Deep Space and Dragons

Episode 87: Spoiler Warnings and Manga Masterpieces

Richard Season 1 Episode 87

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What happens when you mix the epic battles of Dragon Ball with the unpredictable charm of a "stealth nerdy" wedding? You get an episode packed with laughter, surprise, and a sprinkle of fan theory magic! Richard recounts an unforgettable wedding experience that had lightsaber cake knives and d20-shaped table ornaments, while Karl shares his chilling adventures with the Terrifier film series—brace yourself for tales of fainting audiences and gruesome yet fascinating practical effects. These personal stories set the stage for an entertaining exploration of nerd culture, horror films, and the never-ending quest for the perfect wedding leftovers.

Ever pondered why some manga endings leave us satisfied while others feel like a missed opportunity? We take a heartfelt journey through the emotional highs and lows of beloved manga series, discussing the thought-provoking endings of "Super Psychic Policeman Chozo," "Hunter x Hunter," and slice-of-life gems like "Aqua" and "Aria." Our admiration for the beautifully crafted narratives in "Fullmetal Alchemist" and the cultural tapestries woven within these stories provide a rich backdrop for our reflections. From abrupt conclusions to surprisingly fulfilling finales, the conversation offers insights into the art of storytelling and the mark it leaves on our hearts.

But that's not all! Prepare for some nitty-gritty talk on anime adaptations, character development, and the world-building magic that makes series like "Bleach," "Naruto," and "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure" unforgettable. We critique the pacing, foreshadowing, and missed potential in series like "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "My Hero Academia," while reminiscing about the nostalgic charm of "Yu Yu Hakusho" and "Record of a Fallen Vampire." And if that's not enough, we even adopt a cat and ponder the nature of spoilers! Join us for a playful ride through the quirks of anime, manga, and the endless wonders of nerd culture.

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Speaker 1:

Hello Internet and welcome to Richard and Carl present Deep Space and Dragons, the number one most popular talked about podcast at my work by me. I'm Richard.

Speaker 2:

I'm Carl. I'm getting frustrated by looking up Viz Media.

Speaker 1:

I kind of enjoy that just being your statement. Not just like I'm Carl, I'm frustrated looking up Viz Media statement not just like I'm carl, I'm frustrated looking at this media. So do you want to go into the world of carl? Or is it just going to get us canceled by viz, a company I would enjoy working for someday?

Speaker 2:

uh, oh, wow, sorry, I I'm, I'm definitely getting distracted. Uh, there's a number one issue of Dragon Ball graded at 9.8, worth. Well, it's selling for $1,000, because it's the first printing.

Speaker 1:

That almost feels undercut, Like that almost feels undervalued to me, Anyways.

Speaker 2:

but yeah, this is Deep Space and Dragons, where we talk about whatever the heck we want.

Speaker 1:

Occasionally Dragon Ball, which, honestly, you know, we didn't think Dragon Ball. We came up with the name Deep Space and Dragons, but we are absolutely describing Dragon Ball GT, which sounds about right for the quality of our podcast.

Speaker 2:

How many Deep Space Dragons were there, though?

Speaker 1:

The premise was to go through deep space to find dragons.

Speaker 2:

Were they actually searching for the dragons, or were they just searching for the dragon balls?

Speaker 1:

It would have been so much better if, instead of the black star balls, the broken dragon balls got scattered into the galaxy and they fight the cool ghost dragons in each spot.

Speaker 2:

Aha, that would have been pretty cool. But before we get into hypothetical Dragon Ball GT storylines, what's new with you, Richard?

Speaker 1:

I don't know, my life's fine, but hypothetical Dragon Ball GT storylines are pretty appealing. So many things are new with me. I've been working and writing and went to a wedding this weekend between Redacted and Redacted Off the record on this public podcast. The Princess Bride may have been used in place of the Bible. The Cake Knife may have been a lightsaber.

Speaker 2:

Wow, that sounds like a very nerdy, excellent wedding, the thing is, it was stealth nerdy wedding.

Speaker 1:

so, like the thing is, it was like stealth nerdy, like you had to pay attention to find the details, like dresses and suits and fanciness everyone had on lock but like right if your eyes were sharp you'd be like okay, these are these table ornaments. Are they d20s? Are they the dodecahedron from balder's gate 3, or did they just happen to be fun shapes? Oh, these made of book pages. What book are these made out of? Most people would assume something classy.

Speaker 2:

Oh.

Speaker 1:

So like also open bar, a tic-tac station, buffet style food. So it's like, say, a chicken or fish, why not have chicken and fish on top of your prime rib?

Speaker 2:

And they sent me home with a garbage bag of takeout containers worth of leftovers. Ah, the life of the broke student.

Speaker 1:

I mean when they're like we have all this food, what can we do with it? No-transcript. I will happily take whatever you think is an appropriate amount of food for two broke students to consume. So my fridge is fully stacked. So, between the wedding and suiting up and doing a public reading and just working. Getting so much done plus, every law school requires like three applications and essays and things. I'm like I've went from I was whelmed last week and now I'm approaching the overwhelmed, like.

Speaker 2:

I'm afloat.

Speaker 1:

I'm going. That's a lot and I'm gonna like need this weekend to recover as I drink my miscellaneous blue beverage right now and the miscellaneous well, what's funny, too, is it's reading week, so the campus isn't busy, except they're holding a few big events.

Speaker 1:

So we get to do a little pop-up booth and bribe people with pins and I love bribing people with pins To all listeners out there. If you happen to have a spare $40 an hour for someone to hand out pins, happy to. Yes, that is the radar bill for handing out pins. I stand by it. Gotta know what you're worth. I'm really good at handing out pins, I'm so excited about it. So that's what's new with me.

Speaker 2:

What's new in the Carl verse.

Speaker 1:

Well, okay, so um and note you only have four minutes to talk about movies. You can talk about Carl as much as you want, but only four minutes to go over individual movies.

Speaker 2:

Well, okay, I mean, what's new with me is a continuing saga of watching horror movies.

Speaker 1:

It is, but you only get three minutes to describe this horror movie.

Speaker 2:

No, okay, see, the thing is that Terrifier 3 is in theaters and it's a horror movie. I don't know if it's touted to be as disgusting as the second one. Uh, but we hadn't seen the first one or the second one, so I made a mistake.

Speaker 1:

I think I've limited you to far too little time for what's probably an insane concept for a movie that's not that insane.

Speaker 2:

Um the. The gist of the first movie, at the very least, is uh, insane clown murders everyone he comes across.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's like I don't know, 5% of horror movies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it seems fairly generic and a 2024 presidential campaign. It seems fairly generic. It apart is uh the stellar practical effects uh versus its uh indie film budget okay so they put care into. It is what I'm hearing yeah, I mean, it's like the, the first movie like that. Like I said, I described the entire movie insane clown murders everyone he comes across, except for the one person who survives to the end, which is not a spoiler, because that's how the show opens.

Speaker 1:

I enjoyed Insane Tire kills everyone it comes across.

Speaker 2:

That was a weird movie, but it's it's. The reason I bring it up is because Terrifier 2 was apparently so disgusting that people passed out and had to call ambulances in the theater and people had to leave the theater to go throw up in the bathroom. So I don't even think.

Speaker 1:

I could go near that building.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely, don't get me wrong. I've been desensitized by watching horror movies across the eras, like watching horror movies from everything from 1920 to like modern day. Like I've seen a lot of horror movies lately. How's your psyche coming?

Speaker 2:

up there champ well, like I say, you become desensitized to it. Uh, it's to some extent, um, and I would definitely say, uh, that uh. Terrifier 2 in particular, is not for the faint of heart because it is extremely gory, but I don't know if I'd actually say it was disgusting. What I consider disgusting is when people start melting into slime, like that's.

Speaker 1:

Trigger warning.

Speaker 2:

Melting people. Yeah, yeah that you want to gross gross me out, start melting or just be the manga uzumaki ah, that was. That was freaky, it really used somehow took advantage of being 2d to do more psychic damage well, I see the most disgusting part is when the person started like melting into a snail and like kind of like the snail transformation was gross.

