Deep Space and Dragons
Follow the Nerd duo of Richard and Karl as we explore what grabs our attention each week on Deep Space and Dragons. Submit your random question of the week or dragon question to win your free E-copy of the Waltz of Blades Deluxe. Like what your ears see? Support us by clicking the little heart on the top right <3
Deep Space and Dragons
Why Does Everyone's Clothes Keep Exploding in Anime? Graduation Robes, Titanic Board Games, and Pizza Shop Ethics
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Richard and Karl critique anime's problematic tropes while exploring the ethics of charity, business responsibilities, and graduation ceremonies.
• Discover how the Titanic board game works with passengers, lifeboats, and flooding mechanics
• Debate the ethical complexity of giving away free food versus supporting systemic change
• Explore the ethics of performing welfare checks on elderly customers showing signs of memory issues
• Experience Richard's graduation ceremony, complete with academic traditions and awkward encounters as he Han Solo's the president
• Analyze problematic anime tropes including exploding clothes, mid-season character dumps, and hypersexualization
• Consider how certain anime concepts fail in execution despite having interesting premises
• Discuss examples of anime that stumble at the ending like "Kaido: The Right Answer"
If you're writing a story, you don't need to explode clothes. You could write an entire series where everyone stays appropriately clothed the entire time. You have our permission.
Follow all things Richard and Karl, and check out "The Minuet of Sorcery"
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Good unspecified time period. My name is Richard with an R and welcome to Richard and Carl with a K. Presents Deep Space and Dragons.
Speaker 2:And I am Carl. I'm going to specify this is a medieval podcast because of the dragons, I'll allow it. I mean, space has always been there, so you know.
Speaker 1:I mean, space has always been there, so you know it's true. It's like it's always interesting to me, because I was getting a monologue the other day about people sorting things into categories, right, okay. And if you were to say that Star Wars is science fantasy, you'd be right, because there's just wizards shooting lightning, right.
Speaker 1:So if you were to tell me that deep space and dragons is a medieval podcast, I immediately think of the spaceship that got shot down with a dragon with a mana cannon on its back, and I'm like, yeah, sure, because, like, if a spaceship shows up in your fantasy series, provided you're mythical enough about it, you stay fantasy until you state otherwise. Because, like, if we learned that Sauron and the One Ring came from space, it would be terrible, but it would still be fantasy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and even in the Star Wars lore it's like they use kyber crystals that respond to emotions to power their technologically advanced lightsabers. So it's like there is technology but it's kind of magical at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yep, and also they don't know how long an hour is they do not. Alright, so what's new with you?
Speaker 2:Okay, First a mini movie board game review.
Speaker 1:Oh, spicy. Wait, did you watch Clue? Because Clue is amazing. No, no.
Speaker 2:I guess that'd be a board game movie, not a movie board game. We went to London Drugs and they had they had the Titanic. No, sorry, titanic. The board game on for $7.
Speaker 1:I also would probably cave for that for sheer curiosity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, $7 for Titanic the board game, and yeah, so we purchased it because it was cheap and we we tried it out. It's kind of interesting. Um, you're on the titanic, you're in the room, individual rooms, uh, and the rooms will have like passengers, action cubes, lifesavers, a bunch of different stuff, and you go around and you're trying to take passengers and get them onto the lifeboats which are on either side of the ship.
Speaker 1:I really hope there's a game mechanic where you have to try and get people to stop making out inside the parked car to save them.
Speaker 2:Well, they're not exactly. There are different star cards that you can buy for locations, events, scenes and locations, items, scenes, and there was one more, I can't remember, of the scene cards. The one of the scene cards was it's worth five victory points and you get bonus points if you sing. The chorus to my Heart Will Go On.
Speaker 1:That's actually amazing. That was more fun than I was expecting this board game to be. I'm gonna be real.
Speaker 2:But so then, obviously, you're trying to move people from pickup passengers to take them to the boats, and the board is divided into four columns with four rows. At the end of each turn, one of those columns will start to flood, and when a whole row is flooded, then the flood line rises up and everything in that row is, uh, removed from the game and all those passengers are dead and whatever, um, and so you have to try and save as many passengers as you can using the action cubes that you pick up from the board, um, and then get to the top of the ship to get onto your own lifeboat, uh, within nine rounds just to give a meta comment here, because it's kind of really funny to me.
Speaker 1:So, pre-podcast, I was explaining the rules to Daggerheart to you and I have this instinct right now to be like do we really need to cover all the game mechanics? Like I didn't do that verbatim without the mug on less than a minute ago. Oh, but please continue. I just need to put out the irony between my internal monologue and reality.
Speaker 2:I just need to put out the irony between my internal monologue and reality. And I mean I would say, overall it was pretty pretty fun. I mean to be fair for $7, it has to be more fun than a seven-piece chicken nuggets at this point with flimflation, yeah, it was more fun than seven McNuggets.
Speaker 1:No, don't sue us McDonald's, but I also haven't done the budget on your nuggets. Also, make your prices cheaper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely worth $7. I don't know what it would be worth full price, but it was fun enough and there were enough different strategies to potentially win that me, my roommate and my brother ended up with within one point of each other. I ended up winning by one point. Then the next person was one point down.
Speaker 1:I assume by drawing nude sketches of all the other players for a star card.
Speaker 2:See, my strategy was just to fill the lifeboats.
Speaker 1:What your plan was to responsibly exit the Titanic. Did you learn nothing from that movie?
Speaker 2:My brother. He played Rose's fiancé. I can't remember his name now, but he was kind of a douchebag. He was kind of a douchebag and you know, at the end of the movie he grabs the child like I have a child, let me on the boat. And it's just some other random person's child. Anyways, each player also gets a secret objective, and my brother's secret objective?
Speaker 1:I hope one of them is Sink the Titanic. No one of your plays is the iceberg.
Speaker 2:My brother's secret objective Was one victory point To a maximum of ten For Every passenger that is lost to sea.
Speaker 1:So yes, actually he was on the side of the iceberg, that is correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's like there's red guys that are worth three points, grey guys that are worth there, there's red guys that are worth three points, gray guys over two points and green guys are worth one point, and he literally did not save any green guys, because they were worth just as many points on the boat as they were on the iceberg for him that feels charged racially in any event, mini review over uh seven out of ten that's pretty good higher review than a movie.
Speaker 1:It just doesn't do it for me until the time travel aspect, like in a vacuum, no, but as part of the cameron cinematic universe.
Speaker 2:Check whatever early episodes for that journey okay, but now I don't know if I'm actually going to make this a regular segment or not. But Ethical question time.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, you know what? That's a fantastic recurring segment. Last time I just roasted you for not like paying delivery drivers hourly wages. Let's see how far I can dig myself here, Because now it's on the can that?
Speaker 2:Richard doesn't believe in tips? Okay, well, so I mean, firstly, I can't think of the best word to describe it but I do feel a bit foolish for complaining about Red Cross not giving our delivery driver a tip and then Saskatchewan going into a state of emergency like within a week after that.
Speaker 1:I mean to be fair, though, that let me roast you to my friends all week, Alright.
Speaker 2:But this is unrelated to the wildfires.
Speaker 1:They're not caused by James Cameron. Alright, good to know, no, so?
Speaker 2:I've said before, you know I'm conflicted, uh, when uh, like homeless people or just people in general, because you don't actually know what their situation is.
