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Episode 195: Obligatory Anime Episode
387 Plays1 year ago
Hello Podwalkers welcome back to the show. While Hobbes is away taking care of his kids (kids are the literal worst... he also got a new dog...) Taya and Alex use the recent announcement of anime art cards being included in the upcoming Wilds of Eldraine to provide a thin veneer of timeliness to talk about previous anime art cards in Magic and then have a greater discussion about some of their favorite animes. Sit back and get ready for some discussion of anime wrapped in a Magic Sandiwch
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. This week we are here with a topic close to the heart of the two hosts who are here tonight. But before we get into too much, I don't want to forget, I want to thank the Grinding Coffee Company before we get going. They are a great partner that's been supporting us for a while. They like to support gamers.
00:00:56
Speaker
LGBTQ minority owned coffee company that helps keep Hobbs fueled with all of his coffee needs. And as he is not here, I am doing the intro and actually remembering this week to thank them because they are great partners who've been working with us for years. They work with a lot of folks and we are very flattered that they are working with us and have been working with us for this whole time.
Anime's Influence in Magic: Eldraine and Beyond
00:01:21
Speaker
So this week, we are going to talk about something kind of in the news and relevant to magic right now, anime.
00:01:32
Speaker
because there was some anime cards in Eldraine, and they've done this a few other times, and also, Tae and I really enjoy some anime. So that is what we're here for. I'm Alex, found on Twitter, at Mel underscore Chronicler. For now, I don't know when my exit plan is, but it'll happen at some point, I'm sure.
00:01:55
Speaker
And for an opening question, I think we were going to say what character we wanted to, thought would be fun to have an anime treatment as well. We'll kind of talk through the episode, a bunch of characters have already kind of gotten that treatment. And one that I would like to see very personal to me would be Zada. Zada is one of my main commander decks at this point, started as a...
00:02:20
Speaker
smaller thing that I've kind of built as part of an experiment for a little format the local Minneapolis group did here called Dollar General where every card had to be less than a dollar and Zada was a cheap commander at that time since around when that that set had come out and it was a fun like token centric thing and most of the best cards in Zada are cheap combat tricks which are great and so I had a lot of fun with that deck but over the years that has really become one of
00:02:48
Speaker
My favorite decks is one of the most important decks to me. And so it'd be really nice to have that cool anime treatment for my commander there. Taya, how about yourself? Hey, I am Taya. Pronouns are she here? Are they them? Taya Transcends on Twitter. I refuse to call it X. I am not going to do that no matter how much Elon Musk throws the fit about it. Or also Taya Transcends on Blue Sky.
00:03:17
Speaker
And I want an anime atraxa. She would make such a cool, big character in an anime style. She already has such a cool, you know, sort of like anime villain look and just a little bit of tweaking on there. I think would make a pretty awesome card. Yup. I agree that I hadn't even thought of atraxa. That's such a good pick.
00:03:45
Speaker
Oh, right. There's a lot of potential, a lot of ways you could go with the Traxa on a card. Oh, yeah.
00:03:53
Speaker
Well, do you want to talk about the, maybe we start with the cell drain stuff, like sort of be relevant to current events? Yeah.
Anime Art in Magic History
00:04:03
Speaker
So kind of, we needed a backup topic real quick today because Hobbs unfortunately is dealing with some sick children and our original plan was to have a guest on tonight, which we're going to be doing.
00:04:18
Speaker
We're going to be rescheduling. So I'm like, why don't we just talk? I know Alex loves anime. I love anime. Let's talk anime. And this kind of came up because of the anime cards that have been spoiled from Eldraine so far, which look absolutely freaking amazing. And it's not the first time they've done anime either. They've done it previously.
00:04:47
Speaker
They've done, well they've started the first one that they did any anime for was Ashander versus Jace, a dual deck version that was in Japanese only. And they did anime for the face cards.
00:05:01
Speaker
Uh, which they made Chandra look like she's about 12 in her art for that tool deck, but. Yeah. Yeah. And that I looked at it, we were trying to remember, and then I realized, Hey, we have the Google, I could just look up when this came out 2008. Yeah. That released November, 2008.
