Geek Addicts - Episode 39: Discusing The Early Days Of Watching Anime!

[00:00:00] The following is a GNC Podcast Production. Welcome to Geek Addicts, a pop culture podcast. Hello everybody and welcome back to... Well, I've already screwed it up. Welcome back to Geek Addicts, the pop culture podcast where we get up stupid literally

[00:00:52] in the morning to watch one episode of our favorite anime only to find out that the network did not release the episodes in order. I am Bill and this is Matt. How you doing, Matt? I'm doing well as well as I can. I'm a hungry boy.

[00:01:07] I want some food. I'm very tired and I've already gone through four beers in the process of our recordings tonight. So I'm very loose and very happy, I guess that's the best way to put it. That's a good thing.

[00:01:24] So I mentioned off cam at the time of this recording, it's going to be an interesting weekend. Me and Alex are going to our first convention of the year tomorrow. Cool. That should be fun. It's kind of... Wait, didn't she go to Anime Boston?

[00:01:43] So she went to Anime Boston. I did not. I guess that was technically this year. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, it was. Forget what I said. Anyways, yeah, we're going to Kineticon tomorrow. Although at the time when this comes out, it'll already have passed by a couple weeks. So yeah.

[00:02:09] But yeah, we're doing that. I don't know what is in store because Kineticon is kind of a... It's like an everything kind of convention. I think it's a little bit of gaming, a little bit of anime, some comics, some movies.

[00:02:26] It's kind of just general pop culture, kind of like this podcast. Yeah. What's funny is I was talking about it on a Discord server and one of the other members of the server had asked me what the convention was about and I was at

[00:02:40] work so I couldn't respond right away and our good buddy Slade over from the game club, he decided to answer hentai, which I was kind of like... I immediately had to respond. There's usually one booth. Yes. Because at these conventions there's probably going to be a hentai dealer.

[00:02:59] So there's always one. Yeah. It's always funny too because last year I remember it was right across from a booth that Alex was checking out so I looked over and I'm like, oh, DVDs. I'll check this out while Alex is doing that and I look over to Mike.

[00:03:15] Oh, that's all porn. Wonderful. Like I'm not buying any of that. Yeah. Then you say when you were telling the story before that, like you're like, oh, I'll go look at these books. That's also porn. Yeah. Well, yeah, because it was a booth that was split in half.

[00:03:30] There was DVDs. Then there was like a bunch of like what I thought was manga and then it turned out to be hentai dojin. I was like, oh, oh boy. Yeah. That's always fun. Good old conventions. Oh, yeah. I haven't been to one in God knows how long.

[00:03:51] See, it's funny now when 18. Damn. Actually, no technique. Technically, I think I did go. It was a regular comic con. I think went to Rhode Island Comic Con after that. I don't remember what year it was, though. Kind of funny.

[00:04:09] I think we both went to Anime Boston at the same time one year, but we didn't know each other yet. We may. I'm trying to think because I know the first time I went. Did you go in 2017? Alex went in 2017. I went I think my first one was 2018.

[00:04:27] OK, because when I went in 2017, I dressed up as Android, Android 17. And I remember seeing a bunch of other 17s and interaction with them. So I was thinking about it. I'm like, I wonder if I talked to Bill then and we just didn't realize it.

[00:04:44] No, I didn't do 17 until 2019. OK, gotcha. But I think we might have crossed paths at one point as coworkers. The 2018 one, maybe. Maybe because we were coworkers then, but we hadn't interacted yet. I was in a big group at the time, but we were all just as you

[00:05:05] hockey show characters. Nice. And my buddy Tom, like we did that like one day and then my buddy Tom on another day, he dressed up as Danny Phantom. Nice. And he actually found somebody just as the box ghost while we were there. And that was that was fun.

[00:05:23] I think I was a I was a Pokemon trainer that year. Mm hmm. With my I have a so I have an ongoing Pokemon trainer cosplay that I jokingly refer to as Emo Ash, where it's like the punk rock Pokemon

[00:05:38] trainer, where I have like my battle vest and like it's all black and shit. Mm hmm. That's cool. I have fun with that every now and then. I got to bring that back out at some point. Hmm. I'd love to go to another convention. It's been so long.

[00:05:54] I just I just want the money. That's the biggest, the biggest thing holding me back at this point is that, you know, I had to scrounge some money for this year's event. Um, I'm honestly most of my spending, I'm pretty sure.

[00:06:09] So now that I'm a homeowner, a homeowner, um, I buy a lot of art. Like I have like, you can see in the background there, I buy a lot of convention art and stuff, so I'm probably going to be looking for art, but around my house. That's cool.

[00:06:26] Anything in particular you like a particular franchise or something you're looking for? Because it's so scarce. If I see any Yasha art, I will buy it. Um, unfortunately, it's so scarce that it's harder to find.

[00:06:40] If I see any like persona art that has like Yukiko in it, I'll buy it. Um, other than that, it's mostly just like different series and stuff. If it's something I'm particularly interested in at the time. I gotcha. Well, I got to a point where I'd start buying.

[00:06:54] I mean, I have a couple of things back here that I brought over here just to have something in the background. Uh, this one right here, this one's my favorite because it's just burly, chokeslamming Superman and it's awesome. Yeah.

[00:07:10] Uh, I mean, I have the poster of, uh, Jill back there from Final Fantasy 16, I love that art. I'm thinking about getting a new painting though, and replacing that. I'm putting, I'm going to move that somewhere else.

[00:07:23] I'd like to get some like posters of like Toriyama art, like some Dragon Quest characters, like a Chrono Trigger poster or something would be cool. I have a very nice Chrono Trigger. It's not Toriyama art, but it's by an artist I met at a convention that

[00:07:36] did a really awesome Toriyama style. Um, that's up in my game room right now. Hmm. There's also, uh, I've seen art of it around. I don't know if I'd ever be able to find like a real poster of it, but

[00:07:49] there's, um, I've seen some of these like art pieces around on the internet where it's like, um, scenes from like the Android Arc and Dragon Ball Z, but done in like the style of old school, like American comics. And those are really cool.

[00:08:07] Actually I got, I got one that was kind of like that at a flea market. Um, for Xander, I think it was for Christmas one year, but it was, um, it was, uh, it was the same type of style was like designed to be like

[00:08:21] an old American comic, but it was like Kid Goku with like the Eloph saga at the beginning of Dragon Ball. That was really cool. I have, um, it's upstairs in my, um, I have a little hallway on my upper level of my house.

[00:08:36] I have this really awesome like piece of art I found, which is like, it's a, speaking of topical though, recent episode we did, it's a Your Name piece of art where it's, um, you got, uh, you got Taki up at the top and Michio at the bottom.

[00:08:48] And it's kind of like the red string of fate through like the whole like comet background. It's just such a really fun piece of art. I found that looks super nice. It's in my hallway now. I really like that one. It's actually nice. Yeah.

[00:09:04] I'm going to, I'm going to see if I surprise myself. I'm not really sure what they're the big theme is going to be this year. So they do, they do seem themed events. Yeah. It's not that they do themes.

[00:09:16] It's just, it seems like every year at conventions, there's like something that's like the hot property. Like last year was like chainsaw man. Chainsaw man was everywhere. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. I remember the first year I went, the two things I was seeing all over

[00:09:29] the place were, um, my hero and Ruby. I was seeing tons of Ruby cosplays that year. My hero is always pretty big. Um, I remember I went one year and it was legit like attack on Titan everywhere. Yeah, that's fair.

[00:09:45] I think come to think of it, I think the last one I went to, they premiered the first episode of the second season of attack on Titan that. So attack on Titan, like still had its like big fan base.

[00:09:59] And it was the fact that a second season was coming at all was severely hyped. And I, but I think the big hype train didn't start until after season two came out. Hmm. No, I get that a hundred percent.