Speaker 1:

For those of you not watching Carl's Motion, because this is a podcast, I have to assume he did like an arms wiggles and then like a C, like the YMCA, and then crumpled up like a snail when he made that noise. Well, I mean, I mean, besides that, I'll think you did it by the way you hit your time frame. Oh well, that's good, I'm proud of you.

Speaker 2:

Cue the xbox gamer score achievement sound like speed run, uh, but tldr though, uh, I didn't find it that disgusting. I'm probably desensitized, and most people will probably, because the practical effects are just so much better than the CGI, or at least poor CGI. Artists don't get enough time to fully work on what they're doing, and so it often ends up looking a little bit mediocre.

Speaker 1:

Well, the thing is too, a lot of times they just use it when they don't need to. And I'm sure people are doing the same thing of generative AI, where they're like oh, I'm generative, yeah, I write my email. I'm like the dude. You just need to say, ok, thanks, you don't even need the full word Thank you, you're just using this tool because you have it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're actually in a world right now where someone will have an AI write their dating profile, send their intro message. Someone else with their AI written dating profile will then copy that message into their AI and send it back, and then they're both still going to ghost each other anyway because people have no soft skills.

Speaker 2:

Ah, but like to. To compare um the terrifier to, uh it, another freaky clowns or sword horror movie.

Speaker 1:

Well, specifically it part two, uh like we have a script, we have like a planned topic, but my lord and this could be next week's and should be's the number of freaky fat clown archetype characters we've seen over our lives to just like, just like if we did like a top, take freaky clowns.

Speaker 2:

But on the topic of CGI, it, part two, had a huge budget comparatively speaking to Terrifier 2. And the GDP of Saskatoon a huge budget with, comparatively speaking to, uh, terrifier two and the GDP of Saskatoon. Yeah, Uh, but uh, Terrifier two is going to look better in five years than it Part two because, like the, the clown's just not that scary when it's so obviously CGI.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, that's why people weren't as afraid of Trump as they should be.

Speaker 2:

But looping back around to Uzumaki, ooh, that was a good Okay, did it? Uzumaki was distributed by Viz. Did it actually run in Shonen Jump?

Speaker 1:

So Viz distributes a lot of anime, especially in the 2000s. Like Viz Does, it actually run in Shonen Jump. Viz distributes a lot of anime, especially in the 2000s. Viz owns RWBY, for example. Oh really, it was a recent purchase from Rooster Teeth after a whole WB something, something. I'm not going to talk on that too much. But RWBY fans are insatiable. So whenever Viz puts out a press release, they just chant where's RWBY? To the point where Viz puts out a press release, they just chant where's Ruby. And to the point where Viz had to just go on there and be like we will tell you what we want to tell you. Sit down, sit down.

Speaker 2:

So like Viz is more a distributor than anything.

Speaker 1:

So they distribute a lot Like everything from InuWasha to Naruto. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, see, as Viz is distributing, distributing, it seems to be distributing less and less like they. They have a lot of stuff, but, um, there seems to be more independent, uh or smaller publishing studios that are distributing and localizing anime and manga that I've seen, uh, but I think viz is the only one that has like a partnership to create an actual app, because Shueisha is just Viz as well. Right, that's just the actual Japanese.

Speaker 1:

Viz. I think it's more like Viz and Shueisha, I don't know. I don't want to speak on this and be wrong. There's some layers there. I feel like there's some corporation and names and alliances.

Speaker 2:

I honestly don't know. The Manga Plus app seems to have exactly what's on the Shonen Jump app. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

But I don't.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

Which I don't know what to tell you on that one. But like, Uzumaki was definitely not a Shonen Jump series.

Speaker 2:

Oh no, Shonen Jump doesn't really have much in the way of horror.

Speaker 1:

It does once in a while, though, and it'll catch you off guard. Chainsaw Man's the one that messes me up the most. It's not in weekly show-and-jump, because it wasn't allowed to be anymore, I think. I'm assuming it seems right. All right, so shall we pivot into our topic.

Speaker 2:

Which is series that have been completed.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's manga endings in general.

Speaker 2:

Okay, okay, okay. So we're not specifically looking at Shounen Jump or Gizmedia.

Speaker 1:

It'll just kind of devolve into that when we're talking about manga endings. So I'm going to start strong with one of the most iconic manga endings, because it didn't end anything Dragon Ball Z's manga, where he just trains a random side character he invented and then flies off to abandon his family.

Speaker 1:

I would say as far as manga is concerned, a solid seven Like this is going to be like a seven stars out of ten, so it's kind of be the baseline because it be the baseline. Because it didn't end anything, it didn't conclude anything, it's just okay, we're done, but I can pick this up whenever I want. That's probably the most common manga ending I've seen, so I'm going to put that at the top of the scale to go. What is the worst one you've seen recently, because a lot of things have ended recently JJK, my Hero, bleach, 20 years ago Even.

Speaker 2:

Naruto ended 10 years ago and it stopped forever.

Speaker 1:

It was a pretty satisfying conclusion. I'm sure they could do a sequel of his kids or something, but I think it was like the story arc came to such a natural conclusion they were wise to just call it there.

Speaker 2:

But see, most of the dissatisfying endings are the ones where the series got cancelled prematurely, like Durandururon was.

Speaker 1:

it was so good so it had the dragon ball z ending problem where, like it introduced their main villains and then wrapped them up and was done. And I'm like, oh man, you didn't you decide to end by painting by the numbers? And I'm like, you know, if my got cancelled, no one is living through the ending of that series. I'm pulling full Evangelion and my budget's out. I'm not going to leave myself open to be revived later. No, I'm just salting the fields and burning the forests.

Speaker 2:

The Psych House. That's another short one that I really really enjoyed. Wait, psych House ended. When did I miss that? Yeah, yeah, I did. Uh, she woke up her mom because her mom was in a coma because of a psych uh, and then, uh, they just her and her mom went to go live at the psych house and they're like, yeah, that's it so, oh no, you know what, actually you had a short run, but a satisfying ending, though that ghost paradox manga writer thing oh yeah, see that one felt like it was supposed to be that short right, like I was fine with that ending.

Speaker 1:

I'm like, oh man, I missed the ending of psychos. I just missed, didn't read it one week because I was probably asleep just got it. I'm like, okay, it didn't really grab me that strong. Anyway, it wasn't like I'd be more devastated if Super Psychic Policeman Chozo just kind of kicked the bucket.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, I just I get sad about.

Speaker 1:

That's another good series that ended well. It lives. My nemesis Me and Roboco.

Speaker 2:

Oh, oh, ah yeah, the world's longest running fat joke.

Speaker 1:

It's probably not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's probably true Because it's winded See Psychos. It definitely. It was a slice of life manga, so like it doesn't really grab your attention in the same way that other more action-packed series do. But it really felt to me like there was some sort of dark lore that they were starting to build up and then they were just too slow and Shono Jump's just like yeah, no, get out of here.

Speaker 1:

No slow burners in our series. They're like spring back to something that ended decently. So Gon meets his dad at the tree. He lost his man but achieved his goal. Kurapek has got close to deciding to go on his adventure, Killia reunited with his family, and all the natural plot threads of Hunter x Hunter ended. I'm so happy they ended it responsibly. It didn't just make a Hunter x Hunter ship who didn't about no one we cared about. That was nothing but explaining special powers for 200 chapters.

Speaker 2:

I thought we were doing the most serious that actually ended and not making fun of series that should have ended it feels organic.

Speaker 1:

Because why? Why would you bring it back in that state? Was that the entire purpose of every Necromancer story ever written? To not do this?

Speaker 2:

But actually. So, speaking of another slice of life manga that I actually really, really enjoyed, cognition no, there was actually two. It was Aqua, and I don't know why it's separated into Aqua and Aria, but it's about a girl who goes to Neo-Venice, which is on Mars, because actual Venice sank into the ocean, and so she goes to Neo-Venice to become a gondolier into the ocean, um, and so she goes to neo venice to become a gondolier, uh, and then there's two plot lines, one which I didn't see coming, one which I did, and the first plot line is her meeting all of the um elemental spirits like undine, uh, salamander, who decided these, by the way, like I've seen those spirits in so much media, yeah, yeah, specifically it has to include salamander man, who decided these, by the way, like I've seen those spirits in so much media.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, specifically, it has to include salamander and gnome, not like ifrit, and and carbon, yeah, like all the tales games do that one and I'm like what culture had that just stolen from them?

