Tag Archives: podcast

Show #021a Direct Download:

Opening song: “Rainbow in the Dark” by Dio, from the Very Best of Dio album

Songs in the Middle: The “Real Otaku Heros” songs are by Le Jizm, and the complete set of them is available for download here.

“Sakura kiss” by Chieko Kawabe is the opening theme of Ouran High School Host Club

End Song: “Rose” by Tsuchiya Anna, the opening theme of the Nana anime series.

Why Dio? We were inspired by this video, which aired during the VH1 top 40 metal songs of all time countdown (Spoiler: #1 was “Iron Man”.) We here at the NC podcast think that the creature on the cover of the Beast of Dio album looks like the demon locked inside Naruto. Also Dio is the villain in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

• Apples to Apples For the record, Noah does not like this game very much.
• Our new microphone – despite now having two mics it sounds like we’re underwater because of an inexplicable static I had to filter out of the show. Let this be a lesson to you: Always do some test recordings, don’t just plug the headphones into the mixer like we did.
• Hana Matsuri cherry blossom festival in Brooklyn’s Botanical garden.
• Nana, first published in Cookie, is currently running in the U.S. in Shojo Beat magazine ($35 a year! Wooo!) and the first three volumes are available under Viz’s Shojo Beat line.
• The Nana Live Action movie is only available fansubbed, we recommend the version by Live-Evil.
• The Nana anime is available on fansub. We’ve been watching the Live-Evil subs version, but several other groups also subbing it.
• The Nanas are 18/19 years old at the start of the story, not 20-23 like I said in the show.
• Nittle Grasper – This is a fictional band from Gravitation, people! Noah likes the name of the band and does not really like Gravitation.
• MacDonald Duck Eclair – I have yet to buy one of their CDs.
• Noah actually liked Happy Mania, which I reviewed in this episode of Manga Recon.
• Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. Buy it. Read it. Love it. But probably not if you’re under 16.
• The Peach Girl the anime is fansubbed, and the manga is available from Tokyopop.
• “The System is down… dancing Robots” is from somewhere on Homestar Runner, but we like it best in suberunker’s “Football!” AMV.
• Brief mention of Boys Before Flowers a.k.a. Boys Over Blossoms
• Nana is by Ai Yazawa the author of Paradise Kiss, which is available from Tokyopop and the 12-episode anime series was fansubbed last year. I wouldn’t be surprised if it got licensed this year.
• Noah quote: “…your wife left you and your dog beat you and your life was on fire…”
• The Track-Shun Show (or on iTunes here.)
• Pretty Cure Max Heart
• Kino’s Journeys
• Ouran High School Host Club, as I reviewed in Manga Recon episode 1, volumes 1-6 currently available under the Shojo Beat label, the anime is now being fansubbed by at least three groups. We’ve been watching the Lunar subs.
• You thought Utena had a bunch of roses in it?
• Otaku Generation reviewed Host Club in episode 46.
• Rose of Versailles is available on fansub
• Digital Manga publishing. Not just yaoi, but really a lot of yaoi. Robot is one of their non-yaoi titles.
• DR Master sent me a big box of manga, too.
• The MangaCast has several DMP reviews of yaoi already up.

Write in to us with a list of your favorite shows if you want to know what we think of them! We’ll add them to the list of “Ninja Consultant Approved and Disapproved Titles”.

Show #019c Direct Download:

Music: “Young, Dumb & Ugly” by Weird Al, from the 1993 album “Alapalooza”. You can get the whole song and album in the iTunes store. Alapalooza was one of the first CDs I ever owned. Many of the songs parodied on the album will probably fly right over the heads of our youngest listeners. There’s a very funny clip of this song and Akira in AMV Hell 3

Vocab:    Sycophants, Sycophantic
          Troll
          Spaz-Attack

Special Note: I am so sick of this episode by now. It no longer even seems relevant. According to this ANN poll, most people don’t even care about Artist’s Alley at all. In fact, it’s a depressing poll, where the majority of people answering it haven’t been to cons, and most people taking the survey preferred meeting American voice actors to meeting Japanese creators, or even Japanese voice actors!

Here’s the first ever Fan Art me and Noah got of ourselves by Zelda Girl 4:

• Japanese fanart of American works, like Spiderman, Teen Titans, Super Girl and Batgirl, Powerpuff Girls…
• I’m sure you’re all eager to see the new Powerpuff Girls Anime Series.
• We keep making jokes about “P.S. Inuyashaaaa RUUUULLLLEZZ”
• A Certain Podcast Which Alison Does Not Like
• The Mugglecast was the top-rated show on Podcast Alley for several months last fall. They’re number 8 today. Ninja Consultant is #1374 by comparison, AWO is #1362, and OG is #751.

