Podcast Goes Fourth...with Helen McCarthy!

Arbalest

黒い剣士
Moderator
nakamabritannica4.jpg


This time, on our wonderful and bodacious podcast, we're joined by two special guests for a discussion on the the thorny subject of whether anime is getting worse.

The regular team largely takes a back seat in this episode, as we open up the floor to our guests: UK anime uber-pundit Helen McCarthy, author of the award-winning Art of Osamu Tezuka and co-author of the indispensable Anime Encyclopedia; and our very own AUKN Commander in Chief, Augusto, aka Chaos, without whose timely assistance, none of this would have been possible.

Download it here: Nakama Britannica - 4 - Is Anime Getting Worse?

As soon as the episode uploads to iTunes, i'll fire it on here as well.
 
Wha!!! You mean the mystery woman who has cornered the UK anime event introducer/speaker market is on the podcast!! Awesome news, I think someone here gave me good scolding once for not knowing who she was, so I look forward to listening! Please tell me it didn't come at the expense of prof's smooth **** vocals though...
 
^
Thats understandable. You'd have to bleep out my voice too, if only you heard the sounds I make while listening to profs voice.......
 
I did introduce the episode, but after that, I'm afraid I didn't contribute much in terms of conversation... The realisation that I was on a podcast with Helen McCarthy while talking about pornography rendered my mind somewhat blown.
 
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Wow, you guys pulled out the stops for this one, looking forward to hearing it. It's a good job though, because with all due respect I rather feel like the cast would pod itself if it had just been you three discussing this subject. ^^;
 
So, you're not on it, Prof hardly speaks... it really *is* a good job you had people there to do the podcast for you! :p

/is wondering when podcasts became like trains
 
I'm only half an hour in, but I must say hats off to you guys for getting Helen on the show! She's a great speaker and clearly has enormous knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject. Her analysis of moe is perhaps one of the most balanced and eloquent I have heard.
 
Listened to it all (really need sleep). Very, very good discussion guys, well done. I was a bit baffed at first as I was expecting arbalest rather than Augusto, so for a minute I was thinking "Why on earth is he putting on that accent?" lol. But yeah very interesting. Helen is clearly a real vault of anime/manga knowledge and a great speaker to listen to, her enthusiasm being impossible to resist.

The only thing I can think of that disappointed me slightly was to hear yet another person say that they feel Redline lacks heart :( c'mon heart is pretty much all Redline had! It's not fair at all to compare Redline with Akira, they're nothing alike at all aside from both having huge productions values.

But anyway great stuff guys! Also I found having short infrequent bursts of profs tantalizing voice only heightened it's power ;)

Oh on a side tangent after Augusto mentioned it, I was trying to think "what are these great martial arts anime", I genuienly couldn't think of any from memory. I'd agree with Helen completely about Sword of the Stranger, certainly the best one I could think of( in my opinion it's underrated too), even though it's not exactly a martial art's film in the purest sense. Oh yeah, I guess there's FoTNS. But why are semi-realistic martial arts anime so rare?
 
I'm looking forward to hearing this. I have never had the chance to see Helen 'live', I have heard her on pod-casts. She always has something interesting to say. :D
 
ilmaestro said:
Wow, you guys pulled out the stops for this one, looking forward to hearing it. It's a good job though, because with all due respect I rather feel like the cast would pod itself if it had just been you three discussing this subject. ^^;

Quite possibly. I feel like our views on the subject would probably have been pretty similar.

vashdaman said:
Oh on a side tangent after Augusto mentioned it, I was trying to think "what are these great martial arts anime", I genuienly couldn't think of any from memory. I'd agree with Helen completely about Sword of the Stranger, certainly the best one I could think of( in my opinion it's underrated too), even though it's not exactly a martial art's film in the purest sense. Oh yeah, I guess there's FoTNS. But why are semi-realistic martial arts anime so rare?

Yeah, outside of FotNS, I think I'd struggle to name many well-remembered martial arts series myself. What sprang to my mind at the time were things like Tiger Mask and Ashita no Joe, but I don't know if you could really count wrestling and boxing as martial arts.

I haven't seen it myself, but "Sakigake!! Otokojuku" maybe? If the OP's anything to go by, it looks pretty good.
 
Surely Yawara! would count. Realistic martial arts seem to come up so often in the background of other shows that it's oddly difficult to think of things which revolve around them.

R
 
vashdaman said:
Oh on a side tangent after Augusto mentioned it, I was trying to think "what are these great martial arts anime", I genuienly couldn't think of any from memory.

Haven't listened to the podcast yet, so I don't know if they were named. But there are some old series:
- Kurenai Sanshiro (judo)
- Tiger Mask (wrestling, if we consider this a martial art)
- Ashita no Joe (boxe, if we consider this a martial art)
- Ninpu Kamui Gaiden (ninja)
- Sasuke (ninja)
- Ore wa Teppei (kendo)
- Ganbare Genki (boxe)
The best are Tiger Mask (first series, not the sequel) and Ashita no Joe. Ore wa Teppei is really good too, but it's more on the funny side than on martial arts (similar to this, there are some kendo episodes also on Dash Kappei).
There were another series on boxe and one on karate, but can't remember the exact names now.



Teo
 
Really good work guys. I haven't caught up with all the episodes yet, but I think the podcast is coming along really nicely, and this is an intereriew is a real coup, Ms McCarthy is a highly knowledgable and articulate lady and always a joy to listen to. Like the Prof I can thank her Anime World Column in the late great Super Play Snes mag for my discovery of this artform. Great to have an apperance from Chaos too!

Always good to hear some bashing of the moe trend too, but that's just me.

Anway, fantastic episode guys, keep up the good work. It'd be great if you could get a Johnathan Clements interveiw in a future episode- would be a great companion to this months show!
 
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