Speaker 2:When people come in and they ask for free food and even if we have free food that's literally going in the garbage we have to say no for health and safety reasons. Sure, well, I mean, we don't have to say no, but there are a variety of reasons why we do say no, and they're mostly centered around the health and safety of our staff members, because we don't know these people's situation and they're likely to come back and potentially be angry or violent if we say no the next time when we don't have. Ah, anyway, it's more about the fact that I'm conflicted because I don't like the idea of wasting food and throwing it out, but I don't think that we should just give it away, because then they'll come back and it undermines our business and it potentially puts our staff members at risk if they do get violent or angry. Uh, and you know we're not equipped to deal with mental health issues like that and stuff for homeless people in particular, but uh, anyways, so there's also not really about sorry, go ahead, is that not?
Speaker 1:your ethical question. No, no, no, no, all right, you'll get there, I believe there's more about the idea of being being conflicted, being like.
Speaker 2:I feel like morally it would be right to give the homeless people the food, but I act in a way that I don't give them food because of other concerns which I don't know if it's fair to overbalance my other concerns over the needs of the people who are asking for free food, but we also don't know their situation. I guess I just anyways.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give such a weird tangent here. Ok, this will not help your ethical quandary in any way. Okay, this will not help your ethical quandary in any way. And asking like, hey, what are Richard's thoughts on ethical quandaries? Is like talking to Lucy in Disenchantment, who's like a literal demon that enables negativity.
Speaker 1:Okay, so one of my brother's acquaintances who probably doesn't listen to this podcast, but this would be a fun way of accidentally outing them to their family in a situation, so I'll try and be as vague as possible attempted to go to university and their family said they cannot support them through university. They'll have to figure it out themselves. As you're well aware, for university funding, if you have rich parents, they expect your parents to help you, and it's almost impossible to secure funding unless you're far enough removed to be a separate mature student. Right I? I'm speaking with some confidence in this one. It might be different from region to region, school to school, but in my personal experience in like student working, it's not good to have a rich parent that doesn't help you as far as funding is concerned, right. So they tell them they can't help. They can, can't help, they can't help, but their church sponsored somebody to go through university. So their parents were talking at a family dinner about how they sponsored this person to go to university, but not their son, because they were sponsoring for the clout. So, magically, they're ethically like let's sponsor this person to be charitable. So they're like, so, magically, they're ethically like let's sponsor this person to be charitable but not actually sponsoring their family, because no one cares if you send your son to school, but people care if you send a stranger to school and it makes you look good for your religious organization or non-religious Right right.
Speaker 1:So to loop around a bit, say you have an employee fighting food insecurity and you have somebody outside your business being like hey, can you help me? Or let's go back to the delivery driver story last week. So say this delivery driver is also food insecure and you give the people who are in a wildfire a bigger discount than your food insecure employee. Are you a bad person? Was it performative charity? So kind of. Where I'm looping back around to this is that a lot of good things people do are partly good things and partly for clout. They'll send somebody to school for the clout, not for to help out their actual close family members. So when it comes to something like a pizzeria, are they willing to give out free food? What I despise is a Tim Hortons. Yeah, I'm going to call you out directly. You're not a sponsor. Come at me, bro, don't sue me, but seriously, we'll look like.
Speaker 1:I remember being there when they rolled over the hey, you cannot have end of day donuts, and they came up with fictional excuses like what if we get sick from them which is funny, because they're fresher than the ones that we do eat, because we rotate at X number of hours and we bake them at six and it was 12, therefore, and then the joke being it's like Tim Hortons is like here's our charity. We donate to this. We do that. So they're willing to give strangers food by being like look how much money we donated to the food bank but won't let their staff eat the food. It has to go in the garbage. But when we go to like holistics about the, can we give food to people For college clubs? Like I said, this tangent's going all over the place.
Speaker 2:This tangent is going all over the place.
Speaker 1:For college clubs. You cannot bring in homemade food. It has to be prepackaged with a receipt, because a everyone who's seen a awkward teen comedy movie is like what if it's pop air and he's well, but really it's a liability thing, right? You want to make sure that if you sue somebody, you're suing walmart, not a classmate who brought in tainted stroganoff, right, right, right. So, especially with, like, covet restrictions and things, it's like, yeah, if you're getting someone food, it's pre-packaged, it's paid for from a third party and there is some liability things. I did a search earlier to see if, like, there is actual lawsuits of people be like oh, I got fed day old pizza at the end of the day and won the lawsuit.
Speaker 1:That feels like corporate talk. Trying to be like hey, because I remember tim hortons declaring yeah, I'm gonna call out tim hortons again. Come at me, bro that if we let staff members take home day old donuts, bakers will bake more donuts. Bakers don't make that choice. We're handed a spreadsheet that says how many donuts we make and then when we run out our, our manager yells why ain't you make more? Screams, and we make more. So the concern is that if we give our staff let them take end of day food, they'll result in staff making more food so they can take.
Speaker 1:It doesn't actually work, but they're more concerned about hypothetical loss than people having good times. Kind of like how Tim Horton's uniforms don't have pockets in the pants because they're worried they'll steal. So sewing the pockets shut is clearly the solution. Not paying them a living wage so they wouldn't be like the idea that someone would shove a half-eaten bagel in their pocket and your thought isn't maybe we should give them a free lunch because they're so hungry. They will have sweet and sugar goop deconstruct in their pocket all day so they can chew on it. It's like, yeah, we need to make sure that they're not shoving donuts in their pockets. My thought is why are they shoving donuts in their pockets? Just eat a donut. They're less than 13 cents to make.
Speaker 2:To be clear, a part of my part of the reason I'm so conflicted is because if there is messed up food, the staff do just get to eat it, and anyone. If there's messed up food at the end of the night staff can just take it home, and if they're off the clock they took the food home. I mean they can give it to a homeless person if they want. It's their food now that they've left the store. But the store itself. We don't really want people coming in and asking for free food.
Speaker 1:Oh, exactly, and like also humanity makes me lose faith in them.
Speaker 1:So, as much as I'd love to be like, yes, you should feed them. Remember Bear Guy, who would ask for day-old donuts to use in like bear photography, this was like back at Redacted Donuts. We worked together when Bear Guy was a thing so long ago, right, right. And then we stopped getting Bear Guy free donuts because he just left them there and they made a mess, so we stopped getting free stuff, yeah. So it's like I do think you can help out more people sometimes by being more strategic and ethical. Handing random people slices of pizza. I see the ethics right. If you're giving it to your staff to give to their families, you're already winning in my book. But for people with dependency and things, I would much rather you like sell the pizza at a discount at the end of the night to customers and donate that to the food bank would actually help more people than just giving them the pizza. Ironically, so it's like it's a weird societal thing though, because I remember as a kid going to restaurants in the end of night. Be like, oh you just can I have some stuff as a customer in the back, yeah sure. Or give me a huge discount mall sushi guy was really good for that because I restaurants at the end of the night and being like, oh, can I have some stuff as a customer? And they'd be like, yeah, sure, or give me a huge discount. Mall Sushi Guy was really good for that because I'd go get end-of-the-day sushi. But I do think like free versus discount, I would be more likely, personally, to give discounts to people at the end of the day and, in an ideal world, use the funds to like donate to charity on a larger scale. It's kind of like your pizza place being profitable is what lets you give a large discount to 60 pizzas and help out more people, whereas like if people just swarm your pizzeria at the end of the night and no one goes in because they're worried they'll be shivved right. So there's like that idealism versus reality thing. I know the neighborhoods you're in.