00:05:23
Speaker
You know, the art on these ones that they have previewed for Eldraine is just so good. And the cards they're coming on are just all commander staples. It's like Rhysic studying necropotence, smothering tithe, aggravated assault, doubling season. It's.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing. I'm looking at this Greater Oromancy art by Mei Okamu right now. I think I'm not sure if I got that last name right now, but this art is just beautiful. And it got me thinking, you know what, it's like, I love seeing this art style in magic. And personally, I'm a big fan. I love including these in my decks.
00:06:15
Speaker
So I will be happy to get more. I loved it when they did the full set of Anime Planeswalkers for War of the Spark. Yep. Yeah, I'm looking at the Eldraine ones, like the doubling season by, let's see if I can pronounce this, Kemo Onomichi, looks like.
00:06:35
Speaker
I love this because it's got like a goose hydra on top of some golden eggs, which is evocative, at least as a Western audience, sort of the golden goose story from sort of, I don't know if that's actually grim, but that sort of nursery tale, fairy tale sort of thing. And so I don't know if that is, was part of the inspiration or if there is something similar to that in a Japanese origin, but that was really, that's a cool,
00:07:02
Speaker
thing to see, especially in Eldraine, which has some of that sort of European fairy tale, Grimm's sort of inspiration. Yeah, it's really cool. That definitely says doubling season to me, this goose monstrosity. Yeah, and then I see aggravated assault and it makes me think of
00:07:32
Speaker
Oh, now I can't think of the name of the series that has like 15 reboots and a friend of mine keeps trying to get me to watch it with Unlimited Blade Works was that was the subtitle of one of the series and now I'm blanking on what the actual Oh, wow. I'm sorry. It's a huge thing in anime, but this feels very stylistically in that sort of
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah. At least as someone who is cursory familiar with it. I watched a couple of the series, a friend of mine's very into it. And I look at this and I go, yeah, that, that could be a fate character. Yeah. Oh, I, uh,
00:08:18
Speaker
I'm thinking that might need to replace my invocation aggravated assault in my Rakdos deck, which it has the great upside of actually being legible. Unlike those. Yeah, some of those invocations, I really like the structure of those. I really don't like how illegible so many of them are.
00:08:44
Speaker
But yeah, this is what, six of the 63. So we've got a lot to look forward to. And, uh, Oh no, here we go. The 63 20 of them will have anime. Okay. So we have 20 anime cards. Yeah. I need the snicker opponents. Oh yeah.
00:09:02
Speaker
This might be my favorite all-time art for Necropones, and there have been some real killers. The one that came out in the 30th anniversary like advent calendar thing was amazing, but I think this might even top that for me. This is my kind of anime aesthetics for the
00:09:22
Speaker
the necromancer look is just the nail bit there. Yeah, that just is so good. And the Rhystic Study, I will take as many Rhystic Study arts that aren't Bruce Nielsen as possible. And this one is just, it's beautiful with this underwater scene on it. So yeah, these are gonna be great. I
00:09:52
Speaker
I'm excited they're doing this this thing again they did it in Strixhaven with the uh they had the Japanese alt arts that those ones were only available in Japanese which makes me sad to play these I can never remember what the damn cards do unless it's like demonic tutor which that one I can always remember but the other ones
00:10:12
Speaker
it's like they printed a couple of cards there is like two or three cards that were like green and one and i can't remember i can't tell them apart which green and what is this yeah
00:10:27
Speaker
just from the art. So I'm
Language and Availability of Anime Magic Cards
00:10:29
Speaker
glad they're printing English versions of these this time. They are going to have Japanese versions in the Japanese packs, but we're getting English versions, thankfully. I do love my Japanese demonic tutor from the Strixhaven. Yeah, that's a cool one. Yeah. And like I, some of the other anime cards, like my, one of my favorites is gotta be the burgeoning.
00:10:57
Speaker
from the Secret Lair burgeoning. Oh, yeah. I put burgeoning in my Zyra deck because I wanted to run this art. It's a solid card I was thinking about putting in the deck to begin with, but I was a little on the fence and then they previewed this and it's like, I'm buying that box and that card goes in. Now I just need to find the cut. Yeah. Yeah, that art is that one's in my K and T deck.
00:11:27
Speaker
It's so good. So kind of talking like magic and anime is kind of like I said, brings I'm just looking at this list again. I'm getting sidetracked because I'm looking at this art for this cat token again and this cat person. I'm just like, why do they never release the tokens here? They're only available in the Asian markets and I want this cat token so bad. Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah. That's, uh, learned it today. I learned today that, uh, Scryfall has an anime take, which is very nice for scrolling through for this episode, but also like, uh, like to say, and there's, there's tokens in there too, in addition to the actual cards and some of them I've never seen before and they look awesome. It's, it's not complete, but it is.