[00:10:13] Um, so I don't want to drag this on too much. Uh, speaking of anime and watching anime, our topic for this episode, this is going to be another kind of retrospective episode where we just kind of chat about a subject and we don't really have a big structure.

[00:10:29] Kind of like the PlayStation two episode we did a while back. Um, for this one, we're going to be discussing the early days of watching anime, which we've kind of covered here and there in the past when doing our anime retrospectives on different shows.

[00:10:47] But we've kind of mentioned how watching anime as a back in like the early late nineties, early two thousands was kind of a hassle. Like it wasn't the seamless, like at your fingertips kind of thing. It is nowadays. Yeah. It is nowadays.

[00:11:03] You can find anime on most streaming platforms and even the ones where, even the ones where it's kind of absent, there's always at the very least as something inspired by anime on there. I mean, the main, the biggest streaming platform of all time is Netflix

[00:11:17] and Netflix has a massive anime selection. Yeah. Although I would argue that Hulu has a more diverse selection. Hulu's is bigger because Hulu has a partnership with Viz. Um, I mean, obviously the biggest streaming platforms are like Crunchyroll and Hi-Dive right now. Right.

[00:11:38] Which are just dedicated anime streaming platforms. But there it, what we're saying is though nowadays streaming anime is like the easiest thing ever. Yeah. Which we compare that directly to the way we grew up getting into anime, it's severely different. Yeah.

[00:12:01] When I, when I said at the start of the episode, when I fucked up the intro, I had joked about getting up at 5 AM. That was a real thing. Like you would have to get, sometimes you would legit have to get up at

[00:12:11] stupid hours to catch your one episode of a show, which probably wasn't going to even be in order and you'd feel very unsatisfied, but that's all that's what you had to do. Unfortunately. Yep. Especially like with, um, and it was really interesting too, because the

[00:12:30] way that they were dubbing the episodes back then, like, like the vast majority of the animates we were getting, we didn't get any current animes, everything we got aside with the exception of like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! Everything that we got had already started and finished and had been

[00:12:47] done for a bit in Japan before we got it. To a degree, like for me, like obviously I, the one my favorite anime is kind of an exception where we kind of got that as it was coming out. Um, but for the most part you're right.

[00:13:03] Like a lot of the series we got were already done. Um, which was kind of, it kind of sucked, but it was also kind of a benefit at the same time for reasons we'll get into later.

[00:13:19] Um, but I figured the best way to start this is what was the first anime you remember watching? Uh, well, if, if we're not including Pokemon in the equation, it's Dragon Ball Z. Okay. So for me, the first anime I vividly remember watching, uh, not

[00:13:45] counting, actually, ironically, I think I saw this before I saw Pokemon. Um, I'm not counting the five seconds of Sailor Moon that Alex was watching beforehand, but, um, the first anime I vividly remember was Ronin

[00:14:00] Warriors, which I've mentioned in the past, um, a few times, not on Geek Addicts, I've mentioned it on GNC a few times. Ronin Warriors was a very interesting one because it's known as samurai troopers in Japan, but it's essentially it's, it's, it's Power Rangers, but they, they're samurais.

[00:14:19] And it would air. That the one with like the silver looking Saiyan suits? No. So they were, um, they were like a multi-colored very much like Power Rangers. Okay. Um, I'll send you an image in the chat, but, um, they, there was

[00:14:36] like their mascot was like this big white line for whatever reason. It would play, it would air generally after, um, Sailor Moon around that time slot, which is why I saw it all the time because Alex would always watch Sailor Moon.

[00:14:51] Um, but I remember watching that and being very, um, kind of entranced by it cause it had a very unique look to it. Here's a good shot. Send this to you real quick. Um, but yeah, that was on like the early days of like.

[00:15:10] Tsunami was kind of a thing, but it wasn't fully established yet. And this was kind of like, you would go on like just like the random kids TV channels. Yeah. Oh yeah. I recognize that. Yeah. It was basically Power Rangers. That's really all it was.

[00:15:31] I know that I was thinking of something. The suits are kind of similar, but I know that the Saint Seiya, that's what I was thinking of. I was thinking of Saint Seiya. Yep. That's another one. Which I haven't seen either of these Ronin Warriors or Saint Seiya.

[00:15:44] I just remember I've seen the images and the character designed a bunch of times. So thankfully this distork or distork media, they have a bunch of old anime rights and they're like re they're re-releasing box sets of all these old animes with their original dubs, which is

[00:16:02] really awesome because they just, they do, they released a Ronin Warriors box set, which has the original dove and everything. And I, I bought it and I've been meaning to watch it. I just haven't had time, but yeah, I remember watching.

[00:16:18] I have to finish a lot of things. That damn Christian, that damn Christianity arc is rough. I'm not going to lie. Every I warned you bro. I warned you. Yeah. I'm going to say though.

[00:16:30] So I'm like working my way through it, but I'm going back to the start. Like I remember that like, so what channel do you remember watching Dragon Ball on? Cause I remember Dragon Ball kind of was all over the place.

[00:16:42] Honestly, as far as the first time I watched it, I do not know what channel, cause I was young. Like my memory is kind of hazy at that time. Um, I just, cause I remember vividly like the event of it is I.

[00:16:59] It was, my mom was hanging out with one of her old friends, uh, from back in the day and we went over her house and I kind of just got plopped in the living room and they turned the TV on and I have no

[00:17:11] idea what channel it was on, but I remember that the, um, the episode where trunk shows up and fights Frieza was, was that episode that I, that I first saw and I was just in awe.

[00:17:23] Like I had no idea what I was watching, but I wanted to see more of it. See Dragon Ball was always funny to me because I remember it initially aired on it's WB. Um, Dragon Ball Z the ocean dub that is.

[00:17:40] Um, and they would only play up to like the fake Namek saga and then it would reset to rabbits every time because the ocean kind of just, well, the ocean dub for us kind of just ended there.

[00:17:51] Um, and it wasn't until Toonami picked it up or Toonami and adult swim that, uh, we finally got the funimation continuation. Um, I always remember like Dragon Ball was a weird one where like Z you

[00:18:06] would see on TV all the time, but then you'd also get the random, um, Dragon Ball, um, original Dragon Ball episodes that would air every now and then. Well, it was a little sporadic at first, especially because ocean

[00:18:22] originally, I think, well, a few people got their hands on. I think Harmony Gold had it first and then Ocean got their hands on. First and then Ocean did, uh, the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball. And then they were like, all right, this isn't really working.

[00:18:37] So we're just going to do Z and go from there. And then Z took off. So then once funimation had taken over Z, like with the dubbing, um, that was when they were like, all right, let's get Dragon Ball back in there.

[00:18:51] I think that was the point where they started doing Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z back to back on Toonami. Hmm. See the thing with Dragon Ball was like, because Z had taken off, I get the strong feeling that like they would try with original Dragon Ball

[00:19:05] and people just wouldn't get it because it was such a different show at the time. Oh, it's, it's a super different show, especially when you compare like the English version of Z to cause like Z obviously like, you know,

[00:19:19] famously or infamously, depending on your opinion had the Falkner track for, for the music, which, you know, is a severely different type of tone. Uh, even from the original Z music, let alone original Dragon Ball music. Oh yeah.

[00:19:36] Um, I always remember too, cause I, so this is something I wanted to bring up was like watching these damn episodes in order was a fucking ordeal back in the day, cause goddamn they wouldn't fucking play just the random as shit.

