[Music]
Hello and welcome to an all new episode of NMA Brain Freeze. We are your damn the damn
Toasts. I am John and I'm CC and when there's just too much cool anime to watch we've got you covered.
Today I will once again dive into the world of the occult where alien spirits and monsters of all
kinds linger to snatch your soul. Oh worse! Join me in two of the most likeable protagonists you have
ever seen as we brave the wild waters of the new hit show Dandadan. It's our season finale.
John and I will of course give you our picks for best of the season. First things first let's
tackle a couple of left over shows in the quick and the dead. So pack your best running shoes in case
you are forced into a game of tech with a high speed cursed spirit don't get too depressed while
protecting your golden balls at all costs and definitely don't pause the pod we'll be right back.
[Music]
All right quick into that I only really have one show to talk about that I watched and that
doesn't really merit a full review. Everything else is still running or you know from
still wrapping up whatever or is gonna get still another season and yeah so that's of course blue
look season two the return of soccer squid game which quickly after couple of training episodes
not many I think it's like three moves into the big match like the biggest match until now where
our team of Rectag old strikers from the blue lock program play against the under 20
teams so under 20 years national Japanese soccer team. And yeah it's more blue lock so
the the second season made me think that eight bit are stretching themselves a bit thin these days
oh no a lot less animation and much more heavy on the editing at times it feels more like a motion
comic than anything else it's only thanks to the other parts of the presentation being so on point
like shop expressive character designs the soundtrack the sound design and the voice acting that
still works mostly it's not as bad as some of the discussions on Twitter or some of the reviews made
it out to be but that's kind of now the look of the show and if that's gonna be the look of the show
going going forward that's a bummer and a definitive downgrade so I hope it will improve again with
the third season like there's some good things in here let's not like be a complete downer about
this like for example pretty much my only complaint about season one was that we didn't have a proper
audience for the big reactions and proper atmosphere that is remedied in this season as like with
the big game against you 20 is held in blue locks own stadium which is got the impact the show just
it's on it's it on all cylinders and is really good at conveying the intense atmosphere when the
player step on the pitch for the first time it's like really goosebumps inducing and coolest shit
and you have like this this nice interactions with the family members of our team players who are in
in the audience and they're like a couple of cute moments that I really liked and I just
in sports anime I want an audience reaction I want to especially when it's the team sport thing right
when you get something like soccer or basketball or whatever it's it's just it or you know in in
high q for example is it does so much it does so much of conveying the hype like getting you into
there and so I missed that from blue lock season one a lot because they just basically played it
an empty stadium with no one there and just gray walls and of course the stadium or also fully
packed stadium looks much better than just the green pitch and gray walls so just in that regard the
optics of this season and the presentation and everything around it are much better than you have
this cool dynamic between one of the characters that has wars introduced pretty late in the in the first
season or in it's she and he has this dynamic with our main character and it's that is pretty cool
and they're have like they basically bit like this this strong center striker unit that feeds off
each other like a bunch of fucking I don't know like it was like some kind of cannibalistic soccer wolves
or something like that it's fucking crazy like everyone feeds off each others or basically kind of
crazy shit like that and they're they're just trying to develop new plays and everyone in the team
is just like that and that can lead to high moments but like I said biggest problem the animation
doesn't support that momentum that is built up once the enter the stadium like it literally
doesn't have any we still get mostly super slowdown scenes that are basically basically for all
intents and purposes still frames what little motion there is is often cursed by being CG which
to be frank could be worse it's at least fluid but it also feeds like it's severely lacking a punch
it's not choppy or anything but like a lot of other tv cg stuff and enemy feeds too floaty and
waitless and you want those shots and explosive maneuvers to have a feeling of impact it doesn't have
any of the oomph from season one so outside of some special moves like but you're a special dribble
there was nothing really standing out at the start of the match not even the image of a snake suddenly
materializing on the field like as a visual metaphor for you 20s main defenders stopping blue
locks play dead in its trek that wasn't integrated into the presentation with the same in same
panache that you know season one was so good at delivering and that continues throughout the match
lots of barely moving characters sometimes and when you get that rare cool dribble pass or gold shot
it's cg lacks kicking a cg ball mostly and it literally looks like they're treading water sometimes
a lot of snazzy effects and intense expression are there on the character phases and you know you