Alison still has not drawn Vash the Stampede and InuYasha riding a Chocobo. I’m encouraging all of our listeners to draw it, and we’ll put up a gallery later. Maybe I’ll make a mini-comic of just sketches of Vash and Inuyasha riding a Chocobo. Under current Otakon rules that would be allowed in unlimited quantity, if it was a booklet. Putting it on T-shirts or buttons wouldn’t fly, but we could sell 25 posters of it.

Promos:

• FIB Cast – Fish in a “Barral”
• The Randomization Podcast
• The Teen Opinion Podcast – I’ve never listened to it, but they friended me on Skype.

Show #019b Direct Download:

Opening Music: “Ai Believe” by Project Baki
Closing Music: “Kujibiki Unbalance” by UNDER17 performed somewhere or other, live in Japan in front of a group of otaku. Check it out on the first volume of Genshiken in the DVD Extras. The performance is so awesome. I used to hate Under17 but now I might like them.

This show is pretty negative for the first half, so I’m somewhat concerned. It’s important here to know that Alison (and myself) do not have a personal problem with the current head of Otakon’s Artist’s Alley, who’s initials are R.A., rather, we have (had?) a problem with her public relations.

What would’ve been preferable to all the artist involved is if Otakon talked to their lawyer first, and then presented an official policy that was not open for public discussion. Not leaving things open for public discussion would have gone against Otakon’s community mentality, but it may have saved the public relations disaster that followed.

If I were R.A., and I listened to this show, I would probably get (understandably) upset. That said, Alison used her real name in the Otakon forums when the policy was under discussion, so R.A. should be well aware of Alison’s feelings on this topic. By now it should all be water under the bridge, but at the time we recorded this audio, back in February/March, both Alison and myself had very strong feelings about it.

I myself (Erin) did not participate in the forum discussions until the official policy was announced. It’s worth noting that I have an art table at Otakon 2006, which I have paid for. I intend to respect the new rules and policies. Alison opted long ago not to get a table at Otakon this year.

• Otakon – it’s an anime convention held in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s the biggest one on the East Coast, and either the 1st or 2nd biggest in the U.S.
• The Preliminary Rules and The Giant Otakon Thread
• Otakon’s Official Artist Alley Rules for 2006.
• The Giant ANN Thread Regarding the Preliminary Rules
• Comiket, or Comic Market.
• Who is Carl Horn? Here’s his ANN entry and a an interview with Kazuo Koike
• Carl Horn’s awesome post on ANN’s forums which I read on the show. It’s used without permission, but I have read it here with the best intentions – Mr. Horn makes a series of awesome points and relevant statements that I believe others should hear, without having to dig through 1,000 forum posts in order to read it.

Carl Horn’s awesome email really only refers to the preliminary policy, which, had it become official, banned all American-made doujinshi from Artist’s Alley, as well as any and all goods bearing character likenesses that would not be considered “parody”. Under the official policy, doujinshi is allowed, and many craft-type goods are allowed, but buttons and T-shirts with anime characters on them are not allowed (with a few exceptions.)

Here’s a chart to help explain it:

Past Otakons	Under the preliminary policy	Under the official policy
Most items that are not directly copied art allowed. Very few restictions.	No items bearing anime characters which are not original designs.	Items bearing non-original anime characters allowed, but under limited conditions.
Doujinshi/fan comics allowed.	Only parody or satire doujinshi allowed.	Doujinshi/fan comics allowed.
Unlimited prints/posters are allowed.	Only prints and posters of original characters allowed.	25 prints/poster of any design allowed, including anime characters.
Buttons of fan art in unlimited numbers are allowed.	Only buttons with original designs allowed.	Only buttons with original characters and on-the-spot button commissions allowed.
T-shirts with very vague restrictions allowed.	Only original T-shirt designs allowed.	Only original T-shirt designs allowed.
Commissioned Sketches allowed.	Commissioned Sketches allowed.	Commissioned Sketches allowed.
Cosplay items allowed.	Cosplay items allowed – but probably not Naruto headbands.	Cosplay items allowed – but probably not Naruto headbands.

The ban on non-original buttons and T-shirts didn’t come up until April, and the 7th page of the “The Alley – 2006 Policy Q&A thread”, available to be seen only by forum members. Jim Vowles writes:

For the reasons stated: there is generally no blanket license that covers “fan art prints”, but there IS a license for buttons & pins, t-shirts, etc.

