Bonus Podcast (with Transcript) 2023 January: Anime Backlog Resolutions Return

Dee, Caitlin, and Vrai check in on how many of their backlog resolutions they managed to finish and what they thought -- and make some pledges for next year too.

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VRAI: Hey there, AniFam. Happy 2023! Thank you so much for being patrons and supporting us. We are here to check in on our anime resolutions, which you may remember from last year, and to make pledges going forward for the year ahead. This is Vrai, and with me today are Dee and Caitlin.

DEE: Hi, you probably already know us since you’re patrons, but just in case, I’m Dee. I’m @joseinextdoor on basically every social media at this point because Twitter may or may not be dead in two weeks. Who knows, ever?

[Chuckling]

DEE: So, you can find me on Tumblr, Twitter, and Mastodon currently.

CAITLIN: All right, hi, I’m Caitlin. I’m still sticking it out on Twitter @alltsun_nodere. I will go down this ship, I guess!

DEE: I mean, me too. Me too. It’s just I’ve got life rafts in a couple of other spots.

[Laughter]

CAITLIN: I have a Cohost that I’ve literally never used, so…

VRAI: And I never left Tumblr, but it is not for professional things. It’s for me to be sad about vampires.

DEE: [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: What if you’re professionally sad about vampires?

DEE: If you’re getting paid to write about it, then you can be professionally sad about them.

CAITLIN: Yeah. I would say that a significant percentage of your body of work is being sad professionally about said vampires.

VRAI: Oh! That’s beautiful. That makes me feel accomplished.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: All right, so how did you two do on your resolutions?

DEE: You knocked them all out, Caitlin? I knew you were going down your shelf A to Z, so there was a very good chance you were going to hit all of them. What were yours again?

CAITLIN: Okay. So, I had Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond, Chihayafuru season 2, From the New World, and Hataraki Man. Because the thing is, that first year, I underestimated how many new things I was going to buy, I overestimated how consistently I was going to be able to get… Like, I think one of my resolutions was Land of the Lustrous, and that was hinging on me following a schedule, knocking out 10 episodes a week.

Now, I have learned, I have gotten a better schedule, and so I am keeping my sights low, keeping it earlier in the alphabet. These are all Blu-rays that I bought this year, so they’re higher in the alphabet, except for Moribito. Although, I still think I bought it this year, but it’s lower in the alphabet. [Chuckles]

DEE: Oh, are you… are you… Sorry, are you referencing what your 2023 backlog is gonna be?

CAITLIN: Yes. Sorry.

DEE: Oh, okay. No, it’s okay.

CAITLIN: No, I’m a little scattered. So, yeah, no, I learned a lot from the first year. And same deal for last year, too. They’re earlier in the alphabet. I had them, I knew solidly that I would be able to get to them pretty early, and I think I knocked them all out by summer.

VRAI: To clarify for folks at home, you have a system where you’re going alphabetically through your Blu-ray collection.

CAITLIN: Yes. And if I buy a new series that is earlier in the alphabet, I push it earlier. So, I’m starting with Akudama Drive and Appare-Ranman! because I bought those recently. I’m not going to loop back around to the beginning of the alphabet after I hit Y for Yona. I don’t have any Z series.

DEE: Yet.

VRAI: All right, well, I guess let’s just keep each person kind of packaged. How did your four shows go for you? How’d you feel?

CAITLIN: So, I enjoyed all of them. I think probably the bottom one was Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond because it was such a… I watched it immediately after watching the first season, which was directed by Rie Matsumoto and was incredible. And then the second season had a different team on it and was very rotely adapting various stories from the manga, so it didn’t really have the same kind of buildup. It was much less energetically directed, just very uninspiring.

And what really made me mad was actually that they pulled footage from the end of the first season, which was Matsumoto’s original material, to try to put it into a big emotional conclusion for Leonardo at the end of the second season, and I was like, “You kick her off the project and then you try to use her material? Fuck you!”

VRAI: That’s pretty tasteless.

CAITLIN: Yeah! It made me mad. But the other series were really good. Chihayafuru… actually not at all like Yu-Gi-Oh! [Chuckles]

DEE: [ironic] What!

CAITLIN: Nothing like Yu-Gi-Oh!, really!