have the rocking soundtrack like i said you have the great voice work uh by the voice actors they all
try to compensate for that but they just can't especially if the big moments of season one are
relatively fresh on one's mind and it's not been that long that i watched that and that's a bit
of a bummer we know this show can look better because we have seen it one season ago and to be
absolutely fair one of our favorite shows jojo's bizarre adventure sometimes partially has these
issues as well where there's very limited actual animation on characters in a fight but the big
difference is all the stuff that needs to have impact in jojo's does 90% of the cases like David
projection just knows how to underscore the big moments and make them shine despite the limited
animation and also jojo's characters designs are a lot more complex so you just need to have the
right people at the helm to who know what matters and blue locks season to apparently didn't at
least when it comes to the actual plays there yeah this incredibly funny scene i had to screen shot
and put on blue sky with a full frame shot of the face of japan u20 skepten Oliver iq and him saying
you're not moving blue lock and i was like do they know oh no and if so does that make it
better or worse but yeah i don't know who exactly if this crew of the crew changed i think i read
somewhere that a lot of the people from season one moved over to work on a reincarnated as a
slime movie and that would make sense to me that would explain a lot so yeah again you got some good
stuff in there like the first goal for blue lock by naggy's pretty damn cool and that's because it
employs the same explosive traditionally animated silas in season one big surprise there more of
that would have been nice there are some of that sprinkled in between to through the season there
are some really cool hand animated plays and so on but you know in terms of pure volume
there's not as much cool stuff in the season and it was in season one but that was a cool shot
that was a really cool shot and also his one lighter is super cool right after he makes a crazy
dribble trick and right before taking a shot he says nice to meet you to a pan my name is naggy's
shiro which is tear followed by the explosive goal that's very cool shit and the crowd reaction is
appropriately huge that's what i want to see i just sound so ridiculous it is it's about that's
the shit that i want to see in my ridiculous sports anime right that's what i come here for like
i mean i also like the realistic stuff but if you give me something outrageous like blue lock
that's the mo these are the moments i want and they're not enough in the second season to be fair it's
also shot a runtime it's like only 12 episodes while the first season that 24 so maybe that also feels
like maybe maybe in terms of compare when compared in terms of base screen presence of cool moments
maybe the percentage isn't even that much lower but there was just more episodes in season one so
there was more time to put cool stuff in there i don't know um but yeah it's still it's still blue lock
it's still super fun like you have these the evil old geezers of Japan soccer association want to
crush the ambitious young team of ego and just silly new ideas i mean they're actually silly but
they're cool so you get the idea and it's just like super villains on both sides i guess and
despite all my complaints about the animation the match is still very exciting and like i said you
got a cool brother dynamic between a rin and si like rin is on the side of blue lock si's on the
side of the u20 team and they had a falling out as bros when rin always following after his big brothers
in his brother's footsteps and they made this promise where si's gonna be the come the number one
striker in the world and rin is gonna become the number two striker in the world right next to his
big brother that was his dream and then his brother kind of went back on that and decided no i'm not
gonna do it anymore and he rin fell betrayed and now he wants to use this match to kill his brother
it's literally what he says uh he doesn't want to kill him he wants to kill him on the field but he
literally says i'm gonna kill him he's so stupid i don't know he differentiate that he wants to kill
him with his cool plays john with his awesome soccer skills sure it's it's it's awesome i love it it's so
stupid and it's so much fun and i wish it looked better or at least that goes at a good as it is in
season one you know you can't have everything maybe the next season will look better because the
full staff is at uh hand again and uh they can deliver just like that in season one and um again
there's some really cool moments sprinkled into the second season definitely i just wish
it were more there were more of them just from the perspective of the animation not story-wise
story-wise there's enough there it is enough uh character uh there in the character department uh to
feed on and everything enough cool moments but it would be nice if they looked a bit better just
in general so we'll see i will definitely i will still watch season three of course because i'm enjoying
this show so much but you know if i'm just hoping the production values go a bit up again in the next
season let's see please eight bit manage your uh distribute distribute your available personnel better
uh yeah yeah john what do you have tassu ketsu um boy this show tried to be a lot of different
things and it was it started off real interesting with this like death game thing that i talked about
and it had this first or second episode twist where the main character died except he didn't actually