We arrived at these rules by talking to lawyers who specialize in intellectual property, and advocating strongly on behalf of the artists.

It also seems, from the thread as if Otakon heavily encourages cosplay items (except Naruto headbands), crafty things (like stained glass and wood carving), commissioned sketches, and fan comics/doujinshi. Basically anything where there aren’t any competing goods in the Dealer’s Room is generally allowed. They are generally discouraging items which dealers pay a lot of money to sell, like buttons, pins, and T-shirts. Anything that is really hard to make, like say, plushies, is totally OK to sell in Artist’s Alley.

However, I am not Otakon staff and the chart above may not be 100% accurate or even close to accurate.

Show #020b – Errors and Feedback, Part 2 – Show 19a, What the Hell Was That?

Show #020b Direct Download:

• Matsuri Con is in Columbus, Ohio this weekend. No, we won’t be there.
• Some guy from the RDF Underground Podcast called.

  $50 table	+	30 badge	Anime Central	=	$80
  $60 table	+	50 badge	Otakon	=	$110
  $20 table	+	40 badge	Anime Boston	=	$60 and tables sold out in 5 minutes.

• The Baka Song from Ranma 1/2, specifically from the 1991 Song Calendar CD.
• More complaints about Show 19a
• Definition of otaku. Otakon is otaku + convention.
• Ichigo is from Anime Pulse.
• The Future of Team 7 fanart
• My letter to Ichigo: Continue reading →

Show #020a Direct Download:

• “Annoyons”
• Asakurakun’s Podcast, the Randomization Show
• Fish in a Barral Podcast
• Jack, our web designer, reading his review on the MangaCast.
• The Dub Track column on Anime News Network
• Dubs Time Forgot
• 4Kids, and that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game I sat in on a record of.

Those giant inflatable rats. This picture (not taken by me) is just outside of NYU’s library. There are a helpful signs on it’s paws, but usually you’re not so lucky as to know what, exactly, the rat is protesting.

• Chi is from the Tokyo Anime Insider Vidcast.
• State of Decay episode of Dr. Who.
• Law of Consonantal Shift. And if you can understand this article, you can see where なると can become “Nuhrudo”.
• Noah phrases of the day:
  • “You dithering dunderhead!”
  • “Hats off!”
  • “Unless you’re some kind of a stuck-up stickybeak…”
• An interesting article On Nerds Correcting People.

Skype us, our name is “Ninjaconsultant”. We’ve already gotten one prank call.

Show #019a Direct Download:

Noah is noticeably absent from part 1 of this show, but rest assured he has a very long opinion on the issue by the time we reach part three.

Otakon – it’s an anime convention held in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s the biggest one on the East Coast, and either the 1st or 2nd biggest in the U.S.

• Otakon’s Official Artist Alley Rules for 2006.
• The Preliminary Rules and The Giant Otakon Thread
• The Giant ANN Thread Regarding the Preliminary Rules
• ZOMFG says the interweb!
• Otakon’s press release in response to all the madness.
• Carl Horn is our hero!
• I don’t know who shax is, but he is also teh awesome. Edit: Read this last link for a more or less incoherent explanation of what we’re talking about in this show. Also I got this link wrong earlier today.

Other conventions mentioned:

• Comiket, or Comic Market
• SPX – Small Press Expo
• MoCCA Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art
• NYCC
• ComicCon

Promos played:

• Anime Pulse EDIT: We seriously did not mean to sound quite so harsh to Anime Pulse in this show and that other show where we discussed something they said. We’ll talk about this more in our Errors/Retractions show, coming soon!
• Randomization Podcast
• Fish in a Barral Podcast Noah wants to know if they’ve misspelled “barrel” wrong on purpose or not.
• AWO mocking WARP
• Anime 101

Can you guess where our music in this show was from? The first person to email me with the correct answer AND the first person to comment on livejournal (with the correct answer) AND the first person to leave voicemail containing the answer all get a free volume of manga (you can’t win twice, one winner per mailing address). So that’s three winners, total. Ms. Wildgoose, Noah, my brother, Derek, and Scott are ineligible to win (you know who you are).

Check out Alison’s buttons at:

http://buttonbutton.biz

Show #018c Direct Download:

• Many Japanese music fans are finding away around the Japanese iTunes store restrictions by buying giftcards from j-list, or similar importers . (Exporters?)