Speaker 1:

someone must like, clearly some culture just got its history stolen by JRPGs.

Speaker 2:

So the Aqua and Aria. Throughout this series she's going around, she's meeting all the different people and they're basically like their job in society is somewhat related to the element of their spirit Like the air people, sylvia, they're like the male people and they fly around delivering mail, the undines go around to the water and and the transport people, um. So she ends up like going around and meeting basically all the different like spirit clans and and seeing all them. Uh, and then, um, there's a second secret subplot of her seeing all the seven wonders of Neo-Venice and as it was going through and it came to the end, it was like wow, I did not. It actually had a through line and it came to a nice conclusion and ended up with her being grown up and teaching the next generation. And then it just ended and it was very, very satisfying and beautiful ending because I didn't see it coming.

Speaker 1:

but it actually all came together, despite being a slice of life manga that could just go on indefinitely I do enjoy when something hits a nice natural conclusion, like then there's things like full metal alchemist, where it's like okay, you had this written on one of those conspiracy boards of Yard and intricately wove this out deliberately over years, like I know it wasn't in the ending of Full Metal Locust, but they're like oh yeah, the exact center of the circle is this guy's chessboard. He's been taunting you with this whole series. Chef's kiss. Like he got them with the same scam. And then Bleach, no one really knows what happened.

Speaker 2:

I'm kind of waiting for the anime to stretch it out a bit more. Yeah, the sword within the sword. Like did he just did he get genjutsu'd by Aizen? Is that actually what happened?

Speaker 1:

So the thing is the anime is actually expanding all this, and I will have an answer for you when the anime finishes. I'm kidding you not. They also just kind of added in a fight with powered up Ichigo and Bok just in there, Give Iryu a boss battle. It's great. They're fixing it in post, which is wild. I don't think I've ever seen an anime be better than the manga. That's definitely an inverse of how the universe tends to flow.

Speaker 2:

Well, see, I don't think we did it on on stream, but you've talked to me about how uh there's evidence that bleach was not like. Nothing about bleach was was an ass pull like that. He actually had the whole story kind of planned out and where he was going, and you can see these through lines, but then editorial interference uh caused things to either be rushed or or removed or well, it's like it's weird.

Speaker 1:

So he pulled a goku's an alien. So the big thing is dragon ball finishes and dragon ball's either. Like goku's an alien is a retcon, but a smooth retcon. Bleach was going good until they pulled the Ichigo's a Quincy. There was no reason to add that twist. And then they're like oh, the Soul King is all four of the things, so we needed him to be all four of the things. I'm like that's a great strategy if the third one of the things wasn't introduced in what felt like a filler arc somehow in a manga, because no one cares about these fullbringer things, because you didn't bother to explain them early enough to matter. Like, actually, his two friends, this was their power all along. I'm like you know, had you done that from the start, I wouldn't hate you right now, yeah, I mean, and then Jojo's cheats.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, jojo's cheats well, it's like it's really easy to end your series. Well, if you're just going to then do a time skip and continue fair enough even if they don't end it well they're. They're fine because they could just go to venice and put people in heart, uh, heart, cut out shirts and have them murder gangsters with bananas.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so Golden Wind is part five.

Speaker 1:

Yes, okay, so part one is Phantom Blood, right, Yep, which actually probably had the strongest ending out of all the parts.

Speaker 2:

Actually probably had the strongest ending out of all the parts. Okay, so Phantom Blood is that up to the point where Jojo gets his head cut off by Dio and then Dio sinks into the ocean. Yeah yeah, that was a pretty satisfying ending.

Speaker 1:

But also I feel like he scripts the ending first. I'm not saying he pre-scripts every season of Jojo's, I think he legit starts at the ending knowing how it'll go forward and then writes backwards.

Speaker 2:

That would make sense. It's a bizarre series, so you need bizarre writing tactics.

Speaker 1:

So Naruto was the greatest love story ever told, until they decide to then sequel it with a movie.

Speaker 2:

Sequel it with a movie.

Speaker 1:

Well, Boruto as a movie wasn't the worst.

Speaker 2:

Because that was the intent right.

Speaker 1:

He wrote a one shot to then do a movie, and then he did his other two one shots and then the franchise machine absorbed it yeah, okay, okay and then my hero, academia has a super unsatisfying ending okay, but I mean just going stepping back a minute because, uh, I I recently re-read all of naruto yes, this was the point of this, which I'm surprised we didn't do a full naruto episode in retrospect, because you didn't tell me you read on all of it. You told me you re-read the ending and in my brain that meant you just re-read the last 20 chapters for some reason, a thing carl would do.

Speaker 2:

No, no no, I read all 700. 700?, 701? Anyway, I reread all the chapters.

Speaker 1:

And it's got nothing on Freerun.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, if Freerun weren't ongoing, I feel like it's actually going to take 10 years to go through this 10-year quest in Freerun.

Speaker 1:

Good, I love a nice slow pacing. I say that completely unironically, like no legitimately I do.

Speaker 2:

But rereading Naruto it really does feel like he was approaching the levels of JRR token for world building. He had at least six generations of ninjas, each with their own stories and battles, and all of these unique named characters that all kind of wove their way into the story. I feel like it was mostly fairly organic, Except where did Kaguya come from? Like, what the heck's up with Kaguya? That was Well, yeah, obviously she came from space.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, yeah, like the thing that bugs me about it is it could have been fixed in a very easy way for Naruto, like, say someone, gave me the assignment to do another Naruto anime. I would put her on some old cave paintings, right, like I'd throw her, like she should be sculptures, right, if there's like this original ninja goddess that all ninjas descended from.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

You would put that in the lore and you'd put it so early that everyone forgets about it, like you'd have the first day of class and being like and then the ninjas were spawned from Kaguya, and you'd be like, who turned into the moon? And you'd be like, uh-huh, sure, the moon, god. But you see what I mean, right? They? Set up, madara they set up hashirama, they set up zetsus, but they didn't set up kaguya at all yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it's like uh, obito pretended to be madara and then ultimately being masterminded by madara the actual Madara. It's like, okay, that felt like that was set up and it was like the mastermind was actually being manipulated and that was pretty clever, but then the master mastermind was being manipulated by another master, master, mastermind.

Speaker 1:

Which I was weirdly fine with if it was the plant dude, like Zetsu, if it was the plant dude.

Speaker 2:

Like Zetsu, If it was just Zetsu.

Speaker 1:

So Zetsu was just being a creep the entire show, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah and like if Zetsu turned out to be like Hashirama or something.

Speaker 2:

Hmm.

Speaker 1:

Like if Zetsu was like a named character, because they always, like they, made plant power such a big deal. Basically, zetsu could have been the main bad just because he was there. The entire show. Had they explained what the hell Zetsu was and if they'd mentioned that Zetsu was like the will of the Tentails, like it's like, oh yeah, no, zetsu is literally the ego of the Tentails before it got split apart, trying to reassemble itself or something. It wouldn't debug me as much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but I mean aside from Kaguya, which then also helped spawn Boruto.

Speaker 1:

Yep, and like what's interesting, though. So my Hero Academia suffered so much from being inspired by Naruto when it came to the endgame. So my biggest problem I have with the Naruto endgame is that it had six really cool final fights and it's like, okay, you have, and most of those fights were things the fans wanted to see, without realizing they wanted to see them, which is how you do the coolest things Like oh, we put a Sazano around Kurama to fight Obito's space DNA sword. That should end the fight. That's cool.

Speaker 1:

Oh now we're doing it with Madara, who's in Obito's super mode. But's the same super mode, but he has shadow pulls and then he's fighting Dittoba. It's like okay, but like Obito, we cared about Madara. We don't actually care about oh what's this? Madara's fake eyes fell out and he put back in his real eyes to become super duper, madara yeah, we're still not actually invested in Madara, not really.

