 This week on fan service, we finally decide the best anime of 2019. Zone, zone, zone, zone, zone, zone, zone, zone, zone. You don't know what that is, but you will, and if you don't figure it out. Hey everyone, how's it going? Oh my gosh. We're in it now. Where are we at? We are at, no, we don't say the location of our buildings. We're in it though. We're in the anime zone, zone, zone, zone, zone. Coming to you live from the anime zone, we record it every year in the ethereal plane known only as the anime zone. We exist as 2D images being represented at a 3D space on your screen. Can we, every time someone says the word zone, zone. We have to exit. Yes, this is fan service, Ruchiti's official anime podcast. I am one of your hosts, and I am joined by these lovely people who are. Issa. Miles. And Chris. Chris? Wait a second, honey. Hold on, I'm just getting word in. That's a name that's new to the show. Oh my God. Well, we have had a Chris, but this Chris is new. I was gonna say, you couldn't have not had a Chris. I was gonna say, Chris, what Chris are you? Oh, I'm the best Chris. What's your last name? Oh, sorry. Yeah. No, say it, say it with fucking pride. I'm Chris Cocinos. Oh my God. Chris Cocinos. What other Chris? We had Chris, I can't remember his last name, Bakugo. No, his name is. Oh wait, his name is, who am I thinking of? I swear we've had a Chris on the show. Who am I thinking of? We're gonna come back to it, we're gonna come back to it later. Yikes. Sorry, it's just every time we get sent to the anime zone, all of our problems get real. We're also already breaking laws, drinking clause. Drinking clause, there ain't no laws. Breaking laws, drinking clause. There ain't no laws, there ain't drinking clause. Ain't no flaw with the clause. Cocinos, what is it that you do here at Rusty Animation? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. I'm the head of the Audi department for animation. Fuck yeah. Yeah, yeah. Cool ass team, we only make a bunch of cool, you said a cuss, and so now I had to say a cuss. We're allowed to cuss. Oh good, I like to say a cuss. Breaking laws. Yeah, unless it's the first 15 minutes, which I guess we have to censor, but we'll just beep it. Tyler, what's the rule? Tyler doesn't know the rule about it. We're drinking clause, so there's no laws. No, we can ask the special laws. Drinking clause, fuck you YouTube. Whoa! Edit that out, edit that out. Cut that down, we're done. It's hometown, it's hometown. Nice, nice, nice. Hamburger country. Nice, nice, what's your... I'm the head of the Audi department. I have an awesome team, we work on all the animated properties that we do here with the exception of RTA. Yeah. Not only animated, you help out with live action stuff? Live action, yeah, we do a lot. I mean, we've worked on some of them, the shorts for the live action department. We did the Halloween horror shorts that just came out last Halloween. And somehow they're like good fun adventures throughout audio times. You speaking of a holiday just reminded me. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Today should be the first when this episode goes live. Really, this comes out on January 1st? This should be January 1st. We should do this entire episode in Whispers. Oh yeah, sorry. Sorry about your name. Anime Zone. The decade's over. And I like... That's weird to say. I'm gonna go ahead and give us a self plug because I like the addition of Chris to this team. First off, you and I have talked about anime together for so long in the editorial. Yeah, dude. Secondly, because I think you also do bring a unique... Perspective. Perspective to the show because all of us I think are more visual in nature and 50% of your television watching experience is audio. So they're telling a story with audio as much as they're telling a story with video. I feel like we neglect that more than we should. I mean, most, more often than not though, it's a pretty common place that's the case, right? Like, a lot of times you look at schedules in production, people kind of forget that audio needs time to do the work. So everybody's like, we're focusing on animation, we're focusing on effects and so on and so forth. But it's like, don't forget about audio, we have stuff to do. But yeah. It's a crazy... I feel like it's a very common phenomena where you don't know what's wrong with audio or with the sound unless it's wrong. Absolutely. Yeah, if it's done right, you don't know. Absolutely. Yeah, and that's why I think... Unsung heroes. It's weird because I hear... Oh, thank you. We hear a lot of people who are... They'll come up to me and they'll be like, hey, I watched this thing and it sounded awful and I thought about you because I appreciate you and your team and what you do. And I'm like, thank you for that. Oh, that's nice. That qualification there. But yeah, it's so weird. Like, I spent a bunch of time watching, you know, Demon Slayer recently, and I'll talk about that soon. But like, paying attention to sound for me is exhausting because I'm like just trying to analyze all the stuff that's happening. I have to imagine it's probably the same for like animation, right? But that's actually another added layer that's very interesting because you do have to concentrate on the visual on top of everything else just to generate the audio. So it's even like double layer for you guys. Visually, we can just be like a turn the sound off and we don't have to think. But you have to be in that zone, zone, zone. Just to do your job. Yeah, it's crazy. Like I'm sitting here and I'm watching like some of the effects, which again, we'll talk about later, but like it was just so cool to see how they were able to not only make it visually just so appealing, but hourly, like they just do so much with the mix and the sound design. And it's just like, it's like, it's sexy. It's a very sexy sound, actually. Let's hop into it now. So whenever we get new people on the show, we want to kind of figure out their anime identity. Because I feel like there's so much anime out there and we all watch a lot of the same things, but sometimes we don't. Sometimes we watch things that are a little more niche for each one of us. What are like, give me three of your more niche favorite shows? Neesh. Or niche favorite shows. Favorite show. I mean, if it's not niche. I can hit you, I got you covered. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you were like a three course meal that were to be served that needed to serve up your three, the three courses of who is Chris. Rider over here. Well, what would you start off? What's our appetizer for cooking us? Your appetizer, it's weird because it'd be a horrible primer. Well, actually, here, hold on. Hold on, you know. This is a good way to do it. We just, yeah, that's great. I like that. So first and foremost, the first anime I really ever dove into, which is pretty commonplace, was Full Metal Alchemist. Nice. Right, I- Brotherhood or Original. Like when it first came out, I had a lot of like stuff happening in my life. It's the first cartoon to ever make me cry. Oh, nice. Like I was in tears at the end of that season or the end of the show, rather. And so, oh, I got a great one for dessert. And so, to me, that was like this really impactful anime. It was just, it was so great. I didn't really like, well, I did, I had something in common with Ed in that I had a passing in the family and my mom had passed away. And so, spoiler, sorry. And so, you know, to me, it was just it was, I was able to like tether myself to this weirdly unique experience, the show of, you