[Chuckling]

CAITLIN: From the New World had a lot to say…

VRAI: Yep. The three of us are going to do a cast on that, I swear to God.

DEE: We should have an AniFem cast about From the New World. I concur with that. There’s plenty to talk about and unravel with it. Absolutely.

CAITLIN: And finally there’s Hataraki Man, which I loved. I thought it was a much more nuanced take on working women, the work–life balance. Because, you know, what about people who do take a lot of satisfaction in their work? Who… that becomes their priority over their personal lives because that is more interesting and enriching and fulfilling to them. And examining the different sides of that, of what it’s like being a woman working in a male-dominated workplace, and what that means.

You know, original manga by Moyoco Anno, so you know that it’s going to have some challenging takes and ideas in it. And yeah, I really, really enjoyed it.

I wish there were more. It’s only 11 episodes. I recommend it. You can get the Blu-ray super cheap! I think I got mine for a dollar from Sentai.

DEE: Yeah, it’s also streaming on HIDIVE. So, if you don’t want to commit to the Blu-ray, even though they are super cheap, you can watch it there, as well.

VRAI: Yeah, you should touch base with Chiaki about that, Caitlin, because it’s, I know, one of her all-time favorites.

CAITLIN: Yeah, we’ve talked about it a little bit.

VRAI: Because I am in podcast-generating mode.

DEE: I’ll be honest, I had no idea Hataraki Man was a josei until right this second. —Okay, sorry, it’s not a josei, but I didn’t know it had a female protag and was by Moyoco Anno. I heard the title and just thought it was like, I don’t know, a comedy about a salaryman.

[Chuckling]

DEE: I genuinely had no idea. I heard the title and my brain just immediately was like, “I dunno.” So, I might need to bump that higher up my list now that I actually know what it’s about! [Chuckles]

VRAI: I bought it on a sale, too, and it’s definitely "to do."

CAITLIN: I think both of you would really enjoy it. I think it’s a little bit more Dee-core, but, yeah, no, it’s a really fantastic series.

DEE: Excellent. Would you say that one was your favorite of the four you watched? I know you said BBB&B was the low point for you. But was Hataraki Man the high point? Or was it, I don’t know, one of the many moments in Chihayafuru where you probably started crying over card games for no reason? Or for lots of reasons, I guess!

CAITLIN: [Chuckles] I think Hataraki Man was just the most solidly like “highs, highs, highs” for me. Chihayafuru is longer. It’s also the middle section. I’m gonna save a lot of that Chihayafuru heat for the third season, which is one of my resolutions for this year.

DEE: Awesome.

VRAI: I will go next because, as always, I am a stupendous failure. So, on January 1, I had managed to do one of my four resolutions! And this morning, I bumped that up to a resounding 50%, although in my defense, I did manage to watch multiple things on my backlog, just not the things that I had nominated last January.

DEE: You picked the wrong stuff.

VRAI: Uh-huh.

DEE: Whoops, lesson learned.

VRAI: Oops. Yeah. So, my resolutions for last year were Kaiba, which I’m just gonna keep doing until I finally get around to watching it, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, the Devilman late-‘80s OVAs, and Dear Brother. So, the two I got through were Devilman and Dear Brother, the latter of which was because podcast.

DEE: Mm-hm.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm.

VRAI: Yep. So, Dear… I feel like I spent four [sic] podcast episodes yelling at people to buy that series while they still can—which, incidentally, it’s now officially out of print, and when the existing stock is gone, it’s gone. So…

CAITLIN: Don’t sleep on it.

VRAI: Let’s go, people. Let’s go!

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

VRAI: It is a really good anime. I was pretty sure I would enjoy it. It’s an incredible influence on Utena. It’s classic proto-yuri, which also means it’s sad. It’s beautifully directed.

And I was surprised by how much genuine emotional high it has, in addition to just being… the early bits are sort of famously (infamously) melodramatic in a very popcorn-munchy kind of way. And there’s a lot of that. But I think at its best, it really does capture this sense of adolescent anguish in a way that feels very genuine. If you are somebody who is a fan of Fushigi Yugi, I think it is similar in tapping on that sort of raw emotional potency.

The last six episodes kind of suck. It loses a character late in the game and the story just never recovers, and the ending itself is kind of a wet fart. But I think 33—

CAITLIN: Did you watch the streaming subtitles or the…?