Speaker 1:

And then, oh, actually, it's kage the tree, oh it's the genjutsu, oh it's kaguya, oh it's naruto and sasuke. I'm like, okay, you can stop this. Five final battles to go. Also, it's so obvious what they should have done. You know who should have stabbed ubito in the back and stole the powers? Who? Sasuke Duh, the obvious final boss of the show, who didn't actually have a reason to redeem from his villain arc he went into for no reason.

Speaker 2:

Ah, yeah, I mean the ending could have still been the same with them, like running above Chakra and having a fistfight and blowing each other's arms off.

Speaker 1:

Right, but like, instead of a final battle with Madara, who really we did not have any reason to give a solitary fuck about, we have the person who, like you have Sasuke and Naruto team up against Obito, take him down, free the tail beast, and then you know like how Madara like then reabsorbed the maul. Sasuke should have reabsorbed the maul, because he ends up doing that anyway for the final fight.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And then you just have your final fight there and it's like, yeah, everyone who needs to be out of commission is already out of commission Sakura's out, kakashi's out, obito's out. Have Madara get killed by zombie Hashirama and just all the zombies turned off, so we can stop dealing with these goddamn zombies. Sasuke puts everyone in the Infinite Tsukiyomi except Naruto, and since everyone's asleep, they can just have their epic one-on-one. Yeah, done Easy, I fixed it. It wasn't hard. You just had to actually line edit and cut some stuff Because, like I said, he tried to have every cool idea.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, yeah, and sometimes it's like editorial interference, like we were saying, with the ending of Bleach. That manga was just straight rushed to the end. Why were the editors and publishers so intent on ending Bleach when it was one of their tentpole series?

Speaker 1:

Oh, he was fighting cancer, it was a whole thing.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, okay. So what's interesting about?

Speaker 1:

Bleach, though, so Bleach's final fight was much worse. We acknowledge this, naruto vs. Sasuke is probably the best final fight in a manga, probably the best final fight in a manga. But bleach is borutoing where it has, like it's one bonus chapter afterward and like it's a little epilogue, it put its characters in nicer positions and then it's like oh yeah, our boruto, we have a couple kids running around, but really we're following the main character.

Speaker 1:

Still I'm like, oh, you did a dragon ball z where you're like, oh, you went from cell games to busaga. I want more bleach. I do not want more naruto, because bleach has a decency to follow other characters. It's its greatest weakness and it's great the strength. Ichigo does not actually need to be in all of bleach. Naruto needs to be in all of naruto. Ichigo is actually in very little bleach at the end. He only gets two fights in the Thousand Year Blood War.

Speaker 2:

Does that include the bonus one they threw him in with Bok?

Speaker 1:

No, now he gets three fights so far. Technically, renji does more in the Thousand Year Blood War manga than Ichigo. Technically, captain Hippie does more than Ichigo. Technically, the overweight dude, who's Soifong's lieutenant, I think, gets about as much screen time as Ichigo in the actual action of Thousand Year Blood War. But that's a good thing when you're trying to do actual sequels, right, because Boruto's problem is it's only good when it's starring Naruto yeah, it hasn't starred Naruto in a long time either it hasn't been good in a long time okay, actually a little bit of a side tangent, nice, so I assume you have more knowledge of like side source material and whatnot for Naruto.

Speaker 1:

But so chakra, fairly early on, is described as a combination of your like physical energy and spiritual energy, or something like that right, your body and mind meet in the middle to make chakra, which, for the record, was supposed to be called ki, but he called it chakra by mistake.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, um, which, for the record, was supposed to be called ki, but he called it chakra by mistake. Yeah, okay. So one of the things that kind of confused me about Naruto is that they seal portions of their chakra into people and that seems to be equivalent to their soul yes but like you can run out of like, are they literally using their soul to power.

Speaker 1:

Their ninjutsus is that so the way I see it is your soul, is your engine right and that engine is generating the chakra. And if you run out of gasoline you can have the engine start cannibalizing itself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

So it's like if you cut out in this weird analogy, like, let's say, your soul is a lithium battery, Uh-huh. Lithium battery is generating electricity. You can, in this case, cut out a chunk of your lithium battery and shove it in somebody to then have that chunk of lithium keep generating energy. So when you seal your chakra and your soul in someone, your soul is basically the battery for your chakra, and that's why, if you overuse your chakra, you just die.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that makes sense. I was just like I'm not sharing, that's canon, but that's vlad canon, which is usually more well thought out than original canon well, yeah, because it's like uh, firstly, um, I mean, I guess ito tensei forcefully brings back your soul, and therefore your chakra, from wherever it resides.

Speaker 1:

I only have one problem with Ido Tensei and I'm going to rant about it now. You did this. This is on you Conceptually the idea that you take a human body and you disassemble it and reassemble it and superglue someone's soul to it to bring them back to life. I'm fine with that.

Speaker 1:

The Ido Tensei's having unlimited chakra makes no sense. They should have exactly as much chakra as the dudes you sacrificed to bring them back to life. And if that's how it worked, awesome. Or because he had a giant chakra battery, how do you use the tail beasts to power the ito tensei like? Use the tree thing as like an engine to run his ito tensei.

Speaker 2:

I'd also be fine with it.

Speaker 1:

But like oh, ito Tensei just gives you infinite chakra and infinite resurrection. I'm like, bringing back the best people in history was broken enough, guy. They did not need to have regenerative powers. Also, you made it lame by doing that. It's like oh, I brought back Vegeta and now he has infinite ki, it's like. But you already brought back Vegeta. What are you doing? That's my rant. It's like the first time they do Ito Tensei. They don't do the whole infinite chakra thing. I'm also fine with them regenerating until they run out of the chakra that the person they sacrificed powered it, the Fullmetal Alchemist Philosopher's Stone Law, like one of the best power systems. You have X number of souls. You can keep rebuilding that body until you run out of the power supply, that is, these souls. Boom, nailed it, run out of power. Get more souls.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, and Full Metal Alchemist. If we're talking about endings, that's such a good ending. I don't think anything's been better. I really loved when he went through the gate and ended up in World War II. That was so good.

Speaker 1:

You used my own bit against me. I see, I see what you did there. You know the worst part. The worst part is that still probably rates like the top 20 anime endings, like the bad Fullmetal Alchemist ending is still For some anime, because a lot just like like end with nothing. Like the original run of Inuasha ended with them not having completed the jewel.

Speaker 2:

Hey, yeah, that's true. And then they had to go and re-release, continue the series like what? Like 20 years later?

Speaker 1:

Like five or ten, I think.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I thought it was longer than that.

Speaker 1:

No, because they're like instead of just inventing an ending, they're just like all right, we'll just put it on hold till we end it.

Speaker 2:

Which is a long go.

Speaker 1:

Inuasha was an interesting ending, actually. So the main villain of Inuasha turned out to be the sacred jewel itself, right, and the jewel's goal was it wanted to trap Inuasha and Kagome inside and Naraku to fight for all eternity, to act as a battery, oh, and a lot of yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

It weirdly like lampshaded a lot of poor choices character-mates, because the magic wish rock was just screwing them over. Right, and the only correct wish on the magic wish rock was to end the magic wish rock to make it blow itself up. Huh, but the idea that it intentionally scattered itself so it could absorb people's souls into it when they used it as a power source, it was siphoning their souls back to then try and build itself. Having a rock absorb a crap ton of demons to then trap everything in a new jewel so it could continue to exist was actually a really interesting concept. Now, shishomaru, using his infinity plus One sword that kills things so they can't regenerate and keeps killing them with some bullshit and required some additional reading to figure out what it is. I just read, but such is life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm not dissatisfied with how inuasha ended it is pretty funny, like the, the actual ending for film full metal alchemist was like obviously much more poetic and and fulfilling. Uh, but it's pretty funny that the bad ending is is still so highly rated.

Speaker 1:

It's pretty good, like I'm gonna be real, I didn't hate that ending at all. Now, the the Soul Eater anime had a terrible ending and the Soul Eater manga had a solid ending. Huh, it literally ends with them defeating the main boss in a cool battle on the moon, which is great because Soul Eater had that freaky moon the entire time and they actually bother to explain it at the end.