know, I've never seen anything like before. So that was kind of like, that's the old appetizer. Main course. Main course. Something a little more, a little more flavorful. So this one, this one was, this one was interesting. So I was telling Cole this the other day, the reason I actually started watching anime like in full was actually because we were shooting fan service when we were, you know, all in this one building. And so, we were talking about like, we were talking about like Re Zero and some of those other shows. And I love Re Zero. And I would totally put that as my main course because it's really incredible. But I'm actually gonna say, Akame got killed. Oh, interesting. I've heard that name over a trillion times and I always forget what it's about. It's one of Harry's favorites. It is incredible. It's, yeah, it's hard. It's a hard show to watch. Oh, hard to watch. It's hard, oh, it's hard to watch because there's just like, oh, massive amounts of violence. No blood ever. No main characters safe. No, no one is safe. We're talking like Berserk level, like horrible body, bloody. It does get pretty, not brutal, not as Berserk level, but it's, Well, Berserk I also think because of the cheer amount of nonstop gore, you start to become desensitized to it. Sometimes when less gore is more impactful. This also, all of the visuals in Berserk are a little more terse. Yeah, like you see guts and you're like, oh, that's a mother fucker. You see characters in a comic I got killed and you're like, oh, it's a cute little girl who's gonna rip off people's limbs with her bare hands. Legitimately, that's like a thing. Yeah, it was a deep cut too because it was one of those shows where I was like, like I couldn't stop watching it. What is it about? How come I got killed? I guess it's interesting, the best way to describe it is that there's like corrupt politics happening in this land and there's a group of assassins who are effectively trying to overthrow this political power. I don't want to give too many spoilers because there's a lot that kind of developed. But it was like, was it the espionage angle that drew you to it or? What is it specifically about that show? It was the characters. I think the characters, that was another one of those shows and I find myself to be a little more sensitive in my old age. But as characters started to, you see that death flag come up, I'm like getting teary eyed right now just thinking about some of those moments where it was like, I loved this character. Oh my God, okay, well, and that's that. Yeah, so yeah, it's really great. First episode, wool hooking. Yeah, it's one of those things where crunchy, funny. Crunchy, probably Hulu. Yeah, I think I watched it on Crunchy. Sorry, when you said crunchy, funny, I was like, oh, we're describing the show now. Yeah, it's a little bit crunchy. I know it's a little bit funny. A little bit crunchy. I don't think it's funny. I don't think it's okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it's a great show. I truly recommend it. And bring this in for us. Dessert, hold on. I think I know where you're gonna go. I don't know if you know where. I'm going far left with the dessert. Dessert, this is something rich, something you love. The show I'm thinking is a show we talked a lot about. Oh, no. It's nothing, okay. No. Okay, thanks. What's for dessert, Chris? So, what you serving? I actually, I said Full Metal was the first anime I ever watched, but there is one anime that I did watch that ended up really truly classified as anime. Sure. It's a show called Cran Shin Chan. Oh, Shin Chan, you got it. So it is 100% anime. Thank you. I loved that show so much. And then when I worked at Kingsaw, the last place I worked at, and I found out that I was gonna be doing VO recording at the time, they brought in a gentleman by the name of Jason Liebricht. And I knew that name because he plays the voice of Principal Ench. Oh my God. And I remember like, I was like, it was like six, seven years ago. And I just remember that whole moment. I was just like, this is incredible. For people who may not know. Oh God. Tell us what dessert it's all about. Cran Shin Chan is crudely drawn animation about a small boy who has no problems showing off. His little peepee. His little peepee. Glad your mind went there for it. When everything is Shin Chan, it was like, oh, the boy dick show. Yeah. The boy dick show. Charlie Brown, if he was horny, if he was horny, he would have showed his dick. Oh my God. Yeah, he's got the Mr. Elephant man. Anime peanuts. Yeah, literally. Anime peanuts meet Simpsons. Literally. Yeah, that's a good compliment. There were some other ones that I wanted to talk about, but I thought- I thought you were gonna say sweetness and lightning. Yeah, sweetness and lightning is like- Oh, I see. I don't even know what this one is. It's the- It's your favorite show you've never heard about. You need to watch it. Oh yeah? Yeah. Crayon Shin Chan is like the dessert. If you're like, you know what? I want something fun and like, this is just off the wall. Like someone just gave me ice cream in a fucking sink. Yeah. Sweetness and lightning is like- Oh, it's decadent. Oh yeah. Sweetness and lightning is like this like, beautiful, like, wonderfully just heartfelt, heart-wrenching. He's single father, bonding with his daughter. Oh, that's so good. It's so incredible. Miles. And it's short. I think it was like what? It was also one of the few cases where the daughter was actually voiced by a child. A child, yeah. And she's the cutest thing on the planet. Yeah. Yeah. Super adorable. You sang, you sang, wasn't it like the shark song that she sang? Yeah, because somebody put the shark song in for when we used to do a shot of the week. Yeah. We did the shark song and I was like, that's an instant win. Yeah, that was yours. No matter what, shark song wins. Yeah. She'll go make me cry. It's so good. Oh yeah. It will make me cry, dude. You were gonna cry so much. I'm a big crier. It's also, they learned, they bonded over cooking with one of his students who has a very good family life, but her mom is a television chef. So she's not home. And so not home as often as the student would like. Spoilers, spoilers, let him, let him. But no, that's like, that's groundwork. Laying the groundwork. Sweetness and lightning. Sweetness and lightning. It's one of those shows that again, I think I watched after fan service because you had talked about it. And then from then on, I was just like, it's a short, you can watch it on a one sitting. And you learn how to cook. And you learn why children don't like peppers. Yeah. Back to Crayon Shin Chan. Which is funny. I've been watching that to learn Japanese. Really? Yeah. I turn off the subtitles and it's a very, so like with learning Japanese, I've been doing a lot of research in that the best way to learn, and for a lot of, a general best way to learn is to watch children's shows. Yeah. Makes sense. Because what they'll do is they'll hold up an item and say the name of the item, and you'll start to pick up stuff because I was trying to watch Terrace House. Probably that is they just sit around a table and talk. It's a lot of slang. A lot of like. Slang, a lot of like mumbling. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. But it's also, they'll sit there and talk, and they won't hold up a visual representation of what they're talking about. Whereas Shin Chan, like, you see like he's holding up like action figure and like saying. Action figure. Action bastard. It's action man in the show. But I wanted to clarify when you said that I'm like, well actually I've only watched the American dubbed version and they go very off the wall with the scrambles. It's a very fun script. Action figure is what they say in the Japanese, but it's action man in the American dubbed version. It's like action bastard. And there's a lot of like really crass, like dirty humor. And it is so funny. It's the show that all the kids wanna watch that the parents are like, ugh. Yeah. It's questionable. Like I really don't wanna watch the show with you. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's really funny. That was a delicious meal, Chris. Thank you. I'm so full of that. I hope you've liked my meal in the anime zone. Zone, zone, zone. So let's talk about the day. Well, okay, how do we wanna do it? So we have the first ever fanies. The fan service anime awards. The butts. Okay. The fanies. Okay. Now here's the thing. You've kind of just chosen this as the name without any sort of consultation. Did you do any peer review? Did you focus groups on the name? Well, when I first brought it up to you guys, that was me testing the water. Right. And you got like, and you still thought it was cool when I just kind of like gave you that face. Well, no, cause I gave another option and you said no. No. So we'll talk about the fanies. We're gonna stick to the fanies. Do you know that in England, fanny packs are called bum bags? Do you know why? Cause fanny's vagina. That works perfectly. In the US it's butts, in England it's vaginas. Wow. Wow. That changes a lot for me right now. So you're ready to give out the inaugural fanies? Like I feel really bad for any woman, probably born in like the mid 1900s named fanny now. Just for that reason. That's a bad time. There are in there. Franny. Franny. Franny dresser. All right. So we wanna hand out some fanies. Are there, what is the criteria right now? Are we going hardcore IGN 9.2, too much water on this shit? Or are we gonna be like, this is a recommendation against fanny? Yes and yes. Oh, fine. Lee, I can't right now with this fanny. Well, I gave you all homework. Yes, you did. Oh yes, yes, yes. And we got there. We got there. I wanted people to come with four shows that they wanted to say, they would wanna put, either like, like just you know how the Oscars like, it's like the meta game of even getting nominated is kind of a nod. Sure. It's like hey. Yeah, Studio Bones finds out that they got a fanny nomination for us. Like that's going on their next promo. All we're gonna do is send them, we're gonna send them a jar of honey. Yeah. Why? You want a fanny. Wait, why? I think it was because the alternative. The alternative was the golden honeys. Golden honeys. So now we're just gonna send them honey anyways. And they're just like, I don't understand the correlation and who is Cole? We should send it in a fanny pack. It'll make way more sense. Yeah. Yeah. So much more sense. So much more sense. When we go in March, we can just hand deliver it to the studio. Oh, like that. A fanny pack dipped in honey. And you hand it to them. And they'll be like, oh, they got the good time. Oh. How do you get to them? If you just walk away, we won't talk. Yeah, they won't send anything. They won't let us in. So I feel like I want to preface this by saying like I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the mainstream voter. I'm gonna be that person who's like, oh, this was the popular one. Hey, Eesa, I don't think you're gonna be the only one. Yeah, you might not be alone. Just throw that up there. Yeah, because maybe not all of us watch a lot of anime all the time and maybe only technically watch like two shows from this year. I think you watched more. I watched a little more. You watched a lot of older shows. But the majority of the anime that I watched was anime from years past that was long overdue. It was more Evangelion. Evangelion. Re-creators. Golden Camui. Re-creators. Yeah, it was a bunch of shit that should have been watched long ago when I just had gone around to. Yeah. So, conventionally. I do have like some other things too. Like it's like those honorable mentions for that season though that I think everyone else has also heard but it may not have been their favorite kind of a thing. I also don't know, how are we gonna set rules? Do we wanna go by seasons? I wanna go by seasons. I had to cheat when I figured out that I didn't really watch any anime from the last, or from the winter season of 2019. Well, I don't think I did either. But I do have one that is, it's persisted throughout many a day. So, I see you got my anime list open over there. What were some of the bigger shows that came out winter 2019? Back long ago when we were so much younger and more pure of heart. According to my anime list, here are the top like five shows that people were following. We had Shield Hero. Yes. It was Isakai, dude goes to get summoned to another world and people hate him because he's the Shield Hero. Tyler likes it. Promised to Neverland. Promised to Neverland. I'm one of the ones that I should have watched. Yes, but didn't. Mob Psycho 2. Oh yeah, that came out. That was this year. Kaguya Osama? Yep. And Dodo Dodo. Dodo Dodo. Side all those. Are we choosing from that group there? No. There's another one that season. Some of the ones that just came out in 2019. I was just like playing, cause also like the Quintuplet show came out, which the manga is really good on that right now. They just revealed who the bride is. So. Quintuplet show? Spoilers. Throwing in another bit. Cause it's my anime list. So that was the top series. My anime list will continue because they have ONAs now, which is original net animations. What is that? It's their way of saying this was released on Netflix. Also it's an OVA. OVA. OVA's technically have to be a physical, I think. Yeah, original video animations. So those are TV aired series, but then there's a whole section of my anime list code for ONAs, which is, oh well. Original net animation. Original net, yeah. This is like streamed on Netflix. There's also movies as well. There's a whole movie section. So. And the reason Issa brings this up is because you said you were gonna be the mainstream. This is about like, as far for mainstream, is it this? Oh. Oh. No, it's not that one. That's actually an, that was actually in a, summer. Is it? Cause I have a, I have a summer ONA myself. Okay. All right. So winter, 2019. Winter 2019. I didn't watch anything from it. There's someone else start and I'm gonna nod and ask a lot of questions. Mine was Mob Psycho 2. I haven't seen two yet. Oh. Mob Psycho 2 is. It's so good. It's so good. It's like, it's like a new creator of One Punch Bank, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I like Mob Psycho better. For one. Oh. Oh, then one punch. No, I love Mob Psycho 2 better than one as well. Okay, okay. I love the second season of Mob Psycho better in the first season of Mob Psycho. Mob Psycho 2 was weird cause I went into it and like, I have a problem that I need to get over of fandoms can deter me from having. Oh dude, absolutely. If I feel like oversaturated by fandoms saying, hey, I like this show. I like this show. Then I'll step into it being like, okay. Whenever I see this, it reminds me of the fandom and it's wholesome cause like people are saying Mob Psycho is good for good reasons cause it's a good show. And so I went into it not wanting to like it and I loved it. That's impressive. What is it about Mob Psycho season two that you think makes it noteworthy? Well, it is definitely one of those sequels that does expand on its original