Hurricane Irma may have left us without power for weeks–despite being of substantially lower strength than the last hurricane, suggesting that our local monopoly power company spent its billions on lobbying politicians to vote against solar power than maintaining the grid–but we are FINALLY back to talk about our time at Otakon 2017 before Daryl reviews the 2001 film Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis.

Introduction (0:00 – 21:30 )

But before we talk about any of that, it’s time to talk about hardcore pornography! Specifically, on how and perhaps why the delivery and monetization mechanisms for cartoon smut have remained relatively static over the last several years while everything else has drastically changed. We get enough spam as it is, so we’ll just skip out on linking to the sites discussed here. (Note: the original definition of “decimate” was to reduce BY one-tenth, not reduce TO one-tenth as stated.)

Promo: Right Stuf Anime (21:30 – 23:39 )

Originally we were going to plug that at Otakon, a Kickstarter was announced to dub all of Aria the Animation, which is a totally different show than Aria the Scarlet Ammo. But the hurricane recovery took so long that the Kickstarter ended with them having met all their stretch goals without us helping out at all. Wait, fortunately?! We need to prove that THEY NEED US.

Convention Report: Otakon 2017 (23:39 – 52:12 )

We talk about our experiences at Otakon 2017, now that they’ve moved locations from Baltimore to Washington D.C. Though since we were Press, we sort of um, missed seeing the majority of this convention…but on the bright side, we got plenty of interviews! Please look forward to them in the pages of Otaku USA Magazine as well as Anime USA!

We’ll update this space in er, the near future (wink) with a listing of all the titles that were shown at our panels, but for now:

The History of Magical Girls:

Himitsu no Akko-Chan

Sally the Witch

Marvelous Melmo

Cutey Honey

Mojakko Megu-chan

Majokko Tickle

Minky Momo

Creamy Mami

Persia, The Magical Fairy

Pastel Yumi

Himitsu no Akko-Chan ’88

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Magical Angel Sweet Mint

Akazukin Chacha

Fancy Lala

Sailor Moon

Saint Tail

Magic Knight Rayearth

Card Captor Sakura

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne

Full Moon Wo Sagashite

Ojamajo Doremi

Madoka Magica

Pretty Cure

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

Magical Girl Raising Project

Review: Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis (52:12 – 1:52:52 )

This is yet another of those overly long Daryl reviews where he speaks more or less uninterrupted for an hour straight because nobody else has seen the cartoon in several years, and the crux of what he has to say is how much of a different experience it is to watch this film now compared to 16 years ago, and that you shouldn’t watch any of the various pirate rips/encodes circulating on the Internet because it’ll adversely affect your perception of the work.

• This is the best current version of Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis to order and watch: the UK Blu-Ray/DVD combo set. Don’t be fooled by the box cover because it’s lying: that is an all-region Blu-Ray disc and it will work on US players.


• Serial Cities: The Politics of Metropolis from Lang to Rintaro is a writeup by Lawrence Bird, PhD of Architecture History & Theory. You may need to create a free Academia.edu account to download the PDF


• The Dark Horse release of the original Metropolis manga didn’t come out in the US until about two years or so after this film; it says it’s out of print which is odd, since Lost World and Nextworld appear to both still in print or otherwise easily available

<figure id="attachment_3459" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3459" style="width: 525px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-3459" class="wp-caption-text">Haha, they misspelled Metropolis there–HEY WAIT THAT’S A PORNO MAG</figcaption></figure>

Anime Weekend Atlanta is this weekend, but since Clarissa has moved away and Gerald’s employer won’t give him the time off, it seems only Daryl is going. Please vote in the new poll whether Gerald should ditch having to come to work on a Saturday unexcused to instead be at the anime con.