Speaker 2:

I love when a background detail gets to be important. Speaking of the moon that makes me think of is it Record of a Fallen Vampire with Strauss?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or as we've been calling it, the Angsty Vampire. Yeah, yeah, record usually makes it into our fake naming for it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, record of the Angsty Vampire. Yeah it was. I mean it was surprisingly not angsty, but that was a pretty satisfying conclusion too.

Speaker 1:

It was and it wasn't. It was like I really liked it, but it's also like I weirdly watched them pivot their series in real time because it wasn't that long of a series. It's like, yeah, people with weapons fighting vampires and that just came like a history documentary and everything just kind of stopped fighting. It's like no, this is just a tragic backstory.

Speaker 1:

It's like most of it just came to explaining the story, really just switched into explaining what the hell was happening for the vast majority of it. It wanted to be a show and jump thing at the start and just gave up. It's like nah, nah, we're just telling this guy's life story. You know what? Had a great ending but a terrible second to last ending Assassination Classroom.

Speaker 2:

Ooh.

Speaker 1:

It ended with the classroom stabbing him in the heart.

Speaker 1:

So he wouldn't kill the world and it was beautiful. But I'll never not get mad that the final villains were tentacle monsters and the class who was just spent the year learning specific how to fight tentacle monsters never fought the tentacle monsters. It's just like no, you've set up this final battle, your entire show, and just let him 1v1 it and then the other guy just be there and I'm like, but, and then he 2v1 it and then the other guy just be there and I'm like, but, and then he 2v1'd it and I'm like, but the whole thing you learned how to do was kill these things. That was your specific skill set and I was so Not even mad, I'm just like, oh man, you guys got so close to nailing it and then you wobbled a bit and fell over.

Speaker 2:

An interesting choice for a series that has a satisfying ending. All you need is kill.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to need a quick refresher on that, because that title sounds familiar the movie with Tom Cruise Edge of Tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

I think it is oh yeah. I think the movie was pretty interesting too, but the basic premise is that the main hero gains a time looping power. Every time he dies it goes back to a specific yeah, I'm right back on board.

Speaker 1:

I'm here again, it seems right. Remind me of the movie I got back. Oh, you know what? I had a bonkers ending. But I'll let you finish your story first.

Speaker 2:

I just it was just like intriguing, intriguing love story about how far they could get through each loop and then it turned out that the only way for them to end looping was for one of them to die. So this is like it was like this deep, tragic, but um, it was so good I love. All you need is kill is actually slightly better than edge of tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

But edge of tomorrow is a great adaptation of they did well for something that you never think they adapt. What's kind of funny is I kind of homage that in one of my chapters of my second novel where a villain has a time looping power and he just realizes that he can't possibly win and just stabs himself in the face and they're like why did he do? And the next chapter opens with why did he stab himself in the face? Because he just got so tired of dying Repeating this fight. On an equally bonkers note, future diary.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, because she, like, actually becomes God of the world and uses her god powers to resurrect the other. You're going gonna have to refresh me on that.

Speaker 1:

That is the gist of what happened, right though it's like so she became god in the first loop to end up with the guy, and then he becomes god in the second loop. To try and figure out like it's. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember like this ending, just breaking my brain at the time, and it might just be because of my adolescent brain.

Speaker 2:

She becomes God in the first loop and uses her God powers to replace herself in an alternate timeline to help him become God so that they can recreate the world together.

Speaker 1:

And it's just like and then he opts not to, if memory serves, but like it was just a wild ride, because she definitely crossed, like that was just a crazy series that I wish I remembered with more clarity, but maybe I just repressed it.

Speaker 2:

No, I mean they definitely. He is sitting there at the end of time, all sad and alone, uh, and then she uses her god powers to break into his eternal loneliness. I'm pretty sure something like that bring him back, and and then they, and then they actually fall in love because you know they're, they're too attractive protagonists. So law of attraction.

Speaker 1:

Yep, different note. You know what kind of nailed it and it's going to be a deep cut.

Speaker 1:

Yu-Gi-Oh, you think Yu-Gi-Oh nailed it, the final Yu-Gi-Oh's ending was Yu-Gi dueling the Pharaoh at the gates of the afterlife to prove that he was qualified to move on to the next stage of life by leaving things in the hand of his young companion. If you could tell me a better way yugioh could end, I'd love to hear it because, like when you look at the over quality of yugioh and think about, like oh, you had a strong, resonant, emotional, themed ending in the series with the blue eyes, white dragon plane, yeah, like that was a solid. That would have been a solid ending for like full metal, alchemist or bleach or something right. Like that's a solid ending. Like naruto ending with a one-on-one duel to let sasuke move on to the afterlife like that's a strong ending.

Speaker 2:

We're like yeah, I have to prove I'm strong enough to my friend so he can rest in peace.

Speaker 1:

So if I don't fight him with my all, he doesn't get to move on. That's better than Yu-Gi-Oh deserved.

Speaker 2:

Considering its humble beginnings, let's play Punch the Knife in the other person's mouth.

Speaker 1:

No Deep Face. And Dragons does not recommend playing the game popularized in the Yu-Gi-Oh manga of Punch the Knife in the Other Guy's Mouth.

Speaker 2:

Or playing air hockey with a block of ice that has a bomb in it and when it melts it explodes.

Speaker 1:

Or laser tag, just regular laser tag, but the vest just kills you, which really makes you wonder why you didn't just give people guns.

Speaker 2:

Ah, good old King of Games arc.

Speaker 1:

And then JJK can, just so it did, like the Dragon Ball Z ending of we'll have a protagonist, chill in a room and be like we can continue this with JJK Shippuden at any time and I'm like I kind of want you to continue this with JJK Shippuden at any time and I'm like I kind of want you to continue it with JJK Shippuden because your ending was extremely unsatisfying. But I kind of like some of your characters and you forgot to be whimsical until the very end and I like you better when you're whimsical. It's like the only chapter that I'd enjoyed in the last 50 chapters of it was the last three I'd enjoyed in the last 50 chapters of it was the last three.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of funny that JJK has kind of the opposite problem of Yu-Gi-Oh, where it started off super, super strong. It was such an interesting and fairly unique concept.

Speaker 1:

No, it wasn't.

Speaker 2:

It was interesting, though it was definitely a strong starting point.

Speaker 1:

So, JJK, I just like same thing I was giving about my Naruto rant and my Hero Academia rant. Its final battle could have ended five parts ago. Like we knew from the beginning, the final battle was going to be Yuji using his domain extension to punch the Tsukuna out of Megumi Right using his domain extension to punch the Tsukuna out of. Megumi. So why do we have Rope Guy jumping in to fight and Lawyer Guy and Yuta the character that the writer likes more than the protagonist, and then Yuta coming back?

Speaker 2:

again. Well, you see, naruto, it was a great ninja war. Everybody does it.

Speaker 1:

Well, the great ninja war wasn't my problem, I had about Naruto, even though I refer to a great ninja war. Everybody does it. Well, the great ninja war wasn't my problem. I had about Naruto even though I refer to the great ninja war, bringing back the zombies and having people have weird matchups. I didn't like that. The zombies were immortal. I kind of love Kakashi just beating up Zabuza and seeing who the other seven swordsmen were. Or the zombie Chichuriki's jumping Naruto. Or zombie Itachi saying saying to heck, with this, I'm gonna hack my zombie body to get vengeance on kabuto. Those are fun. Plot arcs, right, like oh, atachi and pain hanging out, that's fun. Oh, let's watch neji punch his grandparents. Like that's a fun concept because you're gonna do the dead villains come back arc. That's fun if you have them interact in weird ways. And they brought back a lot of like lore characters that never got screen time like hey, look at all these different bloodline elements we talked about my problem was that we got to the obito final fight.

Speaker 1:

That was obito, then super obito, then the tail beasts, then zombie madara, then true madara, then obito and moderate versus madara, then zetsu, then kaguya. There's an infinite tsukiyomi in there somewhere. It's like stop it, just stop it, stop it, stop. Like it'd be like if goku, when he went to namik, there was no rest between every fight on namik. They all just happened at once in the same hour.

Speaker 2:

Well, and like you say with my Hero Academia, it's just because Naruto's great ninja war.

Speaker 1:

They did it twice with the same villains and heroes. They had a great ninja war, which they called the Liberation War, and then all the villains got away somehow, and then they had another one. They just straight up did it twice. I wanted to flip a table.

