Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
Episode 96: Sakamoto was almost cool.
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Imagine a world where a mythical Canadian province exists, and our listeners are hilariously trying to locate it on a map. This episode kicks off with a playful narrative exploring the whimsical dynamics behind our podcast, "Deep Space and Dragons." We marvel at the mysterious "Carl Kaur" energy that seems to influence our analytics and ponder the chaos of surprise movie reviews and unexpected cameos, possibly from Ryan George. Strap in for a journey filled with humor, spontaneity, and the quirky unpredictability that makes our show truly unique.
As the cold weather bites, we grapple with the daily conundrum of layering up for frosty commutes versus the comfy perks of remote work. Ever heard of a "dipping pizza"? You're in for a treat, as we dissect this delightful Pizza Hut innovation that promises a new culinary adventure. We also take a lighthearted look at the quirks of writing style guides and word processors, adding a sprinkle of laughter to the minutiae of language in professional settings. Our candid conversations are here to keep you entertained and informed!
Anime enthusiasts, get ready to dive into the rich world of evolving storylines and character arcs. We explore the fascinating narratives found in "Sakamoto Days" and other beloved series, focusing on the creative gimmicks that bring non-superpowered characters to life. From the anti-government themes in "One Piece" to the complex character developments in "Naruto," our discussions are both insightful and engaging. Wrapping things up, we touch on the societal implications of a cigarette ban and emphasize the importance of self-care. Join us as we weave thoughtful insights with playful humor in this episode!
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Hello, esteemed listeners, guests, people stuck in transit or shopping malls. Maybe you're in a bubble bath listening to this podcast. Maybe it's the only way you can get through dinner with your family. Welcome to Richard and Carl present. Deep Space and Dragons.
Speaker 2:I was waiting for you to introduce yourself instead of the show there, Richard.
Speaker 1:Well, carl, I was going to passive-aggressively introduce you by throwing a back-ended compliment you, fantastic bastard.
Speaker 2:Yay, introduction. There's this one person at my work, or not at my work, but they order from my work often enough and I don't want to dox them, but their last name is I don't know how common this last name is, but their last name is Barstad.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm pretty sure you just doxed them because, like we've given, I love the idea of someone actually going through 100 episodes to like build the map of the Carlverse, just to realize Saskatchewan's not a real place.
Speaker 2:Well, no, it's just funny, because every time you see it it's like it's Bastard, but R's in the wrong spot.
Speaker 1:Batard.
Speaker 2:It's Barstad.
Speaker 1:I just keep thinking imagine when we started this podcast and we just invented a small town and a province and just committed to that bit for like 100 episodes of yeah, carlin Twidaho.
Speaker 2:Twidaho, that'd be pretty funny.
Speaker 1:And just committed to it so strongly that people in Germany are like I didn't know. Canada had a province called Eurasia. It's weird, between Alberta and BC there's Eurasia Eurasia it's weird Between Alberta and.
Speaker 2:BC, there's Eurasia. That would be pretty funny if everyone's looking for this province and they can't figure out where we actually are.
Speaker 1:I mean, I do appreciate commitment to the bit, so I guess I'll have to ask, and you sort of started it so what's new with you other than Batards?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, that was just a random segue. You called me a beautiful bastard and I was like ha, that reminds me of this Barstad person.
Speaker 1:Good point.
Speaker 2:Who I don't know. I've never actually directly met. But what's new with me? I know that you said that reviewing movies doesn't have that Carl Kaur energy. We don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1:So what's interesting about the Carl Kaur energy? So I've been staring at our analytics this morning before our meetup, and it's like there's just no correlation between what we talk about and how good an episode does. So it's like we do a show and jump roundup we do really good, we do a Sonic Sigmatic saga, we do really bad, but why though? So maybe I shouldn't declare things Carl Corp or not Carl Corp, because there's no rules here. Deadpool and Wolverine did great. I don't know if we started with a Carl.
Speaker 1:Corp opening, or if you just talked about a random, unrelated horror movie, I can't possibly know. I don't take notes. Our best episode was about tropes.
Speaker 2:See, people aren't. People don't really have high expectations for video game adaptations, so maybe some people just skip that because they're like eh, sonic's not for me.
Speaker 1:Or they're like Sonic's not for me, or they're like spoilers movie's still in theaters. How dare you? I know these guys. I'm just going to spoil the entire movie and I just played through Sonic Adventure 2, which is an identical plot, and I do not want my movie spoiled.
Speaker 2:So way, way back in 2015,. Apparently.
Speaker 1:How dare that be? Way back, Well, way way back in 2015,.
Speaker 2:apparently, how dare that be way back? Well, so, um, that's when the Borderlands movie was announced.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Apparently.
Speaker 1:Okay, you see, here's the thing about the Carl giving movie reviews. It's a super old brand and the only reason it irks me is you use it as a surprise so we can't just talk about the movie you're reviewing and similar topics. That's the problem, right? Because if you said, what am I going to do, what do you want to talk about? You're like I want to talk about Sakamoto Days and board games. Also, I'm going to give a 15-minute explanation of the Borderlands. I'm like you know I played all of those right, right, like this could be an episode Easy. You're like no, no, no, this is an unrelated, unsolicited movie review that I'm surprising you with at the start.
Speaker 2:And you're not allowed to coordinate our content because I'm going to do this to you and I'm like you get a big episode.
Speaker 1:Thebes. You could just say, hey, I saw Borderlands. Like no, this has got to be a surprise. Carl Kaur needs to be. Mr Batard decided to put shrimp on this pizza. We didn't stock shrimp, so I went to the river with a crayfish net. Things I can't plan for. This I could have planned for.
Speaker 2:Well, no, Okay, so I mean where this actually begins is that Ryan George did his pitch meeting for Borderlands.
Speaker 1:Not a sponsor, just a fan. We're a fan of him. If he's a fan of us, please tell us. Raya George, Please comment. That just says the word seed on our video. You don't even have to say you liked it. The knowledge that you saw this alone will make me giddy.
Speaker 2:I was actually thinking about commenting on one of his videos and asking him, since you're famous enough, to get cameos with Simu Liu, the Ten Rings guy.
Speaker 1:Sean G. Yeah, or Sean, if it's right.
Speaker 2:Anyways. So Simu Liu did an episode with Ryan George and I was like, yeah, he's got some actual contacts, I guess. And I was like, yeah, he's got some actual contacts. I guess I was going to ask him how often he gets unsolicited requests for to be a guest star on various things.
Speaker 1:It's wild. As part of my course, we have literally classes on how to interact with famous authors and celebrities and things. Here's the takeaway If you make something that requires work for somebody, they innately will shrug against it. You're like hey, read my book. No one's ever reading a book that way, but what they like is quick, answerable questions.
Speaker 1:So how do we send a message hey, would you like to star on our podcast? That would never work, that's work. But if you do, ask, ask. Oh, do you turn down guest things all the time? That's a question.
Speaker 2:So that way they can answer it because like yeah okay, people like that are often very generous.
Speaker 1:But when it feels like someone's like being overly clingy and unless you're in like an inauguration crowd you don't want to be overly clingy like you're trying to take advantage of someone so I would say be like how often do you get the fair question? But if you try and spin that into do you want to be on our podcast, he'll let us know right, right, right, uh.
Speaker 2:but more to the point, he did his, his pitch meeting for borderlands, uh, and near the end of the pitch meeting the producer guy asked uh, writer guy, who is this for? And writer guy, he goes on this kind of this eloquent rant about how Borderlands was made. For that, that person who has a vaguely positive feeling about Borderlands but doesn't actually know enough about Borderlands to be able to make any comments on their bizarre casting choices and their interpretation of the source material, the creative license they took with it, and you know, quite honestly, I think I am the target audience, right, I have vaguely positive feelings about Borderlands because I've heard that the games are great and they do seem like they're fun and I really appreciate how they invented a genre of video games, basically because shoot and loot did not exist before Borderlands, basically.