00:12:24
Speaker
It is very cool. The tokens especially. There are tokens in here I have never seen before and there are some sweet ones. Yeah, and there's that Shadowborn Apostle you mentioned before the show. I also have never seen that. That is nice. So kind of a tragic slip. I haven't seen that one before either.
00:12:47
Speaker
Oh, and the flavor tech from this tragic slip is beautiful too. That's the, that's a jumpstart 22 one. Oh yeah. That, I remember that coming out and people talking about it, but I have not really. She never would have guessed her last word would be whoops. It's one of my favorite removal spells too. It's a good one. Oh, and there's a Kiki Jiki in that set. Yeah. The anime treatment.
Trends and Tropes in Isekai Anime
00:13:18
Speaker
So, yeah, so kind of going from magic to just talking anime, and I know you did the portal episode a while ago, which was before I started, but I listened to that episode, and I was just like, why didn't you have me on for this episode? I know, I know. I think, I want to say that was a, I mean, that wasn't a short one. That's one I was kind of, I don't know, definitely should have had you on. We absolutely should have had you on for that episode.
00:13:46
Speaker
because I love anime, especially Isekai. I have watched too many of them.
00:13:55
Speaker
They've made too many of them, I think to the point where I don't know if you're watching the current season on Funimation, but they've released one that's like, I've been reincarnated as a vending machine and now I wander the dungeon. I haven't, but I keep hearing about that one. Definitely. They have run out of ideas for new Isekai's at this point. Yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
It's one of my favorite trends, I think. I say favorite knowing I haven't actually dealt with the full brunt of it, but there's sort of the names get longer and more absurd because this is just the trend now. We're making fun of how long and absurd the names are by making a longer and more absurd name. And then we've run out of ideas to make an original easy guy, so we're just going to do something even more ridiculous than the last thing.
00:14:50
Speaker
And that is kind of a good culmination there. Yeah, I don't know how they're going to top this one. I've watched the first two English episodes while enjoying legal substances in Washington. And I have to say, I would recommend watching the show that way because it's the only way I could imagine getting through watching. OK. Good to know.
00:15:19
Speaker
trying to think who I know I was talking to somebody about about anime recently and we mentioned that show and I'm like all right I know I heard it I heard about it before it came out and I haven't watched any of it and I need to at least give it an episode. It is ridiculous as the premise sounds.
00:15:38
Speaker
15 minutes into the first episode, I'm like, I do not know how they are gonna make a whole season out of this, but I am curious enough to watch and find out. And I don't know what that says more about me than the anime. This is definitely a watching a train wreck for me.
00:15:59
Speaker
Okay. See, and I haven't watched that, so I don't know, but I think another trend I'm enjoying is the earlier, some of the earlier, like more isekai things as these sort of genres started to, at least that I was aware of some of the earlier ones, where it's a very significant part of it, like a major trope is that the character is overpowered in some way. Right. And that
00:16:26
Speaker
I enjoyed some of those earlier ones, but that kind of got tired quickly. So the ones that have come later that still have that, but find ways to make that not really matter, I think are becoming some of my favorites. Yeah. That is a common problem with those because they.
00:16:48
Speaker
They introduce the main characters overpowered and then they have to keep finding ways to actually make up challenges for them to face that keep the story moving. And then it just gets more and more ridiculous. Have you seen, didn't I say to make my abilities average in the next life? Yes, that was a fantastic one.
00:17:09
Speaker
And that's one of the first ones I saw, at least for me, that it felt like they were starting to play with that. For listeners who haven't maybe seen that show, the premise of that one is this character was super smart and successful in school and did all these things and was popular and all of this and very athletic, except didn't have any actual friends.
00:17:31
Speaker
And so, like most Easy Kai protagonists, died young, gets reborn into a world, and then her thing was, I just want to be average. I want to be perfectly average person so that I can live a happy life and have friends.
00:17:43
Speaker
And so God said, sir, we'll take the magic power of like a worm and a dragon. You'll be right in the middle, making you several thousand times more powerful than most powerful human mage. So the entire premise of this show, at least from what I saw, I'm sure the property exists longer than the season I watched.