Speaker 2:

Naruto did it very. Naruto did it very tastefully with how they resurrected their characters and had interesting matchups right up until the actual Naruto and Sasuke.

Speaker 1:

Sasuke and Itachi versus Kabuto was sick Because it's like, oh cool, Sasuke gets one last team up with his brother he murdered.

Speaker 2:

But JJK and my Hero particularly in standouts, the biggest examples of a series that copied the Great Ninja War without understanding what actually made it cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so like JJK wasn't a long enough show to get away with it. Copied the great ninja war without understanding what actually made it cool. Yeah, so like jjk wasn't a long enough show to get away with it. So when they're like, let's do these calling games, they actually have enough participants for us to know who is in these calling games naruto even the characters we've never seen before.

Speaker 1:

Like the other other six Swordsmen of the Mist. We knew about them. Like the Gold and Silver Brothers and their legendary tools were mentioned by some side character somewhere. We knew Gaara had an abusive dad who beat people with gold dust. So, like the Ninja War introduced a bunch of quote-unquote new characters, but we'd seen them. Like we knew there was a mummy guy with disintegrate lasers. We don't remember why we knew there was one, but we knew about them. And that's just the benefit of a long running show is you can do that. As you're saying, naruto had Tolkien-esque world building.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like I say, he had at least six generations of ninjas planned out, and I feel like there's a huge gap between Kage, the Sage of the Six Paths, and Hashirama.

Speaker 1:

But oh yeah, they just had a Warring States era that they didn't bother fleshing out.

Speaker 2:

But as soon as they get out of the Warring States era and into the Kage village era, it's like that.

Speaker 1:

I would say he had four generations, I'll say four. He had the first four. Yeah, he had written up in writing who the first kage of each village was yeah, okay, the second one, the third one and most were getting to their fourth one, naturally, naruto kind of went to their fifth because their fourth one died young and then they went back to the third, then they went to the fifth, but like Gaara was the fifth Kazekage, so like they got to their fifth generation with everyone having parents and children and village expansions and things Pretty well mapped out, like when they did the pull of the spiral in the back of it is for the Uzumaki clan, like, oh, that doesn't feel like an ass pull.

Speaker 1:

They're called the Spiral Clan and you've been wearing spirals this whole time on your back. I'll let you have this that's just tracks.

Speaker 2:

Uzumaki speaking of, had a pretty good ending.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I couldn't end it. I know the final answer. I feel like I just walked up to you and put a cigarette in your eye, like there is no reason for me to go there, I feel so bad, because it's like I'm watching it on Crunchyroll and I'm like, hey, you should watch this because it's actually super interesting.

Speaker 2:

I've done that to you a few times it's such an interesting concept that he's, like this professional negotiator, has to negotiate with a being of basically limitless power right like um uh, but then they just like oh well, we're talking time, lord, baby, oh man. So while we're talking, Time Lord, baby oh man.

Speaker 1:

So, while we're talking on Ninja Wars, remember how all of Mashal was good until they had a Ninja War, and then it became painfully aware that none of us cared about any of the characters who weren't named Mashal.

Speaker 1:

So now I said in Bleach, they managed to do a pretty good job with their for having 26 named characters. They managed to do a pretty good job with their for having 26 named characters. I'm like, okay, most captains, I know enough about that. I'll watch ninja bitch fight robocop. Sure I at least I know that she just is upset that uahara stole her wife. Like I can like get behind her motives. Right, we're like kampachi. We like kampachi in this household. Let's watch Kampachi fight Braindude.

Speaker 1:

Sure Mashal's problem was I didn't actually learn a single character's name and I know my 13 squad captains and lieutenants and the 10 espada and I even know some of the fracones. Like I'm pretty good at these knowing characters. I'm like, no, I did not grab anyone's name in mashall. How dare you make me follow characters that aren't mashall? And then we got back to the gags where it's like, oh, I'm just going to swim the island out of the way of the attack. I'm like mashall, if you didn't try ninja war in the middle, you might have been a good manga uh, I mean it was a relatively satisfying ending.

Speaker 2:

It just had a crappy ninja war in the middle, again copying Naruto because it was cool, but it didn't know what it was copying. That made it good.

Speaker 1:

Right and I'm mildly concerned. The ninja war was like them copying Bleach, in a sense, like, okay, we got these captains and these Espadas, we'll have everyone but our main characters fight. Also, while scrolling through the list of Viz Media, while looking at mangas, I ran to Midnight Secretary and giggled to myself no further questions.

Speaker 2:

I just thought it was funny. It was here. That is funny.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, and then, completely unrelated, the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga is actually the best version of that story and they made the ending make sense Because all they did was like, okay, they had the ending of the show where they ran a budget and then they ended it with a movie that traumatized me and the manga's like, yeah, no, we're just going to actually show it all and added just a bit more exposition. That was needed for this to make any sense, because it was close to making sense before. Hmm and yeah, and then One Punch man is just going so slowly that, like it's kind of at the point with me. So there's mangas that started before we were friends and I'm just like, okay, you're going so slowly that I don't even think I'm invested in you anymore, like I gave this rant a while back of One Punch man.

Speaker 1:

It's like entering the other hero society arc and I'm like why are you even bothering? Like we'll all be dead before this goes anywhere uh.

Speaker 2:

Well, the thing that annoys me about uh, one Punch man, uh, is it's like they're literally right in the middle of a fight between the Speed of Sound. Sonic, flashy, flash and Blast are all fighting the empty void Right and it's like, okay, this is super cool. And Blast shows up, and then it's like, oh yeah, we're going to start following the martial artist guy that you don't care about yet I had forgotten about the ninjas and blasting completely.

Speaker 2:

That's how slow it goes oh yeah, well, just, I mean they just recently I think they recently released the new chapter where he where the martial artist is too powerful for the power suit, which is a funny gag, but really annoying that they just stopped for a gag in the middle of this, of this battle, like, and then they need to go to another battle or something like interesting, and they're not following Saitama, like where is he? I don't know, blast just left him somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's really funny too is for one punch man. If one punch man was a weekly series, almost all of our complaints about it go away.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, but the flip side of that and we talked about how content creators have it rough trying to actually create new content every week- oh, I can relate as a person working on my third book.

Speaker 1:

You know how little story you can actually fit in a book. Like I'm completely serious, I'm like yeah, no, like a 100,000 word novel, you can really only tell like 24 episodes worth of crap in there. Like for me to write One Piece I'd have to actually write like 30 books, and then I would need someone to care enough about those 30 books that I kept releasing them.

Speaker 2:

Ah, yeah, Like it's the wheel of time.

Speaker 1:

And then the people who actually read all 30 books are like dedicated fans. That would jump on a landmine for you, but are the minority, so while it's like thumbing through a random viz catalog.

Speaker 1:

It's funny because pokemon special it's like I read the. It's like they do a pokemon special manga that goes parallel for each game and they are vastly varying qualities. But one thing I'll always remember is in the final pokemon special showdown with red versus blue, they do the exact maneuver. Sasuke pulls against itachi by sending out the heat in the air to make the thundercloud and I'm like did did he swipe this for Pokemon or did Pokemon swipe this from him? I don't know, I didn't look at the timelines. I think he swiped it from Pokemon.

Speaker 2:

Hmm, naruto is 25 years old, so I think he swiped it from Pokemon.

Speaker 1:

And it's just such a weird concept to come up accidentally and setting up a bunch of fires to create an updraft, to create a thundercloud, to hit them up with Thunderbolt. Just weirdly specific right.

Speaker 2:

See, the reason I say Naruto took it from Pokemon is because 25 years ago, that's 1999, that would be when Naruto started. I'm pretty sure Pokemon started earlier, like early 90s.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I just don't know when the Pokemon Special manga came out, because that would require effort to find that information, probably quite a while. Oh, june 2009 is when it got released over here.

Speaker 2:

I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I don't know, but continuing to trex along this list of spoiling as much as we can for people. We didn't even put a spoiler tag. Hopefully the name of the episode will be like. I'll probably call it spoiler tag or something.

Speaker 2:

Hashtag spoilers.