Speaker 1:I'll let them have it. It's like if I there's always a game that did it first, but Borderlands brought it into the mainstream.
Speaker 2:Like it's the first looter shooter I played.
Speaker 2:Right. So I really respect the franchise as a whole and so it's like man, I do have vaguely positive feelings towards this, but I don't really know anything about the games. So I mean, I wasn't surprised when lilith had weird alien powers, but it didn't bother me in any way. You know, like nothing. None of the choices they made specifically bothered me. And I was like, yeah, I might be their target audience.
Speaker 2:And when I saw the trailer, I was like, yeah, that looks like it could be a fun movie. Then I heard the fan reaction to the trailer. I was like, hmm, that's not a great sign. And then I heard that it bombed in the box office. I was like, hmm, that's also not a great sign. And then I watched Ryan George's pitch video and it's like he says I'm their target audience, but there's a lot of red flags. I don't know if I actually want to commit to watching this movie because it's like a two-hour movie or something right. But my fiancee, she just refused to let it go like. She's like, oh, we got lots of movies to watch, like borderlands. And I'm like, are you sure you want to watch borderlands? It's probably not going to be that good. She's like, yeah, yeah, let's watch borderlands. And she refused to just like forget that it existed.
Speaker 1:How dare you have object permanence?
Speaker 2:Right, right. And so then we came home after going to an enjoyable family gathering, a baby shower for my cousin. So we came home and it was like, okay, fine, let's watch Borderlands. There are very, very few movies that my fiance actually thinks are bad, but Borderlands, even though we were watching it because she wanted to, she fell asleep. She really did not like it and I mean there's almost no really did not like it and I mean like there's almost no redeeming qualities about it. It's just it is exactly as bad as all the reviews would suggest.
Speaker 1:So here's what's kind of interesting about Borderlands and like to go like, make some big sweeping claims. So Borderlands was inspired by, like mad max, firefly, trigon, like the space. It was inspired by the concept of the space, western right and the movie john carter of mars, which is a weird pivot, also has the same problem where, like, the ideas that inspired it are better than it and enough things have come out since then or before then that, like by trying to make a marvel movie, effectively, it's like they wanted to make guardians of the galaxy using the borderlands ip. Borderlands ip was only good because it was a bunch of references to other things either subtle or overt right like the blind
Speaker 1:it like it comes off as profoundly bland Because, for one thing, we just watched Dune and Borderlands wishes it was Dune. Yeah, like Dune's the thing that's perioding not particularly well, and it's like when we were talking about the Sonic adaptation on that episode no one saw. It's like you can be inspired by things but you still have to have a core and a heart to your movie. And Borderlands is just like so bland and I don't really know if you could have fixed it, because Borderlands was already kind of like a novelty knockoff when it's like I was playing through a Borderlands game recently, tiny Tina's Wonderland, which is like an in-universe dnd borderland spin-offy thing, right, and you mash a through the text.
Speaker 1:You don't read the text of borderlands. You enjoy how there's occasionally like a quippy thing when an enemy introduces himself and then you shoot them. It's just it wasn't a good ip to do this, for, unless they want to like go all in on the comedy, you would have needed the directorial staff of Hot Fuzz to have made that movie good.
Speaker 2:Oh, hot Fuzz, that is a great movie.
Speaker 1:Because you would have needed characters to take that premise completely seriously and that would have been the joke to get away with it seriously, and that had been the joke to get away with it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then it's just like why did they cast Kevin Hart as the serious mercenary?
Speaker 1:Seems like a misplay Because. Ben and Reese turned them down to play Shadow the Hedgehog All the good actors are busy in that franchise, because they believe in it, because it's less stupid than Borderlands.
Speaker 2:In any event, what's new with me? I guess a takeaway could be that my cousin had a baby on Christmas Day, so I made a quip when I was describing you to a friend of mine.
Speaker 1:I think I've given this monologue on the podcast as well, so I have. Adhd, where I can't regulate attention. You have extreme attention regulation where it's like all things get your attention of all evenness, at all times. So it's like, yes to Carl, this child being born on Christmas, you could very literally be Jesus. But also, this Borderlands movie was very mediocre and I knew it, but I watched it anyway Are of equal importance.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, like you say, we don't know what our fans or listeners actually like. Like, we appreciate all of our listeners, we don't know who our target.
Speaker 1:Our target audience are three people. I have this narrowed down. First, it is not native English speakers who need something bland, to listen to the background, to practice the language.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Second, people who love watching Richard get dunked on and are willing to wait an ungodly amount of time for it to happen.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And three of the Carl fanboys oh, the ones with the tattoos. Yeah, so it's like I love the idea that we're just like the number one source of like some random german english class and like they like have to like write essays and like fix our grammar because we're just so like the perfect level of bad that they need to use as like a how not to english class and they're like oh, I can't understand this, richard. He talks so fast, it's like good learn well, I mean speaking of talking fast.
Speaker 2:What's new with you, richard?
Speaker 1:so I had a weird day. So I'm back to full classes and there's just like Frozen ice hell outside Right.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:So I don't have class on Mondays, because life is straight up rigged for me.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:My class today Was cancelled for a work period Because we have to write a novel. So I had to put in 7,000 words on this novel. But I had work today as well and I am so conditioned that I'm going to start this with a question. I actually did some prep work for what's new section. So with your current job a job I've worked in the past before what is your morning procedure to get ready to work, to work when you know it's minus 30 outside? Like what do you do?
Speaker 2:What do I do, yeah?
Speaker 1:Assuming you have to, like you have to go a decent distance to get there.
Speaker 2:Well see, I'm fortunate enough that eons ago, when we were both learning how to drive, I actually finished the course, so I can drive myself around 100 episodes to get that sick Richard burn. You were so close and then you moved and had to reset.
Speaker 1:There's so many steps, though, still like socks, pants, underpants, shirt, overshirt, gloves, toque, get to the car, turn on the car, leave the car, make yourself breakfast, go back to the now warm car, drive five minutes.
Speaker 2:Well, firstly, my daily commute is about 11 minutes and, secondly, I, actually I just I put on a sweater, I put on a winter coat, I go out, I start the car and then I immediately drive to work.
Speaker 1:So here's what's funny. I have flashbacks when we lived in Speedy Creek. It wasn't a long walk, but the wind down that highway would literally tear through your flesh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was rough back before I could actually drive, although I mean it wouldn't have been a distance worth driving. What's?
Speaker 1:interesting. Even that short walk was just brutal. Like I think about how Naruto's wind shuriken slices someone on a cellular level, I'm like, yeah, I can relate. So the thing is so I look at my work schedule right, and I start thinking like I always have of coats layers. I have, to like, go from my house to the bus stop. Do I take the closer bus that takes longer, or walk further to the further bus that takes less time? So I'm doing all my morning prep for my 9am shift right, I get outside and then I realize something.
Speaker 1:I work in tech, so I send my boss a message being like it is cold. Can I just zoom into the meetings today and they're like yeah, of course, and that's what's so wild is we have like a decent percentage of the workforce who have just not go to work as an option. So much of my life is I have to go to work to make the money to live that I would never.
Speaker 1:five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Consider not going to work because it's cold, but my class was canceled for a work period. Today, like I mentioned, and I like this big internal moment of I'm like I could ask Carl a hundred things he would do before going to work and none of them would be call the office because it's cold and not go to work.