successfully. Not in a way that makes it irrelevant or what's the other word? I'm redundant? Sure. And what's like the two sentence pitch for anybody that is not familiar with Mob Psycho? Mob Psycho 100 is a show about a boy psychic who is an assistant to a con artist. Sounds like an impromptu game where you're trying to build the sentence. Yeah, Matt lives over here. An assistant to a con artist but it is wholesome. It is wholesome and it's kind of like, like seeing Mob like kick ass is. Seeing Mob kick ass. It's like supernatural and then the hidden genre of it is action. Yeah, bones is great. Studio Bones. So the hidden genre is action and the thing with season two is it does expand on Mob growing up and growing out of, in some aspects, growing out of his relationship with this sense figure that he has with Regan. Yeah, it's developing that relationship. Developing, yeah. More so peers than a subordinate relationship. I wonder if like some shows don't execute on that second season particularly well because of the fact that some of them don't expect to maybe have a second season or and they were prepared for it and they're like we have an idea for the big picture. Cause sometimes it just feels like second season is just shoehorned in to make it work. The only other show that I could think of that you can fight all you want whether or not it's anime or not was Legend of Korra was one of the few series that I could feel like, I feel like they had a plan and then we're told you need to change that plan and then we're told actually maybe this plan you need to change it one more time just because of like weird distribute like there's something about the story of that show that does not feel as cohesive. It also feels- I still enjoyed it. But I also feel like with Korra like season one could have been one and done. Oh yes. I was kind of like oh. I thought that was the point, right? Yeah, yeah. Anyways, we're not here to talk about Korra. Yeah. Any other notable stuff about Mob Psycho season two? I don't know this basically kind of the gist of it. I think a lot of sequels nowadays have actually been getting better. That's good. That's exciting. Mine's a, it's really hard for me to say one because one I think is a better show and one I liked more. Ooh. That is super interesting. Well, let's throw them both out and then we'll see which one we want to talk about. Promise Neverland. Was the better show? I think Promise Neverland was the better show. Okay. I think Kaguya Sama Love Is War is the show that I loved more. Tell me why. Tell us about the show. Kaguya Sama Love Is War is about two students who go to a prestigious private school. Our president and vice president of student council, both of them have the mindset that whoever admits love first loses. To one another? Yes. To anyone, to one another? Interesting. Whoever, no matter what, because they're both from prestigious families who are all about having power. Okay. Well, I think. To make yourself vulnerable to someone like that is a sign. Well, you're admitting submission if you're like, hey, I love you. It's a real Khaleesi John Snow situation. Yes. And so the entire show is just kind of framed around these very like relatable interactions of two people who are in love and don't know it themselves. Oh my God. Two of the most frustrating tsunders you've ever seen in your entire life. But it's all like mind games because it's like, okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to use my mom to buy a theater so that way I can then have an award, a radio award to the station that he always listens to. So that way, whenever he listens to it, we'll say, oh, this is the magic winner. Here you get two free tickets and we're gonna do it to a movie that I've been saying that I want to watch. So that way he'll come over to me and offer me the tickets to go with him thereby proving his love for me. Wow. That is. Convoluted. Yes. So comedy? Comedy, very, very funny. Romcom. Romcom. Cool. How many have you gotten that? 12. Just one done season? No, it's a manga that's been going on for a while. So it will be continuing. Yeah, I think the manga's almost over. There he is. I feel like I would grow frustrated. I'd just be like, one of you just say it. There are steps that happen. It's not the same thing the entire time. Each of them makes steps forward. There's also other characters they introduce. The secretary, Chika is the best character in the show because she's the most pure, innocent. They did a fun dance for one of the post or one of the credit sequences that was so good. I was pointing enthusiastically because Kali, a friend of ours, is the person who constantly recommends me stuff that I always end up liking. Kaguya Osama, she was telling me, you will love this. And that has been on my watch list forever. So I saw this was from this year and I was like, oh, I should actually watch that. Wow, okay. So the other one was Promise Neverland. That's right, okay, so that was the other one. Which is shown in, what I like is it's shown in Jump series that much like the other stuff I'm liking from the Jump right now, kind of breaks the mold. It's about these kids living in an orphanage that find out maybe they are being lied to and maybe they don't want to be adopted. There's some stuff going on. The Island Babies. Yeah, it's very, and correct me for a moment, this doesn't sound like shown in Jump. Exactly, yeah. At all. It's three characters are all these super intelligent kids who are like one is like very intelligent about agility and how to like physically perform better than people. Another one is like a chess guy who's like strategy and other guy's book smarts. So it's very like, the entire series is a giant chess game of like the people in charge and the kids trying to figure out, I don't want to spoil too much more because there's something in the first episode that happens that that's the show. That's the show, yeah. Also, I think we're not gonna, the fannies do not represent the best show of the year. That shit's fucking subjective. I think we're gonna talk about our favorite show of the year. That's what we're gonna do. It sounds like you love. That's what the fannies are all about. That's what fannies all about. Okay. Chris, you have anything from Winter 2019? Dude, I mean, I'm just gonna throw Chin Chin back out there because it's timely. Is it still going? Oh, it's still going. It's on the ongoing series. So you put up my anime list and you look at the number of episodes, it's a question mark. It's up there with like Conan and my, or I think Conan actually has a count. Conan has like 900 something. Yeah, but like, I think there's another one up there. Like one piece doesn't have, it has a question mark. Like they don't, they don't fucking know. They don't fucking know. They don't fucking know. But yeah, it's just timeless. It's able, I'm able to just go and like, if I just want to put on like a show, it's just easy for me to have one. I'll put it all, okay, even say for the spring mob psycho, all. Oh, for Winter. For Winter. For Winter, yeah, I'll go ahead there as I think our Winter placeholder. When did, when did Tekken Titan season three start? Was that spring or winter? So technically it was fall. Was it fall? Fall of last year was the first half of the season. The second half of the season was summer. Yeah, technically it was this year. So winter 2019 mob psycho season two? Let's do it. I mean, I'd like to go, I have to go watch it now. Yeah. So now I'm excited. I've been hearing so much about mob for a year. Yeah. I mean, they've, the