[00:19:50] Um, I always remember this cause the first episode of original Dragon Ball I saw. So I had been watching like I'd watch Z periodically and I was kind of figuring out Z and then I'd catch an episode of original Dragon Ball and I'd be so

[00:20:04] confused, like why is Goku a kid now? Or well at first I was like, is that supposed to be Goten or Gohan or whatever? Um, but I always remember cause I'd be like the first episode I saw was

[00:20:19] worst possible place to start with OG Dragon Ball, by the way. It was the episode where he's talking to a girl at the end, uh, Suno, the redheaded one who, um, uh, befriends Android eight. Right.

[00:20:34] It was like in like the middle of the series and like they'd already established all this lore and stuff. And I was like, I don't get what's going on at all here, but he was like telling her about how, like what the Dragon Balls do.

[00:20:45] And I'm always like, this is so weird. Well, at least you got a basic brush up on the core concept of the Dragon Balls. The problem was that I'd already seen Z by this point.

[00:20:55] So I already kind of knew and I was just confused by like why, what's like this weird flashback, like what's happening here? I think the first original Dragon Ball episode I saw, if I remember correctly, was the episode where he meets Oolong, which would have

[00:21:11] been like episode four. So I was, I still like was super early on there. It was also weird too, because I was so used to like Sean Chamele as like Goku by this point. That went hearing a, hearing a Stephanie again. I was like, it sounds weird. Yeah.

[00:21:30] I did like, I did like the fact that she played Goku and Gohan though. Yeah. It was, it was, that's what threw me off. Cause I thought I was like, is this supposed to be Gohan?

[00:21:40] Like I was so confused, but it's kind of a cool, like I know they were kind of like at the time because of the way that they treated the American audience. Um, it was interesting for them to do it that way.

[00:21:54] And I don't know if it was just a way of saving money or whatever, but, um, whether it was purposeful or otherwise, it was kind of cool to have that little, um, I don't know the word, like kind of like a tribute to Masako Nozawa.

[00:22:10] Cause she played Goku, Gohan, Goten, Bardock, like that entire family pretty much. Still is at this point. Yeah. No kidding. Um, I will say though, like this had to have been a coincidence, but like one of my favorite, like just hilarious, like timings of like

[00:22:30] episodes was like, I remember like the early two thousands, like it was like a Cartoon Network era. They would play an episode of Z. Well, it was an episode of original Dragon Ball and it was like Goku doing something.

[00:22:44] And then it immediately cut to way into the, the boo saga. And it was an episode with, um, it was the episode where Chi Chi is training Goten and he goes Super Saiyan. And I remember my kid brain was so confused by this at the time.

[00:23:01] Cause I was like, wait a minute. Is that supposed to be like what? Like, I don't understand. I can't feel like it would be even funnier if, if they had been doing GT at the same time as well. That would have been hilarious.

[00:23:13] Cause so we should talk about GT cause GT is so fucking weird. Cause that was like done in like the mid nineties, but we didn't get it over here to like the early two thousands. Yeah. Cause in Japan, the Z anime ended and they immediately like the

[00:23:31] following week jumped straight into GT. It was like seamless over there. Which is hilarious because the first like Dragon Ball thing we really got over here was the PS one game GT final bout, which had Steve Blum as Goku is still hilarious to me, but like that

[00:23:55] came out, but then we didn't get GT until years later with, uh, in like the two thousands. As, as disappointing. I mean, it was nice to still have some Dragon Ball, even though like, even as a kid, like I could recognize like this is something is

[00:24:09] missing here with this Dragon Ball series, like this doesn't feel like either of the previous shows. Even when you, even when you take into account the American changes and stuff, like it just, it just, the aesthetics of it,

[00:24:23] the, the general tone of it, it just feels so vastly different from the original Dragon Ball series. So vastly different from both of its predecessors. And even then, like I knew, like, I don't really like this that much, but it's still Dragon Ball.

[00:24:40] So I guess I'll watch it. Um, but I did still find myself severely disappointed whenever I'd be like, Oh, Dragon Ball is on GT. And I am, I have a certain fondness for GT now. Um, and there's always been aspects of it that I like.

[00:24:58] So, you know, I'm not going to sit here and hate on GT all day, like some other people, but, um, it is easily the weakest of the shows by far. It has great animation, which I still will defend till the end of the end

[00:25:13] of this end of time. Hmm. Um, yeah, GT was so weird. Like I still remember when GT first came out over here and like Super Saiyan 4 was fucking everywhere. Super Saiyan 4 is still epic. I don't care what anybody says.

[00:25:28] Super Saiyan 4 is honestly like, I still to this day say like, if they didn't do the stupid Goku as a kid thing, I feel like GT might've taken off easier. Well, I wish that they had just kind of like let go of it at once

[00:25:44] they finished up the whole baby arc and stuff. And they were like, okay, like the whole point of going out into space and stuff like, yeah, we're going to save the earth. We're also going to turn Goku back into an adult. And then they just didn't.

[00:25:55] It's like, all right. I always, I always thought like, um, the second he went Super Saiyan 4, he should have stayed adult by that point. Yeah. But no, they, uh, GT anyways, we'll have to, we'll have to do a GT deep dive at some point.

[00:26:14] I I'm totally up with that. I need to rewatch it though. Same. I really do too as well. I haven't watched it since I had Cindy go through it. I haven't watched it since I bought the box set like a decade ago. So,

[00:26:29] well, watching it with the Japanese music makes it a lot easier to get through. You don't like the grand tour? No, nobody does. Everybody hates it. Um, which actually kind of sucks because the, the version of GT that I

[00:26:45] have on my hard drive is the version with the American music. Great. God damn it. And also GT did that weird thing when it first came out over here, where they, I started an episode. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:58] They did like a recap episode and they, they jump you in like right, like when like baby is about to be introduced. And then like later on, they were like, Oh, GT, the lost chapters. It's like, they wonder why it bombed over here.

[00:27:17] It didn't do so well over there either. So that's why it only lasted 60 episodes, which is hilarious because it was already done by the time Dragon Ball or OG Dragon Ball came out over here and

[00:27:32] they knew it sucked, but they were like, baby, the Americans will like it. No, not at all. Well, I think at that point it was like, like Dragon Ball Z and, uh, Sailor Moon and I know there was a couple other ones, like they really spearheaded anime.

[00:27:51] And once people realized like how well it was doing over here, like a lot of these companies were really desperate to get more stuff. And since Dragon Ball was like one of the, like, like godfathers of, you

[00:28:07] know, bringing it over here, they were like, Oh, well, this is whole other series here, we're just going to bring it over because regardless of whether or not people like it, they're still going to watch it, which ended up being 100% accurate. Oh yeah.

[00:28:21] I mean, we all watched GT. We all complained about GT, but we still watched it. Speaking of that, like you mentioned Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon is such a weird oddity for like anime at the time because like it was huge.

[00:28:40] And I always remember, cause like Alex watched it religiously. Um, and I'm convinced a lot of that was because it was essentially just female Power Rangers. Hmm. Um, but yeah, like that was on like repeat at almost like all the time.

[00:28:59] Like I remember like, so another like early way of watching anime was you would go to your local Blockbuster. Remember, remember those kids? Um, and Blockbuster has always had a decent anime selection of VHS tapes back when like VHS was still the primary, um, method of a video.

[00:29:19] And I always remember like there would be like just the sections of like all the different animes. And I always remember, cause you get like maybe like four or five episodes at most. Yeah. I think, I think five was the cap, but generally it was three. Yeah.

[00:29:34] Cause I always remember I'd pick up like the Yu-Gi-Oh ones all the time. Cause I remember renting the, uh, the Yu-Gi-Oh VHS that had like the, uh, the video game arc on it. Like where they were inside the video game. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:50] I like that one where they're just basically in a Zelda game, Google cards. Yeah. Um, I remember that one. And then I also remember cause Alex would always rent the different Sailor Moon DV, uh, not DVDs, uh, VHS tapes.