Speaker 2:And none of them would be called the office because it's cold and not go to work. Oh yeah, when it's cold out we need more people to work because nobody else, nobody in the city, wants to actually like cook or go anywhere, so they order pizza.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had pizza for dinner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was cold. That pizza place was probably busy.
Speaker 1:Well, pizza Hut actually has an interest in new products to steal. Oh so my brother orders this new kind of pizza. Okay, oh so my brother orders this new kind of pizza, okay, and follow me here, because it's so obvious that it'll actually hurt you that you didn't think of this.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So start with a pepperoni pizza.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Shape it like a cheesy bread where you slice it into like the dipping-sized strips. Okay, put four dips in the box. Okay, call it a dipping pizza, call it a dip in pizza. Does it cost more? Nope, costs less. I love it. I love the idea of slicing your pizza so it fits in the dip specifically.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:Having a good flavor instead of just cheesy bread and having a variety of dips. That's just I. I'm like, how has no one done this in my 35 years of existence? To be like, hey, we cut, cut it into the dipping bread shaped dips strips so you can dip them in the nacho cheesy goodness easily well, I mean, we do have a couple varieties of of cheesy bread.
Speaker 2:Uh, like you know, a ranch bacon wedgie gets ranch instead of the garlic butter and gets bacon.
Speaker 1:I mean, those are good, I can confirm Bullseye bacon wedgie.
Speaker 2:that's another, not super popular because bullseye is kind of a love it or hate it thing.
Speaker 1:Well, you get the idea of like hey, if we cut a pizza like the dipping and put it with a bunch of dips, you get like five flavors of pizza.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it costs you like nothing. You're just cutting it in a different way and putting some dips in the box and if you do it right, you put in those dips that expire next week.
Speaker 2:Okay, but did this pizza get ordered today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was delicious.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so that's what's new with me is.
Speaker 1:I had that epiphany that I work a white collar job and I can just remote in, had an hour long meeting about grammar. I'm living my best life, basically it was like.
Speaker 1:We had a lengthy conversation about why are people using all case? Why are people bolding things? Why are people doing this? And then I wrote a style guide to be like. Examples are E, period, G, period, comma, all lowercase? So my boss asks me so why are some of them uppercase, when we know this? And I'm like this answer is going to hurt you.
Speaker 1:Some of this starts with an example in a new line and every word processor ever made wants to turn the first letter capital. So what happened is we fixed all this and then Word just unfixed it for us, Because if you start a sentence with a lowercase, it makes Word mad and because it's egcomma, it assumes the next word starts uppercase, because that's how Word has been trained. So, literally we fixed it, moved it onto a new file and then it unfixed itself. So tomorrow I get a copy edit all morning, which is great. By the way, Best money I can make is going through a Word file and being like and that's lowercase, and that's lowercase. Why did you bolt this?
Speaker 1:But also we had a full conversation of like who uses single quotes and why and I gotta give my fun fact that single quotes are used when having an internal monologue, when italics have a different purpose in your writing and are also used for quotes within quotes, and I give this speech and my boss is like, all right, so it's for internal dialogue, or a quote within a quote. Why would we ever use that? I'm like, oh, we should never use. We should ban everyone for using that. I don't even think I should be using these.
Speaker 1:The quotes within quotes Single quotes in general should not be used by people Because that use case is so specific.
Speaker 2:Right, because the norm is to use italics when you're having an internal monologue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but a lot of people. I have to take away their italics privilege when I'm editing for them.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Because they'll use italics for emphasis as well.
Speaker 2:Ah, in which case they should be using the single quotes, but nobody should be using single quotes, so using single quotes.
Speaker 1:So yeah, because it's like, if you use italics for something, only use it for that thing. You can't also use it for handwritten letters, and use it for internal monologues, and use it for texting and use it for emphasis. Pick one, you only get one, and then I shake my fist at the.
Speaker 2:Shake your fist angrily.
Speaker 1:And one of my books, I was using brackets for texting and I got mixed results from people, because I'm like in my brain that makes sense because you send texts in little boxes.
Speaker 2:Right, right. But yeah, that's what's new with me, is I got to?
Speaker 1:avoid the cold and copy edit. I am very much not that exciting and it is lovely.
Speaker 2:It is lovely that you're not that exciting, uh, but you know what is exciting sakamoto days all right.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a lot about sakamoto days. In passing. I don't think it's ever been an episode focus, except like when it came out, when we did one of our show and jump roundups. So I'm gonna start with one of the things that drives me mental in anime and manga.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:You're allowed a plus size character whose specific power isn't turning skinny after they use their powers. So I'm going to start listing some animes that have a fat character that turns skinny as a power up.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Dragon Ball Naruto.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:One.
Speaker 2:Piece, okay. Dragon Ball, naruto, okay. One Piece Okay, no, no, no, naruto, it's kind of the opposite he powers up and then he becomes skinny because he burns all his fat but it's not that.
Speaker 1:That's a power-down, power-up and stay jacked. Oh yeah, you're right, as long as the end result is I turned my fat into skinny to be better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, anyways.
Speaker 1:Bleach, one of the Squad Zero. People had that specific power. Right One Piece.
Speaker 2:My.
Speaker 1:Hero Academia.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Probably JJK, I haven't checked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think there were any fat people in JJK.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry if that's offensive, that's somehow worse, not better, and I'm sure there's more. But I hate, like all of them, like every big show and jump series in the last like 50 years has had the fat character get skinny as a power-up. And I hate it Because realistically, if you're the size of Sakamoto but kept his speed and strength, you'd actually be so much more dangerous at that size because how mass works, it is way more dangerous for a 600-pound man to dropkick you.
Speaker 2:Well, and then the series kind of like teased this idea. Uh, like the assassin doctor lady like hit hit sakamoto's pressure points and and then he couldn't go skinny to power up. But it turns out that he just had to actually learn how to be comfortable in his own body and it's like man, that's such a good surprisingly, yeah, yeah, it's a good message, uh. And then probably about 20 chapters later he just starts going skinny again, and now the latest few chapters he's just been skinny constantly because he needs the extra power.
Speaker 1:I guess but also like to kind of like follow that one a bit like dragon ball z is funny because the fat one is the good one, but like, eh, they still get the shade, Like I'm not giving the back to them.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe we should read Roboco just to see if the robot gets skinny as a power-up.
Speaker 1:I refuse so to talk a bit about the premise of Sakamoto.
Speaker 2:Days.
Speaker 1:So I can't remember the name of it, but there's an anime that made it on Netflix that was really more an animated slideshow that was like about a Yakuza husband. Okay, I'm drawing a Yakuza husband Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm drawing a blank on the name of that, but it's. One of my favorite concepts is I love when you give someone like the Rionin catch-em-back story but they get to be happy afterward Like bonus points to Sakamoto. Days of badass assassin meets cute cashier, falls head over heels, starts a family, gets overweight, lives his best life. That's great. That is a character arc. And then other characters are like don't you want to be a bad ass? Like no, my life is great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean that exact premise. Like I do think the absolute best arc in Sakamoto Days is when they realize that there's a arc in Sakamoto days is, uh, when they realize that there's a bounty on Sakamoto's head but they have to take his daughter to the fair. Yeah, uh, because it's just like it's this great mixture of him trying to be this awesome family man. Well, also have to dealing, deal with all the crap that comes with being a retired assassin.