show, the first season was great. Yeah. So then we have spring. And I already see what I think is going to be our winner. Yeah. What did my anime list have? Top five, One Punch Man. Season two. Season two, Kimetsu no Yaiba. Demon Slayer. Demon Slayer. Uh-huh. Attack on Titan, season two, season three part two. Okay, yeah. So that was the spring. Fruits basket and the wise man's grandchild, Kenjana Maho. That's funny. I read the manga for Fruits Basket, but I haven't watched. Also notable entries, Carol and Tuesday. Oh yeah, that one looked really interesting. Of course. Sars on my, other notable entries, Sars on my. And if you go down to O and A's, a Gretzko season. I was going to say, and that was when you said like your favorite and the better, it killed me because I'm like, I loved, I loved a Gretzko. I still need to watch season two. Here's the other thing. Season two is incredible. I want to know. They actually go over gas lighting. And it's amazing. What are we going to do about shows that last one season into the next? Because Demon Slayer is spring and fall. Well, I know what I'm doing then. Spring and summer. Spring and summer. Give me a chance to split it up. I don't know. Because I think the parts that people like the most are probably going to be in the fall or summer. I think it's, can it take up both of those? Is that cheating? Well, I think why not? Why don't we just say the favorite ones and then we'll just, if we all voted for Demon Slayer for both seasons, then fuck it. That's where we're at. Yeah. I'm fine with that. It's Demon Slayer for me. Yeah, this kind of feels like that year where Breath of the Wild came out and like every game reviewer on podcasts was like, so far game of the year, excluding Breath of the Wild, what do we want to talk about? At least that's how it felt to me. Demon Slayer was hands down. That's my annual Fanny winner contender for me. It's a, you know, the two Senate summary, a boy comes home to find his family slaughtered by demons except there's one sole survivor, his sister, but the only reason she's alive is because now it seems that she has been turned into a demon and he must go on a quest to see if he can rescue her or if it will all be for nothing, but in order to do that, he must become a super strong Demon Slayer. So I got a short story for you. So I was watching, because I binged all of Demon Slayer recently. And by the way, I'm still sticking with my guns. I think I'm gonna vote for a gritsco for that season. And I'm voting for a Demon Slayer. He's the next one. Yeah. So I was watching it and it started to buffer. And I'm like, like this is before he had come home. It was running into like the grandfather's house and hung out there. And so I'm like, I'm like watching him like, oh no, what's gonna happen? Like what's he's gonna go home and something's gonna happen? And so it starts buffering and I like minimize it for a second and I'm like, refresh and I look. And I just see at the bottom of like the description of the episode, it's like, you know, Tanjiro leaves and then it comes home and his whole family is murdered by demons. And I'm like, what the fuck? What is this? What I like, we watch on Crunchyroll? Yes. So what's interesting is the first, for like the first week, Crunchyroll will erase all the description. Yeah, they won't put it in the description. I love that. I love that. What end up? Because marketing told us to. But it used to be, we would only reveal episodes. Nice, nice, nice. After Premiere. Yeah, Demon Slayer's. Yeah. I think the thing about Demon Slayer to me, a lot of people lost their mind over a later episode where they just crank up that animation. Oh yeah, you saw that budget. Just go like, money. It's fucking great. Money. To me, what I loved about Demon Slayer is, I feel like a lot of people these days always say like, well, it's not very original. Like, that show needs to be original. I like this because it's so original. I don't think Demon Slayer's a particularly original show. I think it is a concept that is, I've been done before. Like, okay, you know, family is murdered. I have to go avenge this. Like, oh, I guess what I'm saying is, it takes a lot of ingredients from a lot of things that have been made before, but it combines them in a way and executes it on such an unbelievably high level. In a way, it reminds me of The Last of Us. The Last of Us is not a super original story, but that fucking execution. It was phenomenal. It was fantastic. And Demon Slayer, I think, just has flawless execution. Just, it's dripping with it. Dude, I was saying like, for me, and it's funny because I, again, said to Gretzko, but I've got to talk about Demon Slayer. For me, Demon Slayer was just, it was, like you said, it was dripping in style. It's like they took this show and they like, coming from a sound perspective, like if you go and you listen to a lot of anime, it's a lot of the same sound effects are used across the board. That's why like, your name was such a big impact on me. It was that they had like an actual team of Foley artists. Like, there was just two folks just doing the Foley for the entirety of the movie. And then of course they had sound design go throughout. It was like, they changed the soundscape. And in a lot of ways, and I don't know the exact breakdown, you and I have talked about this before, but like, anime tends to cater to the higher frequencies because a lot of the smaller TVs can't, can't handle. That low end. When a big localization is changing audio levels because you look at the general Japanese household that has a small TV, they don't want to have big loud speakers because you are surrounded by other apartments. If you have a loud sound system, you're going to annoy your neighbors. So it tends to be a smaller, so you have less space to deliver information. So normally sound effects are super low. That is fascinating. And dialogue is very high. Wait, I remember part of this conversation because two or three years ago, we had this conversation about why hentai sound effects have changed throughout the years and why they've evolved to having body sounds because sound systems got better. Well, yeah, but also on top of that, and this is kind of a gross thought, but like body sounds typically are like the sticky wet sounds, and those are higher frequencies. Those are easier to cut through in sound effects. I mean, more often than not, if you think about like a fire sound or whatever, like the reason you can hear fires because you've got the low end, but you also have that crackling high end. More often than not, like when we have like tortures and stuff and like Ruby, like you're gonna hear that low end in the background. I'll get rid of all that shit and just leave the crackling there. You know what it is. It's just noise. It cuts through exactly, because if you have too much in that frequency space, it's nonsense. That's so cool. But yeah, so they turned up the volume, no pun intended on the audio and the visual for this series. Like I talked about this with Phillip, one of the guys on my team, we're a recording mixer for, you know, all of our animated shows now. We were like laughing about how we heard sound effects that we use in our shows in this show, which is not anything I've ever heard before in anime. Oh, that's really cool. So yeah, I will say to scale back though, a Gretzko was such a great show. For me, I'm like a metalhead, tried and treat like I've been listening to metal for a long time. I've seen your college pictures. Don't look that up after this. But yeah, and so what I thought was super neat was that it covered this, it was just unique, right? Gretzko in and of itself as a series is just a unique show about this, you know, a small woman, Fox character, right? And I love that it's all like anthropomorph, it was like, Fox are red panda. Red panda, sorry, red panda, you're right. How dare you? Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was like, wait, there's a Fennekin. Well, no, he's a hyena. No, no, there's another Fox. There is Fenneko. No, there's a Fenneko's a Fennek Fox. Oh, that's not a Fox. It is a Fox. It's a type of Fox. What do you like about a Gretzko? I'm not done. I love that it followed her character in such a way that it was like she just going through the normal shit that like a normal working human would go through. And she's trying to like better her life and the best way for her to do it is to find that quality of life in unleashing hell in a karaoke room. If you're a Western anime viewer, the best comparison I could make to a Gretzko is actually Touka and Birdie. Oh, yeah. Like Touka and Birdie leans way more into the like kind of like absurd, raunchier sort of like crass humor. Whereas a Gretzko leans into like full on like Eastern absurdity and like, you know, this is the persona that you have at work versus the persona that you unleashed in the karaoke room. And the way I compare them a lot, like, cause that's exactly how I think of it. Both of the main character in both series, the main characters are also flawed. Like they both can make mistakes and mess up. Like Gretzko makes mistakes. She fucks up. She has misunderstandings that causes more problems for her later. Or like- It makes her so relatable. Yeah, yeah. And same thing with Touka and Birdie. Yeah, you can appreciate that, right? One of the things I think that I find interesting about a Gretzko is one of which is the Eastern lens on it or at least the Japanese lens on it. You have a lot of shows here that are kind of about the working woman and about her kind of unleashing herself or being herself in a capacity. And in a Western way, sometimes that is kind of just being unapologetically yourself. But a Gretzko is finding, the series is about this working woman who's trying to find ways to continue being a woman in this kind of society that's highly gendered and has different values than we do. Like on the just straight up. So the way that they interestingly enough humanize her boss in season one and get her to actually kind of find inspiration for that and keep working from him. Even though at the end of the day he's still kind of an asshole. But there ends up being like this thing where it's like, oh, but you know she still kind of has to work under him and she's gonna do that and she'll find like. Well, that's something I feel getting strangely into real world stuff. And I don't feel like people try to understand the other side enough. And it's like, you get to see why he is the way that he is. And it's like, you don't have to agree with him. You don't have to. But you can go like, oh. It gives you context. That's why you've been exposed to this that made you the way that you are. Whether it's like learning like, hey, don't do that to other people. You actually just reminded me, one thing I wanted to talk about was with regards to Demon Slayer. They do such a good job of doing that exact thing. That's true. Humanizing, this is the first anime that I've ever seen where they give you the bad guy and they kill the bad guy off, but then they're like, oh, but here's the backstory in case you're interested. It's the Assassin's Creed assassination moment where they have that moment of. Yeah, I do want to, I would like to add to something I said earlier. I do think that is actually really original. It's unique. It's very unique. They spend a whole chunk of an episode talking about this character who's gone. And it's because they want to take this moment to humanize this person or give you an idea to the ability to identify what that character was. Tandaro's greatest strength is his kindness. Yeah, I mean, even, empathy and kindness, like I also want to say, like also just his general kindness, because the reason that he survives is because he stayed and helped people around town. Yeah, he wanted to go and sell some stuff to help his family. But then he saw that this person needed help. So he helped them. And he saw that this person, and like the whole reason that he doesn't go home at night is because he helps that one guy and one guy's like, actually no, stay in for dangerous at night. And that's what allows him to not be there when his family slaughtered. And we wouldn't have a series if he had gone home. It's something else when you can take the villain of a story and at least give them some human element or even just give them a backstory. They could still be an awful piece of shit human being. That's what makes Batman villain so fascinating. Yeah, it's great. I mean, you get to see their developing story. I mean, I appreciate that about. And it's so funny because I was like, I'm talking about Gretzko, but then we'll go back to the next layer. You know what, since Demon Slayer can also count for our next one, do we want to say spring Gretzko? Cause I feel like there's a lot of really strong things. Was there, was there, I mean, hold on, hold on. I have onions. I mean, no, as in like, I would say, I do have summer stuff, yeah. Demon Slayer for me would be spring. A Gretzko season two just as like a finisher to top this off is I think very interesting in that the way I looked at season two got so much more anxiety than season one. Oh my God, but also, yeah, no, just like, oh my God, I had to stop watching because it really was just like, it was too real, but the other part of it too, what I think is interesting about Gretzko is season two is how she learns to stay firm in what she wants, which is I think very. It's a very hard thing to do as a person like me. It's hard to find that moral balance of staying firm and treat yourself, but also playing the game that everyone has to play when working with a company or with people in general. With people, yeah, especially with her relationships. If you're an independent contract or even if you're working independent, you still are gonna have to interact with people at some point or another. Do you have any more spring shout-outs, Cole? No, I mean, I think spring, I was like, it's gonna be pretty easy because it's Demon Slayer. Yeah, we'll give spring a Demon Slayer. I'll do a quick shout-out for Carolyn Tuesday. Nice. I think it's worth watching. I'm curious to see where it goes. The thing that helped me back from it the most was it kind of sells you on this like, he was a grassroots story about two girls that, against all odds, managed to become big musical stars. And yet, those girls get more lucky breaks and coincidences than any anyone would ever get. Everything seems to work out for them. Yeah, that's the one thing. The one thing that helped me back was like, I feel like you're selling something, but you're not quite actually going through it. But it's still a very, very charming show. They're writing it from a perspective of like, I don't know anything about this. Very romantic. I think it's really cool. It's more romanticized. Very, it feels like it's all destiny. Summer. Getting to the summer. Right in the summer. Summer in 2019. Demon Slayer. My many lists said Dr. Stone, said Inno Shobotai Fire Force. We got there. Danmachi. Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon? Vinlin Saga, which I think that's actually the best series of the summer. Okay. So I have no votes. I have no horse in this race, but I will say that I watch trailers for all of those. In Vinlin Saga, I love when anime does like Norse mythology. Vinlin was, it looks Norse mythology. It's Norse history. Norse history, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I meant. Yeah. And this show was, sorry if anyone likes this, Arifueta, it was bad. Which one's that one? Arifueta, from Commonplace to World's Strongest. Sounds like a light novel. It is a light novel in which the main character like is such a good guy, but everyone hates on him. So one day he actually gets knocked, like one of his teammates knocks him down the tunnel. And so he eats a bunch of demons and becomes powerful. And now he's the strongest in the world. Ah, yes. I love when they're happy. I do have other ones. We've all eaten demons. We've all eaten demons. Like, again, this is another split season where I think Vinlin Saga is the best show that came out that season. But Astral Lost in Space was to me the best, was my favorite show. Why? What's it about? Astral Lost in Space is like in the future, the people like have these space programs, summer camps. So like, oh, you get to go live on a planet for the summer. I think I remember you telling me about them. They arrive at the summer camp and there's this white little ball that shows up. And all of a sudden they are in the middle of space, not at their destination. Luckily for them, well, there's a lot of like, kind of what you're saying, like lucky circumstances that happen, like whenever they pop back out in space, there's a ship right there that they can get on. I think that's part of it, is that it was very intentional and planned, whatever the behind the scenes person is. But essentially they get on the ship and they find out that they can make it back to where they're supposed to be, except their ship can only hold so much food and water. And there is only one path out of all of the infinite space paths that have that when they plan it out, the timeframe of their food and water will let them land on planets where they can refuel. It's like FTL the anime. Yes. Oh, shit. It also handles people's relationships as well. It has great representation. There's like amazing representation. Oh, serious. That's cool. And it was like the show nobody was talking about. What's it called again? Astro Lost in Space. It's on Funimation. Check that out. It was super low tier on Funimation, like they didn't promote it at all. And I was like, this is the best show you have. You guys have played in the season. Interesting. All right. So other things to note, at least for me anyway, Cannon Busters was premiered on Netflix. That's on my anime list. According to my anime list as well, they actually released the Violet Evergarden movie in Japan, which is actually kind of crazy because after the stuff that Kyoto Animation has been through this year with the fire and things like that, I did not know that they were gonna, I did not know that they were still playing on releasing that movie. So I'm interested to see if there's gonna be a US release for that. The One Piece movie came out, One Piece Stampede. Is this the end? Are they done with One Piece now? They're getting close. They're getting close. They're getting close actually. We're done. And for the US. They're always gonna get close. No, like they actually have like a schedule. Yeah. And for the US, for us at least, premiere, premiere was there. And I'm gonna go off the beaten path for this one, premiere is my summer 2019. Tell me, what is premiere? Premiere is trigger, studio triggers. All right, I'm already sold. I'm already sold. Nice, nice, I know my audience. So your trigger is movie and it's... Man, you already know studio trigger. Anyone who's watching this knows studio trigger. It's just a mashup of everything that they've ever made into one, two hour spectacle of like amazing. Or just like just explosions. Explosions, just visuals. I wanna, I wish I could explain it, but it is an experience. Flaming Hot Cheetos for your eyes. Flaming Hot Cheetos for your eyes. Oh my God. Done by Aaron Nguyen. Can it be talkies for my eyes instead? Oh yeah, yeah, it can be talkies for you. I need to see that movie one day. It's, man, that's my 2019. Yeah, I love that explanation. Flaming Hot Cheetos for my eyes. Demon Slayer was also. It's painful actually. So this is not a vote, but I think it's something worth mentioning. Dr. Stone. Yes. We've talked about Dr. Stone a few times over the course. Yes. The run of this show as we came back. Sell me on this show because I watched the trailer and I'm not gonna sell you on this show. Because I'm not sold on this show yet. Have you been watching it? So that's where I wanna come in. A lot of people around the time we had RTX this year were telling me about Dr. Stone. You gotta watch Dr. Stone. It is a show where an event happens in modern day where all humans and for some reason, swallows are immediately turned to stone for 3,700 years or 37,000 years. I don't know. It's a lot. 3,700, okay. Long time. And then one day, dude wakes up. I can't remember the scientist's name. Senko. Senko, thank you. Senku. Senku, essentially boy genius finds himself unpetrified. Tall white hair. Tall white hair. Kind of looks like he has green onion for hair. Yeah, that guy. I've seen it. And he brings his friend who's a super strong boy. He unpetrifies him. He's a durable boy. Durable, yeah, durable, big lad. Yeah, the thing is he's not strong in the sense that he can win and fight fair. Lots of scenes. They're both strong willed, strong willed people. Okay. Senku's will to constantly discover new things and spread the good word of science and all that shit. And beefy boy, he wants to protect his friends. He's kind of like your standard Shonen guy. Sure. Which interestingly enough, I learned from being on the show, he was the intended protagonist of the series. But very soon after the start of the series, the mangaka realized, oh no, Senku is a much more interesting protagonist and the story shifts over to Senku's perspective as the driving force of the story after a few episodes. And that is why I first stopped watching the show because I didn't really care about beefy boy. It's not that I didn't care. It was that the movie was, the show was moving at a very snail's pace. And like though there were things that I found extremely charming about it as someone that like goes camping and like knows a lot of wilderness survival stuff. Like I geek the fuck out whenever it's like, we're gonna talk about how to like make a fire. And like here we're gonna talk about how to make rope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a show that is romanticizing that and showing off how cool knowledge is. I'm like, yeah, that's fucking cool. I really liked that. But the story itself, I was like, and it's okay, this guy's trying to revive his love. And like all this other stuff. I stopped watching episode, I think it was five. Oh wow. And a big thing happens. A big thing happens in episode five. But for whatever reason, I was like, I'm good, I'm good. But so many people have told me over the course of the show that like I stopped like one or two episodes prior to when the shift happens. That's like a common thing to say though. A lot of people are like, oh no, just keep watching, it gets better. It's like, we had a conversation about that semi-recently. Yeah, I, since our last recording, I watched two more episodes of the show. I think I'm gonna keep watching it. Which is not something that