Speaker 1:I know like I remember one time specifically that I once helped out a person that lurked in the mini mall when I worked at redacted restaurant in saskatchewan and they kept trying to solicit I had broken my thumb. I shoved into a drawer, the thumbnail turned black and falled off. I was in possibly the most pain I've ever been in. Actually turns out, slamming your thumb in a cast-iron drawer is just really, really rough. Right, she's in front of the car knocking on the window and I need to go to the hospital and she wouldn't move out of the way. And the thing is, had I never helped this human being, I wouldn't have spent 20 minutes in immense physical pain, dying because their priorities were higher. Their survival, naturally, was a higher priority to them than my survival was to them.
Speaker 1:Right, because Maslow's hierarchy of needs is real when people are hungry, cold and starving, they're not really concerned about social etiquette. So, like I see scam ads for this app, I really do like the idea of a discount app that's like hey, it's end of day, here's what we got left over, come in for 50 off or 60 off. But I think by making it a transaction, even if it's a small fee, it's like how's this gonna sound so mean and get me canceled on the internet? But I do believe that if you spent all day panhandling, you should have to pay $3 for your pizza. Like the number of people who are, like, outside the liquor store asking for money to go and buy liquor. I can't afford liquor. Like I haven't had a drink since I went to that gallow of free drinks because I don't have the budget for it. Times are tough. Unemployment is unemployment is like brutal right now. The job market is terrible and I'm like, yeah, giving people a discount is good, but when you make it free and I've noticed this for a lot of things, especially to go into, like this tangent's almost done to go into literary world and novels a free ebook is considered garbage.
Speaker 1:If I put my ebook out for free, people assume If I put my e-book out for free, people assume it's bad. If I put it for 99 cents, people assume it's bad. If I put it for $4.99, people assume it's good. Because why is it a dollar? That's just me making more money. The quality of the book doesn't increase with the pricing, but people see a premium product and they think it's better. But it's also like if something's free, people will accept it and throw it on the ground and trash it right, right.
Speaker 1:As someone who's worked at so many open houses and booths, I was running the D&D Club booth and people were like, oh, can I have this?
Speaker 1:And going for D&D club booth? And people were like, oh, can I have this? And going for D&D props? You're a business major, you do not need a Mimic Chess figurine. You will never need it and you're physically trying to take it from me after I said no because it's on this table. Or like I'll send out character sheets and people are like, yeah, I'll take one, and there's just a pile of them around the trash can. So like the very act that you attribute some value to something, even if you take a loss, means people then attribute a value back, right, right, if you literally had a sign that was up that was like end of day mystery pizza, whatever's left, dollar a slice, I think that would solve your problem ethically, because it's like, yes, they should have a dollar, and if they really don't, you can be like here, I'll give you a dollar to buy a dollar slice of pizza. But now they have to at least be a customer and there's a certain level of composure people have when they enter a restaurant.
Speaker 2:That is generally true, yes, but my ethical question actually, like I say, it's not about homeless people, but it is in a similar vein. We have this elderly customer. I've been told she's elderly. I mean, I haven't actually had any in-person interactions with this person, just occasionally on the phone. They live reasonably far away from our store so you know, like our drivers, they'll drive wherever they need to go, because they go where the money is, but the further away it is, obviously they're not happy if they don't get a tip or if there's something wrong with the order or whatever. And this particular customer over the past couple months and this particular customer over the past couple months, she has either lost or forgotten her debit card or forgotten her PIN and been unable to pay for her food.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting argument, but sure.
Speaker 2:Well, to the point where everyone suspects that maybe she has some form of dementia or something like that or she's just lying to kick it. I mean, maybe when she can't pay for her food, like we can't just give it to the person because they can't pay for the food, we don't really know anything about their life situation. They could just be trying to scam us and like it undermines their business to just give away free food in that way, to like an individual like that. Like if you give away free food as a giant donation, you're you're actually making a statement about your, your business. But if you're just giving it away to an individual because they couldn't pay for their food, that's just teaching them to not pay for their food.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like capitalism's weird because I personally believe in things like universal basic income, assisting people, the fact that we're in this weird dystopia where people like ai's gonna take all the jobs but no one's willing to accept that then the government needs to pay people basic income by siphoning off the top one percent, because if there's no jobs, people will just die and then they'll revolt and then they'll literally drag oligarchs to the ground and execute them via gullotine French Revolution style. So it's like I agree these are large societal problems, but I hate band-aid solutions. Like I was publicly super against La Prime Minister being like hey, everybody, have a 1% sales tax reduction on valuable items for three months. That's not a solution. Solution hey, have a slice of pizza isn't a solution, right, right, what is a solution is hey, we're going to donate monthly to the food bank. Or like a smile cookie thing, like get a slice of smile pizza, half all profits go to the food bank, is an actual solution because they're better equipped to handle it. Much. Like hey, all all proceeds go towards employment, canada, we're better prepared to handle it.
Speaker 1:So my ethics are weird. Like I agree no, food should be a right. Health care should be a right. Housing should be a right. Airbnb should have been illegal yesterday because they never passed an inspection. But when it comes to like the idea of like am I a bad person for not giving people money? I've been a broke student for four years. You know what I literally said to someone handling me on the bus at eight in the morning you have more money than me because I'm at negative forty thousand dollars. You're harassing people who can't afford transport because they're more likely to be empathetic than people at car lots. No one on redacted transit at 6 am is financially well off, because you just wouldn't be. You're either a student or an employee at a soul crushing job, because if you were well off, you would have a car. Because you're getting up at six in the morning to ride a bus for an hour to be panhandled at by this guy.
Speaker 1:So I said that to their face verbatim.
Speaker 2:The ethical question isn't actually about whether or not we give the lady the food. The ethical question and maybe it's not even the right word but firstly, do you know if there is any particular service that you would call to do a welfare check on the elderly? And since I don't know anything about this person's situation, aside from what I've just described she appears to have memory problems and is frequently unable to pay for her food do you think that would warrant enough concern from me, as, I'm going to say, a proprietor of a business, to call a welfare check on this?
Speaker 1:customer. That's a good question. So the beauty of being a student employee is I have the out of my pay grade defense and I've used it three or four times where it's like I say that sassily, but it really is. This question is out of the scope of what I can handle as a student employee. I will put you in touch with counseling. So in a school, my solution is really easy, right, like if I worked at the school cafeteria and this happened repeatedly, I would send them to student services and I would walk them to the health and wellness center, like I've literally walked students. Like I have this, this, this happening in my life. I'm like that sounds like a suicide risk. Come with me, hey. Um, front desk, I know you have a line, but can you like get someone here now please? That'd be great because I don't want to cause death.
Speaker 1:So I will let trained professionals do this right so logistically, what you're talking about is similar to how I would handle it of call somebody when I hit a certain point, but you don't have that convenient connection. So this will be some research on your part, because I would absolutely, in a school setting where they're everyone's insured for one thing and covered right, so I wouldn't put them into crippling bankruptcy by doing this to them I would absolutely call somebody to get them help. So that's my ethics. Yeah, I would absolutely look up who I call, call the person first independently, like oh, I just have some information.
Speaker 1:What should I do in this situation? Right, like, literally just call, like a university's elder research center, for example. Be like alright, u of S Elder Care Center center. Hi, I have this person that's coming in like this who should I contact? I love me universities and I love me libraries. You know how happy some random grad student will be to get a phone call where someone in real life is asking them for their expertise on the topic. Because, yeah, it's fair to not know. But I think that would be my play is, I would google elder care specialist saskatchewan, call them and be like hi, I have this problem. What do you suggest I do? Because I am like. I avoid trying to call the cops on people if I can help it right. Right.
