Episode 12: Explore the cuddliest nation in the world; North Korea

Download Episode 12


With a title like that, I can't wait to see how people find our podcast this week.

Note: I am aware that our voices go Chipmunk during the Gintama review. This was completely unintentional, I could change it, but Alex's chipmunk voice breaks me up.

This episode is almost exactly half the length of our previous one, clocking in at around 50 minutes. (And would probably run for about 25 minutes if I cut out all the times I say "Andddddddddd".

News


It was a rather slow week this week with news, and the item that we talked about the most wasn't even really an anime!



This show fascinates us to no end. Translated to something to the effect, "A Squirrel and a Hedgehog" it's both hilarious and frightening at the same time. The production values are also very impressive.

I pledge to try and get this baby fansubbed. Anyone here who can speak Korean PLEASE e-mail us!

The Appleseed 2 Trailer



I am not impressed. Alex thinks it looks pretty good though. It seems that this one is completely in 3D and over-stylized as possible, conforming to every cliche that has overidden action films in general, the "bullet-time" cam and whatnot.

Why rip off the Matrix when that was really a ripoff of a vast amount of Shirow's work anyway?

Japanese Box Office

This news is a few months late, but no real suprises here. Doraemon, Pokemon, Death Note (Live Action), Detective Conan and Tales of Earthsea round out the Anime/Manga related titles that made the most in the Japanese box office in 2006. Earthsea, unsuprisingly was the #1 Japanese film of the year.




Blue Dragon sells 15 million units on the DS


It may have been a hit by XBox 360 in Japan standards, it proved to be an absolute megahit on a Japanese device. An anime & manga is on the way too.





Gintama Volume 1 sales cross the one million mark & Mini Review: Gintama (Anime version)


This IS the latest Shounen megahit, Gintama merchandise is already all over Asia and it just may be watchable for those of you who are usually put off by Shounen epics with 10 episode fight scenes and endless episodes.

Shinsen Subs has the torrent files here



I've quite enjoyed it thus far. It's got much more of an emphasis on comedy and is watchable in the same way something like the Simpsons may be. It doesn't consist of 20 episode fighting arena arcs or anything like that. (At least so far)

Anime Person Of The Week: Yoshihiro Togashi




Could these two pictures be any more different? That's what a nervous breakdown will do to you! Creator of Yu Yu Hakusho & Hunter X Hunter as well as the recipient of the Tezuka award, Yoshihiro Togashi is certainly a powerful figure in the Manga world. At least when he gets off his "sick leave". (One year and counting)

Wrapup


Naturally, a counter counter counter counter counter counter counter shoutout to Up a paddle and a shout out to Anime World Order for playing our promo! Thanks!

Comments

Chris Sobieniak said…
Noticed this early podcast about the N. Korean "Squirrel & Hedgehog" cartoons you were mentioning. Just thought I drop my two cents here besides this being an outdated podcast...

This and other episodes were produced by the April 26th Children's Film Studio, though also known under the abbreviated "SEK" (Scientific Educational Korea) as well. This series has been on-going since the late 70's according to some sources I noticed, though it's probably still in production as we speak (if not hardly known outside the country).

While most have already seen episode 27, the wolves featured in that appear to be new characters added to the story, as previous episodes mostly tend to feature the weasels as well as mice that were against the "peoples' army" (or whatever I want to call 'em). A Bit Torrent that's been out on Pirate Bay features the first 24 episodes in VCD-sized mpeg's. It's worth checking out if only to see the evolution of the cartoon as a whole.

Aside from that, SEK also apparently was responsible for having done animations for several foreign companies over the years, often on TV episodes though they probably don't get credited for the effect given the circumstances. Back in the 1980's, they were on Rene Laloux's "Gandahar", the third in a trilogy of films he did that all happen to get co-produced with Communist studios in the past. In the case of Gandahar, it was noted how rather embarrassed the SEK animators were in trying to animated nude people, no doubt since that sort of thing is never done in their culture (or animating anything of an adult nature since they were mostly doing children's stuff like the cartoon mentioned here).

Some noteworthy links to share:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEK_Studio
http://www.nkeconwatch.com/category/dprk-organizations/companies/sek-studio/
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=7876