VRAI: I have the DVDs with the improved subtitles.

CAITLIN: Okay. Okay.

VRAI: Yes… Yeah, the pronoun games thing makes me angry. I still think that the ending is kind of a whiff compared… I think one of the changes they made from the manga version is sort of cheap.

DEE: This is very hard to talk about without spoiling things. So it’s like, “Hey, folks! We have a four-episode [sic] podcast about Dear Brother. You can listen to that.”

CAITLIN: Yeah.

VRAI: Yeah.

CAITLIN: Go watch it. Buy it. If you don’t want to make the investment, which I do recommend you do because it’s an important piece of shoujo history, if nothing else, you can watch it on RetroCrush.

DEE: The subs are rough! But it’s there.

VRAI: Which is so odd. It’s so odd that it has those different subtitles, and also frustrating.

Like, how many classic anime are there where they’re strong, strong, strong and then have kind of a weak finish? So I don’t think that that is near enough to disqualify Dear Brother from being well worth a watch for anybody who is at all interested in older anime. It’s so good and it made me feel things.

The Devilman OVA is less "must-see TV." I found it fun because I have a real soft spot for that particular ‘80s kind of anime gore that’s really literally pulpy. You know, it has that real sense of… you’ve got the guts and the viscera, and it’s something that you don’t see a lot in the post-digipaint era, both because, you know, you’re gonna generate sales for the Blu-ray and you have different TV guidelines for a TV anime. Chainsaw Man is trying to bring it back, but honestly, even then, I feel like digitally drawn blood just doesn’t have that same goopy sense of delightful weight. It’s so funny! Oh my God, I miss old gory anime! They’re hilarious!

In terms of actual content and not just… it’s definitely an OVA in the mold of: the first episode is an advertisement for the manga and the second episode is “Here’s the most popular fight scene we’ve animated for the manga fans.” So it’s not really a complete viewing experience on its own. It’s cool and fun to look at. I think it gets really inventive with some of the action sequences. And I actually really like… Because, obviously, I’m coming from Crybaby as my main experience with…

DEE: Devilman, yeah.

VRAI: … with Devilman. I like that the first episode takes a lot of time developing and building up Akira’s decision to become Devilman and building his relationship with Ryo. The entire 50-minute first OVA is basically the first episode of Crybaby. And it really works! It’s emotionally investing.

I think if you like Crybaby, the OVAs are worth looking at. I don’t know if just on their own, if Devilman doesn’t really interest you much, it’s worth it. It’s a Go Nagai manga, so women aren’t treated super fantaculously [sic]. Miki’s very cute, and she and Akira have some cute chemistry here, but she’s there to be a damsel and also to be naked while being a damsel.

CAITLIN: [Sighs]

VRAI: Yeah. Uh-huh. The fight with Sirene, the demon, that’s the big highlight of the second episode was kind of interesting in that… it was sort of interesting to me that Crybaby actually adds in an extra dimension where she was lovers with the demon that Akira fused with and blah-blah-blah, boring. The OVA doesn’t have that; she just resents humans and thinks they suck and that they are polluting the earth.

And on the one hand, Go Nagai’s issues with women are all over the place because this is a scary naked lady who has teeth and claws, but is mostly just sort of naked in the middle. But it doesn’t feel like gendered violence, if that makes sense, during the big, long fight scene. So, that was neat.

But overall… eh. It’s just a neat piece of historical ephemera, I guess. I had a good time watching it. I don’t know if I’ll go back to it.

DEE: Good to know!

CAITLIN: All right!

DEE: Yeah, I will not be adding that one to my list because I’m not a big Devilman fan, but I appreciate you—

VRAI: You hated Crybaby so much! [Chuckles]

DEE: I respect Crybaby. I do instinctively, on a deep level, hate it, yes. [Chuckles]

VRAI: That’s fair. That’s fair, because the Issues with Women (capital letters) are present.

DEE: Yeah. But I, again, appreciate you telling us about it. I’m sure there are listeners out there who loved Crybaby and are like, “Ooh, cool! Maybe I’ll check this out.”