[00:30:07] Sailor Moon was, um, I was left cause Sailor Moon was where I had my epiphany as a child that I liked women. See, I never, I never actually watched Sailor Moon. Uh, I just know of it.

[00:30:21] I maybe I should actually like take the time to watch it just for. It's, you know, it's worth, it's worth a watch just cause it's kind of like, it's important to anime cause it's kind of like what got

[00:30:35] anime over here, it's part, it's partially what got anime over here. Yeah. It's, it's kind of like the, the, the twin to Dragon Ball Z, but on the female side. Yeah. Which I always thought was interesting, even though like the primary

[00:30:52] demographic of that show in Japan, I'm pretty sure is male or at least like, I think it is technically Shojo, but I, at this point in time, like it's kind of, it's kind of gotten to a point where Shonen Shojo doesn't really

[00:31:08] matter anymore because there's an equal number of people of either case reading and watching. So, I mean, Alex watches more Shonen and I watch more Shojo these days. So that, that kind of sums it up perfectly. Yeah. Um, yeah. Sailor Moon was interesting.

[00:31:28] Sailor Moon is also like one of the greatest examples of awful anime censorship and like localization fail. Yeah. The kissing cousins, which we'll never, we'll never get over. Yeah. Right. Um, I do kind of branching off what you're saying earlier.

[00:31:48] I think I might've caught an episode or two of Inuyasha back in the day, but I don't think I knew what I was watching. Uh, yeah, let's get into Inuyasha. So when I joked earlier about getting up at 5 AM to watch a show,

[00:32:01] I bring this up all the time. Inuyasha had literally the worst, um, uh, time slot out of all the animes out there where it was literally like, it was like 5 AM on a adult swim every morning.

[00:32:17] Uh, you'd have to get up at like the stupidest hour and then you'd catch your one episode and it was never in order. It was always some random episode. Mm. And cause the running meme for years was always like, if you fell asleep

[00:32:31] on the couch, you'd wake up with the TV on, you'd wake up and you'd see the shot of Sashoma staring at his dad's corpse because you woke up at 5 AM. Um, yeah. Inuyasha. So how I got into Inuyasha is always a weird one to me.

[00:32:49] Um, I think the animation and the music is what stuck out to me. Cause Inuyasha has got a very unique soundtrack and it still looks really good even today. Like that was like during like the transitional period where like

[00:33:04] animation was starting to kind of get modernized, but it hadn't gone fully digitally yet. Yeah. It was like somewhere between like the classic nineties look and like what we get in the early two thousands would say like Naruto and bleach and stuff. Yeah.

[00:33:18] Cause there, there is a point in Inuyasha where like it goes from a hand drawn to digital and it's a very noticeable. Um, but I was, I think what happened was so, um, I, my favorite color is green. I like, I've always joked.

[00:33:35] I've always mentioned that in the past. I think what happened was I saw Kagome and I saw like the green sailor costume and then my eyes just were kind of drawn to that and I just kind of watched it and I ended up really digging the, uh, the

[00:33:48] storyline, even though like watching it the way I was watching it then made no sense because they, she, I swear she'd have like jewels at one point that she'd have no jewels and then she'd have like all the jewels and then none of them again.

[00:34:01] I mean, that also attracts with the show. I mean, to be fair, watching it fully on YouTube years later, which we'll get to eventually that, that era of anime watching. Um, yeah, she does kind of fluctuate how she has them at the time, but

[00:34:16] like this was like, we'd have like moments where like she's got the full gang and then it's just the two of them and then ship those there and then it's just the two of them again.

[00:34:25] And then suddenly Moroku is there and then song goes there and then back to just Moroku because the fucking they'd play the episodes so randomly back then. Yeah. I went through similar things with Dragon Ball. I mean, at least Dragon Ball was a little bit more consistent because

[00:34:39] they, once we had like the solid, like prime time to Nami block, uh, it, it did play them consistently. And we had at least one, one Dragon Ball and one Dragon Ball Z every day. Uh, Monday through Friday, but it still did the reset thing even when

[00:34:56] they had plenty of episodes. Uh, so I remember there was one time when I was a kid, there was, um, you know, at this point I, I had, you know, I had played enough of the Dragon Ball games and whatnot. So I knew the whole story.

[00:35:11] So I knew the point when I was trying to get to a point where I had seen everyone's first Super Saiyan transformation. Uh, so I was, I still needed to see Vegeta's. So I watched from Raditz all the way through and then the, literally

[00:35:27] the episode I watched the episode before he turned Super Saiyan the next day back to Raditz. I was so fucking mad. That was where the breaks back then. It really was. So the worst part was too, like Dragon Ball was a mainstream anime.

[00:35:44] I air quote mainstream because let's be real. Anime didn't get mainstream until the late two or 2010s, but there was the select few animes that were like considered the top dogs at the time. And they kind of, I I've convinced they got preferential treatment

[00:36:04] a lot of the times. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, there was itself. So, all right. Because Dragon Ball Naruto, like Sailor Moon, all of the Yu-Gi-Oh, all of those would get like their time slots were always the best.

[00:36:18] They would generally at least attempt to show the episodes in order. Um, and they would get the most promotion. Meanwhile, if you were say like in a new Yasha fan, you were basically like, I hope you like getting up early. Yeah.

[00:36:35] Well, I didn't really get into, uh, in a Yasha as a kid, but I did go through a similar thing because I did get into Beyblade and that also aired at the ass crack of dawn. So Beyblade was on ABC family, I'm pretty sure.

[00:36:51] So it was ABC family after Fox kids ended because I wanted to talk about Fox kids for a bit. Fox kids is what was, I should say a programming block that kids nowadays will never understand how awesome it was because I always

[00:37:08] remember every morning Fox kids, you'd have your episode of power Rangers, your episode of Digimon, some weird whatever was on Fox kids at the time. And then towards the end, the original Beyblade started and it would be on Fox kids.

[00:37:28] I think it got all the way up to the start of V-Force. And then after Fox kids became the Fox box, they moved it over to ABC family, which I believe is where you were watching it. Yeah. Cause I think I remember correctly.

[00:37:44] It was, uh, I don't remember which order it was, but I'm pretty sure it was Captain Planet and Beyblade back to back. I, I vaguely remember that because it was very similar to how Fox kids

[00:37:54] was where it would be like a power Rangers in the morning first thing. And then, uh, Digimon was always right after because Saban had handled both of those. Hmm. And then I remember, cause then they would pick up like, I remember

[00:38:08] when Beyblade got picked up and at the time I didn't know what anime was. So I just thought there was another cartoon that looked slightly different. Looked a little bit more realistic, maybe not, maybe not more realistic than American cartoons, at least it had an edge to it.

[00:38:25] I should say. Yeah. It's very striking art style compared to what we were used to. And I think honestly, like the, cause there's always the debate between Pokemon and Digimon that there'll be a forever infinite debate.

[00:38:39] I think one of the reasons why I was so attracted to Digimon back in the day was because I was a power Rangers fanatic and it would always air right after our Rangers. So I would always, I was, I was always catching Digimon back in the day.

[00:38:56] And Digimon say what you will about the, the, the, the stuff around the anime, like the actual games and like franchise itself. But the Digimon anime, I still think is infinitely better than the Pokemon

[00:39:12] anime just in terms of like story arcs and actual, like the plot going somewhere. See, I didn't invest any sort of time. I would catch episodes here and there of Digimon. But I never really invested any time into watching it.

[00:39:28] And I think, I think what you're talking about is exactly why, because Pokemon was episodic, you know, until like the point where I was kind of losing interest in Pokemon anyway, it didn't really develop like a continuous story.

[00:39:42] I don't think it was until like Ruby Sapphire that it did that. And even then it was borderline. Yeah. Even then it still did the episodic thing, whereas they show up at a place, they meet some people, there's some sort of problem involving Pokemon.