Speaker 1:One time, and after an internet argument, someone called the cops, thinking I was a suicide risk, and they showed up my door to make sure I was still alive and that was a very positive interaction that went great for me because I know that if I was a suicide risk, someone in the internet made sure I didn't die. I wasn't.
Speaker 1:I'm just a drama queen. It was on a D&D forum and I was using metaphor. What drama queen on? It was on a dnd form and I was using metaphor. What the point is? That calling proper authorities would be my play, which is ironic with all the things I've said to anti-authority and government and things over the years. But yeah, no, there is actually trained, passionate professionals whose job it is to deal with this and the best way to find them is to ask the professional whose job it is to find them. Fair enough, I hope I answered your ethical quandary. And yeah, give your staff free meals, just everyone in this universe. If you run a profitable food service job and you're not giving your staff free meals, that's bad, right, that's just bad.
Speaker 2:I definitely agree that if your business is profitable and I mean obviously you need proper management, that's making sure that the system isn't being abused, but within reason you can give your staff a free meal, and it's just the same as if a burger got wasted.
Speaker 1:And it's also worth putting this out there too, just for some basic math for people. So we don't pay people for their lunch break. It's their own time. They can do whatever want. That north america's just decided this because we're bad people, including universities, right right. But we also kind of acknowledge that most people on break no boss has ever been so pure-hearted that if they get slammed by some accepted rush, they don't ask the person to help. Nor is it really practical for them to go home or live their life in any meaningful comfort. So we're giving them a break almost entirely because doctors around the world have agreed that you need to let people stop moving once in a while so then they can do more hard work for you.
Speaker 1:The staff meal is almost always going to be cheaper than if you just paid them for that break hour, yeah. So like, if you're not going to pay them to rest and you're going to do that thing where it's like your shift starts at this so you have to be pre-changed, we're not going to pay you for that. Just at least give them a sandwich, guys. Like, come on, give them the thing that costs you like maybe three dollars to make it, so that way they don't spend their day hungry.
Speaker 2:It's not unreasonable so, tldr, uh, you think that the situation I described would at least warrant doing some research and calling to see if someone else thinks it's someone more qualified, thinks it's a risk absolutely.
Speaker 1:If I was in this situation, I would call counseling and be like hi, the same person has come up five or six times and seems to be forgetting their PIN number in their card. Who should I talk to about this? Because, like I'm such a torn person, because, like I study like ethics, humanity and goodness, and I'm, like, immersed in positivity, I also worked in a movie theater theater, so it's like I'm also not above calling security and having someone dragged out because they screamed at me to not that I didn't accept their gross popcorn bag, because they were told free refuse refills a decade ago and they keep using the same bag so it's like.
Speaker 1:I want the world to be a better place, but I also want, like professionals, to do it. One of the biggest things I learned in my degree is there's people who are trained in things. Let them figure these problems out.
Speaker 2:I do have a small side tangent.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Someone comes in today and they have a stack I'm going to say it was at least 20 little coupon cards that say one free small pizza expires whatever date 2019. And so he comes in and he's like hey, can I use this stack of free small pizzas? And we're like no. No, they're expired. And he's like mmm, it's illegal for there to be an expire date on these, so you should let me use them.
Speaker 1:And then he responded with cool I'll call the cops and we can have them figure it out. That works every time. By the way, I was so jaded by the end of my kitchen tour. That wasn't a hypothetical.
Speaker 2:Well, ok. So apparently it is illegal for gift cards because they're purchased and have a monetary value to have expiry dates, which makes sense because you gave someone money, your money should never expire.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But these free small pizza coupons we give them out for free, so they're not part of this law that prevents you from having a fight against them.
Speaker 1:It's like when I hyperinflated Richard points and they lost all value. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just thought that was funny because it's like if they expired in 2019, that means that they got them in 2018, which means that they've had these things for like eight years. And they just like found them in a drawer somewhere and came in and tried to claim them and tried to strong arm us into giving away this free pizza and then, after leaving, like well, I was just going to give them to charity.
Speaker 1:It's like no, you weren't. If you'd opened with that, this would have been a very different conversation.
Speaker 2:It would have If they had opened with that. I might have been like well, you know, we could, if you give us those coupons, we could give some to charity.
Speaker 1:But like you know, I think I spent too, long in an academic safe space where I can speak my mind, because I'm like, oh yeah, how I would have handled that. Ooh, handle that. Let's role play the interaction. You be the customer. I'd be emotionally dead inside, but in a good mood, richard, welcome to redacted pizza. What's up?
Speaker 2:uh oh, I have uh these uh free small pizza coupons.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping I could could uh redeem them oh, let me take a look at these things, why I was actually wondering the same thing. I would like to know legitimately, why you have a stack of these because these were one per person when we gave them out. Did you mug people for them?
Speaker 2:I did kind of. I kind of suspected that maybe he just like found a stack of them in the garbage right.
Speaker 1:Like were you dumpster diving behind? I would have said that. Like, were you dumpster diving behind? I would have said that I was like were you dumpster diving behind t-days pizza, looking for coupons like dude? There's better ways to make money. Go to service saskatchewan and go into their job placement program and you can pick up cans and they'll pay you for that and then you can buy your pizza with money, the thing we use anyways, I don't know if we're gonna get into our topic proper, because we still have to find out what's new with Richard.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. So I could either give a super condensed one or like a full lengthy, super detailed monologue, so it's probably gonna be like a three minute. What's new with Richard? Okay, okay, okay. So I graduated yesterday and finally went to my ceremony, okay. So here's some things about graduation that I expected and didn't expect, so I'm just going to mostly give graduation fun facts and a quick montage of what happens. All right. So first off, I finished classes like a month ago and I'm like graduation, I don't care. And then my beloved friends and family are like you don't have a choice. I'm like, ah, but it sounds like work. I already have a book deal. Why would I go to grad from book school? Right, so I give them the. My grad was two events there was an anthology watch, because our writing students and our publishing students, as a capstone, publish an anthology. That just makes sense, right? The publishers do the book design, editing.
Speaker 1:The writers write the short stories. It's a very nice anthology. They did good. They gave us swag bags, copies of anthology, bookmarks, pins, like. It was overall not as good as last year's because they had a full documentary they made and scored, but it was pretty good.
Speaker 1:My year did pretty good, oh man any of my classmates that listen to my podcast like we. We did. Wow, rude way to say our year was less good than the previous year. I mean it was but rude of me to say right, I should say my year is the best year I'm in it, but last year was really good. I volunteered at the event last year for context, so did it really good?
Speaker 1:I would say second or third best one, not bad okay, okay so we go to this thing and I accidentally gave the wrong time to all my loved ones. So, like the day before.
Speaker 1:I'm like. So when I said start at three, I meant to say it ended at three, it starts at one. So my various loved ones are like well, I can't get there to like 130. I'm like that's fine, it's just people talking. So my campus didn't hold it in like a hall. They kind of had like the lobby, has like an event space in it, but it's also like the lobby. So they like put up like some partitions, but any human being can just walk through there if they want right. Which means I don't care if my friends and family come late, I'll sit in the back row. Any human being can just walk through there if they want right. So I'm listening. They all show up. They sit down.
Speaker 1:We do this grad yearbook thing where we all sign each other's anthologies, because duh. But also one of my classmates made up cwp shirts for my program and everyone was going around signing the back of these shirts, which is kind of cool, okay. And then teachers give their speeches. One of my professors gave a metaphor for my program being canceled where, like he talked about how tragic it was about this art summer camp. He really loved being canceled and like it was like it was beautiful because it was just how close can he get without losing his job, calling them out on this decision but your program.