VRAI: Mm-hm. Also, in my defense, as far as things that… I won’t spend time on them because I didn’t list them; they don’t count. But as far as backlog I meant to get into this year, I did manage to watch Maquia and Night on the Galactic Railroad and the first season of Mob Psycho 100. So, yay for me.

DEE: Nice! That gives you—

VRAI: [crosstalk] All right, Dee, what do you got?

DEE: That might give us a teaser for what one of your resolution shows is. We’ll see.

VRAI: [Chuckles]

DEE: I’m curious.

Okay, yeah, so, my first year, I knocked out all four shows and I was like “Hell yeah, so I’m gonna play in Hard Mode year 2," so I did some longer stuff. So, my plan was to catch up on Pokémon Journeys and then watch Dear Brother, Kimagure Orange Road, and Wolf’s Rain.

CAITLIN: How did that go?

DEE: I did pretty well. I would say that— So, okay, we’re not gonna go in exactly that order. So I did watch Dear Brother. When the podcast was doing the watchalong, I was like, “Oh, this is perfect.” I wasn’t involved in the recordings, but I was like, “I’ll watch it while they’re recording them,” because I edit the transcript, so I was like, “This way, I won’t have anything spoiled and I can kind of read along with what they’re talking about.”

So, I did finish Dear Brother. I mean, I’m not going to rehash everything that Vrai said, but basically everything that Vrai said, with the slight wrinkle that I do think it’s worth watching; I’m not going to buy it because the ending was very disappointing. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Those last six episodes suck!

DEE: It’s one of those things where you know you are riding a train that is going to end up at Tragedy Station. And I was fine with that. But the way it is done is so… it feels like cheap melodrama in a way that a lot of the melodrama before felt like earned melodrama. [Chuckles] And then I sort of just lost interest in the show from that point to the end.

So, I’m not going to buy it, but I do still think it is worth watching as a history piece and because there’s some really great characters in it and just some truly tremendous moments in the early episodes with some of these extra-ass teenagers—and some emotionally resonant moments, too, moments where I was tearing up. It is a good show worth watching; it just has a very disappointing final six episodes.

So, yeah, and then all the other stuff Vrai said about it, as well. [Chuckles]

Okay, so Pokémon Journeys and Wolf’s Rain I completed to the letter if not the spirit.

[Chuckling]

DEE: Pokémon Journeys… I did watch all of Journeys, and I actually got through the entirety of the next season as well, which was Master Journeys. But if by "Pokémon Journeys" you mean the entirety of Journeys, I still have like a cour before I’m caught up with the English adaptation.

That said, I do plan to blast through it because the ending—God, this sounds weird to say every time I say it—the ending of Pokémon is coming up in a few months now, and I need to be there for it. So, I will continue to watch it. But we’re gonna say that yes, I did in fact finish Pokémon Journeys because I technically did; I finished that season.

It was a season of Pokémon. It was just a lot of episodes that were… It was directionless, truthfully, and… It’s such a good show when it’s an ensemble cast with a lot of different arcs they can keep coming back to, and they pared their cast down to basically two people, and it made it a lot harder for them to find throughlines.

Having watched the season after that, I will say they do start to kind of figure their shit out and they start to take advantage of the world-hopping aspect, and there’s a lot of returning characters. So, you start to get characters from the old seasons who come back and actually have an impact on the story and interact with the new characters in meaningful ways.

I finally like what they’re doing with Goh. They still don’t really know what to do with Team Rocket, but they have a few fun episodes, so I’ll take it. And yeah, I’m excited to see how Journeys wraps.

So, I have gotten to a point with it where I am enjoying watching it, which was not always the case early on. It was kind of just like background noise. So I’m glad it’s getting better and figuring out what it wants to do.

Wolf’s Rain I watched, but I didn’t watch the OVAs because they’re not on Crunchyroll. And I didn’t know—

VRAI: What?!

CAITLIN: Wait, what?

DEE: I didn’t know there were four recap episodes in the middle of the series, because I think the studio got sick or something. So, there’s an “ending,” quote-unquote, and then there’s four OVA episodes, which are the actual ending. I don’t have access to those currently. So I’ll finish it—

CAITLIN and VRAI: Oh my God!

DEE: I’ll finish it eventually, I guess. I think they’re still technically—

CAITLIN: Glad I have those Blu-rays.