00:18:04
Speaker
is her being so overpowered, but trying so very hard to hide it from her friends. So that because in her head, if they know how powerful she is, she just won't have any friends anymore. Yeah. And I love that different form of tension that they introduce into that this whole formula. Right. It's
00:18:31
Speaker
It's definitely, I do like the ones where they're in like, and they have been, there's been several lately where they've introduced like the main character ends up having no power, but someone who like comes with them or something has all the power. So there's been one with their mom comes with them into the world and their mom has all the special abilities and there was one.
00:18:57
Speaker
I haven't watched this season, but their sister has all the special abilities and they don't. Okay. Do you know the name of the one with the mom? Because I have not heard of that either. That one is like, you won't believe my mom's two hit combo kill or something like that. That is an amazing name for that too. Yeah.
00:19:19
Speaker
That one is only a valuable subtitle that I've watched most of the first season, I think. And then the other one was the one that just came out this season was something like, you know, my sister is OP or something bullied basic like that. My sister is so OP and the main character has no skills and his sister gets all the skills. Okay.
00:19:49
Speaker
Have I talked to you? I know I've talked to somebody and I want to say it was on the show, but maybe not, about campfire cooking in another world with Mike. Yeah. I know you've talked about it. Okay. That one kind of follows in that same sort of vein where the main character's ability, he does get an ability. Like he gets, and this one, he doesn't
00:20:12
Speaker
die, I don't think. It's like him and several other people from Earth get summoned to this fantasy world to be heroes. And then this kingdom does some like magic scan and everybody to see what their powers are. And one person gets to be a paladin and he runs off and someone's a powerful sorcerer and she runs off. And then they get to him and like your power is
00:20:31
Speaker
online grocery, and they just hand him a bag of money and kick him out. And then he discovers like his entire power is just that he can order groceries from a Japanese grocery store or whatever they have. So he'll buy like grills and stuff. And and so his what ends up happening is he's just gets he cooks food that no one in this world has ever experienced.
00:20:56
Speaker
And that attracts the attention of an incredibly powerful demigod, Wolf, who then just starts following him around. And so it's a similar thing where he's got a demigod who's just wandering around with him because the demigod is hungry. And he's trying very hard to just have a casual fantasy world life. And
00:21:19
Speaker
Go do a little bit of hunting and maybe a quest or two just to get some money. And this trying to mitigate this hungry, incredibly powerful wolf is... It's fun. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, I've never watched that one. I might have to give it a try. Have you ever watched Kanasuba?
00:21:38
Speaker
I've heard of it but I have not watched it. That is one I recommend and that's one where it's another one where it took the you know the strong protagonist and turned it completely upside down where the the main character comes in with no special abilities whatsoever he is like eff rank and
00:21:58
Speaker
pretty much bottom of the barrel at everything. And like when he goes to register at the Adventurer's Guild, they recommend that he become a merchant instead because he's a...
00:22:12
Speaker
And they form like the worst adventuring party out there, even though when he gets his one wish, his one grant from God when he's being reincarnated, and he actually asks the goddess to come with him, but she is totally useless. That's amazing. So they form the most useless adventuring party ever. They have the paladin who can't hit anything.
00:22:41
Speaker
The priest who does party tricks instead of actually casting spells, the goddess, priestess, the wizard who knows exactly one spell and can cast it once a day, and him who has like no skills whatsoever.
00:22:57
Speaker
OK, I'm going to watch that. Yeah, they just released a third season, which is actually a prequel that document there. It covers the wizard going to school and becoming an adventurer and her story, which was really cute. But that is a very funny show, and it really does. It takes that whole there is no overpowered hero in this story.
00:23:25
Speaker
He, the only skill he is good at, he has a high luck skill, which even that ends up going against him because like he learns, he eventually learns how to use the steel skill and his luck is so high, instead of stealing anything useful, he steals panties when he uses a steel skill. Oh my God. Yup. Yup. Okay, cool.