[00:39:56] Team Rocket shows up, try to steal Pikachu. They're blasting off again. Episode's over. It's, there was the same formula every episode. Yeah. To see, to me, the, what I liked Pokemon, like I watched Pokemon pretty religiously up until the start of black and white.

[00:40:13] I gave up on it at that point. Um, to me though, like the reasoning why I, I Pokemon just never like hooked me the way Digimon did was Ash never develops. Like he literally is the same character from beginning to end. He barely ages.

[00:40:32] It took him 20 years to age two years. And then they retconned and he never aged at all. Mm. Um, meanwhile in Digimon, all of those characters, they grow with you. Like they progress and age.

[00:40:47] And then when we got to Digimon zero two, they were all like high school students by that point and like grown up and then like there was a new cast that they interacted with. And there was actual progression and stuff.

[00:40:59] It was just a, it was such a different show at the time. And it appealed to me in a much different way than Pokemon did. Cause I, to be honest, I didn't realize Pokemon was an anime for the longest time. Me either. Um,

[00:41:16] I think what you're describing is essentially how I felt about Yu-Gi-Oh. Yu-Gi-Oh is another good one. Um, well the Yu-Gi-Oh anime is kind of shit. I love it, but it's not a great anime by any means. Yeah. It has its problems for sure. The manga is really fun.

[00:41:36] Well, the manga, the manga is great. Um, the anime I'll preface again. I love the anime, but it has so many problems. Oh, for sure. Like the first season, which is arguably the strongest season in a lot

[00:41:54] of ways is so janked like in like compared to the actual game it's based off of, but I kind of love it for that. I feel like the first season they were kind of trying to do like almost kind

[00:42:10] of like what they did with like Pokemon and, and, and Digimon where like it was less constricted to the rules of the game and more just kind of like check out these cool monsters and all the stuff they can do, you know, like, and there's magic involved.

[00:42:25] Ooh, fun stuff, you know? Yeah. And then like later on, later on once they were actually kind of like spearheading, like let's sell some of these cars to these kids. Like that was when they started really like trying to teach the kids the rules through the anime. Yeah.

[00:42:41] The season two, like the first episode, by the way, here's all the rules and everything you remember from season one, forget about that. And ironically, I don't think the rules actually became like accurate until Waking the Dragons. Yeah, I know.

[00:43:01] And that, that season, that's what sets the point. So I want to jump ahead a little bit. So anime on TV was always kind of a mess. Like it's pretty obvious. Like we just, it was a struggle.

[00:43:18] So let's talk about the YouTube era, like the early YouTube before YouTube became the show it is now when like people just would upload whatever on there. How many animes did you watch on YouTube back in the day? Uh, a couple, not super a lot.

[00:43:39] Honestly, I was, I was watching through a lot of the third party websites. That was actually how I watched Death Note all the way through was through like, um, I don't even know what, what website it was.

[00:43:48] It was like, um, I don't even know what, what website it was. It was one of the ones where it would have like a list of like 30 different video players. Oh yeah. Were different. We might as well loop these together because they are kind of the same period,

[00:44:04] the piracy era as I like to call it. Yeah. Cause you, so YouTube, this was, YouTube was really funny back in the day because like you would have like people trying to get around like, um, copyrights all the

[00:44:20] time and you'd have, you'd have episodes of animes that were like splitting to like five parts each and you'd have to like go to each part. Cause I remember watching, I watched all of Inuyasha on YouTube the first

[00:44:34] time because that was like the first time I'd actually seen it from beginning to end. Uh, I did the same thing with OG Dragon Ball. Uh, Z was not on it, but OG Dragon Ball was.

[00:44:44] And if it was only like, like it was the two episodes where this, the like latter half of it wasn't there, but otherwise they'd, a part would be, a part would have got like copyright claimed and you'd like missing something. You'd have to go find it somewhere else.

[00:45:00] Yeah. So early days of YouTube when we were still in that early stage of the internet where it wasn't really known which video player was going to become like the definitive one. And I think at this point, Google video was still a thing.

[00:45:17] Yeah, it was because YouTube at the time had that 10 minute time limit per video. So like you couldn't post anything over 10 minutes. Um, that's why you'd have like, like five parts for like each episode. Yeah. Like you had weird stuff like that.

[00:45:38] And then we go into like the, the quote unquote sketchy piracy websites back in the day. Um, and these were always hilarious. Cause like you'd have, you'd kind of have to sift through the find what you were looking for because not all that you wouldn't always get the

[00:45:54] dub dub was kind of like hit or miss. Um, and there'd sometimes be episodes missing or like series just wouldn't work for you. Um, this is also, this was also where I discovered head tie for the first time. Fun stuff. Cause they would mix it in. Shocking.

[00:46:15] Uh, yeah. They would mix it in with all the regular enemy and I'd just be like, scrolling and be like, my, uh, 12 year old brain was not ready for that. Cause that was like, I was like, what the fuck?

[00:46:31] Anime, anime like resulted in many awakenings for me as a child. That's all I will say. Um, yeah, I get that. I think that was the case for a lot of people in our generation. So what was the first, I have to ask, what was the first

[00:46:46] anime you watched where you realized anime was not just for kids? Um, I mean, my first experience with dragon ball Z was trunks cutting freeze in half. Fair. Um, but aside from that, I don't know. There was a pretty dark moments in Yu-Gi-Oh! True.

[00:47:14] Also you hawkish show you hawkish show was the first time I was like, Oh, this is actually really dark. Like, yeah. You see, I. Dived straight into the deep end right at the start because I remember 12 years old, I want to say 12 or 11 going through one of those

[00:47:33] sketchy anime sites, I found Akira and I saw Akira for the first time. And that fucking scarred me as a child. Oh, you know what? The Tekken movie might be one of them too. That's up there. That's very much not for kids. Yeah.

[00:47:49] I remember watching that way back. I remember I saw Akira and I saw perfect blue as a child. And that like messed me up for awhile because I did not understand what was going on. Those are very much R rated movies that are not meant for children.

[00:48:06] And if you watch them as children, it does mess with your mental state for a bit. Yeah. Actually remember what the first time I watched an uncensored unedited, actually the first time I watched uncensored Dragon Ball Z was

[00:48:21] I think I had rented a Saiyan Saga DVD and it was the episode where the special beam cannon and like when I saw like this is the gaping hole they're both spitting up blood and shit. And I was like horrified. Like this isn't Dragon Ball.

[00:48:39] This isn't the happy show I've come to love. I will admit after I watched Akira for the first time, I did not look at animation the same way for like a month. Like it was very hard for me to watch cartoons and after that.

[00:48:52] Well, at this point I'm so desensitized to it that it's not even well nowadays. Nowadays we have Reddit where if you scroll in the wrong, if you go into the wrong sir, like a subreddit, you'll see people legitimately die, which is which completely desensitizes you to anything. So.

[00:49:11] Mm hmm. But yeah, as a as an 11 year old, 12 year old, seeing stuff like that, it does mess with your head for a bit. Mm hmm. For sure. I will say the the the as much as the streaming websites were kind

[00:49:32] of sketch and probably are how I got most of the viruses on my computers back in the day. The amount of anime you could watch on those sites was pretty outstanding. Oh yeah, there was always a huge selection and obviously just because

[00:49:47] of the state of how everything was at the time, like there wasn't a whole lot of English stuff, which you know, I remember at a point to there was specific websites dedicated to shows in particular. Like there was a watch Dragon Ball online dot com at one.

[00:50:02] Oh yeah. Um, I, I remember the fan like anime fan sites back in the day were also like amazing because they were so cringe. The fans did you ever watch fan subs? I've seen a few like every now and then sometimes you'd watch them just for the laugh.