Speaker 2:This is the last year for your program uh, it's suspended right now.
Speaker 1:They might resume it so, like everyone who's currently enrolled gets to graduate years one, two, three and then the program theoretically is being shut down. Oh, because 60 of university college funding got lost from international student. That's a whole thing, yeah, yeah, that is a whole episode for me to explain what happened to my school. I have.
Speaker 1:I have some context there yeah, but like to catch everyone up to speed just google ontario colleges and then complain to your mp that we're losing our colleges. While all jobs are shifting to skill-based, let's not train any writers. In an era where content creation makes up like 30 of the gdp, sure, anyways.
Speaker 1:So we gave this a big metaphor yeah, so we go through this launch party which had cheese cubes and things, and then there's actual grad right the worst part. So we do a break between the two. I cry tears because my family made like my friends made a lovely card that have, so they went out their way to have everyone sign it with. How would I have them in my phone? Because I have people in the phone by like a mix of like dnd characters and code names and other things right, right so it's like a super personalized card.
Speaker 1:I say thank you to one of my friends who's like there's no evidence. I said something nice. It was a forgery, like yeah, but you baked me cupcakes and the cupcakes don't lie. Okay, I do enjoy it. It's like anything nice in that card is slander. I didn't consent. Their message in the card was just grats, but there was homemade cupcakes involved, so I've not fallen for that.
Speaker 1:So we basically spend the time between these two events in traffic. Because we went back to drop off the cupcakes, to refrigerate them, because they're good quality cupcakes, get the gift thing and then go to this grad hall. So you would think they'd line us up alphabetically, right, you would think that. So we go in and scan a QR code on our phone. Get our gowns. We have this like we have to wear a hood thing because we're so we have our gown and we have this hood thing because it's a bachelor's degree, because, much like Cutlerly, academia has their secret language designed to make fun of poor people based on their like, your stripes and ribbons and other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, due to sexism, these collar, these like hood things were designed under the assumption you have a dress shirt underneath. Ok, but no one ever tells you that. So 90 percent of people are like trying to wrap this tie for this hood to the zipper of their robe because they have zippers. And then I'm like to everyone, like, oh, these are literally designed that you just attach them to the second button on your dress shirt underneath because sexism. Why would they update these for the idea, although, be fair, anyone can wear a dress shirt. Technically, if everyone was required to wear a dress shirt and dress pants, it wouldn't be sexism anyway. Anywho, long story short, these were designed under the assumption you'd be wearing this.
Speaker 1:So I, after teaching a few people how to assemble this thing and going for photos, it became apparent the mistake I had made. So I stood at the front of the line so everyone knew where to stand right. Instead of being alphabetized, they scan the QR code to let them know what name to read and you just go in the order you happen to have been standing in. Oh, so I went first. Okay, question what don't I have? Oh, so I went first. Okay, question, what don't I have? I mean lots of things. What is one?
Speaker 2:of my like top three things I'm bad at. I mean I'm drawing a blank at the top of my head. I mean there's physically writing. That's one, that's one.
Speaker 1:I'll just spoiler it, you would have got it pretty quick. I have no sense of direction. Okay, that's true, that would be in the top three. It's like can't write. Get queasy when I listen to medical things have no sense of direction whatsoever, right, so I'm going first. I'm like, oh no, no, I don't have someone to follow off the stage. I need to know what I'm doing. So I go out and I shake the president of the college's hand. So, with the back sense that my program has been canceled and my sheridan's been a crap, I did okay, fine.
Speaker 1:My college, which I just name dropped sue me, anyone who Googles me can figure this out, because it's all of my posts right now has been a largely positive experience. But whenever something negative happens, I speak out about it because of who I am as a person, right. So I am with the president of the school in front of me, who I've sent sassy emails to probably on three occasions over the course of my time there, one of which resulted directly in me meeting with like a really high-ranked person and getting one of my best jobs I had there. So you know, emails work, right. I shake their hand and I'm just. My brain is entirely okay. Which directions do I go? They say congratulations, you worked hard to get here. I said in my fugue state, I know, paused for a full beat and I went, thank you. So they said you worked hard. And I'm like, I know. And I'm like, oh no, I han soloed them. That was not my intent.
Speaker 1:Then I like speed walk off the stage because I like I need to flee now managed to navigate successfully back to the stage and sit down. And then, as I'm like 90% of the way back, I see my loved ones with a camera and it's like pause for a second to photo. They mouth at me. So I like smile and then proceed to continue running back to Speed, walking back to my seat and, as a result, there's like the only photo in existence where I smiled, showing my teeth, because I don't like my teeth For viewers who are picturing me picture that I have a singular vampire fang that's like a row above the rest of my teeth. That's just the thing. Carl can vouch on. That one, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like there's this like one photo that's ever existed me showing a toothy smile because my entire mental bandwidth was drained from this experience, because I only pretend to be an extrovert, so I basically had to play a character for like 12 hours straight as my like loved ones had to sit there and I'm like, why does anyone go to these things? If it wasn't for my loved ones, this would have been a terrible experience, because it was mostly standing. However, because I was fully supported and people did nice kind emotional things to devastate me and make me cry not manly tears it was absolutely a worthwhile once-in-a-lifetime experience and when I graduate again next year, I ain't doing it because it's like I could have went when I did my one year program to get into my four year. I'm like now I'll do it at the end of the four year, and then I got kind of committed to it. Yeah, I spent today mostly recovering from my celebration, so that's what's new with me as I learned that we use qr codes now to figure out who walks across stages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a little bit bizarre. I would have thought that would just be like a check-in thing, and then they, you know, call the people alphabetically, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'm like, oh, I guess I'm going first. And one of my friends is like, do you want to switch? I'm like, oh, I volunteered to go first for literally everything for four years. It seems weirdly appropriate. I'll just commit to it at this stage. So, yeah, that's what's new with me as I give mixed advice about. It's like don't feed people from your private food stores. Make sure everyone has access to food stores. Yeah, alright.
Speaker 1:So to move into our feature topic, which I don't actually remember exactly, I'm gonna start by complaining about world trigger, but not really okay. Okay, so when we did our last show and jump round out, I'm like, okay, if world trigger lasts for as long as one piece, it can get away with this plot arc. So the second, most recent chapter is like all right, final day note, you guys will only get the food you can manage to pack for your adventure. And then a character sends out like a really sad voicemail, like we don't have food. Can you all donate food to us please? I'll, I owe you and I love you guys.
Speaker 1:I'm like that was actually a really entertaining chapter because, michael, you took a break from the bureaucracy to just that's a good bit. The person's like sending like the most formal note. They can be like greeting and salutations. My friends, we don't have any food because we suck. I will treat you all to meals after this. I swear lucky winners in the draw will receive.
Speaker 1:So I'm like that was actually a legitimately good chapter, because you stopped from the meta commentary for 30 seconds and the next chapter is like alright, now we're going to give everyone their captain review and I'm like, oh my lord, please get to the plot. After this, there will be a death battle. You're going to fight the A ranks in an awesome death battle where everyone who's in these tests are going to have this awesome death battle. So go through your squad and give everyone a point score. I'm like, just please end this arc and, like I haven't been counting the chapter count, like I don't know if the bottle test was longer than the invasion. I legitimately don't because of the release schedule. Right, right, and it could definitely come back from this if people start throwing bricks at each other again. Like, if, like, if this is just an awesome epic battle, that's as long, if phase two is as long as phase one and it's just an epic battle, I'm good, right, but they're literally creating homework.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my topic idea was the way I worded. It is conceptually interesting ideas that give anime a bad name in execution.
