Doc & Shadon romp, stomp, and spray atomic breath all over the place on this episode that’s all about Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s 2016 kaiju powerhouse, Shin Godzilla! We discuss the film’s seething hatred of bureaucracy, ability to put the viewer into ground zero of a disaster, fantastic editing and shot composition, driven core cast, and more!
Doc & Shadon discuss Suncoast Video shelf constant, Video Girl Ai. Is this 1992 OAV sex comedy meets sci-fi romance worth revisiting 30 years later? Listen in and find out as we chat about the show’s themes, characters, comedy and place in anime history. And answer your questions!
After some delays, we’re back to talk about Spike Jonze’ film “Her” from 2013! Shadon enjoyed this film back when it was released, but he wanted to revisit it now, almost a decade later, to see how it held up. We discuss the film’s relevance in 2022, its core message about learning how to love others well, if anything about it would be made differently in 2022, its depiction of societal change in the wake of radical new technology, if the film sufficiently establishes Samantha’s humanity, which app we’d like to fall in love with, and much more!
Music: Foreigner “I Want To Know What Love Is” Michael Kelly “Calicomp 1.1 Shutdown”
Sources I Wanted To Read But Didn’t: Aleksić, Jana. “Defense of Humanity: Defense of Personality: Aesthetic Rethinking of the Concept of Body in the Film Her by Spike Jonze.” Kultura (Belgrade, Serbia), no. 167, 2020, pp. 266–87, https://doi.org/10.5937/kultura2067266A.
Jagoe, Eva-Lynn. “Depersonalized Intimacy: The Cases of Sherry Turkle and Spike Jonze.” English Studies in Canada, vol. 42, no. 1, Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, 2016, pp. 155–73, https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.2016.0004.
Jollimore, Troy. “‘This Endless Space between the Words’: The Limits of Love in Spike Jonze’s Her.” Midwest Studies In Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell), vol. 39, no. 1, Sept. 2015, pp. 120–43. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.bunchproxy.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/misp.12039.
KIYCI, Hale. “Spike Jonze’s Her: How Transhumanism Turns into a Control Mechanism under the Name of Love.” Journal of the Faculty of Letters, vol. 12, no. 23, Jan. 2022, pp. 121–38. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.bunchproxy.idm.oclc.org/10.33207/trkede.954659.
We discuss Mamoru Hosoda’s third original film and final Madhouse production, 2012’s “Wolf Children.” When Doc first watched it, it was one of his favorites. After watching/rewatching all of Hosoda’s work n the lead up to this podcast, does he still feel the same way? Shadon has never seen the film before. What does he think of it? Click play and find out!
Lot of ground covered in our discussion, including: production details, both the critical and also the academic/scholarly response to the film then and now, different cultural perspectives on single-motherhood, queer readings of wolfhood, “let’s get back to nature” and, of course, our emotional responses to the movie. And much more!
We are discussing one of the best films, Korean or otherwise, made in recent years, Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning.” In fact, this is Doc’s favorite movie! “Burning” is an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story, “Barn Burning” (itself an adaptation of sorts of William Faulkner’s short story of the same name) and features incredible performances from Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo, and Stephen Yeun.
There is a lot of ground to try to cover in this discussion. We tackle the movie’s focus on class and wealth divides, what it says about creative individuals and the creative process, reality vs unreality of certain elements of the film and what those possible conclusions mean for the film as a whole as well as its individual elements, and so so much more. All of this discussion is near, very very near…all you have to do is press play!
Doc & Shadon saddle up to bring you all a mammoth sixty billion double-dollar-sized helping of podcast about one of our all-time favorite anime: Trigun! This show was an important one for both of us in the early, formative years of our anime fandom. Perhaps surprisingly, we both found that, not only does it hold up (in terms of what we come to anime for) but it has some depths we did not plumb when we were in our teens and twenties.
We cover a ton of topics in this show, including: a character analysis of Vash The Stampede, utilitarian/consequentialist morality vs deontic/non-consequentialist morality, how the show drops the ball with its female cast, the anime’s tonal shift, Christian symbolism, comparison of Trigun to other media, favorite gags, how many Gung-ho Guns can you name, and so much more!
For you, it was the most important podcast of your life, for us…it was Tuesday.
Welcome back, friends, to Warui Deshou, where this time we discuss the notorious 1994 fighting game film adaptation, Street Fighter: The Movie! While it can occasionally be charmingly camp, and Raul Julia’s performance is beyond reproach, much of the time the movie’s poor casting and writing leave us cringing and groaning. But, how would we adapt a fighting game story to the silver screen? What lessons can be learned from this one? From its troubled production? In addition to pondering these serious topics, Doc & Shadon have a good laugh at SF’s expense.
Production details and stories mentioned by Shadon are from this Guardian Piece
Join Doc & Shadon for a discussion on Studio Ghibli’s 2004 film adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 fantasy novel, Howl’s Moving Castle. After talking a bit about some creatives behind the film as well as its production, the hosts analyze the movie’s aesthetics, anti-war themes, metaphorical interpretations of the castle, differences from the novel, and, of course, its very abrupt ending.
We discuss Doc’s favorite John Woo film, 1989’s “The Killer”! Doc and Shadon talk favorite scenes, religious symbolism, heroic bloodshed as a genre, what to make of the Jenny character, and so much more!
Once upon a time, there was a man who died…then that man befriended another man, and they went on to do a Bad Anime Podcast which would one day cover…Princess Tutu! That’s right, Doc and Shadon are here to talk about ballet, meta-text, and weird animal-people. After lauding the folks who created this little gem, we answer a boatload of Discord & Twitter questions, discuss characters, themes and story structure, and do our best ‘If you like _____, you’ll like Princess Tutu.”
warui deshou 