00:23:53
Speaker
So that is, that is one of the, one of the first ones where they really take the, you know, the main character is not overpowered and is just kind of pathetic. Yeah. And that one, it's like, they just all the way, they went all the way with the convention or somewhere where it's like, well, it's not him. He's just standing next to the overpowered person. Yeah. No, they really went all the way the whole, the whole,
00:24:18
Speaker
group of them is pretty much pathetic. And they like live in stables because they can't afford a, they can't make enough money adventuring to afford a place to live. Okay. Yep. I'm going to check that one out. That's cool. And another one that I talk about a lot, but I'm going to talk about it again. I don't know if you've talked to you, but if you watch restaurant to another world. I've watched some of it. It didn't turn out to be my thing. That's totally fair. Yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
For me, I love it because it's a great combination of food and
00:24:53
Speaker
like some isekai things only it's more of a reverse isekai if it makes sense like the premise is there's this western restaurant in Tokyo that one day a week rather than people rather than the door opening to Tokyo and having people in Tokyo come into the restaurant it opens into this fantasy world and all of these fantasy people come eat at this earth restaurant
00:25:17
Speaker
And this is just a thing that he knows. He inherited this from the person before. It's just they have menus in different languages that correspond to the different languages in this fantasy world. And I like the show because in fairness, especially the first episode. The second episode has some character development. The first season
00:25:38
Speaker
has very little specific character arcs because there's not a lot of repeat characters. Most of- Yeah, I didn't make it through the first season. So maybe that changes later on, but it just- Yeah. Kind of felt a little repetitive for me where they just went to the, someone shows up, they go through the cooking scene, they do a short little story and then it repeats again. Which is totally fair. Like one of the things I loved about that
00:26:03
Speaker
was I love the world building that they did in the first season where it's just random things where there's just, and each, it's the same roughly half hour episodes as most animates, but then it's split in half. And so there's like two vignettes every episode for the whole first season, no real connection, a couple of repeats, and that's about it. The second starts to have a little more story about the restaurant itself, starts to have a little more story. Some of these characters who are meeting
00:26:31
Speaker
where continents apart in this fantasy world but meet up at this restaurant and start to develop political movements or things going on in their world. But I love the little world building things of the merchant who discovers spaghetti at this restaurant and then devotes his life to finding the right grain in his own world to replicate this dish.
00:26:54
Speaker
or the, the lizard men village where every once a week, they all compete to see, you know, in Olympic games sort of thing to see who's the most fit and they get to go to the restaurant and order food and eat a dish and then bring, you know, and then ordered, get it to go order for the rest of the village to share. And I loved that. But again, there's no character stuff going on. It's the world building, which I thought was super cool.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was a really interesting concept. I can definitely see where some people would like it.
Personal Anime Recommendations and Inspirations
00:27:27
Speaker
It just wasn't my...
00:27:31
Speaker
I had a thought while you were talking and now it has totally left the station. Let me see if I can bring it back. While I am trying to get that thought back, I definitely have to mention my favorite show of all time, which is reincarnated as a slime.
00:27:53
Speaker
I have talked about it before on the show. There's two seasons to the anime. There's something like 22 light novels, which I have read. All the ones available in English and the bad auto-translations of the ones not available in English. Nice. That is a really cool show. Yeah. I have made a deck with proxies for all the characters, for magic characters.
00:28:22
Speaker
The deck is completely awful because I stuck with the flavor over, I went with mechanical matches over playability more and it has never come within sniffing distance of winning a game. So I don't really played it very much.
00:28:42
Speaker
And I kind of need to take it apart because it has a perfect five-color mana base in it. That's actually good. Yeah, a deck that can actually take advantage of it. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair.
00:29:00
Speaker
But yeah, so I mean, and that, for people who haven't seen it, this is another Isekai, follows the kind of story of a guy who gets stabbed, saving a friend.
00:29:14
Speaker
from a guy and gets reincarnated into another world as just a slime creature. But while he's going through the process of getting reincarnated, he's talking to himself about how much it hurts and how much he's getting cold and then he gets hot. And the process of reincarnating was interpreting that as like all these things going on. So he gets all these resistances and everything.