DEE: I think they’re still technically on Funimation but I canceled my Funimation sub, and so if I want to watch them, I have to sit through like eight hours of commercials, and I didn’t have time. So, yeah, I assume they will eventually make their way to Crunchyroll during this Fun–Crun murder [sic], and I will eventually see how it actually wraps.

I liked it well enough. It’s a good mood piece. It’s nice to see a show for grown-ups. The lore is unnecessarily complicated, but that is very true to the time period that it was being written in, I feel like. And…

VRAI: Deeply incomprehensible on purpose.

CAITLIN: Keiko Nobumoto.

DEE: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Keiko Nobumoto is the series composer on it. Obviously, the music is great because Yoko Ono’s—wait, oh my God—Yoko Kanno… [laughs]

[Laughter]

DEE: I do that way more often than I should.

The music is great. Blue is my favorite character. The boys are good. I watched it dubbed because I’m a fake anime fan, and I had a good time with it.

So, yeah, I am curious to see how it actually ends. I’d heard from a lot of people that it’s a very sad show, and I didn’t necessarily—

VRAI: It’s sad as shit.

DEE: Yeah, and see, and I haven’t necessarily gotten that… I mean, there’s definitely an undercurrent of melancholy throughout it, but it’s not horrifically sad yet, so I’m like, “What is that OVA going to do to me?”

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

DEE: So, we’ll see. I’ll eventually get there. So, again, to the letter if not the spirit, I finished Wolf’s Rain; it’s just that there’s an OVA.

Okay, and then Kimagure Orange Road, I got about a cour into, remembered that there were like 70 episodes of the show, and was like, “I don’t actually like this, and I don’t want to keep watching.”

CAITLIN: Aw.

DEE: So I stopped watching, because the point of these backlogs is to watch stuff… I feel like the point of these backlogs isn’t to punish yourself with multiple cours of something you don’t like; it’s to try things, and hopefully you will like them. Wasn’t into this one, so I dropped it, but I did watch The Untamed, which is basically anime. So I’m gonna say I replaced Kimagure Orange Road with The Untamed!

CAITLIN: I do want to point— I also watched Kimagure Orange Road this year. I liked it. It wasn’t earth-shattering to me. I appreciate it as… its place in history. It was very influential. It’s kind of the origin point of most shounen romantic comedies…

DEE: Oh, it is. You can see it as the…

CAITLIN: … for better or for worse!

DEE: Yeah, it is the template of the harem shounen comedy, 100%. If it had been maybe 26 episodes, I think I would have finished it, I think I would have stuck it out. But it felt like it was the same thing every episode, where he likes this one girl but he’s dating the other girl because she likes him, and so he’s just kind of going along with it but he really likes this other girl, but she’s a tsundere and they can’t quite communicate.

It was just that, over and over again, and I was like, “I can’t do that for 70 episodes. I can’t.” So I tapped out early.

CAITLIN: They start to get… I’m not saying you should go back to it. They do get more and more high concept as the series goes. They have a lot of movie parody episodes. It’s weird. It’s a weird series. Just very strange. Does a lot of kinda avant-garde… whatever they felt like doing. I don’t know. [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah, but I think the other issue was, other than the dark-haired girl, I didn’t really care for the cast. So it wasn’t even like I was having fun with the characters.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah. Madoka’s great.

DEE: So, I’m glad you liked it. Lots of people do. I mean, shounen harem rom-coms are going to be kind of a tough sell for me anyway. I thought this one would have enough charm, and I thought the psychic element… when I watched the first couple episodes, I was like, “Okay, there’s some wrinkles in this. This could be fun.” But yeah, not for me. So, I did not finish that one, but that was intentional. I dropped it on purpose. So, that’s where I was at the end of my watchalong time.

VRAI: Man, old anime could just go, man. I am currently in the middle of watching the Tomorrow’s Joe recap films, and it’s a very jerky viewing experience because it was 79 episodes, and it’s like, “I can tell there’s a bunch of stuff missing, but also, this is a pretty straightforward narrative. So, like… how?”

CAITLIN: Yeah, very, very different pacing you get in those old series.

By the way, Dee, I do want to point out that you said “Funi–Crunchy murder” instead of “merger.”