okay i mean and then everyone is trying to play four d-chasse against each other and this
Jesus christ i got i mean i finished watching this show i don't understand most of what happened
because of all the plotting and scheming that was gone didn't really make one lick of sense
yeah i because they do away with the uh death game and then they sort of bring it back and then they don't
and then hey guess what the villains were just misunderstood all along it's like man shut off
wow that's like a fun time it was all about family family family than diesel is that you
and it just it started off so strong and it just creamed off the edge of a cliff in the latter half
where they they tried to change the focus to a different character and it sort of partially worked but then
at the end of the day oh we're we were able to resurrect the main character anyway i was like
what was all of this for sounds sounds like a good question so i don't think i could recommend it and
i don't i don't think it was satellites best offering because some of the animation was kind of
pretty inconsistent throughout so i like to check out their work but boy i don't i think this may have
been one to pay the bills but be the chance sometimes sometimes you just got to do that in spite of
this adaptation like people i guess people were clamoring for an adaptation of this for a long time
and i don't know if this is how the original comic played out but it seemed like it didn't really
land with a lot of the reviews i had read so it's sitting at a 5.56 on my anime list
yikes
so you know that that that's not a strong vote of confidence that surely was the like i really wanted
to like this show and i stuck with it to the end and it wasn't worth it don't watch this show i don't
intend to but thanks for the warning yeah i mean i i feel like we don't say that too often because i
don't like saying that but boy oh boy yes we want to be mostly a positive podcast we want to encourage
people to watch more anime that's why we're doing this like hey if you don't have time to watch this
here's this cool show maybe you want to check it out it's always a bummer when we have to tear into a
show really unless it's funny to tear into it sorry art but you know it's always like if they
went there's a show where it's like this could be cool and it turns out not to be it is always a bummer
especially when it just train wrecks itself itself yeah that was that
but also there is magic loom here which was you know the cute magical girl workplace comedy i've
been watching and it was neat uh and i guess it's coming back for a second season at some point because
they ended on a little bit of a cliffhanger where uh i guess these creatures that are sort of pop up
all over the case these kai are sort of learning how to evolve and you know they're the magic
Cindy they are pulling a borg in adapting to the magic that are used being used on them so oh boy
you got to pull an even bigger gun than the last one bowl what does that mean i wonder if that could
be an allegory for something hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm one wonders um but you know the
characters were still pretty charming all the way through and you know it was very bright and colorful
so you know hey hey you know sure great i'll probably check out season two for that JC staff uh i think
uh worked a little bit on it and they it's amazing when they actually put in effort sometimes they do
that can you believe it i can i mean there's a new railgun season on the way so i guess they'll
be putting in effort on that again so so yeah uh i think that was a fun breezy watch and i'm
looking forward to more of it nice love live superstar season three i mean i don't know
how to talk about love life anymore but you know the girls go to china they have they put on a big show
there the encourage one of the girls to keep being an idol five of the girls graduate from high
school and they leave the school up to the new generation and you know that's that pretty much
not really as poignant as like some of the other love live shows but still
enjoyable for what it was still pretty sunrise is still you know doing the good work that they do
on love life so and the last one is Ron Mahath she is also coming back for a second season at some
point but uh boy this was also really fun to see because you know never having watched the original
seeing how ridiculous and goofy this show was was a lot of fun god what was it i think it was
mappa mappa put in definitely put in the work on this one uh they hopefully they're still not
killing their animators but you know old happy will yeah we'll see uh but i'm glad you're enjoying it
like i mean considering you didn't have really watched the old show and everything and uh
that that that was brand of kind of old school comedy still works for you
yeah i mean it was silly and it was you know a really quick 12 episodes so you know got to uh me oh
we kind of got to speedrun meeting a lot of the characters and i feel like the fact that it
went as fast as it did worked in its favor i mean
i guess if you're a fan of the old this is probably you know you've seen all of this already so getting
through it like real quick is probably a good thing but you know i feel like it worked just as well for
someone like me who hadn't seen the original so the fact that some of the characters can't tell
the other transformed characters apart is so goofy like i can't get over it sometimes
but it it it it helps play into how silly it is like it knows exactly what it's trying to be so
that's a lot that's worth a lot for any show really yes so i like it i'm looking forward to more of