00:29:41
Speaker
You know, the pain and cold and heat and everything. So he comes out like super powerful for a slime. And it's definitely one of those ones where the main character is very powerful, especially as you get further into the books. And it's also one of those ones where they keep having to come up with more and more ridiculous storytelling to come up with challenges for the main character because he's so powerful.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, one thing I like I've watched the animes I haven't gone any further than than where the anime is up to. But one thing I really like and this I like this show a lot. That's that's one of my one of my favorites, but it's lower down the list for me, I think but
00:30:18
Speaker
I really like how, that's another one where it's like, he's very powerful, but not all of his challenges are straight power contests. There's a lot of, like he works and helps to build this village and then there's these things, and then there's these different threats and there's this political stuff going on that he has to maneuver and things like that that he can't just power his way through.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah, there is a lot of that and the village building is one of the big things and he makes this multicultural monster utopia
00:30:54
Speaker
country out of nothing where it's like everybody can live and work together and they're friendly with humans and stuff out of like well stop eating each other and you know stop fighting each other and maybe you can do something or start building things rather than you know fighting each other constantly.
00:31:14
Speaker
And pretty much his whole goal through the thing is he wants to basically be able to settle down, have a good life and be happy. And he will do whatever it takes to have to do that.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah. So if that means conquering the world so he can settle down and be happy, then he's willing to conquer the world to do that. Okay, okay, okay. Here's Hobbes. I have to jump in here for a second. I'm editing this right now, and I just heard this great line about how this character basically will do whatever is needed, even if that means destroying the world, basically to have a nice place to settle down. Wow.
00:31:53
Speaker
neither Alex nor Taya decided this point to mention Nicol Bolas, who basically was the doing the same thing. That's all back to your show. I just want you to know that. Yeah. And along the way, like he builds this found family that become important to his vision of the future.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I do remember the, I remember what I was going to talk about before is when you mentioned the restaurant to another world being a reverse Isekai, I was going to mention one of my, probably my favorite reverse Isekai. Have you ever seen an Isekai quartet?
00:32:31
Speaker
No, I haven't. So this takes all the characters from four, and it's actually it's expanded to a bit more than that in the second season, four popular isekai's and brings them back into like a
00:32:47
Speaker
fantasy real-world setting where they're all summoned into a classroom setting. So it comes to school anime. Where they're imprisoned in the school anime together. Okay. And it's all the characters. So it's the characters from Overlord, Tanya the Evil, I think Konosuba and Resub. And they added
00:33:14
Speaker
Legend of the Shield hero for season two. But it's all the characters from these stories that are brought together into like a real world classroom setting. Okay. And it's really amusing. They're like 10 minute episodes or 15 minute episodes or shorter episodes. It's really funny. It's all chibi style animation.
00:33:45
Speaker
So, but it's like Isekai then reverse Isekai. So the four people, the four people that were Isekai all figure out eventually, you know, that they've been like Isekai together, but their minions or their
00:34:02
Speaker
co-characters from the Isekai that are now back out into the modern Japan all have no idea what the hell is going on. Okay, that sounds cool. I'll have to look into that. Yeah. Which reminds me of one I hadn't thought of before, but have you seen Gate?
Analysis of the Anime Gate: Politics and Power Dynamics
00:34:20
Speaker
I didn't see gay after you were, after you discussed it on the last episode. I watched it. Yeah. Cause that's one and I, I'm really curious what you think, but just a quick like preview or description of what it is. I enjoyed it a lot.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah, after the quick description, it's basically a gate to a fantasy realm opens in the middle of Tokyo, and a fantasy army comes and attacks and kills a bunch of people in Tokyo, but immediately gets driven back and then, of course,
00:34:55
Speaker
you know, the, um, Japanese self-defense force goes through the portal and can easily massacre everybody on the other side because they don't have any modern weapons. Yeah. They're, they're bringing tanks and jets through this portal into this fantasy world. And then it becomes kind of a, you know, political drama between the kingdoms on the other side of the portal and Japan and the rest of the world.
00:35:25
Speaker
you know, on Earth, you know, dealing with Japan and they want access to the portal because they want to exploit the resources on the other side. And, you know, it focuses on, you know, a specific member of the Japanese self-defense force who just wants to return to his normal life of playing video games and watching anime.
00:35:49
Speaker
of a very, oh man, I understand that. I get that, very sympathetic. So he was pretty much, he would have been like army reserves, basically, and get called back to active duty after this portal opens.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, if, if I remember correctly, wasn't he going to one of the like big convention? Yeah. Yeah. But like I love one of the things for me was super interesting. He said it's a lot of the political stuff when they get into the fantasy world and, and basically establish very quickly and conclusively to the people there. We have overwhelming firepower.