Speaker 1:So, like the first two episodes have come out and we've been kind of like spoiled for good animation for things. So I watch this and I'm like, oh man, watching me deflect a bowl of chopstick was sick and it's like I swear as it sounds. I like gag series and I like series of overall arcs, but these overall arcs are like it's kind of a hot take. But a lot of these assassin animes like Assassination, classroom, logo, 13, um, give it attention to a certain extent ever find that thing where they have to come up with increasingly weird gimmicks to give assassins because they don't have a power system. So they have people sucking on guns and other nonsense.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on that where it's like, yeah, we have this league of assassins, but we're not actually going to give them superpowers, so instead we're just going to give them increasingly gimmicky gimmicks.
Speaker 2:I would definitely agree. Sakamoto is supposed to be a legendary assassin and he is supposed to be somewhat powered down because he's been retired and got out of shape and whatnot. But then like it's impressive that he doesn't die to all these other crazy assassins. But what actually made him so legendary compared to all these people who have these incredible and strange powers, like the film director guy who has an incredibly steady hand as long as he's filming something and he like it, and he like what the heck?
Speaker 1:what's kind of funny is like we've done our whole episode the overpowered protagonist on why saitama works and why when a reincarnated as a sexy harem leader doesn't and a lot of it comes down to like the likability of the protagonist and them having goals that are hard to achieve. So right.
Speaker 1:I like OG Superman because OG Superman's win condition is never kill the enemy, it's prevent bad things from happening. So even though Superman has all of the superpowers because his goal is like live out healthy work-life balance and be inspirational, a lot of it comes to the oh, I could just punch through this person like they're made of cardboard, but I can't Because I'm more than that. So, like Sakamoto's interesting because it's like oh yeah, his motivation isn't being badass and I'm willing to give badass assassin backstory a free pass in anime. Like Rion and Kenshin took like 200 episodes to bother to explain why he was this legendary badass that was acting as a doof. I've been watching that again, also on Crunchyroll because they reanimated it. The pacing's a little off. But it's Rion and Kenshin, so Bad person. The writer may or may not have been not getting into that Entertaining series. Nonetheless, no characters go through magic weight loss that I'm aware of.
Speaker 2:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:They do have an openly trans character and I don't think they handled it poorly. I'll get back to you on that one. I mean I also enjoy, I also really enjoy anime where the characters are. I like to say, as a rule of thumb, every anime character should just be aged by four years to make these series make any sense and the proportions look sensible in the slightest.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I love me a good adult protagonist. So Sakamoto Dei's super strong protagonist, strong, silent family man, secret badass, works at a convenience store Right, His struggles is that his wife said no killing. And his daughter is more important.
Speaker 2:How do you feel about? Those were his struggles and they kind of come up in passing every now and then. But I've said before in this podcast that usually between 100 and 150 chapters there's a tonal pivot and that it's really hard to create a consistent series that doesn't have this big turn around that mark.
Speaker 1:Attack on Titan.
Speaker 2:Ugh, but uh, Sakamoto Days. Surprisingly, like I say, the best arc is the amusement park arc, but that was only like chapter 60, and it's right there that suddenly it shifts just straight into an action series and something that actually really annoys me. They had this character, the former triad member, and she's working on the convenience. It's a female character working on the convenience store and after the amusement park arc she just gets written out of the story like she just stops having any lines, the story. She just stops having any lines or doing anything meaningful, and we just I don't understand why. And then they feel like they need another female character, so they add another female character, but it's. I don't get it.
Speaker 1:So Sakamoto Days. So we'd like to talk how a lot of show-and-jump series recently as we went through and listed all the ones that have been cancelled have that like chapter 60,. Hey, I guess we need a bigger story now because I lived longer than we were expecting. So it's like most manga that come out now aren't as ambitious. I'm going to use One Piece and.
Speaker 1:Naruto as examples. In One Piece and Naruto, they list out that their worlds have truly stupidly massive scopes early on and don't use them. One Piece is like yeah, I'm not even at the grand line yet. I'm not at the part where the adventure starts yet. For the entire duration of.
Speaker 1:Sakamoto days. They haven't actually hit the ocean yet. Right, naruto's like there's five great villages and then they introduce one dude from the water village and then they're like okay, so there's a full world here and we're only looking at the children, while the adults look cool lurking in the background.
Speaker 1:Because they're like oh yeah lurking in the background, because they're like oh yeah, not only it's like, orochimaru is a local villain, and then we have the actual, every other ninja village and ninja world going on, and then the ten clouded villains are like okay, naruto's setting itself up forever.
Speaker 2:Bleach did the opposite.
Speaker 1:Bleach is like. I'm going to name drop all 13 of my important characters in the first plot arc. Oh crap, my power scaling is ruined because now he's as strong as a captain. Which we established were the strong characters. Bleach doesn't feel like it expected to go as long as it did right because it's like yeah, no, you didn't really write past soul society and you absolutely did not plan the quincy thing as a thing, despite anime recons.
Speaker 2:Well and again the Soul Society. Each arc in Bleach is actually like that tonal pivot. Oh yeah, the first arc is all about hollows, the second arc is all about soul reapers. The third arc is all about Hoikomando.
Speaker 1:I'm so mad that the Placomundo stuff doesn't actually like talk about hollows. They're like we introduced a new kind of hollow. I'm like if I wanted to know about the old ones you'd actually set up. No Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, All they did was set up that the new hollows because they're old hollows that ascended.
Speaker 1:Yep, but not to do another Bleach episode, as I am one to do, the point being that these huge pivots happen. One Piece avoids it to a large extent because each arc, which is just a series of islands kind of, has its own tone, except for the go-get To the point where they even animate each arc differently, almost Really.
Speaker 1:They did the Egghead Island arc recently. It was more bright and bouncy and colorful animation where Wano was more serious. Almost they went from Rion and Kenshin to my Hero in vibes and they can get away with that because he started out with a huge scope. Hunter x Hunter is another one where it's like they started with a huge scope and they never even got close to using it. They never explored their whole world before. It's just an island in a bigger world. They didn't even get close to scoping out the size of the world.
Speaker 1:they set up when Dragon Ball they had to keep upping the scope every season, scoping out the size of the world. They set up Right when Dragon Ball. They had to keep upping the scope every season, but they did it in a way that's both brilliant and idiotic. Alright, he's the strongest on Earth. I guess there's aliens now. Also, the afterlife is just a place you can take a plane. I guess there's a demon world now. Oh, better, throw in some time travel for good measure and they're like wow, yeah, better. Like okay, we've used everyone in the universe and all the timelines, so we should probably pull someone in from the multiverse.
Speaker 2:Hmm, that is definitely true and ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Dragon Ball gets like a pass. It like got grandfathered into some things. It wouldn't pass. It's kind of like how if alcohol was a new invention, it would never get sold. There is no way you can patent liquid poison that gives you cancer with the only intended side effect of making you silly. There is no way you'd ever get the license to sell beer when you explain what it was and what it did if it was a new invention, because it just kills people and it's upside is it kills people. That's the point. The point is you're drinking poison, but back to Sakamoto days.
Speaker 1:So, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, you go ahead.
Speaker 1:I'm opting out.
Speaker 2:You're opting out.
Speaker 1:Freedom.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the first roughly 60 chapters. I don't know how long that's going to be in terms of the anime, but the first roughly 60 chapters are, With modern numbers, probably like 30.
Speaker 1:Like they go through the material way faster than they used to because ADHD.
Speaker 2:Hmm, but so that's focusing on Sakamoto just trying to live his best life as a cashier, and there's lots of characters that could have been fun and interesting that they introduced. Fun and interesting that they introduced, like. There's the one chapter that's about this female police officer who's chasing down Sakamoto because they think he's related to this bus incident in the previous chapter and she seemed like she could be a recurring character, but then she's just kind of not, because that was really close to that tonal pivot. I don't know why I keep saying shivit.