[00:50:22] Um, I'm pretty sure that that one Dragon Ball special, you can only watch fan sub. Yeah, there's um, I've seen, cause I've told this story before about how when I got into Naruto, I caught up with the dub very quickly by the time the Tsunade arc was happening.

[00:50:39] And from that point on, I pretty much watched the whole show subbed. Um, like everything that was up to that point and then like every time I go to catch up, I always end up watching, watching it sub.

[00:50:49] So I've pretty much seen the entirety of Naruto in subs. Um, including the filler, which was rough, but I remember, I don't remember what, which group it was. But I know that there was a group that would take a lot of liberties

[00:51:08] with the fan subs and they'd be dropping F bombs and like, uh, all sorts of like completely different dialogue choices, but like we're pretty fricking awesome. Like, I dunno, some of it was just like, it gave me a completely

[00:51:24] different expectation for when the Naruto ship it in dub game out. Hmm. Actually, that reminds me. Okay. I was going to say that reminds me of another thing where like you would go on those websites and you'd find stuff that wasn't released in America yet.

[00:51:44] We're like, like for me, like one of the things that stuck out to me was a sailor moon season five that didn't release over here until like the mid 2010s. Yeah, I actually, I watched, um,

[00:52:00] the rescue Gara arc, that first arc of ship it in like is at least six months before it came out over here. It might've been longer. Oh yeah. It was always weird too. Cause you'd be like, what is this? I've never seen this before.

[00:52:13] And I got to say like, uh, before I really understood the concept of filler and like how much there was going to be how I said that I watched all of the subbed episodes of original Naruto because after the, after Sasuke

[00:52:29] leaves and they keep like, be like dropping hints, like, Hey, we're going to go on this mission and we might get some hints about Sasuke. I was watching all of that subbed hoping that we were going to get some Sasuke shit and we never got it.

[00:52:41] And it just made me incredibly frustrated. So going back now to like the TV world, do you remember the aesthetic of tsunami like during the two thousands? Oh yeah. Tom in the spaceship. Oh yeah. Like once to Nami came on it was that's when you knew like, you're

[00:53:02] like shit got shit's getting real. And they had the awesome promos whenever like a new arc would come out. I always remember when like Naruto first aired, like they hyped the fuck out of Naruto. They always show like little clips from different episodes and stuff.

[00:53:18] Like, like they chose some goofy scenes and they show some like actiony scenes and stuff, like kind of like a big mix. And I think that was a big part of what got a lot of people into like new shows. Well, new for us at least.

[00:53:33] I always remember too, like when they tried branching out and they'd have like Tom doing fucking a game reviews on to Nami all the time. That's actually a fun watch party idea. Maybe at some point we'll do a watch party and just like

[00:53:46] watch old to Nami promo videos. Oh yeah. There's a ton of them. Like to Nami was that was such a, they brought it back a few times and like it's cool, but it's nothing will ever be the early to mid to early to mid

[00:54:01] two thousands to on me. Like that was such a different time. Like that made. Anime was so obscure at the time, but that made anime seem cool as fuck. Yeah. The period of time with to Nami was at the end of like the prime time,

[00:54:16] like four to six slot. Like that was like peak to Nami. Like they bring it back now, but unfortunately like anime so mainstream now that like a block, a specific block like that just doesn't really matter anymore because everything is like available at the fucking fingertips now. Yeah.

[00:54:38] It's just, I don't know. It's less fun than it used to be, but at the same time it's more convenient. It's like kids don't understand the struggle. They just don't. Well, I always loved to like you'd have obviously the mainstream titles on

[00:54:52] to Nami, but then they'd occasionally throw in like some random show that like wasn't a mainstream one, but it was kind of like something they were trying to push and like sometimes that would say that's, I think that's partially how I discovered in a Yasha.

[00:55:06] Now I think about it is probably what made you Haka show take off too. Hmm. Yeah. Cause you Haka show was not mainstream when it first came out. It was very much another anime that kind of got overshadowed.

[00:55:23] I think there was one of, if not the first thing Funimation did after they finished Dragon Ball, which was definitely a good cause I mean, it was refreshing because it had that similarity to it, but it was darker in a lot of ways. Um,

[00:55:41] the dub for you Haka show is arguably one of the best Funimation dubs, I think period. Oh, easily. And especially because like the changes they made to the dub worked really well for it. And to the, at this point, it's so iconic that I'm really worried

[00:56:00] for when the, um, for when the, the, the reboot anime comes out. Cause I know they're going to handle the dub completely differently than they used to. Oh yeah. And I'm just concerned about how that's going to land.

[00:56:17] Like, um, Kuwabara like has that nasally, um, Chris Sabat voice, which I just, I don't think he's going to be able to replicate if he tries again. Yeah. I think at this point is so far removed from it.

[00:56:32] I know that they did do the, the OVA is not that long ago, which I still haven't watched. I should do that, but I mean, uh, nothing, nothing against her cause it's not her fault, but like Cynthia Kranz has aged so much that she,

[00:56:48] her voice just doesn't sound that way anymore. Yeah. Now that you mentioned it, I watched the Kai dub recently for the, like all the way through for the first time is she sounds so different than that, like even compared to what she, what she sounds like in super.

[00:57:01] She sounds so different. Well, unfortunately voices age and when he had such a very feminine young voice when she was voicing Chi Chi and Botan, uh, she's aged and she's got a much more mature voice now. And it, it just, it's still a girl.

[00:57:19] She's a great actress, but it just doesn't sound the same anymore. Yeah. But at the same time, I wouldn't want anybody else for Botan. Like, well, yeah, that voice is like, it's, it's like if they recast Chi Chi, I would hate it because Cynthia Kranz is Chi Chi.

[00:57:34] It's like they, they really can't recast anybody because I'm, I would be upset. They recast anybody, even if they do a good job. Like, well, it's like Linda Young has to be Genkai. Like that's 100%. Nobody else can do that role.

[00:57:49] Justin Cook barely acts anymore, but he has to be Yusuke. Yeah, for sure. Uh, I mean, he came back from fruits basket. If he doesn't come back for you, Hakusho, then he's fired. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, it's speaking of fruit baskets, it's like Laura Bailey was

[00:58:04] Toru and the fact that she came back for that voice says so much because like, I don't think they could have recast that character. I think they might bring her back for you, Hakusho, cause she did come back for the OVAs. I hope so. Botan, not Botan.

[00:58:22] Keiko's voice is pretty iconic. And she, she wouldn't, it wouldn't be a huge time commitment either. Cause she's not like a super prominent character. Like she's around it, especially at the beginning, but like as the show progresses, she's around less and less.

[00:58:34] So it depends on if they want to follow the manga like super accurately. Cause she was more present in the manga. I'm, I'm fairly confident that if, if this reboot goes forward, it's probably going to be more accurate. Not that the original anime didn't deviate that much though.

[00:58:53] Like there were changes, but they were pretty minor. Honestly, I think the changes were mostly they downplayed Keiko. Yeah. And, um, Yusuke's mom, that was the only other thing. They, they, they, ironically, they downplayed female characters. That's actually kind of the weird part about the original, uh,

[00:59:12] Yuhaku no anime. No, not early nineties anime downplaying the females doesn't sound that out of character. No, I just, I laughed because like, I was thinking about this because I've read through a good amount of the Yuhaku show manga and I'm

[00:59:25] all like, I'm like, wow, they really went out of their way to make the anime sausage fest. I mean, you don't get, you don't get a prominent female fighter in Yuhaku show until the very end with, um, uh, the hell is her name.

[00:59:40] The, the, the, the King lady. Yep. The one that's like a cyborg. That's true. Like the only female fighter that you get. It's funny. It's just funny to me because like reading the mug, I'm like, wow, there was a lot more female representation in this. Yeah.