Speaker 1:

I also enjoyed going through this viz list and just hitting the non-show and jump things catch me the most off guard, like oh Record of a fallen vampire Cause I did not read these series legitimately at any point, like I'm like oh people actually brought these out.

Speaker 2:

I guess I had good taste retroactively, retroactively, oh, rion and Kenshin.

Speaker 1:

Well, if it's good first ending, then sad backst, sad backstory than mid-second ending. Mid, like he fought the four martial artists and then he fought his love interest's younger brother, I guess, and then hit him with the Sonic She-She thing and it's like, yeah, okay, sure, I can't think of a better description than mid. Did you ever?

Speaker 2:

read.

Speaker 1:

Samurai 8, the Tale of Hachimaru the Naruto author's attempt to make a science fiction series. I did not. It is really interesting and I cannot believe they canceled the Naruto guy and told him to get back to work on Naruto and didn't give it like the fact that got his series. It's like you're not going to, you're only going to give him what it went eight volumes, I think, not even. Oh no, it only went five volumes and I'm like you're only going to give him five volumes to let him cook. Are you kidding me right now? It did not feel like it hit a natural ending either and I'm just like, wow, you guys suck. He gave you billions with a, b. I could be wrong.

Speaker 1:

Moments can come at me at this one.

Speaker 2:

You know what else starts with a, b Black Cat.

Speaker 1:

There's only one thing I liked about the Black Cat ending oh, that he blew up his Ori Calcum gun, shooting him so hard. Like it's like okay, like Black had a cool idea, isn't it? It had weird ideas in it. There's a certain like genericness. I see a lot of anime had in that time period where it's like, okay, you have the villain organization, the morally great good guy organization, the rogue agent who was a member of them, who went on their own.

Speaker 1:

And like they were the number, like there was a proto-Espada right, Like he was number 13 of their Espada, who were fighting wizards for some reason, who drank wizard potions to get weirdly specific superpowers. So he stopped being an assassin, started using an invisible sword, but then the nanomachines that made him young powered up the aura calcum gun to fire laser shots and like there's just a certain like that's internal logic of black cat wasn't that good, it was some anime bullshit I freely admit this, uh, but sven with his freaking future sight powers in his briefcase like black cat was cool, but then the author went off to just write smut.

Speaker 1:

He just gave up. Just write smut. He just gave up and write smut now.

Speaker 2:

Oh, well, I mean sex sells.

Speaker 1:

I guess he did to love rue, I think it was okay and then after that he did like ishiaki triangle the least.

Speaker 1:

I'll never not be mad at that series where the premise was solved in the first chapter because I read the first chapter before realizing it was just smut where it's like two people are into each other but one got the gender flipped, but they're still into each other. I'm like you don't have a conflict, the conflict is internalized homophobia. I guess that's your actual conflict for your show Okay, japan, get woke. Conflict for your show Okay, japan, get woke. Note if anyone has stopped listening to our podcast because I'm like yeah, there isn't a problem in the show, it's 2024. Get your life in order. I'm fine if you stop listening to me now. I stand by it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that is pretty funny.

Speaker 1:

Did you ever read to Pokey's Original Sin?

Speaker 2:

Original Sin.

Speaker 1:

It was the one about the cute alien who gives the depressed fourth grader tools that just result in horrible murders and death.

Speaker 2:

No, I don't think I read that.

Speaker 1:

It is so messed up. He's just trying to make this kid smile and everything he does results in someone's prostitute mother dying and other like. It goes super dark out of nowhere or with always dark, and I'm just kind of like scheming through the list. Time paradox ghostwriter was the name of the one I'd forgotten earlier which was pretty sick. Toriko, I think we've complained about before, but what are your thoughts on the ending of Toriko? I think we've complained about before, but what are your thoughts on the ending of Toriko?

Speaker 1:

uh, the ending of Toriko dissatisfying that sums it up pretty good, so I'm gonna like make myself look bad here by mentioning a manga I read simply for curiosity, all the way to the end that did the jankiest ending I've ever seen. So it's called we Never Learn. It was one of those shameless, tacky, rom-com-y gross anime mangas that I was reading, for whatever reason.

Speaker 2:

Don't at me internet.

Speaker 1:

But what they did was they actually wrote a different ending where the protagonist dates a different character and actually wrote out all five endings. So it a different ending where the protagonist dates a different character and actually wrote out all five endings. Huh, so it went through them in sequence and wrote out what each character's ending would be. And it's like it didn't have a dating simulator game that was attached to it. He's just like, yeah, I'm going to write out what each pairing would have been. And I'm like, wait, really. And I was more invested in the ending than the series because I'm like, wait, you're just going to actually list out what would happen if they dated each person. That's kind of amazing. So, audience, don't read it, don't read, we Never Learn. I did it for you, I took the shot. Don't do it. And then World Trigger ended after the Rank Wars, which is fine, I guess, but they never really got to go into the cosmos.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, too bad they never really got to go into the cosmos. Oh yeah, too bad that they never got to go into the cosmos and they never will.

Speaker 1:

Did you ever read Yu Yu Hakusho?

Speaker 2:

No, I have not. There are some series where, unless it comes extremely highly recommended, I see that it has 600 or more chapters and was like hmm, they forgot to end Yu Yu Hakusho.

Speaker 1:

It's bad, oh, it is like exactly like the worst aspects of the Bleach ending tenfold amplified Huh, where it's just rushed, nonsensical chaos. But I think I made it through all the things on Viz because I just kind of pulled up all their titles and looked at, like what we've read, looking at and a lot of things that I didn't think were Viz we got to talk about like All you Need Is Kill did not occur to me it would be a Viz series.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, it actually was Ran and Shown Jump apparently.

Speaker 1:

And I thought Black Clover ended, but I guess it just stopped caring Well.

Speaker 2:

Black Clover ended, but I guess it just stopped caring. Well, black Clover switched to being released monthly and now he releases or quarterly, every three months, and he generally releases two chapters on his quarterly release.

Speaker 1:

And I'm also looking at a sub-series that almost had a chance.

Speaker 2:

I remember the few chapters of Candy Flurry, where they made candy weapons to beat people to death. Oh yeah, and everyone was like, watch out for the lollipop user, because they killed everyone. And she was like, but I'm the lollipop user and I didn't kill anyone.

Speaker 1:

Right. And then we got Death Note, which had a great ending, and then a second season. For some reason You'll notice, it's a recurring thing to me you, you're like, okay, you ended your arc and you could have just ended your show and you didn't. And I'm holding it against you forever. Forever, oh, you know what I really enjoyed? The ending of Fairytale, part of the ending, oh, so Fairytale has an exact problem. Its first ending of the two immortal persons embracing their love for each other. Creating a paradox and obliterating each other was awesome.

Speaker 2:

Right, the whole like oh.

Speaker 1:

Nazi was a demon and da-da-da. I'm like, actually you set all that up. Most of the random ass pulls in Fairytale, because Fairytale is garbage, but it's my favorite brand of garbage. We're like set up nicely. We're like, okay, the evil dude was off. Making his own nation Makes sense. There's the full world map. There's literally no reason he couldn't.

Speaker 1:

You have a bunch of epic matches. You bring back all the side characters because it makes sense, because Fairy Tail's great ninja war made perfect sense Because their continent was being invaded. I'm like, oh yeah, all your characters live here, that's it. That is the entire vested interest. They need to be allies right now. This is their house where their stuff is. But, like for Fairytale, there's a bit where, like, lucy rewrites the magic book that built Natsu. So her novelist subplot from episode one was actually the thing that allowed them to defeat the villain was kind of amazing. Since Lucy was the protagonist of Fairytale, natsu was later. She was Just straight up. So I'm like it was a satisfying ending. But they absolutely did the Dragon Ball Z non-ending of like, and we can sequel this whenever we want to the point where the fairy tale hundred year quest is airing, like right now, like either on epic episode five, but fairy tale did something I wasn't expecting from a manga like that okay romantic plot progression happens oh so gajil's girlfriend levy is just pregnant.

Speaker 1:

Now, okay, and like characters that like started like dating over the course of the show are like oh so Gajil's girlfriend Levy is just pregnant now, okay.