this goofiness uh and you know hey good times it was it was good times it was fun times it was silly times
but i think uh that's i think that's everything for my quick and a dead just a blue
through him as quick as possible so some exceptions aside uh you know it seems like you had fun
with the show's you great so there's that yeah pushing tasks you get to try to do something else is good
stuff not you that mean format yeah but yeah that's it for the quick and to dead so let's move over to our
i guess second and final review of this season
[Music]
really from her recent break up momo ayase a popular high schooler shows kindness to her socially
awkward schoolmate kentakakura by standing up to his bullies can misunderstand her intentions
believing he has made a new friend who shares his obsession with aliens and UFOs
however momo's own eccentric occult beliefs lie in the supernatural realm she thinks aliens do not exist
rivalry quickly brews as each becomes determined to prove the other wrong
spy danishan clash over their opposing beliefs momo and can form an unexpected but intimate
friendship a bond forged in a series of supernatural battles and bizarre encounters with urban
legends and paranormal entities as both develop unique superhuman abilities they learn to
supplement each others weaknesses leading them to wonder if their newfound partnership may be about
more than just survival thanks a l rewrite for this summary um danadan is a manga by yuki nobo tatsu
that started publishing in chonjon plus in april 2021 counts at this point 18 volumes and is still
running tatsu also wrote the manga fire and ball and segi no ro kugo the tv adaptation of danadan started
in october last year and the first half of its first season i will talk about today counts 12 episodes
it is produced and animated by sions saru which have come up several times in our show i review
devilman crybaby and keep your hands off aso can which i both liked or respected to varying degrees
though i'll probably never watch devilman crybaby ever again
just to depressing man they also animated the recent requel of scop pilgrim for netflix which i like
the whole damn lot they did a bit for star wars visions and a couple of other things and in the
animation studio landscape they are definitely a pretty unique entity highly influenced by the style
of one of their founders the director musaki wasa who also directed um their devilman and aso
could shows the animation can be pretty unusual especially when compared to your standard shonen
shows which considering that danadan is their first big current shonen adaption makes this project
all the more interesting all their projects have a very loose sometimes cartoony sometimes very
bizarre and dark sometimes very playful animation style and art design to it um you have devilman
crybaby which is very dark dirty and grotesque then there is keep your hands off aso can which
revels in the concept of animation itself and the joy its protagonist gained from working in that field
pack to the brim with omajas to works that inspired you aso and his team then you have scop pilgrim
which adheres so close to the graphic novel's artwork that it feels like a literally leapt of the
page there an incredibly versatile studio stuck to the brim with capable hands all aspects which
had me very excited to see what they could do with a popular new shonen jump ip like danadan which i
had already heard a lot of positive things about before the anime adaption was even announced
and when it was boy did people lose their shit uh science sorrow being let added the excitement was
palpable not the least on my end so it's science sorrow deliver oh man did they and danadan
the director is fruga yamashiro who also directed two episodes of keep your hands off aso can
and some episodes of other shows like he history um super shiro and tatami time machine blues
but this is his first full director gig he is supported by the man the legend our boy he roxi seko
who handled the series composition and adapted screenplay and of course he has come up a million
times in our show before because he had a hand in a shitload of things we reviewed and love attack on
titan jujitsu kaisen chansoman mobsyko 100 winlens sagga if you have seko on the script and the source
material is at least good your chances of being disappointed are pretty god damn low the man just
knows how to translate characters dialogue and story from the page of amanga to the small screen without
a doubt for the music we also got a real heavyweight on the helm in the form of kansku ujio who has
done the soundtrack for chansoman devil man crybaby heavenly delusion ping pong liss and the blue blood
a silent voice and other stuff so as you can see the production set of this show is out of this world
but what about the story and characters well first we have momo ise our main girl voiced by shion
wakayama who voiced hume in danazanan and maria renault in the japanese stop of castle venia nocturn
apparently who knew and a bunch of other stuff of course so momo gets dumped by her boyfriend because
she is broke and doesn't want to put out that's shiti uh not a first but of him she has a bit of an
aggressive confronting nature when something a noisera like when he breaks up with her she immediately
tries to kick him to the head give him a good old boot to that someone else in her school experiences
both sides of that when she stands up for him to some bullies the lone otaku in question who is by
the way voiced by natsuki hanaye so tangiro from demon slayer gets the partially wrong impression
she does this because just like him she's interested in the occult or at least in the same field