VRAI: [Laughs] I mean…

CAITLIN: Which, you know…

DEE: I mean, they did sort of murder Funimation, so it’s not inaccurate. Yeah, that was a misspeak on my part.

CAITLIN: [Laughs] I thought so. It was just [unintelligible due to crosstalk].

DEE: [crosstalk] A hilarious misspeak.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: All right. It is time. Drumroll.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, what are y’all’s backlog resolutions? [Playfully imitates a drumroll]

VRAI: [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: I lost the tab. What were my resolutions? I lost it, hold on! [Unintelligible due to crosstalk]

DEE: [crosstalk] Did you tweet yours out already?

CAITLIN: Yeah, I did tweet mine out.

DEE: See, I haven’t. I was waiting for this episode because I thought you guys might give me ideas for things I could put on it!

CAITLIN: Well, you didn’t see, so… You know, didn’t work out. Well, I did it as part of the thread. And I’m still looking for the tweet. Doot-de-doot.

DEE: Yeah, I’m gonna add mine in.

CAITLIN: Okay, here we go! All right, I found mine. They are Chihayafuru season 3…

DEE: Hell yeah.

CAITLIN: Gonna finish that one out. Until they make another season, right?

DEE: God willing. They’ve got plenty of material, and the manga wrapped a few months ago.

CAITLIN: Yeah, the manga ended pretty recently.

DEE: I would love to see the entire anime get adapted. It would be over 100 episodes and it would be glorious!

CAITLIN: The Girl in Twilight, which… I know, Dee, you had a problem with the fanservice. It wasn’t very well liked.

VRAI: I dropped that about halfway through.

CAITLIN: But it is written by Uchikoshi, so I have to give it a try, and the Blu-rays were very, very cheap on Sentai!

DEE: I was trying to remember what that one was even about. That’s right. Yeah, I did watch like half of that. Okay, well, have fun.

[Chuckling]

CAITLIN: Kino’s Journey 2003.

VRAI: [loudly] Yah!

Ooh, sorry. I’m—

DEE: Damn, Vrai!

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

DEE: I didn’t realize you’d never… That was so much raw emotion!

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

VRAI: You know, they’re my baby!

DEE: I apologize to Peter and any listeners with audio sensitivities! [Laughs]

VRAI: I’m so sorry!

CAITLIN: Oh my gosh! I love that I was able to make you feel so excited, Vrai, because I knew you were gonna be happy about this one. I was not expecting the yell that just emerged from you! [Laughs]

VRAI: The fucking football fan [unintelligible due to crosstalk]!

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah! Yeah. That was “Your team just scored the winning goal.” Yeah, absolutely. It was glorious.

I didn’t realize you’d never seen that one before, Caitlin. That’s exciting.

CAITLIN: And, finally, Moribito. And I have realized that these are all Sentai releases.

DEE: Oh, yeah, they did rescue… Technically, Moribito was, I think, Bandai? It was somebody, and then Sentai rescued the license.

CAITLIN: So yeah, those are my four.

DEE: Excellent.

VRAI: Nice, nice, nice. All right. So, mine for the year are Kaiba… because at this point, I’m just gonna put it on the list until I make myself do it.

DEE: Or die, one of the two.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

VRAI: One of those will happen! Uh-huh!

DEE: Or the heat death of the universe. One of these.

[Laughter]

VRAI: One of these will occur! Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans because I think, between Witch from Mercury reigniting my interest in the Gundams and Maquia reminding me that I have a lot of feelings about Mari Okada, I might be able to do it.

Serial Experiments Lain, which I technically have seen before, way back in college, but I feel like that doesn’t count because I was sort of half-watching it and I hated it, so I want to give it another shake.

And then, Healer Girl, a show that I really wanted to watch and just kinda never got started on and I know you really liked it, Dee, so it looks like a chill, nice time.

DEE: It is a chill, nice time.

VRAI: [crosstalk] And a little musical.

DEE: And a musical. Yes. Yeah, I think you’ll have a good time with that one. Very nice, very nice.

VRAI: I didn’t put Mob on there because that felt like cheating when I’d already kinda got the ball rolling on it. So, eh.

DEE: I mean, Caitlin did a season 3, so I think it would have been fair. But it’s too late! You already tweeted, so these are your four.