Speaker 1:Because it's fun I.
Speaker 2:I don't know why I keep saying shivit.
Speaker 1:Because it's fun.
Speaker 2:I don't have problems with the tonal shivit, where suddenly it's all about the assassin world and I almost feel like, as an assassin world, sakamoto Days is kind of starting to have that same problem that John Wick had, where, the more you learn where they could swing an election with sheer numbers.
Speaker 2:Quote Ryan George the more you learn about this assassin world and the crazy powers that these assassins have, the more unbelievable it becomes, because there's plot holes and inconsistencies and this world just doesn't work for the sheer amount of damage that these assassins do. Or there's this museum arc where the chairman of the Japanese Assassin Association just wants to go see some art and so they put all this assassin art in there. Everyone seems to know that there's an assassin world, but like nobody really does, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It has. So remember that new manga that's like about Yakuza, but not really so. This has the Naruto problem, where they're ninjas who don't do ninja things. Right so an assassin is supposed to be stealthy. These aren't assassins. If they were super martial artists, the show would work better. If this was like hot take. If we replaced assassins with martial artists in this story and made Sakamoto a retired martial arts master who used to kill people with his bare hands, it works better, yeah yeah, I think it does.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like how Luffy's not actually a pirate because he never pirates anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pirates were not good people.
Speaker 1:Luffy's a sailor. He's a sailor, but I digress. One Piece gets away with it because it has very anti-government overtones where it's like they're pirates, because the authoritarian ruling class has labeled anyone who's a dissident among their society a terrorist. Basically, he's doing something with it society a terrorist, basically Right. He's doing something with it. I'm a let out a cook, but like, yeah, naruto's not about ninjas.
Speaker 2:Naruto's not about ninjas.
Speaker 1:The Sakamoto days is just not really. It's not about the time. It drives me nuts. I don't know in the current series if he's in his human body or his ghost body, because that stopped being a thing they cared about. It's like you're bleeding out on the ground, I'm like. But they're ghosts, they have blood. Then how does a hollow hole work if you can stab them in the liver? We're prepared to answer these questions. So also Sakamoto Days has another problem their genos isn't compelling. So Shin's, the main character of Sakamoto Days, has another problem. Oh, their Jettos isn't compelling.
Speaker 2:So Shin's the main character of Sakamoto Days. Right.
Speaker 1:We made him a psychic because we needed to do something interesting with him, mostly so Sakamoto can say what he's thinking to Shin. So the reason Shin's psychic is specifically so Sakamoto can say sassy things in front of his family to Shin is specifically so Sakamoto can say sassy things in front of his family to.
Speaker 2:Shin. But see that gag apparently wore thin and didn't have enough. You know there weren't other psychic people, so it's like it's almost not even a thing that he's communicating telepathically to Shin anymore.
Speaker 1:Right, he's like I'm going to use my telepathic powers to react before people shoot to Ultra M. But I'm like, dude, watch some spy movies or something. You either need to reduce the anime in this or ramp it up, and I'm not sure which way this should go. But to flip the script a bit, to give random, unprepared spy family comparisons.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:First up, Spy Family versus Sakamoto Days. They actually have really similar premises.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Sakamoto comes out more consistently, and I like the character Sakamoto more than I like any one character in Spy Family.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Spy Family has a substantially better ensemble cast, I will say, though Spy Family being like the main villains, also psychic spoilers made so much sense. I was happy with it.
Speaker 2:He might be psychic.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's definitely psychic. Like it clicks together so nicely. He was doing experiments. He made a little girl psychic through these experiments to do on himself, To be able to be a mind reader. That drove him insane. No, there's like a lot of ways it can go.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of ways it can go. It's true. It would make sense and be universe consistent for him to be psychic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like the main villain being psychic is really funny, because here's where this pays off. Amazingly, if we get into an endgame situation, lloyd doesn't know you're a badass and you're doesn't know. Lloyd's a badass, which means if he's dealing with one of them, reading the mind would warn him nothing at all about the other, which is an amazing checkoff's gun. If they end up defeating the big bad because he can't spy on the other one, because they simply don't know.
Speaker 1:Right so there's a lot of ways it could go, but it releases slowly so it's like I'll put the hold on Spy Family, where Sakamoto days it's like he's psychic, but so what? Because they don't have any intrigue. Hot take A mind. Reading character is kind of pointless if there's nothing interesting, nothing sassy for them to mind read Like. The dude has the best skill set for a rogue imaginable and mostly just fights people with chainsaws.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, he's got his like super glove that has a half-second delay, that he has to use his psychic powers to account for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's lame. Mind reading's already a sick ability. Use that, just use it well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean we've levied a lot of complaints against Sock Motor Days, but it is a series that I do follow every week, so like I do still enjoy it, I dropped off for a while because I dropped off at the JCC tuning exams because they were yeah I don't get it.
Speaker 1:Maybe you can explain this to me.
Speaker 2:So we go through sakamoto days.
Speaker 1:We start with the amusement park arc, best arc. We go to the lab arc where the female love interest is kidnapped shin's female love interest because it is required by anime law.
Speaker 2:This love interest gets written out of the show, basically, yeah.
Speaker 1:Then we get to these death row prisoners also required by show and law. Then we do the most contrived shuning exam in existence, because maybe they explain this later. But if everyone in the organization knows who Sakamoto is, they know he's a super badass, dangerous John Wick fellow yeah, no-transcript. So he's willing to disguise himself as his wife to enter a tuning exam where people are fucking remote piloting drone operating assassins. But it never goes to him to walk through the front door.
Speaker 2:You got it a little bit mixed up. He goes through the tuning exams and because he's overweight, they don't recognize him, recognize him, and then when he gets to the end of the tuning exam it's like oh, that was Sakamoto, so we can't actually allow him to pass the exam because he's already an assassin. And then has to sneak into the school in disguise because they won't let him pass as a student.
Speaker 1:But why a school?
Speaker 2:Why is?
Speaker 1:he sneaking into it. That's where I'm stuck.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't remember why they're doing any of this.
Speaker 2:So they're sneaking into the school because the school has a database on former students and the main villain is a former student.
Speaker 1:See what breaks me is like so Sakamoto is John Wick. Mm-hmm is a former student. See what breaks me is like so Sakamoto is John Wick, mm-hmm. Why would John Wick not just break into the building and steal the data?
Speaker 2:Uh well, I mean, nobody's ever found the database, because the database is a person.
Speaker 1:It's only if you had someone who could read minds, to interrogate someone, to then break into the base Like they forgot to. So to then break into the base Like they forgot. So to lap around my rant about the tuning exam, a format I love in a lot of series, in your spy assassin thriller, you don't go tuning exam, you go Mission Impossible movie. It's so obvious. You take your cast of three and have them plan elaborate heist. Instead, it was week after week of random bullshit until I got burned out um, yeah, okay, so did you.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't remember. I think it was after the tuning exams that they reveal uh that uh Sakamoto's friend, uh slur the big bad yeah.
Speaker 2:Uh, moosehead guy, I can't remember, no Moosehead slur X, the slur next to the same person. The Moosehead guy is, uh well, he seems to be pretty much completely a cyborg. Okay, but anyways, slur was strengthened in murdering this lady named Rion, and the trauma caused him to create a second personality within himself, that is, this person that he killed, and then his second personality puts a bounty on Sakamoto's head so that Sakamoto will come and find them and kill the crazy guy, which then there's a wrench thrown in their plan that Sakamoto doesn't kill people anymore, even though there are numerous times throughout the show where they appear to snap people's necks. Shin and Sakamoto just kind of go around knocking people out with like what definitely looks, and there's even a little sound effect that looks like they snap people's necks.