• “The script is available before production even occurs, so the subtitles tracks and everything will be ready as soon as the show is completed to air in Japan.” – Noah

  This is false from an animation production standpoint – the script changes many times over the course of editing in pre and post production. It’s my understanding that in anime, the vocal tracks are recorded after much of the animation has been completed. On the show I work on, we make a final script based on the final cut that we send to the client – but that script isn’t ready until the final version of the show ships out, or sometimes even after the fact, because I think they just use this script for archival purposes, and a different company entirely does the closed captioning.

  The point here is, what Noah is saying in this brief sentence that I missed during the recording is patently false.

• Furthermore, Noah’s idea that the Japanese could produce their own subs cheaply is also way off. Chi from the Tokyo Anime Insider vidcast told us that one Japanese company subbed one episode of their own show and it cost $10,000. The typical budget of one episode of anime is about 5 to 10 million yen, or $42,800 to $85,000. So adding $10,000 is equal to one fourth of the entire budget of a low budget show!

  Why would any Japanese company spend $10,000 when they could earn more than that by doing nothing and waiting for U.S. companies to just give them some money instead?

• Mr. Answerman on the “quality” of fansubs.:
  

  “…I’m going to go ahead and trust the professional, experienced, paid translators anime companies hire instead of GOKU_83474 or whoever decided to do a rush job on this week’s Naruto episode. Most of the fan translations I see are rife with grammar and spelling mistakes, excessive swearing and way too many untranslated words. There are some that are just fine, but honestly, I’m always going to prefer the professional product. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that; to me, it’s the same thing as preferring your doctor’s medical advice over whatever self-diagnosis you can perform using Wikipedia. Yeah, the information MIGHT be right, but you know, better to trust the professionals.

• My assertion that the internet is “the future of television”, might also be somewhat off-base. Check out this article by PBS guy Robert X. Cringely:
  

  “Twenty million viewers, on average, watch “Desperate Housewives” each week in about 10 million U.S. households. That’s 210 megabytes times 10 million downloads, or 2.1 petabytes of data to be downloaded per episode. Fortunately for the download business model, not everyone is trying to watch the show at the same time or in real time, so iTunes, in this example, has some time to do all those downloads. Let’s give them three days. The question on the table is what size Internet pipe would it take to transfer 2.1 petabytes in 72 hours? I did the math, and it requires 64 gigabits-per-second, which would require an OC-768 fiber link and two OC-256s to fulfill.”

  “There isn’t an Internet backbone provider with that much capacity, much less excess capacity.”

• As for “original rights holders” asking fansubbers to stop, “That one company” who recently (2004) wanted School Rumble, Genshiken, and a half dozen other shows to stop being distributed is Media Factory. You can read the much longer statement on animesuki here.
• IGPX is funded in part by Cartoon Network.
• Totally free and legal anime downloads from ADV and CPM.

We’ll probably have a part 3, or 18d, for corrections and retractions, like how to pronounce “asaharakun” and what grade he’s in, or indeed, how to pronounce “Naruto”. In the meantime, you need to watch Tokyo Anime Insider (formerly “Anime for the Lazy Man”) here’s the iTunes link.

P.S.
Yesteryday I saw a dog that looked like Mugi!

Show #018b Direct Download:

Do we cite anything in this show that warrants notes or links? Email me at ninjaconsultant @ gmail.com

Steve complained that we hadn’t used his music in a long time, so you’ll hear a new piece of his in this show. Where’s my Ira Glass impression, huh, Steve?

Analog Lights is a division of “Giant Spider, INC” For more information, email Steve at: GiantSpiderINC@hotmail.com – or you can find him on myspace – I know you kids love myspace: http://www.myspace.com/analoglights.

Show #018a Direct Download:

I’m sure Noah will fix up these show notes later:

Intro: Berserk Intro (Kono sekkai wa…), Pocky song from website.
Sites Mentioned:

• Gaiaonline.com
• Rented from Greencine or Rentanime.com

Anime Mentioned:

• Hols Prince of the Sun
• Samurai Deeper Kyo
• Kenshin
• Mai Hime (My Hime)

Other Podcast Promos/Stuff:

• Happie Random podcast – now called the “Randomization” podcast. Asarakun is in 6th grade, FYI.
• Weekly Anime Review
• Happy Hentai Podcast
• Anime World Order
• Anime Pulse

End Music: From Bleach and Prince, in Erin’s crappy mashup. Call our voicemail: 206-203-ERIN with your reaction, complaints, etc.