[01:00:00] Even when you factor in like the, the psychics arc where any of the bad guys, psychics chicks, I don't think they were. It's a, it's a very sausage party show, but that's kind of his, that's kind of his thing because like Hunter Hunter is very much a

[01:00:15] men male show. True. I mean, there, there's definitely more female characters that are prominent in that, like, it's not even, it's not even, it's not even sexist thing. It's just kind of how the story was written at the time. Oh, I guess I'm not being tech.

[01:00:33] I'm not being totally fair. Ginkai is a prominent female fighter, but she is also like retired by that point. True. It's, it's just funny to me how different, I mean, Japan has much different standards in general, but, um, they're getting better. They are.

[01:00:50] It's, it's just funny to me how like back in the day, like so many animes were like very male centric. Yeah, extremely. I think that's why like Inuyasha stuck out to me as a kid. Cause like Inuyasha is an interesting one where the main character is female.

[01:01:07] That makes sense. Um, yeah, I think that might be why it appealed to me. I don't know. I've always had that weird kind of like against the grain kind of view when it came to anime. Yeah. Cause Inuyasha even, even beyond Kagome there's also Sango and

[01:01:25] she's, she's a bad ass. She's main character. Um, Kikyo is there for most of it. Um, they're also, they have equal screen time too. Pretty much. Also even, even bill is you have a Kagura. Yeah. Inuyasha.

[01:01:42] I mean, Inuyasha is just kind of an interesting exception to the rule. Um, but I also speak into that now. I wanted to talk about, we had mentioned earlier how a lot of the animes back in the day were very old and they were just getting

[01:02:01] released for us years after the fact. I feel like now we should talk about some of the more modern animes that were releasing before the, the mangas were done. And we ran into the, the horror that we ran into multiple occasions of they ran out of material.

[01:02:20] What do we do now? Mm. Some of the most prominent ones I could think of are one piece, which had its own issues over here because it had it start at four kids and failed miserably and then had to restart at Funimation. Yeah.

[01:02:34] One piece is a bit of an exception because that show got screwed over here, like initially, which is hilarious to me because what, uh, four kids didn't even want it. Like they were like, they weren't interested in that at all.

[01:02:50] The reason why they ended up with one piece was apparently toy animation was kind of like forced them to take it in like a bundle deal along with, um, two other shows they picked up that were more on brand for four kids at the time. Yeah.

[01:03:08] And then they actually watched one piece and realized it was violent as fuck and they were like, we don't want this. This is against everything we care about. Yeah. I wonder why they failed. Um, yeah.

[01:03:20] So one piece, unfortunately it was, it was doomed from the start to be like mainstream at the time because they could, they, the first attempt sucked and then they had to restart from scratch like years later. So they were kind of behind the eight ball to begin with.

[01:03:36] Um, to me, the one I think of right away is like a full metal alchemist is probably the most infamous case of, uh, running out of manga. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that wasn't, that was an interesting case too, because it

[01:03:50] wasn't even just like a, oh, we ran out of material. We're just going to do some filler until we, until we catch up. It was, we ran out of material. So we're just going to go in our own direction with it and do

[01:04:00] it how we want from this point. That was essentially they ran out of material and the author straight up said, do whatever you want. Like I I'm giving you my blessing and they, they certainly did whatever they wanted. Yeah.

[01:04:14] Um, other cases are like fruit, the original fruit baskets, anime, which was vastly different from the, uh, the later version, the manga wasn't done. So they didn't know all of the, excuse me, they didn't know all of the, uh, the secrets, the facts yet.

[01:04:35] And the director tried to make it a comedy when it's very much not a comedy. Yeah. Um, that was another thing with the enemy back then where everything was trying to be a comedy. Yeah.

[01:04:50] Which I didn't dislike in a way it worked for a lot of like, for instance, you Haka show how we mentioned before, like it's definitely the dub is much more, um, comedy centric than the, the, the subbed version and the manga.

[01:05:04] Like obviously like it has its goofy moments and stuff, but it definitely played it up a lot more with the dub. Oh yeah. Well, it was, it was interesting because a lot of shows that they would push were more comedy centric, but then you'd get like fruit baskets,

[01:05:22] which you think is comedic, but then you actually like read it and you're like, this show is fucking depressing. Mm-hmm. No kidding. Um, yeah. So that, that was a thing though, that we'd run into a lot where

[01:05:38] like the series would run out of material and you'd get either. They would do a lot of stuff. They would do the full metal alchemist route where they just completely go in their own direction. You'd get the fruit baskets route where they would just end it immediately.

[01:05:57] Or you get their Veroni Kenshin method where they would attempt to do filler until manga shows up and then the series gets canceled because the filler was that bad. Mm-hmm. Um, so it was kind of a mixture of everything at the time.

[01:06:13] Then you get juggernauts like, like Naruto, which even if the filler is really bad, they'll still continue with it because it's just that popular. So Naruto is a fun, like Naruto, um, bleach and one piece are kind of

[01:06:27] the exceptions where the artists are so good that they're able to get material out at a solid enough pace that like, despite filler, the show doesn't become nothing but filler. Cause I know Inuyasha, they tried to stretch it with filler, but they

[01:06:47] just kind of hit a point where it's like, what were they going to do? Cause they couldn't continue the storylines. That's why that's why Inuyasha ends kind of prematurely and then came back years later with the final act.

[01:07:00] Which kind of makes me feel happy that I didn't actually watch it until like way later because by the time I got to it, it was all there. Unfortunately, the only downside to Inuyasha is because the final act

[01:07:14] came out when it did, they ended up squishing so much content into just 26 episodes. There is a lot of stuff that got truncated or just cut in general for that final few arcs. Which is sad when you consider like the original Inuyasha anime was stretched out a ton.

[01:07:34] Although Inuyasha, I still think handled filler the best out of most of these shows. I definitely agree with that. Inuyasha was interesting because by the time I got to it, I was already at a point where I understood the concept of filler.

[01:07:51] I could recognize it pretty easily in most cases. But Inuyasha was a lot more interesting than Inuyasha. It was a lot more interesting than Inuyasha. I could recognize it pretty easily in most cases. But Inuyasha is the rare exception. Exactly.

[01:08:06] Yeah, I couldn't tell what was filler and what wasn't. One of the best arcs in Inuyasha is the school festival arc, which is where Inuyasha is chilling at Kagome's school during her school festival. That's all filler.

[01:08:22] Like that is not in the manga, but it is such a great arc that you'd never notice. That actually makes a lot of sense because that was the one where there happens to be a sealed demon in the present day

[01:08:35] and it gets released and they have to fight it. There's dried demon jerky that they bring over and it gets hydrated and that's how the demons show up. Gotcha. That's where my favorite Inuyasha gif ever, the gif of Kagome

[01:08:57] and Inuyasha just screaming at each other back and forth. That's from that arc. OK. Inuyasha still is the king of actually doing filler well. I was going to say, when do you think the shift happened where anime went from being this kind of weird thing

[01:09:20] to mainstream where it was just naturally everyone could watch it? Well, I think the point where it was absolutely 100% solidified was probably COVID because a lot of people got locked in their houses and had to find new things to watch. True.

[01:09:41] But I think the big turning point was probably around 2012-ish because 2012, 2013, this is when we started getting a lot of the more modern stuff. We started getting like Isekais, which got really popular. The first one I remember seeing is Sword Art Online, which I still really love.

[01:10:04] This is around the time when Dragon Ball and One Piece started getting their big theatrical films. Attack on Titan came out, which is a huge game changer for American audiences. Naruto ended. Yeah, Shippuden was coming to an end.