Speaker 1:But there's no blood, so they're probably not dead, sleep it.
Speaker 2:And so now the latest arc is that the crazy guy created another personality of someone he killed, which is the apparently not so legendary but more powerful than Sakamoto ever was swordsman.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so now he's the main big bad. He has three personalities One that's trying to just see the world burn because he doesn't like the JAA, one that's trying to stop the guy that's trying to see the world burn. And one that's just a mumbling, ridiculously powerful swordsman that's just murdering everyone indiscriminately.
Speaker 1:So here's kind of we've had this talk before about narrative design, so the problem with this villain in Sakamoto Days is for a character arc, you need your protagonist to go over her journey and change.
Speaker 1:Sakamoto and Shin don't have anything to learn from this story, so this villain isn't thematically resonant.
Speaker 1:So we're going to loop back to Bleach as a character example, weirdly enough.
Speaker 1:So if we take Bleach and pretend it was just Soul Society for the fun of it, we had Captain Kuchki who was I will follow the rules above all else, even with my own family, even if I hate to do it, because someone needs to follow the rules to set an example, or there'll be no rules.
Speaker 1:Then you have Ichigo being like, yeah, I literally needs to follow the rules to set an example, or there'll be no rules. You have Ichigo being like, yeah, I can't, I literally can't follow the rules because they weren't written for me. I don't dislike any of you, but the current hierarchy you've built does not account for my existence and what you're doing is wrong, because even though they broke a rule, the rule is stupid. So that way, their final fight was literally on character A, who wants to enforce the rules at the detriment of losing his family, to character B saying it's not that you shouldn't break the rules, it's that the rules themselves are stupid. You have a thematic fight and then each blow between the two is getting that message across. You zoom into.
Speaker 1:Naruto, for example and you have Rock Lee versus Gaara is the best example of this Hard work and effort versus the cruelty of growing up and then Naruto being the character in the middle, who could be Gaara, or he could be Rock Lee and chooses to go the Rock Lee route of hard work and effort instead of just leaning into the monster route like Gaara where he could have just let the fox out and murdered Gaara, but he chooses to use hard work and effort instead.
Speaker 1:So the Sakamoto Days villain. If his motivation was I want to protect my wife and my daughter, he'd be a great villain for that series, right? Or if he was like a Mr Sweetangu and was like I want to make a better war, the villain. If Sakamoto's core drive is spending time with his family. The villain's core drive either needs to be he can't spend time with his family because they're dead and Sakamoto killed them, or I'm also trying to perfect my family in an opposite way.
Speaker 2:I guess. A little more backstory on on the villain uh, spoiler alert. Uh, he grew up in an orphanage. Uh, that was used by the JAA to like. They just had orphans that they would train to be assassins and send out on missions, and if they died it didn't matter.
Speaker 1:I've seen Black Widow.
Speaker 2:Um and uh, uh, he had it gets sent out on a mission to kill a specific person. Uh, and they're holding all of his quote-unquote family from the orphanage hostage to make him do these missions, uh. And so then uh he eventually uh, it's kind of convoluted, but essentially essentially after he kills the other female assassin character, and then he just is like you know what, I'm strong enough, I could just go beat the people up and free my family from the orphanage and then we can just burn the world down burn the world down.
Speaker 1:So it's like, if the twist is, sakamoto was supposed to be this guy's family and then decided to start his own family, there could be some symbolism going back and forth.
Speaker 2:There's no real direct connection between the two characters. Like you said, he's a villain of the show, but he's not really Sakamoto's villain.
Speaker 1:And to loop to Speedgrapher, for example, because your characters don't have to have a connected backstory to be symbolic mirrors or metaphors to help, because all good writing is your character has to go through a journey and be transformative, and that's who determines who your protagonist is. So, let's go. Speedgrapher, photographic guy had no actual connection to Mr Sweetangu, but Mr Sweetangu's motivation was manipulate everybody to make a better world. And photograph guy's motivation was paint the world clearly and report on it, no matter how shitty.
Speaker 1:So, their conjistic ideologies were Mr Swatangu wanted to scam everyone to make a better world, and Mr Photographer Guy just wanted to tell the story. Effectively, he was trying to save the girl, but really it was just getting the information out was his modus operandi. So they actually don't end up being enemies at the end because Swatangu does his thing and then Dude Guy retires as a photographer, metaphorically stating you know what? It's not worth outing Mr Swatango at this point. My search for truth wasn't worth it. So he went through a full character arc of changing from a relentless produce of truth to the people I tried to save cared, doesn't matter if I go blind. So even though those two characters had nothing to do with each other, they arced nicely.
Speaker 2:Hmm, right, there are more like antagonistic forces than actual antagonistic characters for each other.
Speaker 1:It's more like they were story arcs to define each other. So now, to focus into Shin. Shin is the main character of Sakamoto Days.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:What is Shin's arc?
Speaker 2:Uh well, so far Shin's arc has been. I don't want to be useless to Sakamoto, and that's really it. Everything he does is to not be a burden to Sakamoto.
Speaker 1:See what's wild is. They arced him in episode one, right Like I'm going to kill Sakamoto. Who is this badass I once knew? Now I work at Sakamoto's shop and his family has accepted me and I must protect the shop. That's cute, but that means he's already arced. He's at the end of his story from the start, really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:And I'm curious to see where they're going with that, because, ironically, how I would have wrote in Shin is I would have given him a love interest as well, so that way he wants to be where Sakamoto's at. If I want to be happy and retire so here's what I have to do have to do. But I also kind of enjoy the idea that, like if Shin kept getting Sakamoto into trouble with his efforts to protect Sakamoto's life, where the actual life lesson was no, you just need to live your life then there could be something to be had there.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But however, to loop back to my original rant, this is one of the better weekly things in Show and Jump. I just enjoy tearing things apart that I like. Like I'm not going to tear apart witch watch.
Speaker 2:There's no point, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Witch watch is tearing itself apart.
Speaker 2:There is very existence and then spy family is too damn slow. Well, I mean, the good news is that one punch man seems to be on a weekly schedule so far this year.
Speaker 1:I'll believe it when I see it. And one punch man is too damn long, so Spy Family's too damn slow because it's setting up all these plot threads that'll pay off in years.
Speaker 2:One.
Speaker 1:Punch man, so Saitama cannot arc. We acknowledge this. That is the joke of the show.
Speaker 2:I mean he's currently trying to arc because he's training against other Order members to become strong enough to take over the JAA to make his convenience store a national chain.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting. That's an interesting like. It's not an arc, though, because the character's personality needs to change over the course of it, weirdly enough. Sakamoto could easily have had an arc of learning to speak up for himself. That could actually be his arc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he certainly doesn't seem to be the strong, silent type anymore.
Speaker 1:But it's weird because it's like he's also at the end of his story and if we reflect on Rion and Kenshin, because it has a very similar structure to Sakamoto Days Kenshin's arc he started with I am traumatized because I murdered my wife and I've just kind of been wandering around doing good deeds, but I can't stay in one place too long because I'll get attached.
Speaker 1:Kenshin's arc was literally retiring from being the badass and working through his PTSD by letting other people in the new generation step up so he could hang up his sword and retire. Kenshin had a really compelling arc because he literally watched and be like oh I really like this new person that I could easily fall in love with. Nope, can't do that. Better, go fight the seven to ten assassins, kenton literally went and fought bandage guy to avoid being in a serious relationship because that was much easier and got called out for it by like everyone in the cast be like dude.
