In order:

Princess Mononoke
Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Porco Rosso
Whisper of the Heart

Everything else is in an amorphous opinion ball of "it's alright".

The only one I actively dislike is Ponyo, and I'm pretty ambivalent toward Howl's Moving Castle. I'm gonna revisit Pom Poko and Only Yesterday soon, although in general Takahata's work leaves me shrugging. His stuff is alright.

Liked by: Manuel

What happened to ANNCast 215? It jumps straight from 214 to 216.

February 20, 2015

We must not speak of ANNCast 215.

Where did Funimation use the "trap" slur?

February 19, 2015

Earlier this morning, in an otherwise bland social media manager tweet about Hideyoshi from Baka and Test. They yanked it after a few people said "yo that's a slur, not cool" and reposted the tweet minus the word.

I give people a lot of leeway on the 'trap' thing - even 3 years ago people still used it regularly to refer to trans characters, and it was considered part of the normal otaku parlance, in spite of being an obvious slur from chan culture. As awareness of trans issues has permeated in the last 2-3 years, it became obvious that calling trans characters 'traps' was inappropriate, but not everyone has caught up on that. I had to instruct a few of my writers recently not to use it - I don't think any of these people have a transphobic bone in their body, but the word became one of those slang terms people started using without really thinking about it. So a "hey, we don't use that anymore" suffices. If they get up in your face for being a PC thug who's violating their free speech rights, hey, you just found out you can ignore that person's opinions and maybe hit the ol' block button.

Funi yanked it so good for them and it's not worth dwelling on.

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Which is better in your opinion: Kaguya or Wind Rises?

February 19, 2015

I personally felt The Wind Rises was a more engaging film. I talk about this plenty in the latest ANNCast.

What are your favorite Anime films?

February 19, 2015

Let's exclude Ghibli from this list, shall we?

In no particular order:

End of Evangelion
Adolescence of Utena
Redline
Rebuild of Evangelion (2.0 & 3.0 specifically)
Perfect Blue
Interstella 5555

There are a ton of also-rans I like a lot but I'm not sure I'd put them on a list of all-time favorites, like Akira, Paprika, the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy, etcetera.

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What are your favorite comedy films?

February 18, 2015

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
Hot Rod
O Brother, Where Art Thou
MacGruber
Anchorman
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Big Lebowski
Mean Girls
The Great Muppet Caper
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie

Liked by: Rose Bridges

Why is it that you seem to enjoy watching terrible films, yet always act like many mainstream Hollywood films, including Marvel movies, are hard to sit through?

February 18, 2015

Well, bad movies can be wildly entertaining. I can say I was dramatically more entertained watching Lucy, or R.O.T.O.R or Chopping Mall than I was watching, say, Transformers: Age of Extinction or Guardians of the Galaxy. Marvel movies in particular have a sameness to them that's turned them all into creative paste - they aren't bad, but they're all curiously uniform, and at their worst they're downright boring. Back when we were still in the early stages of the Iron Man franchise it felt kinda fresh, but after like 8 films and another dozen or so on the way, it doesn't feel fresh anymore, and after all that success they're not interested in taking any chances creatively. So the films all wind up looking and sounding eerily similar, and that sameness leads to a general malaise of boredom.

So yeah, I'll take someone's ambitious, creative failure over the output of a studio that has figured out an aesthetic and a formula that seems to guarantee $500m+ international grosses and won't stray from it.

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Do you like Oliver Stone's films?

February 18, 2015

Generally speaking, not really. I think I've seen every major release of his, and of those, Natural Born Killers, I guess Platoon and maybe Wall Street (and the sequel, which I didn't hate) are OK. The rest... I mean, I'm fascinated by Alexander just because it's such an enormously ambitious and expensive collection of bad decisions, and his biopics about Nixon and Jim Morrison are like obnoxious late 60s fever dreams with terrible makeup. He keeps trying to replicate the sensation of being on acid and it never works; he always makes it look like cheap B-movie camera tricks. Give it up, man.

He's an auteur whose work I'm not particularly fond of, but at least his films are unique and sometimes bad enough to be entertaining, so I'll always see whatever he makes.

Liked by: KitKatAddiction Rose Bridges

Have you seen Agent Carter yet?

February 18, 2015

Nah.

My tolerance for Marvel media ends at the tentpole movies, and even those I'm having a hard time caring much about now. I certainly don't care enough about Marvel stuff to sit through the myriad TV shows they have going. If there's some piece of relevant info from a TV series that I need to know for one of the movies, I'm sure it will be breathlessly recounted to me roughly 4,000 times before I see the film, during discussion of the film, and then for years afterward.

How good is your Japanese?

February 18, 2015

Awful. I used to be at maybe a 1st grade level, right after college, but I didn't continue my education in it and those skills are all rusty now.

Since you started the new ANNCast format I've started to get a little worried that you will no longer be having the special guest shows, such as, Super Manga Pals or Game Show Bros. Will you still be putting together those kinds of shows? Please tell me Deb is retiring from Podcasts too!

February 16, 2015

Let me allay those fears: we will absolutely continue doing our recurring theme episodes, like Super Manga Pals (which might return next month; Deb and I spoke about it recently) and Game Show Bros. (which will return during E3 week as always). Supernerds will return sooner than you might think.

The idea with the new format wasn't to take anything away, it was just to set listener expectations and make the schedule easier to produce - 3 shows a month, on this day, at this time. One interview, one series discussion, one "chat" show (which will be where the theme episodes are slotted in). It is never, ever my intention to box myself in with 'rules' about what kind of content I can or can't produce, and I would never sink a viable format just to make sure the (completely arbitrary) "rules" are strictly adhered to.

Thanks for listening!

With Haibane Renmei taking the spotlight on the next Anncast, any chance you guys would consider doing other Abe related shows like Texhnolyze? Would really love to hear your thoughts on this one.

February 16, 2015

Never say never, I suppose, but the day I agree to sit through Texhnolyze again is a long way off.

Rewatching Haibane Renmei made me realize I'm just not that big a fan of ABe. His stuff is alright.

How do you personally feel about all those rubber Bat nips, crotch, and butt shots in the infamous Batman & Robin film?

February 16, 2015

They're great for a "joel schumacher is obsessed with nipples" supercut. Watch his version of the Phantom of the Opera - all the statues have erect nips and defined crotches.

Do you have an professional journalism education?

February 16, 2015

I don't have a degree in journalism, but I took 3 years worth of courses in college. It was easier to complete a minor in East Asian Studies due to all the Japanese courses I took, so I went with that, but Journalism would've been my minor had I not.

Zac Bertschy

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