I expected to do. Okay. But at the inclusion of some new characters, one character in particular, the sorcerer. I suddenly found it much, I found every second to be much more enjoyable. So yeah, cause you just said something like, what interested you was the, oh, let's build fire. How to make rope. They take that and they start going, let's make antibiotics. In this world with no technology, no anything. How do you make antibiotics? It is a extremely wholesome show in that the driving action is knowledge and the sharing of knowledge in the hopes that it will better humanity. Open source. It's so weird because it's what I appreciated about food wars was that they would go into the breakdown of an actual- That's like dish. Cause it's the Shonen Jump show as well. That's very much like the, it's the what food wars is to food. Dr. Shonen is to science. With less tits. Well, they just introduced one character. But no, I mean like, I still like, I'm not crazy about how it looks. It reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh! I'm like, do you have any kids? You met Mellon Girl yet? No. I met short skirt blue girl with tree fall and she does kicks that should reveal a lot. But thanks to the power of anime, you only see what they want to see. Anyways, we gotta go cause we're already at time but we don't know where she's gonna get through. Fall 2019. What are we in on as the, as the winner for summer? What were they? It was, it was fall. Dr. Stone, Fire Force. Or that's what I'm saying. Promare. I feel like everybody that's been on the show geeks out of promare do want to give it a try. I'm ready to watch it. I can't vote. I can't vote. I'm not gonna go home and watch it right now. It's like, I'm excited. What do we say? Are we giving it to Promare? Sure. Promare. Promare. Happy Fanny. All right. Fall. 2019. Fall 2019. So my hero season. Wait, we were in fall right? I thought we were in summer. Now we're in fall. There we go. My hero. Short art online. Seven deadly sins. Food wars and cautious hero. So noticeably all of them were sequel. Sequel two. I mean, mine is the next one, Orisuki. That's the, I did the call explains with the bench. Oh yeah. It's the only show this season that I'm constantly like, I need to go back and watch. I need to watch the next episode. Quick, two seconds subscription. Call explains, but very short. It is very succinct. The horror man of a, where the main character is kind of a bad guy. He's a real piece of shit. He's a piece of shit, but he's a piece of shit in a, he's not like an actual like detriment to society, but he is bad because he finds that sometimes if he's an asshole, it helps people like kind of get over things easier. Oh, it's kind of maybe it's kind of like the anti-moral, so to speak. Yes. And yeah, I mean ultimately yeah, but it's also like he's actually doing good things for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's Billy out. She's the bad guy. Oh, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. Like there's stuff where like people are like, oh well, he'll be the one to say the brutal truth or he'll make up brutal truth to help somebody get over. And there's some absurd comedy in there that sounds really nice. There's a really good comedy. Oh, I can see how that's actually a thing because in most, at least from what I know of like modern Japanese society, your attitude or your behavior is centered around being polite. So you actually never tell people. Well, and that's like his front word appearance is polite because he's like, oh, I'm gonna be the, I'm gonna have a harem, like yay, I'm gonna get every girl to fall for me. But then he's like, in the first episode, he's all of a sudden like, oh no, I'm the side character. Like this other guy is the main character. Okay. But it like starts hopping into things where like the main, that guy is using both of those girls to try to get another girl, so. That's right, yeah. Basically big trouble in Little China is Kurt Russell. Nice, nice, nice, nice. Step on the side. Oh, my hero. Yeah, 2019 was a very shown in a year for me. My hero season three continues to. Four? Well, it's three or four. I think it's three, right? Oh, it's four, my God. We'll see whenever Beastars comes out. I know, I really wanna watch Beastars. I'm just, I continue to be impressed by my hero's ability to continue not only moving plot line forward, character story lines forward, but also continuing to do fascinating world building with every season. Like now we're in, we're no longer just seeing, this is what's like to be a pro hero. We're seeing what it's like for pro hero leagues to work together with police forces and what like, prior to this season, I feel like most of our villains have been exactly that, they have been villains. And we've seen how quirks have changed the landscape of the hero and villain and like justice system, but we haven't really explored how quirks fucked with what we would consider today to be modern villains like the Yakuza and like organized crime and how that had a huge influence on a pre-existing sort of power group. Yeah, those already existed. How did the addition of powers and now this third, like there was heroes or there was police in organized crime. Yes, now there's heroes and villains. But how did quirks also affect police and organized crime? Yeah, it's just, I'm so, every time I think I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna be like, well, it's probably gonna start fizzling out soon. Nope, I'm like, oh no, this is like, I didn't even know I wanted to know about that. We'll see what people say after this season. That's what I've heard. It's starting to pick up again now in the manga, but it's gonna go through a rough patch here for a little bit. Okay. I still haven't watched My Hero. Nice. That's right, she hasn't seen any. Nice, nice, nice, nice. I've heard nothing but great things, but now I'm like, oh my God, I got hyped next week just to watch through Four Seas. My Hero was my top anime when it came out and it was for a while. Demon Slayer might, Deethrona is my new favorite show name. Demon Slayer is really good. I'm curious to see how you'll feel about My Hero after watching Demon Slayer. The thing I'm like, right now the reason I, Demon Slayer is edging out My Hero is because there is a completeness to Demon Slayer that like, I mean, I loved how they ended it. They're preparing us for what, a movie now? Movie, that's, well, even like the manga is almost done. Oh, the TV says we're done. Also huge style points for Demon Slayer. All right, so that's our sign that we should probably wrap it up. Are we even, are we even fall to My Hero? What, yeah, but I mean Demon Slayer went to all, Demon Slayer, first ever Fanny. The Fanny's, Demon Slayer wins. Eesa has an honorable mention. Oh, do I? Okay, I'm gonna end it with this. There is this ecchi anime that's airing this season, ecchi, quote unquote. It's called Excel Joshi, which means extra large woman, I guess. The description on my anime list is, running short of money, office lady, Saki Watase is introduced to a part time job where she's tasked with reviewing extra large size condoms. While receiving an escort home after a night of drinking Saki's demon boss, quote unquote, Kaseke Sudo, notices she's carrying a large quantity of condoms, when Saki explains her circumstances, Kaseke reveals that he is extra large size, a romance between the two, thus begins. He's dirty, you're nasty. Have a good one, everyone. That's all we end on? That's it. Have a good one. Have an extra large 2020, we'll see you next week.