Speaker 1:So my first pitch to this topic is World Trigger, spirocracy. World Trigger being like, yeah, we're going to do a really bureaucratic system Sounds great in practice, and one of the things that failed in execution is they gave every character so many names and had them all look the same and it's just like no one remembers anyone in World Trigger. So it's like that idea of like them taking their border defense agency seriously Good idea. World Trigger is entirely good idea. Bad execution right now Because they're like our action series is people sitting in a room not being animated. It's almost the opposite problem to the things you're going to go back to. Well, I mean, if you even knew what I was going to talk about, I don't.
Speaker 2:I assume you're just going to complain about the ending of kaido kaido was actually, uh, one of three specific things that I wanted to mention, because Kaido the right answer. I started watching it and, before I managed to get to the end of it, I recommended it to you because it was awesome. It was about a negotiator who has to negotiate with a higher level being, and it's like how do you negotiate with someone who's smarter than you? It's pretty great. Um, it was like super awesome and and so much fun to watch.
Speaker 2:and then they, they bungled the ending because they weren't smarter enough to be smart enough yeah, um, and it was just such a letdown. That's kind of a fringe case of what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:I'm talking more about oh, are we going to go Kenichi? And the sexual harassment.
Speaker 2:Kenichi wasn't specifically on my list. I was going to segue into martial arts as a superpower in general and I was actually going to go with a non-anime example of Marvel's Iron Fist. Okay, okay, Because Iron Fist just sounds so cool. You punch the heart out of a dragon and get the power of the Iron Fist and then protect Kun Lun. It sounds like such a cool idea. But then Danny Rand was just such a little bitch for the lack of a better term. Nice, Did you recently go?
Speaker 1:through the Iron Fist series or what. Or you're just like one night in three in the morning you're like why is Iron Fist lame? I almost want to blame whitewashing, but that's just a different problem, endemic of the era.
Speaker 2:Danny.
Speaker 1:Rand's story should not have been told for a white guy's point of view. Like that's just so many. The white savior tropes are so toxic, like it's the classic Dune problem. Oh yeah, the white savior came to help the desert people. It's like stop, just stop Lorenzingrebiating this In having a cool idea that had poor execution.
Speaker 2:It kind of taints all of like. Any animated series that have Iron Fist in them have now kind of been tainted by the terrible execution of Marvel's iron fist on netflix. Um I'll allow it so yeah, and this happens a lot with martial arts as a superpower in general. Uh, we're like history's strongest disciple, kanichi. They're using their fists, their legs, they're punching and whatever. Why do the clothes explode?
Speaker 1:so that was such a roundabout to get to the trope. Why do clothes explode in anime?
Speaker 2:we all, we know the actual answer.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's because sex sells and by putting exploding clothes on the cover, teenager boys will buy it. That's why there's no deeper meaning to this, but like it gives the anime a bad name.
Speaker 2:That's like exactly the thing. There's like I don't watch anime because it's too hyper sexualized, and then you're watching a genuinely interesting, well choreographed, well thought show and they're just like yeah, and we just need to throw in some fan service because otherwise it won't sell on the quality of our writing fire force and soul eater were really bad offenders for that.
Speaker 1:Where you're like this doesn't fit the vibe at all of what's going on here. Why are you doing this?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, at least fairy tale was gender neutral, with the clothes exploding so fairy tale.
Speaker 1:So the reason I give fairy tale and chainsaw man a pass in this category, so Fairytale is everyone is in a completely impossible body shape and their clothes explode. However, the characters in Fairytale are aware of this and they're literally stripping to sell magazines and calendars to fund their guild hall. Right, and stay with me here. This is the most important plot point to fairy tale. Everyone fairy tales over the age of consent. Everyone in fairy tale is an adult, because that's anime's worst trope by far is they do this to minors, which is just a crime well, see um.
Speaker 1:I would say anime was so much better if you age every character by five years. It just makes every character make more sense structurally and narratively every time. There isn't a single example where the story is not better if you age everyone by five years but that that sang a ways perfectly actually into uh, the actual uh series.
Speaker 2:That got me thinking about this. Um, a little while ago we did an episode about uh school teachers in anime and how few genuine school teachers there are, even though there's so many high school settings oh yeah um and uh I I don't know why, but I really got into the regular at the Magic Academy you're not the only one.
Speaker 1:It was a better to Aruno Index and I watched all three seasons.
Speaker 2:I skipped the mini movie where his sister seemingly gets shot and they have to be resurrected using the resurrection gun.
Speaker 1:God I hate the resurrection. You know, the thing is, I wouldn't. I wouldn't hate the resurrection gun if it was a healing bullet gun. So if you shot someone with a healing bullet I'd be on board, but the gun part doesn't even go pew. It's just, uh, it's too op man.
Speaker 2:but so so season one has a lot of like incest jokes, the sister brother complex, whatever but it kind of shifts away to that as it focuses more on the main character's struggle between his responsibility with his great powers and and lack of what he actually wants to accomplish. Yeah, right, right, but there's a sp-off show and it's called the Honor at the Magic Academy. I don't think I've seen that.
Speaker 1:Don't.
Speaker 2:Don't, don't.
Speaker 1:You sounded like me for a second. That's a problem. This broke you.
Speaker 2:It is season one of the Irregular of the Magic Academy, except it's told from, like, the sister's point of view and her friends yeah and yeah, all of the incest quote-unquote jokes.
Speaker 1:I mean I guess there's no actual incest because, you know, all of the anime is hyper-sexualized but weirdly chased as you like to say I have a fun monologue about that, but I'll let you finish where you're going with this first.
Speaker 2:But yeah, she overtly has sexual feelings for him, uh and uh, oftentimes he doesn't see the fashion show that she puts on. But she'll like strip down to her underwear to put on a fashion show to decide what she's gonna wear for her brother um, that's unfortunate yeah, yeah, like I mean I watched it all because of the sunken cost fallacy.
Speaker 2:Oh man, the things I've watched because of sunken cost fallacy. It genuinely made me uncomfortable. And then, as she gets her high school friends on board, it's just a bunch of high school girls fangirling over the garyest gary stew that's ever stewed so to pivot a bit and we'll probably do a full episode on this later, because crunchyroll had their anime of the year awards.
Speaker 1:Okay, so solo leveling one anime of the year.
Speaker 2:That's reasonable, right yeah, I would say that that it was definitely a really solid season two. I I don't foresee good things for season three, but I'll watch it anyways For the record though.
Speaker 1:Did it deserve to beat Delicious in Dungeon and Free Rin? Probably not, but I can see why, right. Here's where I have a problem. Jin Woo won Character of the Year. Delicious in the Dungeon and Free Rin came out this year.
Speaker 1:Will I accept that solo leveling is a better series than free run? I can see why people would think that right, jinwoo is also a bland character. That sister's trying to sleep with him, who has no characteristics whatsoever. He is the ultimate self-insert. Bella from twilight has more personality than Jinwoo. He's just the least insufferable Ikasai busted character, because most of them just turn into creepy perverts instantly and he didn't, right, right, so he's bland, but he's bland and inoffensive, right, right. But to say that Fririn is a less interesting character is just insane to me. Right Is a less interesting character Is just insane to me. Right, it's like the character whose entire, the entire anime of Ririn Is them processing emotional attachment, and I'm like To not give it to a character. To give character to Jinwoo Just shows these rewards are rigged. But like to go into the tropes a bit. Soul leveling has all of those tropes, just all of them.