Speaker 1:

And like characters that like started like dating over the course of the show, are like in relationships and like working their way through it and having like. It's like for a show-and-jump series for the characters to like actually have character development and not just time skip it away of like oh, grey finally realized that the person that's stalking him, the Stalker Syndrome, is starting to win and now he feels bad that he ditched her. I'm like wait, are these characters actually experiencing character growth? That's weird. I wasn't expecting this. Like I thought Threattale was going to go nowhere forever, but I think your characters are aging and maturing. Slowly, but they are what, as I just like sit up in my seat slowly, but they are what, as I just like, sit up in my seat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean the author of Fairy Tail, with all of his Fairy Tail-esque spinoffs and whatnot. He actually seems pretty competent.

Speaker 1:

He also has created a cinematic universe, which is funny to me, because it's like oh no, there's multiverse portals, so my characters can just show up in each other's shows and there's literally no reason they can't, because I wrote that in. I'm like well played sir.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the cinematic universe is great.

Speaker 1:

Also, he's super chill on fan projects and fan games and put out a bounty for people to make fan games. I'm like, even if fairy tale's garbage, I respect Hiro Mashiro's ethic as a person when he's like there should be more games about my thing so you could just make them. You know his agent had a stroke when he heard that right, like oh yeah, I'm not going to sue people for making fan projects, I love fan projects. I'm like what, who are you? You know you live in Japan. Right, are you allowed to say this legally?

Speaker 2:

Japan, famously against fan projects.

Speaker 1:

Yes, they're like how dare you modify a console you legally own? We'll shoot you. But yeah, fairytale Ravemaster and.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I like Ravemaster.

Speaker 1:

Right and Eden Zero was okay, and then it's like Eden Zero was okay. I don't know he doesn't write masterpieces. He writes fun long-running series that I'm just allowed to enjoy. He's basically the Wendy's of manga.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, that seems like a good chance to pivot into our random question of the day, indeed.

Speaker 1:

That was a very smooth pivot.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I don't actually have a random question.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I thought you were going to blow my mind here.

Speaker 2:

No, no, okay, my random question uh, what would you do if you could transform into a super saiyan, complete with like the um aura and like the shock aura and the hair transformation, whatnot? Uh, but it confers no meaningful benefits oh, what would I do with it? Yeah, like you. You can go super saiyan, you can transform, but you don't actually gain anything from transforming. I'm an author every time.

Speaker 1:

so I would be in normal mode and as soon as I like, pull out my book or go to speak or do a reading, I go super saiyan. I would abuse the heck out of this like richard the student with his glasses, like I do the full card, can't I pull off my glasses? Go Super Saiyan, give a speech any time I make a public appearance and then just turn back to normal and that's just my gimmick. So I'm at student orientation, just I go Super Saiyan at the booth. That'd be amazing. I don't need my strength boost.

Speaker 1:

You're giving me the ability to make my outfit dramatically billow at will.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, I mean you might have to worry about the stuff on the table flying off when you turn it up though Worth it every time.

Speaker 1:

Like the sheer amount of bluffage. Like someone, like 2 in the morning, is like, hey, give me your wallet. Are you going to go? Super Saiyan, they're not going to huck around and find out. They have no idea what just happened.

Speaker 2:

How about you? You just screamed and they fell back.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would use that ability. I'd have to specifically go to my way to not use it more than once a week before it loses luster, because it's such a good trick.

Speaker 2:

Well see, I think I would go the opposite. I would like uh be constantly transformed, uh, and then, when I wanted like be unassuming and disappear, I would just be like, okay, uh, I'm gonna leave now and then power down. Everybody's like, oh hey, where did carl go? It's like I don't know he's.

Speaker 1:

You know, bright blonde, spiky hair is pretty hard to miss where I would use it like to punctuate sentences, like when I just gave that rant about the 10 numbered villains. I would just go super saiyan while I'm ranting about the ending all right, here's our actual random question which came from my event, from one of our podcast fans. Because I ran to one of our podcast fans at the wedding I went to oh nice, here's one. If animals could talk, which one do you think would be the rudest?

Speaker 2:

Which animal do I think would be the rudest? Well see, that's not exactly fair, Because animals have their own distinct personalities. You would certainly be able to get to know them better. It's house cats. In terms of domesticated animals, I do think house cats would be unreasonably sassy. But I also, I think that fish would be pretty rude too.

Speaker 1:

I can see that House cats for sure would be rude. Fish would definitely be pretty rude.

Speaker 2:

Well, they would just be very demanding. They don't really have a whole lot going on, so every time they see you they'd be like hey, what are you doing?

Speaker 1:

Let's pause for a moment. We know what animal it is. They're already the rudest. They're called Canadian geese. They would just say slurs at you, like, if you subtitled a Canadian goose it would just be slurs at you. Like, if you subtitled a Canadian goose it would just be slurs, slurs, slurs, which is a bit they did in a hell of a boss thing About penguins.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're right, canadian geese would just be the rudest animal On earth, for sure.

Speaker 1:

You'd be like can you move? And it'd be like I'm going to burn down your house, you garbage and I will eat your remains. You're're like, you're tiny. He's like I will cut you.

Speaker 2:

You know, I also think kangaroos. Kangaroos seem like they'd be pretty rude too.

Speaker 1:

Right, but you know who would not be rude. You know who would be sagely. Every capybara on the planet sounds like a mix between Uncle Iroh and a hug. All capybaras must sound at least a little like Uncle Iroh. Just looking at them and their expression, with an orange on their head in a hot spring.

Speaker 2:

You know I'm going to have to get back to you with this next week, but at my workplace we have an Australian guy. He's working as a delivery driver. I am curious if he thinks that kangaroos would be rude if they could speak. I'll have to ask him. That's interesting.

Speaker 1:

We do have one other random question before we wrap it up. If your pet suddenly developed the ability to plot world domination. How long do you think it would take them?

Speaker 2:

if my pet randomly or suddenly could develop the ability to plot world domination.

Speaker 1:

How long do you think it would take them? Mika would never succeed. He's been raised like me, by me. He has no chance of success.

Speaker 2:

Hmm.

Speaker 1:

He'd have the ability but, much like me, with the power of ADHD, it would all just be plans. He'd have fully functioning mech suit, blueprints next to the occult cube and five of the twelve Jackie Chan talismans.

Speaker 2:

Five, five of the 12.

Speaker 1:

Just couldn't commit to one plan.

Speaker 2:

Yeah well, I mean, you're probably right, Animals can't count. They would probably end up with nine gym badges.

Speaker 1:

No, it's not that. Animals in general. My pet specifically is exactly as dumb as me.

Speaker 2:

Now, relatively recently, we got an extremely cute and docile cat. Her name is Elsa. She was like she's six years old, so like she was a rescue cat that tragically, her previous owner got too sick to be able to take care of her anymore, so she had to put her up for adoption.

Speaker 1:

So I thought you were really going to say, tragically, she killed her last owner.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean mean, maybe, maybe this is just the cover story, um, but I mean, if she could plan world domination, I, I just uh, I I think she would probably uh, just have better plans on how to act, cute and get treats like. I think she, I think she would use her world domination powers for her own selfish gains.

Speaker 1:

Or I think Miko would absolutely try but wouldn't succeed. He has the spite but not the follow-through.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my Elsa is not spiteful.

Speaker 1:

I was cat-sitting a couple weeks ago and Miko remembered he knew, was not pleased. He didn't smell the other cat on you Absolutely. And with that, thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Richard and Carl present Deep Space and Dragons. Spoiler warning the episode you just listened to contains spoilers for a minimum of 10 series. Enjoy.

Speaker 2:

I don't know this is a good ending, but I don't think this is a good ending, but I don't think we really spoiled that much. I think we just said, oh, this had a good ending oh, good point. Snape killed Dumbledore that was a good ending. I liked that.

Speaker 1:

Bye honestly, it's kind of funny as a good plot twist you can't really spoil because it makes narrative sense like the chessboard. I spoiled it because it was cool, even if you know about it. I can't actually remember the last time something straight up spoiled and I got disappointed by it. Oh, the Dragon Ball Super, super Hero movie where they just showed off all the new forms ah, yeah, yeah, okay.