Speaker 1:And then when the next villain shows up, they're all like dude. There's four of them, you have four friends. He's like, well, this is my problem to clean up. And they're like, no, it's not. And then he beats the guy. Good You're done, go home, your wife's waiting for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds about right. But it was a pretty good series.
Speaker 1:My mini One Punch man rant. Here's my next arc. Here's my next arc and I'm like cool, Saitama can't arc by design. Genos needs to do something. But they're doing the my Hero Academia thing of just introducing hundreds upon hundreds of characters and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 2:Right now One Punch man has three concurrent arcs that are going on and it's like it's just wild.
Speaker 1:Garou's arc was interesting because that's a character who went through a plot arc. I actually really enjoyed the Garou plot arc. If One Punch man had ended after Garo, I could say you're talking about. Yes, saitama didn't learn anything, but Garo learned that being an edgelord badass meant nothing, because someone will always smack you down a peg and like literally you would be God himself, and then the universe will smack you down a peg. So grow up and apologize to your master because he was right.
Speaker 2:No amount of being a crazy edgelord will make you happy yeah, the one thing that Sakamoto does have going for him which, like I said, I have one punch man, three different arcs going on at the same time and none of them have anything to do with Saitama. He did catch a light save, at least. At least Sakamoto is at the center of each of his arcs, except for the one where Shin went into the prison to try and find a fortune teller to help him get more powerful, but even still, sakamoto shows up to bail him out. Because of they actually set this up like hundreds of chapters before that. Sakamoto has GPSs in the name tags of all his employees.
Speaker 1:I do appreciate that.
Speaker 2:And so A it's come up once before, but now it's like the second time. It's like I'd forgotten about that. It's like how does Sakamoto keep showing up at the right time? Right?
Speaker 1:because of the GPS trackers.
Speaker 1:It's like just now, like chapter 196, we're going to do the Shin Sakamoto backstory, because I got back into it after you mentioned a couple weeks ago I should get back into it. It's just like. It's just so interesting to be like where do you want to go with Sakamoto's story? It's kind of where I'm at. I'm like what is Sakamoto's arc? And if Sakamoto doesn't have one, that's fine, but then Shin needs to be going somewhere with something. My question to you is how long do you think Sakamoto Days is going to keep going somewhere with something? My question to you is how long do you think Shakumoto Days is going to keep going? Do you think it's ramping up or do you think it's winding down?
Speaker 2:Because it's already been a lot of mangas at 196. I think we're still in a bit of a ramping up stage, but I feel like the big bad absorbing the swordsman's personality or while creating Sona, because he doesn't actually, he doesn't quite, he doesn't push them for all intents and purposes, but doesn't actually mushy boot them.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, there's no magic science, or?
Speaker 2:technology involved. Masha boosts them for all intents and purposes, but doesn't actually Masha boost them? Yeah, yeah, there's no magic science or technology involved, but he absorbs their personality and abilities.
Speaker 1:Which I'll allow.
Speaker 2:In any event, I feel like that's the final stage of the boss and I think it's still ramping up because the Order is trying to track down Sakamoto and friends.
Speaker 1:Loop into narrative design too. Right now, we're in the middle of the. Shin Sakamoto flashback. That almost always is what happens before the final arc. When you go back into the character's origin story and your Kenshin stories, your JoJo's, your Bleach, even like you saw Ichigo's mom and dad meeting and then mom dying, you're like, okay, this is what you do to grind up before your final plot arc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I definitely think that Sakamoto is heading towards a final plot arc, but I think there's still a little bit more ramping up to do, because they have a lot to do with facing the Order, I guess Because they've introduced so many not villains but so many assassins. That are cool and interesting concepts. They're not characters, they're concepts.
Speaker 1:So what's?
Speaker 2:fun is they have to deal with.
Speaker 1:So what would be wild and a flex they would not do, is they want to extend Sakamoto days by I don't know 400 chapters. Here's what I would do Fill and kill Sakamoto and get Sakamoto powers.
Speaker 2:Oh, that would be interesting.
Speaker 1:And then suddenly, Shin now has to protect his master's wife and daughter Against evil Sakamoto. But I don't think they're going to go that direction. Like I said, they're probably just going to knock down all the bowling pils they set up. Finish it and then the last scene is going to be Chonky Shan being remembering when he was a badass, helping one of the younger people he encountered in the story Working at his convenience store franchise location.
Speaker 2:He did specifically say that he wants to be a manager of the second location.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's my theory and with that, sakamoto Days, it's interesting because I keep comparing it to Rion and Kenshin and to Spy Family and I think the problem is that you're right. They had a third character to have a nice balance and then they abandoned that Because if you're doing the mentor-mentee story, it really works well to give them parallels and it's like. Sakamoto is a great sensei, he is the best Master Roshi I've seen in years.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I love wife-guy Master Roshi as an archetype. Right, I love wife guy. Master roshi as an archetype let's move away from. Should be in jail. Master roshi as an archetype to. I love my wife and daughter but I'm actually the most badass at this thing. That is a great archetype I agree but they just didn't quite know what to do with shin. Like I don't think he learned anything over the story and, I think, having a more characters to interact with would have fixed that.
Speaker 1:Because if it was like if Shin's lesson should be from Sakamoto the secret to being the best assassin in the world is being a chill dude who loves his family Like that should be the life lesson, but they forgot to put it in. But it's also moving at such a nicer pace than a lot of things I've complained about, Like Spy. Family is moving so slow. They have one of the eight lightning bolts and they've just now explained the concept of the villain. Maybe yeah.
Speaker 1:Like they have established their main villain from Chapter 1, and had him say three lines of dialogue over the entire thing so far.
Speaker 2:So there's bonus points to sakamoto days for having momentum yeah, even if they have tried to stifle their momentum by having random side arcs. Like I said, shin going into the prison to find the fortune teller and then this flashback arc.
Speaker 1:They forgot banter. That's the only problem I have with these, because it's a long-running manga, right, sometimes you need a beach episode, but that works if your characters have chemistry. So the problem is, if you send just Shin on a side quest, he doesn't have anyone to banter with.
Speaker 2:Well, he can banter with the sniper guy. That's kind of completely uninteresting.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's the problem Everyone's a gimmick and no one's a dude.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:But with that it's time for our random question of the week.
Speaker 2:Ooh, I love random questions. Here is our random question Wow week.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I love random questions. Here is our random question. Wow, really.
Speaker 2:Alright.
Speaker 1:Should cigarettes be banned?
Speaker 2:Should cigarettes be banned?
Speaker 1:I think this falls into the same category of if alcohol was invented today, it would not be able to be sold, so yeah, so here's my hot take on cigarettes, Because if you just ban them overnight, people go through withdrawals and die Right. I think, the solution is we just keep upping the age limit on them. Every year you have to be one more year older to buy one, and we just phase them out that way. Because they should be bad? They do nothing good for you at all whatsoever, they're just bad for you.
Speaker 2:That's kind of hilarious. You know, if someone who's 17 and the age limit is 18 and then they turn 18 and the age limit ups to 19, they're never going to be able to legally buy a cigarette. Good.
Speaker 1:That just saved our healthcare system billions.
Speaker 2:Hmm, well, I mean, that's probably true.
Speaker 1:They're bad for you. Anyone who inhales a cigarette and thinks this is good for me is a liar.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:As a former smoker. Anyone who's ever smoked a cigarette knows it's bad for them instantly.
Speaker 2:Wait, you're a former smoker.
Speaker 1:Mostly just to hit on people and smoke breaks.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's kind of like the same reason that my brother started smoking. It's because smokers get more breaks at work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I haven't smoked in like 10 years. Anywho, long story short.
