Happy Reiwa, folks!
Continuing on with the festivities for the 40th Anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam, we review the second Thunderbolt movie, Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower.
Author: akibaren
What’s In A Name? Various Name-Related Puns In Japanese Cartoons
When I first decided that I was going to start running panels at anime conventions about ten years ago, I kicked around all sorts of ideas of what to talk about. Early on in my fandom, even longer before I went to anime conventions, Dragonball fansites often discussed the trivia related to Toriyama Akira’s puns when it came to naming characters in his epic. As I started watching more anime and reading more manga, I started noticing more and more of these puns and I thought this would be a fun convention topic to present. But when I started with even the most rough draft of this, I found this was a real short topic indeed and wouldn’t fit a convention format very well. Which means it’s perfect for Free Talk here at Akihabara Renditions.
Series 2 Episode 17: Anime of Heisei-gannen
Japan is preparing for the abdication of its current Emperor, which means the coming of a new era! Actually, this doesn’t mean anything except or history and political junkies… doesn’t it? Well, not so fast!
Drew will explain the significance and brief history of the Imperial Calendar system and Richard confuses monarchies for someplace that elects their figureheads and nominates professional wrestler Jushin Thunder Liger to the post and applies it to pop culture through beloved children’s hero, Masked (Kamen) Rider. Then they’ll go on to discuss some of the most notable series from the first year of the closing Heisei period.
Series 2 Episode 16: Mobile Suit Gundam 40th Anniversary
Upon us soon is the 40th Anniversary of the airing of the original Mobile Suit Gundam. A TV series whose original run went from being shortened due to poor ratings to one of the most visible anime franchises. It’s success having gone from Japanese Star Trek to Japanese Star Wars.
Drew and Richard sit down for a chat and reflect on the franchise’s various series, various adaptations and what might be coming next for Gundam.
State Of Classic Anime in North America, 2018
Way back in the early days of Akihabara Renditions, I started a thematic piece I called the “State Of Classic Anime in North America”. As my own personal fandom tastes shifted from the shiny and new titles, I started digging deeper into the “classics” and time periods of Japanese animation that most interested me. But since I did a bunch of arm chair industry analysis, I figured an annual round up of titles and their releases was good consistent content that I could work on. Which leads us to the first, and until recently only, State of Classic Anime in North America. Now, I think it’s time for this to make a comeback and be featured in a Free Talk segment.
Series 2 Episode 15 – Christmas Craptacular VI: I Did It Because I Didn’t Want to Die
It’s that time of the year again, our annual tradition! The grand-daddy of them all – it’s time for Christmas Craptacular! On this, the sixth edition of the Craptacular, we change nothing! We watch some shitty cartoons and report back to you dear listeners! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Series 2 Episode 14 – Twilight of the Podcasters
In this episode of Akihabara Renditions, Drew and Richard sit down and talk about a film that was seemingly everywhere in an earlier time of fandom but has conspicuously disappeared – 1987’s Twilight of the Cockroaches! Take a trip down memory lane as we revisit a film we’re seeing for the first time in two decades!
As we mentioned in the show, the movie was aired as a one-off movie night on Cartoon Network on Night of the Vampire Robots, and someone uploaded the whole broadcast to YouTube.
Show notes update 2018-12-21: Discotek Media has licensed Twilight of the Cockroaches for DVD release early 2019!
Pre-order at RightStuff for under $13!
A Treasure Trove Of Junk: Personal Archive of Internet Anime Fandom, 1996 ~ 2002
Drew here with another Free Talk on Akihabara Renditions! I joke that my parent’s had this plan for their retirement – Operation: Get Your Shit Out Of My House. Phases of this operation are selecting some holiday or family gathering and when they show up, inform my wife and I that they have stuff for us (usually to my wife’s chagrin). This is the story of one of the results of those phases: part of the delivery was old floppy disks I had from my early teenage years up until I left for college, which was nearly all years of heavy anime fandom. I figured this would be a good Free Talk article to both look at how Internet access and anime fandom not only correlated but how they’ve changed over this time period.
Series 2 Episode 13 – Crafting Panels for Anime Conventions
Hey everyone – if you’re reading this then it means Drew is up late putting together a podcast because him and Richard are putting together panels for an anime convention! Which, just so happens to be the topic of our show!
We’ll be at Anime Weekend Atlanta presenting the following panels, so if you’re also there, we’d love to meet the listeners!
Ten Years Ten Anime: 2000s Head-to-Head – FRI 9:45 PM CGC 108
Nue Kids On The Block: A Profile of Studio Nue – SAT 2:15 PM CGC 108
Suit (of Armor) Up! 30 Years of Ronin Warriors – SAT 7:15 PM CGC 108
Don’t Talk About The War: Militarism and Pacifism in Japanese Animation – SUN 11:30 AM CGC 107
Series 2 Episode 12 – Rizzobot Cizzarnies
Drew and Richard are back for another exciting episode of Akihabara Renditions! We get back to our roots and have a good, old-fashioned review episode about old Japanese cartoons. We’re headed back to the heyday of the Bubble Economy era by reviewing two OAVs – Robot Carnival (1987) and Record of Lodoss War (1991).
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