VRAI: [crosstalk] I twote it. [Chuckles]

DEE: At the end of next year, you can be like, “I should have done Mob.”

[Chuckling]

CAITLIN: Last year I had two season 2’s.

VRAI: Smarter than me. All right, what about you, Dee?

CAITLIN: Only in some ways.

DEE: Okay, so, my anime backlog resolutions for 2023. I’m not going as hardcore as I did last year as far as long stuff. It’s going to be shorter things that I should probably just fill out my history with.

So, number one, because Discotek is releasing it, is Aim for the Ace, a series I have been wanting to watch for a very long time and am extremely happy—

VRAI: Oh, me too!

CAITLIN: Oh, yes!

DEE: —am extremely happy that Discotek is going to be releasing it. I’m hoping it’ll be on RetroCrush, but if not, I am willing to buy the Blu-rays to watch it.

For folks who don’t know, it is like the classic shoujo sports series. It’s a tennis show. I guarantee you’ve watched an anime that has referenced it because it is such a touchstone, and the fact that we’ve never gotten it in the US is a tragedy. So, I am really excited to watch that one.

I also believe… isn’t it Dezaki?

CAITLIN: I think so, yeah.

VRAI: Yeah, because he directed like 60% of old anime!

DEE: Yeah, it’s Dezaki Osamu, who also did the back half of Rose of Versailles and Dear Brother and is, again, a seminal, extremely influential director. So, yeah, super hyped for that one.

And then, the other ones I’ve got are… I’m going to watch Antique Bakery. Yeah, I’ve started getting into Yoshinaga Fumi’s manga a little bit, and Antique Bakery is one that’s also available in anime form, and it appears to be streaming on Prime. So, I’m going to give that one a shot. I’m looking forward to the chill-boy baking times.

And then, since Caitlin spoke so highly of it, I’m putting Hataraki Man on my backlog resolution list for this coming-up year. Excited for that one, as well.

And then the final one on this, I continue… I have mentioned this before a few times, but I continue to be ashamed to admit that I have never seen Kiki’s Delivery Service. So I am putting it on this list and I am watching Kiki’s Delivery Service.

CAITLIN: [whispering, as in disbelief] What?

DEE: Yeah!

VRAI: You’ll have a good time.

DEE: I bet I will! And it won’t take me very long. And it’s one of those things where I keep being like, “I should watch this,” and then I’m with friends and they’re like, “Yeah, let’s watch it,” and then we don’t, and so I’ve yet to see it. [Chuckles] So, yeah.

CAITLIN: Oh, I think I might’ve been one of those friends this year!

DEE: Yeah, we did talk about watching it when I was in Seattle, and we just got busy with other stuff and never ended up actually watching it. Which, again, totally fine. Now it’s on my resolutions list, which means I have to watch it! I have to watch it so I can win the game! I have to win the resolutions game. I’m very competitive. So, yeah.

VRAI: Can I talk you into the adorably janky Scum Villain donghua? It’s not an anime, so it’s like bonus. It’s also only like 11 episodes long.

DEE: What’s it on?

VRAI: YouTube.

DEE: [noncommittal] Mm… Yeah, maybe.

VRAI: [Laughs] You’re not actually held to that.

DEE: Yeah, I’m not committing to it, but if you talk it up a couple more times in the Slack like you did The Untamed, like… I think it was time two I was like, “Yep, this is going on my watch list.” So, yeah, sell me on it, Vrai. Not right now because we’re out of time. But sell me on it and I’ll add it to my watch list.

VRAI: I’m not actually sure whether it will be your thing. I just think you’d find it interesting! [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah. I mean, I probably would. I liked The Untamed. I’m not opposed to it. It’s just there’s a lot of stuff out there for me to watch!

VRAI: Fair.

DEE: Yeah.

VRAI: Rock on. All right. Well, good job, y’all!

And by all means, chime in on the comments. We want to know what you were watching or what you’re planning to watch this year, because it’s not fun to get too competitive about these things in terms of a shamy way, but it’s kind of fun to have a reason to come together and to share about these things. Right?

So, good going and we will check in again next January.

DEE: God willing and the creek don’t rise, we will check in again next January!

[Chuckling]

DEE: Thank you, AniFam!