Speaker 2:It. Just it makes me sad. It's like I really like the regular Magic Academy. I think that the mixture of magic and technology is a really cool conceptual idea, and they have all sorts of interesting sports and events designed around this concept. His sister just cheats and invents flying magic, but everyone's okay with it because everyone can use it. Anyways, it's a really gripping conceptual idea. And then it's just loaded with so much smut and fan service and and like I say like, uh, the main character, he, he can't do anything wrong, everything. Like he, he's the best engineer, so he like tunes up their, their casting assist devices, uh, so that everybody that he works with ends up winning their thing. And so then they're like oh yeah, we need to like do something special for him.
Speaker 2:And it's like uh, the special thing you could do for him is let him sleep for eight hours for the first time in his life there is, there is one consistent male character in the honor at the high, at the magic academy, yeah, and yet I don't think it passes the bechdel test that is hilarious.
Speaker 1:So to kind of pivot off that a bit, so I'm a big fan of the series kage asamo, love is war, right. So that series was an anime romance that skirted along tropes but, like, mostly used them for their advantage. So here's one thing it did that is insane, absolutely insane. Spoiler warning I'm literally going to spoiler tag this. So this has never happened in a single rom-com I've ever read in a manga, right, not a single time. The male character and the female character, who are having their game of wits to see who can confess first, right, actually have sex, and it shows a panel of them going to the bed together and waking up next to each other.
Speaker 1:The internet lost their minds because the idea that one of these shounen-style rom-coms could have two characters in high school get physically intimate with each other is so beyond the concept of imagination that, like luffy getting gear five, ichigo being a quincy, saitama punching a man to jupiter, the attack on taito being a time travel looping story, none of those had the same shock value of this very obvious outcome to this story in any other form of media, like the only logical outcome in any other form of media of two people of consistent chemistry, trying to get the other to fall for them for a year straight. Is them actually hooking up before graduation? It's just an insane concept, like could you imagine a Naruto if Naruto and Hinata actually had like two panels next to each other and then they woke up? It blew people's mind in fairy tale when people looked at like the night before the final battle and Levi's background and Gajiel's background had the same wallpaper. People were like it's the same wallpaper? Maybe these two characters that have been dating for a year hooked up in this show, which they did, by the way, spoiler alert, he actually managed to like gajal has a kid on the way in fairy tale. But like it's just such a wild inversion of the trope is having a character into aru, whose ability is my left hand blew up a character's clothes in chapter one is completely socially acceptable in this genre.
Speaker 1:Like them, planning elaborate excuses to strip in front of their brother is completely socially the norm in this genre. But if his brother, if her brother, were to like that one professor, that clearly has a thing for him, that's like the same age. If they were to go on an actual date and have a one-night stand, people would not be able to comprehend what just happened. If this completely eligible, legal, like this eligible man actually went on a real date, no one would actually be able. Their brain couldn't comprehend it. Like if jen woo actually like kissed one of his love interests, they went back to his apartment.
Speaker 2:The internet collectively would not be able to handle that, which is so wild to me well, yeah, and then, like I say, like a lot of these really interesting ideas, uh, just have. Well, I mean the.
Speaker 1:The biggest offender is the fan service with like the clothes exploding, like let's go dan to dan, that's another huge offender. But dan to dan's trying to like I don't know man, dan to Dan's trying to like I don't know man, dan to Dan's almost at Chainsaw Man's level of they're trying to do something with it. Like what was it Like? Right near the start of Dan to Dan they end up like losing their outfits to the Loch Ness Monster and one of the plot points is he had his family jewel stolen by a witch. But like I don't know if they're doing something with it, like they're not chainsaw man of. Oh, this is actually like key character development and plot in about someone's coming of age story. I'm not sure I'm on the fence, but it's not like that one bodyguard show, blue, whatever, where. I'm like yeah, I have to drop this now. It hit the line, it crossed it and I'm done, done here. I don't want the fbi at my house. Anime is dead. Anime was a mistake.
Speaker 1:Like another example, weirdly, of the inverse is like a neon genesis evangelion. Any fan service moments were like framed and scored to be super uncomfortable, deliberately because the show was let's see how much we can torture shinji. So it's like oh yeah, in that series a character being half naked, sleeping next to him, is torture for him, like actual torture, and then he ends up choking her to death later. Because that show is because it's like this person's actively harassing you, belittling you and bullying you and you have no self-esteem so they're just gonna like make your life miserable because you're looking at them is like part of like the depression metaphor they were going for in that show where it's like, oh, sex is everywhere, but no one cares about you and you're gonna die alone. Sheesh, oh yeah, neon jess. If evagelion, there's a reason it's iconic and I don't think it's because it makes you feel good things. But they did stick the landing after doing several reboot movies, which is commendable.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I mean for this category of good ideas that were poorly executed. I put in Kaido the right answer, because it was a great idea that just they didn't. They completely failed to stick the landing.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and Kenichi comes up where it's like the concept of Kenichi If you took the perversion out of it Would just be good, and if you took the sexism out of it Because I remember I was working on a short story Inspired by it a while back when I'm like the most baffling decision in Kenichi Is a badass fighter Mew Training, is a badass fighter Mew training.
Speaker 1:To get Kenichi at the level for them to team up and fight somebody is just like a much better concept than what it ended up being. Where they're like no, no, she wants to be a housewife. I'm like fuck off with that, fuck right off with that. Yeah, I'm going to use two F-bombs here. Where it's like okay, this makes no narrative sense for some of these choices you've made and why this makes no narrative sense for some of these choices you've made and a lot of these people should prompt and did you really have to have a pervert as long as you're five people who should be in jail, like just straight up, directly to jail, do not pass, go. So it's like I can't show kanichi to people, but it's such a clean, good premise well, so I was going with the kind of the right answer.
Speaker 2:How many series have you seen where the ending was so bad that it gave the rest of the anime a bad name, or gave anime in general a bad name for being like animes have bad writing, type thing?
Speaker 1:Hmm. So for a while like so I'm not gonna say naruto, even though it like stumbled a bit, didn't quite get there. It's like tokyo ghouls anime ruined itself terribly but its manga didn't. Hmm, death Note Second season sucked, like if you just watched till L died, it was great, right. I'm just trying to think of things that, let's see, I hated the skip on Attack on Titan, but a lot of people loved it, so I could just be wrong about that.
Speaker 2:Could be, could be. I mean, like I say Kaido, the right answer is like the number one pick, where it's like the ending was so bad that I can see why someone would say that anime has bad writing and it just gives anime in general a bad name for how badly it ended because, like some of the time, a lot of the time, it's like they didn't follow the manga, which feels like cheating right, right, because the original ending to full metal alchemist uh was world war ii, germany, which just made no sense.
Speaker 1:And then nart uh in iwasha. Anime is like oh, we're just done. And then they came back and did their final season later. Gt's terrible, but no one blames Dragon Ball for that.
Speaker 2:No, people don't blame Dragon Ball for GT being bad.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to really think, because my might have just like repressed some of these like let's take Sidcraft, for example. Where they're like blitzing through the ending, like okay, sidcraft just got the wrap up.
Speaker 2:Where I'm like, okay, you're fine, but oh, I'm like it was that chapter where they decided not to have a mystery. I think that was the turning chapter where they decided not to have a mystery. I think that was the turning point where the editors were like yeah, no, this is done.