Speaker 1:Also, I used to enjoy cherry cigars and they banned those because they taste good, because if they taste good, more people will smoke them, which is, ironically, exactly the case right I'm a weird one where it's like, if someone bans something I like and I can look at the logistics and the reason they banned it is because it's something I like, I can kind of like give them a pass. Almost it's like oh yeah, this is bad for me, I see yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:So in essence it's like I can. I can see an economic argument because, you know, cigarettes and and liquor kind of fall in the same category where they're very heavily taxed, and so there is a lot of government revenue that comes from the sales of stupid people buying things that are bad for them I do enjoy taxing shit out of stupid people.
Speaker 1:I would rather tax rich people, but I'm willing to like, do both.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because you know it's. Yeah, the economic argument I don't think outweighs the other benefits of just like not selling poison to people.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of funny is, with all the talk of tariffs and things going on and 51st State things which we will not get into at the end of our episode, our premier actually had a suggestion that one of the ways they're going to fight back is they're going to remove all American alcohol from the LCBO.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And my first thought was and see if you disagree or agree removing all. It's like if our liquor stores in Canada could only sell Canadian liquor, like the government-owned liquor stores isn't that just?
Speaker 2:good Right.
Speaker 1:Doesn't that just give more revenue to Canada outright?
Speaker 2:I mean, provided that we have the infrastructure to keep up with the demand.
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean it's alcohol Like we should be, we're.
Speaker 2:I mean it's alcohol, like we should be. We're canada and it's alcohol we should be fine.
Speaker 1:It's like sure people would have to like go out of their way to import alcohol. Like if they really want that american booze, they'd have to like have it mailed in or ordered special or go from america right but I'm kind of like yeah, wait a minute. Why don't we just make it that these stores have to sell Canadian goods? I'm not that concerned if someone's fermented grape juice has to come from the local valleys instead of France. I know it's not technically champagne, it's just sparkling grape juice, but I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2:Again, my point about the infrastructure does kind of stand, just a kind of a different angle. Amazon Web Services has a significant market share of website hosting capability and there are lots of websites that have to deal with Amazon's terms and conditions because there's no one else that has the infrastructure to support their web traffic. So the idea that if Canada just started trying to be self-sufficient and use Canadian goods, we don't necessarily have the infrastructure to cut off foreign imports in that way, because we might not be able to meet the demand of our people using only Canadian goods.
Speaker 1:But Mike's take weirdly being that if we in individual cases, instead of a general rule, we could meet that demand, especially as, like a direct bargaining tactic to that nation, a direct bargaining tactic to that nation, that seems like a win-win to me. Being like hey, we're going to stop selling your alcohol until you drop this tariff. Also, we now get an uptick of our own alcohol being sold. Sounds great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I'm not an economist, economist, economist, so this is just like off the cuff. I don't actually really know what I'm talking about, me either but not my degree specialization.
Speaker 1:This isn't about quotation marks but.
Speaker 2:But the point is um that I, as a non-smoker, I don't really care whether or not cigarettes are banned. I see the economic argument but honestly, the strain on the health care system caused by cigarettes, I think it'd be a net benefit to have them banned.
Speaker 1:Also from like a personal point of view. I grew up with my mom smoking in the car. It's like well, I had the window open. I'm like I'm pretty sure this fucked my lungs up, pretty sure this is bad for me.
Speaker 2:Are you sure it wasn't when you inhaled like straight fire that burned off your eyebrows?
Speaker 1:That's the thing about how bad cigarettes are. For me, the straight fire was healthier for my lungs.
Speaker 2:Burned out some of that cigarette tar.
Speaker 1:Probably, probably gave it a good deep cleaning, yeah. So yeah, random question I'm fine banning cigarettes. I see this like slipperty-slope-lipperty argument and I'm like, okay, but yeah, if cigarette was released as a modern product, it would never pass FDA approval. Like, let's take marijuana, for example, because it's legal in Canada, I can talk about it, it's not a controversial subject. Cigarettes cause cancer. Marijuana prevents cancer. You couldn't buy the marijuana for 20 years. Yeah, One of them is literally prescribed for glaucoma and the other one would never be prescribed for anyone for any reason.
Speaker 2:Although it's so funny when you look at like when pregnant women were uh encouraged to smoke because it helps relieve stress yep.
Speaker 1:So, in conclusion, I personally am absolutely fine with cigarettes being banned, but also, like I don't know, after watching this days for a while, I'm not the biggest fan of freedom these days. Just in general, it seems that people are like freedom means I, a tech mogul whose name shall be removed from this video clipping, can just do a Nazi salute at an inauguration speech straight up because I'm free to do so, and I'm like are you sure this is freedom? Or it's like the freedom for these companies to scan my data and take my YouTube transcripts and then feed them to an AI to make a robot sound like me to sell pornography? Is that too much freedom? It feels like too much freedom.
Speaker 2:Well, to be fair, the Nazis culturally appropriated several things, the Roman salute being one of them. So maybe he wasn't being a Nazi Counterpoint, maybe he was just being a Roman.
Speaker 1:Counterpoint Everything he says and does publicly.
Speaker 2:The guy is crazy.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of evidence that he's a bad dude, like I don't know what's worse that he did a Nazi salute or he's just that bad at dabbing. But yeah, I, I love the note. That's like freedom to use one of four people's electronic devices and web hosting services because it's their freedom to have a monopoly on that. I'm like, um, wouldn't freedom be that I don't have to give him money? Or, like you'll hear, like the government be like due to the free market, I gave 11 million dollars to bail at the liquor stores to deal with the competition I created by letting corner stores sell booze. I'm like that doesn't sound like a free market. That sounds like you put your tongue on the scale, because free market means businesses should be allowed to die.
Speaker 2:Well, anyways, there's enough rambling about economics and politics.
Speaker 1:Hot. Take Richard's anti-freedom straight up, because people have done too many stupid things with it recently and he's revoking their freedom privileges. You can earn your free speech after you take an etiquette class. Skill testing questions to access the internet. Like you have to pass a GED test to be allowed internet access.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's all.
Speaker 1:I got.
Speaker 2:You have to have a minimum level of intelligence to be able to use the internet.
Speaker 1:Pretty much it would help. Anyway, to everyone out there, don't smoke. Controversial take.
Speaker 2:Don't. Yeah, you know, self-care is important and smoking is not self-care.
Speaker 1:Unless it's like, I'll say that like smoking cigarettes is bad. If you tell me like it was the birth of my grandson so I had a singular cigar, I'll be like, well, it looks cool aesthetically so I'm going to let you have that. It's kind of funny, like you were talking about it earlier, to loop back in. It's kind of funny, like you're talking about it earlier, to loop back in the idea that you could simply just tax advice so unreasonably high that you simply couldn't afford enough cigarettes. For it to be problematic might actually be the solution. Enjoy your 200 pack of cigarettes.
Speaker 1:Each one of those you are free to buy that each one of those cigarettes is worth an entire lunch, so really question how many of those you want to consume. Cigarettes are all illegal now in Richard Land. If they're wrapped in gold leaf, that should reduce the number of smokers.
Speaker 2:Anyway, self-care, you know, stay hydrated, exercise, go outside.
Speaker 1:if it's not, you know, too horribly cold man, I hope we get so much hate mail from smokers after this episode. Bye, I just love the idea we spoil an entire manga series where I'm most like, yeah, sakamoto days was kind of good, but this villain's concept stupid, and it's like, yeah, yeah, I agree, smoking is bad, cancel, block. How dare you encroach on my freedom to poison myself by lighting tar on fire and inhaling it? But take a break at work complete pivot.