[01:10:23] Bleach had been done for a bit, but that's a whole other thing. One Piece had hit its time skip, which was a huge heel turn for One Piece. So I think this is just a period where a lot of big leaps

[01:10:40] and bounds were happening with a lot of different franchises and it just caught traction. I think the Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods was a big effect on this too because that movie was huge. I think that reignited a lot of people, like a lot of people

[01:10:58] who casually watched things like Dragon Ball and maybe they caught Yu Hakusho, maybe they caught Inuyasha back in the day. And then they got older, grew out of cartoons, whatever else. And then you find out the big Dragon Ball movie is coming out,

[01:11:13] it's coming to theaters of all things. So I think everybody going out to see that sparked a new interest, a reignited interest in the old fans and a new interest in the new fans. Oh, yeah. So I think that was a big turning point.

[01:11:30] You know, as much as I have come to accept the fact that One Piece always outdoes Dragon Ball when it comes to box office and numbers and whatnot. But Dragon Ball is always the one that kind of like leads the charge, in my opinion.

[01:11:46] It kind of paves the way. And I think that's very much true when it came to like Battle of Gods, kind of like getting that whole anime renaissance over here started. To me, another one to this one, which was like kind of the sign

[01:12:03] where I realized anime was extreme, was had officially hit the mainstream. We had talked about it a few weeks ago, but your name. Yeah. The the the smash success of your name was to me like the point where I really thought feel like anime

[01:12:20] had truly broken into the mainstream because like early 90s, late 90s, early 2000s, that movie would have never done the success that it had to be coming. Hmm. Yeah. It was also the thinking about it when we started getting anime balloons at Macy's, the Macy's Thanksgiving parade.

[01:12:42] That was that was a big a big leap right there. Yeah. Yeah. That and when you could go to like PJ Maxx and find anime shirts. Hmm. Yeah, I remember back in the day, if you wanted an anime shirt, you had to go like Hot Topic.

[01:13:00] And even then they only had like a couple of different shows. They'd maybe have a Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon shirt. But more often than not, you were probably going to find like usually let the darker Naruto stuff. Yeah. Or they'd probably find like the like like the

[01:13:22] Akatsuki pattern. Oh, yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah, like something very subtle, like nothing in your face or like the little fucking stuffed animal guy from Bleach. Yes. You see him. Oh, and the guy with the hat in Bleach used to see that everywhere, too. 100 percent.

[01:13:45] Honestly, I think that the main turning point for anime and stuff was when like I want to say, like, Persona had a lot to do with this, like Persona becoming mainstream. Also. The general just like anime video games and also like real life, like sports, like.

[01:14:07] Play like athletes who endorse into anime because there's been a lot of a lot of football players who are like massive weebs lately. Yeah, I love seeing those videos of like, you know, it'd be like a football player, like getting a touchdown or whatever, and he'll have

[01:14:24] like two of his teammates do the Rasengan thing with him and shit like I've seen that so many times. And so it's always so funny. There there are NFL players who have Crunchyroll sponsorships because they're that big of weebs. I believe it.

[01:14:38] It's not even that it's like wrestlers, MMA fighters. There was a there was a fucking Jujutsu Kais in NASCAR like a few weeks ago. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, it was fucking. It was just funny, like the fact that it it it happened at all. Yeah, for sure.

[01:15:02] But yeah, we got about an hour going. I feel like this is probably a good place to cut it off. You're watching anime back in the day kind of sucked. And it's amazing that anime took off at all, I will say.

[01:15:16] Yeah. And watching it on TV is bad enough. But you know, when you wanted to get a home release, there was no season sets. I mean, hell, even like the NAR, even the Naruto sets that we that we have been getting for years,

[01:15:29] the 13 episode sets, which has pretty much become the standard at this point. Even those you could you three episodes. That was generally the best you were going to get. Sometimes you get four or five, but three was the magic number.

[01:15:42] The turning point for me was like when Dragon Ball came out with the orange bricks, the blue bricks and the green bricks. Yeah. The orange bricks came first. And I remember when I first found those, I was so excited. I was like, yes, I get the trunks one.

[01:15:56] I watch all those episodes again. And I was so mad because I went to the New Bray comics. I know it was FYE. He went to the FYE. There were a lot of trunks. All they have is Frieza, which I mean, Frieza is great.

[01:16:06] Don't get me wrong. But really wanted my trunks. Yeah. God, those. It's ironic because the orange bricks apparently have horrible audio quality. But and the video isn't great either. They they cropped the shit out of it because they had this weird obsession with widescreen. Yep.

[01:16:25] And they still kind of have that weird obsession with it. And that's why like they did like five fucking different home releases. Before they were finally like, hey, we're bringing the dragon boxes over. And everyone was just like, cool, we're not buying it

[01:16:39] because you've already fucking thrown us so much crap. Yeah, we're bringing the dragon boxes over, but we already did the blu rays, which are better. Oops. I mean, they're they're they're better. They're not they're not like amazingly better, but they're slightly better.

[01:16:56] I mean, the dragon boxes are like the true remasters, even though they're on DVDs. Blue rays are better than orange bricks is. Yeah, it's is. What am I going? Anyway, we think a lot. But yeah, blue is the best you're going to get for a reasonable price.

[01:17:16] That's what I'll say. And God damn it, give us a new a new rerelease of Oji Dragon Ball at some point, please. Yeah, I'd love that on Blu Ray. That'd be great. I love the blue bricks, but my God, they're hard to find now.

[01:17:31] So I've had mine for a bit. I'm glad I got them when I did. And it's still like fairly cheap when you can get them. So it's funny, I have all the blue bricks. I have all the green bricks. I don't have the orange bricks.

[01:17:42] I bought the blue rays instead. So that's I did the same thing. Well, technically I started buying the orange bricks before I understood how bad they were. Yeah, I had gotten like the first I'd gotten that season three that one time, and then I got the fourth

[01:17:55] one later when I was actually able to find it. And then I think I was just when I was in my mall rat days, I was wandering through Target and I happened to see that they had a combo pack for seasons one and two.

[01:18:05] So I grabbed that and then that was all I ever got. And then later on, I got the blue rays. It's funny, too, because like a lot of the Blu Ray sets kind of suck nowadays, like the I know Inuyasha, like they kind of fucked up the

[01:18:19] the screen mastering on the Blu Ray. So like there's no if you're going to buy Inuyasha, buy the DVDs, they're better off. Mm hmm. It's just one of those things like you just can't win nowadays. Yeah, there's always going to be.

[01:18:37] I mean, let's be honest, we've loved the complain. Oh, yeah. I mean. I give a centifilm works a lot of credit because even though they're like constantly in animation or Crunchyroll shadow, I should say these days, they were the first to abandon DVD altogether

[01:18:58] and just go straight to Blu Ray and I just made that the standard. And because of that, their Blu Ray sets are generally better in pretty much every way than Crunchyrolls are. That's fair. I do like having the option for DVD, though,

[01:19:11] if you want a cheaper choice, you know. True. I'll give I'll give sentai credit. Their DVD, their Blu Rays aren't that expensive compared to like Crunchyrolls offerings. So I gotcha. But, yeah, any any other final things you want to bring up before we close this out?

[01:19:33] No, I think that pretty much covers it. OK, yeah, we got a good hour out of this. A pretty good discussion overall. Anime kind of watching anime back and they kind of sucked. And it's amazing it took off at all. For sure.

[01:19:47] But anyways, guys, once again, thank you for joining us on the gaming. This isn't the gaming collecting podcast. Fuck. You get it. Oh, I've already falling apart. Thank you for joining us on Geek Addicts. You can find Geek Addicts on all your major podcasting platforms

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[01:20:28] The Elder Trolls, Gaming Together and our three GNC shows and Find Time. Can't forget Find Time. You can find us all over there. Tons of awesome video, audio and blogs. Whole bunch of cool shit. Go check out that site and you can find all of our links

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