Anime World Order Show # 238 – Our Christmas Miracle Is Remembering to Post This Third Holiday Roundup

Anime World Order Podcast

As we mark our 19th year of anime podcasting, it’s time for our annual holiday roundup of Christmas episodes! But first, we take a moment to pay our respects to the recently departed Jan Scott-Frazier, not by pressing F but by talking about her influence on us and this podcast.

Introduction (0:00 – 26:25)
Although Daryl’s call for submissions for his proposed Otaku in Memoriam throughout this year didn’t exactly succeed, we unfortunately have to end the year on one. Jan Scott-Frazier passed away at the start of the month, and while you can certainly read her list of career accomplishments on Wikipedia or Anime News Network (which, in a Christmas miracle, was NOT bought out by Sony after all, as they only purchased a percentage of Kadokawa), the idea of Otaku In Memoriam was to hear more personal testimonials about fans no longer with us. Although our interactions with Jan were limited, but our Bobby’s Girl episode of AWO would never have existed were it not for her actions. (And for the record…that is also the case in the event you saw Bobby’s Girl via a digital fansub.) Jonathan Clements wrote up a memoriam which is worth a read. Rest in peace to a true anime pioneer.

Clarissa was recently a guest on the now award-winning Shoujo Sundae podcast, where they recapped a few key later episodes of the newer anime adaptation of Fruits Basket. As goes with the territory for recap podcasting, spoilers will therefore abound. We then can’t help but hate on Sola Digital Arts, as their recent theatrical release of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim made around $7 million despite being released in over 2600 theaters nationwide. THis was not for lack of awareness, as its trailer was saturation bombed, playing everywhere for what felt like ages. In the wake of this “half as popular as Madame Web” performance, Warner Discovery has admitted that it was a “Roger Corman Fantastic Four” effort, hastily shoved out in theaters just to ensure the film rights to Lord of the Rings would be retained.

Holiday Roundup, 2024 (26:25 – 1:39:26)
For the third year now, we’re covering Christmas episodes of various anime series. This year, by popular request (well, more like demand), we’re going to list in advance all of the things that we talked about, in the order in which we talked about them, so that you can go check the episodes out yourselves if you desire. With the exception of Dr. Slump, every anime episode listed here has had a legal release in the USA:

Martian Successor Nadesico episode 13

Japan Xmas or X Japan Mas?

How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift episode 10

This is not how I expected ladies who apparently really need to hit the gym to look like…

Dr. Slump episode 35

Rest in peace, Akira Toriyama. Christmas isn’t a thing in the world of Dragon Ball (where Arale showed up once), but it is in Dr. Slump, so we’ll be watching many of these in future years. This sort of action would have to be pixelated out for modern Japanese broadcast.

Buddy Daddies episode 1

You say Santa is your dad? Does the money for the presents come from the government? What do you mean we didn’t do Azumanga Daioh?

Gintama episodes 200-201

It took willpower to not embed this one into the MP3 of the episode itself.

Food Wars The Fifth Plate episodes 6 and 7

It took willpower to not set this one as the featured image of the blog post you’re reading.

Bartender episode 10

The narrative setup for Bartender is not that far removed from Golgo 13. It’s impossible. No bartender could make that shot.