Speaker 1:Right. So Fairy Tail was very mid-ended so he just punched like he has a great ending with Zareph and then a terrible ending with Agnologia that didn't really go anywhere or do anything. However, fairy Tail didn't Boruto In 100 Year Quest, where it's just still going and it's just more Fairy Tail. So it's like you botched the ending. So you went to an island with five bigger, meaner dragons to actually build this up and end it better and try again. I'm like, oh, you're just going to actually try again, because Claymore that took a while to remember. Claymore when they're like, actually it's an island that's a breeding ground and there's a world. We don't want to Claymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that definitely falls into this category, where it's a super interesting conceptual idea, but then they just that was a very disappointing way for the story to go, because it just wasn't really foreshadowed in any way and it's so bland and generic and just seems like bad writing.
Speaker 1:Siren's weird because Siren's original premise was bad and he pivoted to a much better premise. It was weird because you put in this code and there's points and it's a game, because we're trying to do a dance and actually this is just better with you're jumping between two timelines of psychic people and the idea is that you're trying to change the future by jumping between these two fixed points. So the kids you save end up like it's like that guy siren's weird.
Speaker 2:If you start it later into the series it's better because, yeah, the weird part about the telephone with the card phone card that at the start like they just kind of completely abandoned that because it was bad.
Speaker 1:So like it's weird Cause like we're going to set up like a game and then they just didn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you were to only see like that first portion of it, I could definitely see how that would be an enemy with an interesting concept that gives anime a bad name because it's so generic and boring.
Speaker 1:Future Diary. On the other hand, like I don't know, I think it nailed it somehow.
Speaker 2:Future Diary was definitely a worthwhile series, for sure.
Speaker 1:The thing is, I know I've read more crap, but I think I just didn't retain it.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. It's not going to be important to you because it was crap. But yeah, tldr, I can see why the honor at the Magic Academy got greenlit and I imagine it's been greenlit for a second season. They had a little like this is what will happen on the second season, but oh man, don't support it.
Speaker 1:So just try to think on tropes. To go back to the original topic, so I deeply hate the accidental pervert trope. It'll. Any series that does it. Where the main protagonist trips and falls and rips their clothes off by accident, it's just bad. Anything that does that where it's fan service disguised as slapstick specifically ruins the show. I cannot show it to people. Disguise is slapstick specifically ruins a show. I cannot show it to people.
Speaker 1:Fire force, soul eater, high school dx, deep, what was it? High school of the dead, like that is. It's the worst because it's like god is sexually harassing and using the character as an excuse, but it's always an accident, so it's not their fault is the worst, worst tropes. I think it's the an accident, so it's not their fault is the worst, Worst trope. I think it's the worst trope than an actual pervert, because then, like you can have a character get like beat up for that, mmm. Uh.
Speaker 1:The second trope I absolutely hate is when they have the girl in your three-person squad and she just sucks the Sakura, the Nobara, the I'm sure odihime, where it's like, oh, we added a female character to be kidnapped specifically or to not be interested in the protagonist but be interested in the dual tagging so the protagonist has to win them over.
Speaker 1:It's just bad. It's a bad thing that keeps happening and every manga would be better if it could pass the Bechdel test. Like Ochako in my Hero just doesn't get a character arc, despite having a very interesting power. Honestly, the fact she didn't walk around with a giant sledgehammer that she needed to wait for and hit people with a giant sledgehammer such a missed opportunity. Like Rukia was the dual antagonist of Bleach and didn't like get any. Although Bleach is weird with his screen time where they're like we're not going to give it to any of the characters we built up and we're just going to give every captain in Aronk. Bleach got pretty bad for that by the end. I'm just like, yeah, we're just giving screen time to characters you do not know or care about at all.
Speaker 2:Here's your 26 lettered villains. Yeah, yeah, that was definitely so. I think that goes on my list of tropes is introduced.
Speaker 1:As I've said before, I don't like when people introduce characters past the halfway point of the series, so I think that's a trope.
Speaker 2:I hate too is the midseason 10 new numbered villains dropped. That does seem to be like. You mentioned Tokyo Ghoul. You said that the manga didn't screw itself over it did, but not as much like. The anime was unwatchably bad the mid-season character dump I couldn't get through it in the manga. It kills a lot of things. The mid-season character dump I couldn't get through it. I couldn't get through it, yeah, in the manga.
Speaker 1:It kills a lot of things. It's part of what ruined Attack on Titan for me too.
Speaker 2:They do the time skip and then had a mid-season character dump.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shippuden dodged it. They wisely only added in a singular. So after Shippuden started they added in characters in the single digits, like they added in a singular. So after Shippuden started they added in characters in the single digits, like they added in Sai and Tree Guy, but waited a while. They staggered their mid-season character dumps. When Shippuden happened they added in two characters, a plot arc and that was it.
Speaker 2:It got unreasonable by the Ninja War where they did their other dump, but they basically established everybody yeah, the Ninja War is actually pretty tough to read too, because of the character dump, I mean they managed to foreshadow most of the characters.
Speaker 1:They dodged a lot of it because they're like we've introduced before. That happened because they had like a UN meeting and stuff like. All right, at least we know who's in the Sand Village. We know who's in the Lightning Village. We have a decent idea who's in the Mist Village from Cont in the lightning village. We have a decent idea who's in the mist village from con. Like we had a decent idea who most of the people were by that point. Right where fairy tale, after its time skipper, like let's just add in five guilds and have the guild tournament, right. So yeah, the mid-season character dump is a trope I despise. I also despise the abusive girl where they're like oh yeah, she just punches the protagonist aggressively forever and I'm like okay, that's not better because you're still not passing the bechdel test. I give a pass to the psycho person from future diary, because the plot revolved around her being unstable like that, right, right. However, I think we're going to move into our random topic and wrap things up.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I don't have a random question for you today. I thought I might, but if I did I forgot it. The moment has passed.
Speaker 1:Casually tragic, I'm not going to say deeply. So here's the question Would the One Ring corrupt Deadpool?
Speaker 2:Would the One Ring corrupt Deadpool?
Speaker 1:I don't think it would I think he'd be fine. I think he'd corrupt one of the Deadpools. He's pre-smeagoled. Here's my theory of how this goes. He would put on the ring not because it willed him to do it, to make the race come, but so he could fight the race specifically in a sword fight. Like he turned it on and flipped off Sauron to fight Sauron specifically. I think he's corrupting the ring.
Speaker 2:I think the ring isn't going to corrupt him physically, but I think the ring would corrupt him mentally.
Speaker 1:I think he would corrupt the ring.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, he is a fourth wall breaking wisecracking mercenary, so it is possible that with his metanology he would just be able to corrupt the ring itself.
Speaker 1:Interesting. But with that I think that's it for our episode this week. We maybe talked about our topic a little bit and I'm going to leave with this parting wisdom If you're writing a story, don't explode clothes.
Speaker 1:Don't't do it. You don't have to. You could just write an entire series where everyone stays appropriately clothed the entire time. You're allowed to do that. You have my permission, and the only time is acceptable is when it's like raccoon or napa, where it's just a big beefy guy whose clothes explode Zangief's style. I'll let you have that one. If you must explode a character's clothing, make it a character who would feel empowered and comfortable by it and also age up all of your characters to college.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, because that's one of the other things that makes the honor at the high school very uncomfortable. Uh, is that at the very at the beginning of the series they very clearly state that she's 13?
Speaker 1:uh and to finish it up, anime's protagonist of the year was jinwoo, not kafka. Jinwoo, not Kafka, not Him, not Freerid, not Mao. Mao not Momo, not Okaroon. It was Sungjinwoo, the best written character of the year. Bye, bye.