00:36:33
Speaker
And it becomes sort of an examination, some part of it. There's a bunch of other stuff going on, including a bunch of goofy hijinks. But some part of it is an examination of how do you responsibly use power when you have so much more than the people around you. And I was not expecting that just from a
00:36:57
Speaker
media that I'm used to consuming, Western media that I'm used to consuming. And there's even like a little reference at one point in the show talking about how the humans that are in this world must have come from a different world and then the gate eventually closed. And I honestly thought that was going to be a major thing. But I'll just say that wasn't as big as I thought there was a lot more other things going on. And I really liked what they did with that.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely a good series. I think it's on Hulu. If you like more modern stuff, it definitely was worth watching. It's a good mix of modern political drama with fantasy aspects. It was definitely not like anything else I've seen anime-wise.
00:37:51
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely, I will give it props for that as it's, it's in a very crowded market. It's, it is absolutely an isekai, but it is completely different from everything else in that genre.
00:38:07
Speaker
really, really found. And I think some too, now that I think about like, there's a lot of urban fantasy sort of stuff that I can see kind of from a Western angle and a big convention there, which is not universal anymore. And it's kind of breaking down to some degrees. But a big convention there is that it's the other world is secret, the vampires, the faith, the
00:38:25
Speaker
You know the the Wizards whatever that world is is a secret world and you can't let anybody know and it's a big plot point that that's just a secret the whole time and gate it's immediate like within the first 20 minutes of the show the fantasy world and the modern world meet each other in blood and Then it just kind of goes from there Everybody is aware that the other sides exist and that it's dealing with the ramifications of that. Mm-hmm Yeah
00:38:57
Speaker
All right. I have one more show. Well, kind
Exploring Unique Anime Premises: Bookworm and Beyond
00:39:02
Speaker
of. One more eschat that's really big for me. And I talked about this a little bit. It's a sentence of a bookworm. Oh, yeah, that's a good show. That is a show that I watched the whole show, watched all that was available, went and read all the books, at least the English ones. I'm
00:39:22
Speaker
I haven't gone quite as far to read the stuff that hasn't been translated yet, but I've followed that show for the books now for years and I love that.
00:39:34
Speaker
basically a bibliophile, a girl who's just obsessed with books, wants to become a librarian, like Mosey Sakai dies in the beginning. The suggestion in the anime, which is straight up said in the text of the light novels, I believe, is that she was crushed by a bookshelf falling on her.
00:39:54
Speaker
gets reborn into a world, a sort of European fantasy level technology world where books only exist as incredibly, incredibly expensive things that only rich people can own. And she's the daughter, very young daughter of a poor soldier and has no access to books. And it's kind of her determination to, well, if there's no books that I have access to, I'm going to make my own.
00:40:22
Speaker
And I love that. Somebody does a lot of reading and things like, I love a lot of her stuff. And this is one too, where this is an isekai where in a way she has like, she's overpowered, but that is just all of her knowledge. Right. It's all of her knowledge. Well, she also is extremely powerful. She is extremely powerful.
00:40:44
Speaker
Which is very bad for her because commoners aren't supposed to have that power either. So it's constantly getting her into trouble in that world. Yes. And it's like an actual physical threat. There's a lot going on with that, but I love that show. That is up there for me.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to, uh, I do want to, we've talked about a lot of isekai's. I do want to make sure that I, um, talk about at least one anime that's not an isekai today, uh, that I really enjoyed, which is, uh, a sleepy princess in the demon realm. Have you watched that one? No, no, this was really, I don't know if that's the exact title. I can't remember, but this one was from last year.
00:41:42
Speaker
And it's a single season. And it's the human realm and the demon realm coexist in this world. And the demon king kidnaps the princess of the human realm for some unknown reason. And she ends up basically running the demon king's castle. She has no chill whatsoever.
00:42:13
Speaker
this little girl, you know, starts taking over the whole place. And it is, it's cute, it's hilarious. It is a really great show. That's awesome. That's to one, like all she wants to do is make herself comfortable. Like the whole thing starts out if she doesn't like
00:42:32
Speaker
She's in her prison cell and she doesn't like the bedding and the pillow she's in so she wants better bedding so she goes out and starts hunting down better bedding and then from there it basically like
00:42:47
Speaker
you know, she starts taking things into her own hands and pretty much takes over the place. That's awesome. It's a quick non-animating. That reminds me of a book I read a few years ago that I just, I'd love. I carry on.
Relationship and Friendship Dynamics in Anime
00:43:01
Speaker
One of the, I don't know about
00:43:02
Speaker
weird things, but sort of weird things that I love. I love superhero fiction. Like I love reading novels that are superhero novels. And she wrote a book called, I think it was after the Golden Age. Yeah, that's the first one in the series. So the main character is the daughter of the world's two greatest superheroes, but she has no powers. So she gets kidnapped a lot. And the opening scene of this book is some petty villains just kidnapped her to try to get ransom. And they're so bad at it, she starts to give them tips.
00:43:32
Speaker
It's super great. I guess there's one non-isakai anime I would like to talk about that I think I've talked at least briefly about a few other of my favorites, but one I don't think I've talked about at all is called My Love Story. I haven't heard of this one. Number of years ago,
00:43:52
Speaker
I really enjoy this. It's a fun romantic anime. But one of the things that I love the most about it, it's this really weird thing of how fiction can just kind of, you see yourself in the weirdest ways in fiction sometimes.
00:44:09
Speaker
The two main romantic couple, there's a friend of the guy who was kind of part of getting the two of them together. But through the show, there's a very strong friendship between him, this other friend, and both members of this couple to a point where it's a really important part of their group, a really important part of the dynamic. There's a point where
00:44:36
Speaker
The woman who didn't know him to begin with is very adamant that they are together going to do some stuff for this other guy's birthday because he is such an important person to both of them. None of those three characters are anything like me and my best friend and his wife.
00:44:57
Speaker
that relationship between the three of them is like the exact relationship I have with those two where my known my friend for a very long time two-thirds of our lives at least
00:45:12
Speaker
met his wife much later in life, but her and I have a have a relationship ourselves outside of just the relationship I have with him. And so I see kind of see us in that same relationship. And I love that a it's just a fun romantic relation anime. And but I love that there's this representation of like, not the third wheel being like a good thing like this, this person who's close to both people. And that is important to all of them.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's a lot of good romantic animes to a lot of
00:45:54
Speaker
A lot of good, cute ones as well. Yeah. And that's kind of in that, that cute range there. I think they're all high schoolers through the whole thing. So it's a lot, I mean, that's animes sort of thing. It doesn't matter if they're saving the world or a romance thing. It's always high schoolers for some reason.
00:46:13
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a lot of things like they're, you know, have an episode where they all go to the theme park and they make sure the other guy comes with, I think that was one in particular where he was trying to make himself scarce because like, no, no, you two do something together. Like, no, you're important to us both. You're coming with us. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I, I've not seen that one, but that one sounds pretty good. Yeah.
00:46:39
Speaker
All right, well, this has been a pretty good discussion. I hope we haven't lost y'all while you've been nerding out about anime here.
Anime and Magic: Dream Crossovers
00:46:51
Speaker
I would love to see some universes beyond anime products that would be
00:47:01
Speaker
really cool if magic really brings in the anime rather than just a few cards here and there, let's get them to actually bring in some anime products. Yeah, and there's some I think that fit fairly well didn't talk about a lot. Full Metal Alchemist is one of my favorites. That is an anime doing like a European fantasy.
00:47:22
Speaker
Yeah. There's a lot in there that could fit. Well, any number of the, uh, you know, stuck in a video game variance could probably fit pretty well. Yeah. Right. There's just so many of them. Obviously I would like die screaming for a green card is a slime anime, you know, the universe is beyond set, but even a popular one, like I.
00:47:51
Speaker
I don't I don't have time to watch 900 plus episodes or whatever. So I've never like gotten into one piece. But even if they like did like a one piece crossover, I'd be really happy for the people that did love that. Oh, yeah. I mean, and if nothing else, like one piece has I think I've watched maybe 100 episodes. I'm at the beginning of that show. But it's got some incredible character to say.
00:48:14
Speaker
So yeah, I would be like I was with 40K. It's like I knew very little about the start of it. But by the end, you know, when the cards came out and I watched people get excited about it, I got excited about
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:48:26
Speaker
it. And I'm like, OK, cool. I can see how these fit together. Yeah. All right, cool. Thanks, everyone. And we'll we'll be back. We've got some some cool stuff coming up. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the host on Twitter for now.
00:48:43
Speaker
Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore Chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com.
00:49:00
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:49:28
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.