of the occult but unlike him she doesn't believe in aliens and unlike her he doesn't believe in ghosts
so when they dare each other to prove the existence of either she of course gets almost abducted by aliens
and he gets possessed by a ghost despite how fortuitous yeah as it happens despite being a different
kinds of peril the two are able to join forces and help each other out though as momo is able to
unleash her until now dormant spiritual powers she can basically manifest like these two giant spirit
hands that can grab on to or smash anything like telekinesis stuff and can also suppress the ghost
that has possessed our lone occult otaku which enables him to use the ghost power without being taken
over by its mind so they fend off the aliens escape the spaceship and then right at the end of
the first episode comes the actual twist and drive of the show which i or rather m a l rewrite
gave away in the summary so momo has a big crush on this actor called can takakura and wants to find a
guy who is just like him she only hooked up with her ex because he reminded him of that actor she
always wrote she always drawn on about how she will probably never find someone that uses this
exact kind of masculine charm and then it turns out occult kune's name is actually of course can takakura
and the way that is revealed in the finale of the first episode is amazing it's like a big bang
shaking her life to the core and of course she absolutely can't and doesn't want to deal with that
this is absolutely not the type of character she wants to associate with her idol and deep down she
is probably afraid to eventually fall for him just because of that name alone and again ending up in
a relationship she doesn't want so she refuses to call ken by his real name instead calling him
ocaruunt because he's into the occult i guess from this moment forward every time someone else calls
him can she gets mad ocaruunt has this line he often says something like i'm just an awkward guy
which apparently is as it happens a famous line the actor used in at least one of his movies and momo
absolutely cannot handle ocaruunt saying it it's hilarious and very cute and with that you have a great
dynamic for a very unusual rom com and yeah the two mains are instantly likable especially in
their interactions with each other and you immediately get the feeling that it actually wants to go
somewhere with this blossoming romance and it's not wasting much time either i love how the show
immediately builds this fantastic chemistry between them both kind of loud and a bit overzealous
slash annoying in their own right but being very passionate and recognizing that in each other
and there's this immediate connection and understanding between them on a certain level the moment
where momo sits next to ocaruunt in class to ward off the bullies that are throwing things at him and
everything is so good and makes your immediately likable she just gives them the stairs like better
knock this off i'm gonna punch your heads and and then he's like of course immediately stunned by this
behavior of hers and when he catches up to her she first also lashes out at him because he's all
over her with the alien otaku stuff and she is in a bad mood due to her break up but she instantly
realizes she went too far and apologizes and tries to build a connection to his interest by mentioning
ghosts which of course then kind of backfries because he does believe in ghosts she does believe in aliens
and they start arguing again but you know there's there's the moment where two of her ghiaru friends
come down the stairs and they look at the scene and they immediately see what the viewers sees
and are like wait are they into each other so very clever girls uh then uh momo at some point
opens up about when they're like investigate the different places as momo goes to a place where
there aliens are supposed to be aliens uh okarim goes to a place where they're supposed to be ghosts
and they talk over the phone or walkie talkie i'm not sure and then i think no it's a phone uh and then
uh momo uh momo opens up about her grandma and how um her grandma made her do the uh lack ritual
and umo momo got mad at her grandma for having to do it because other kids and worse her childhood
crush made fun of momo for it even though it turns out she was actually mad at the kids for making
fun of her grandma not for making fun of her but she was a child so it wasn't so easy to understand
an act on back then and since then the relationship to her grandma has been kind of strained um that
kind of adds with each other and everything and then on the other side we have okarim who doesn't
immediately open up to her but when the aliens capture her he basically vomits out his reason for
wanting to be friends with aliens uh to her and them uh because he was bullied so much he wanted to
believe aliens were real so he could become friends with them instead which is super sad but uh is also
very heartfelt moment which is also the reason he didn't want to miss the chance to make a friend
so he verbally deec vomited all over momo when she stood up for him uh because he just wanted to
be friends with her so got them much because she was the first person really showed interest in him
in a way and it wasn't necessarily about him sharing his love for the occult but more so that he
was able to talk about that stuff with passion and confidence to someone who was nice to him
so you have this already great set of characters both with their understandable amount of emotional
baggage who just get each other on a very fundamental level but definitely have some trouble acting
on this intangible connection in the right way which is where the comedy a bit of the drama but also
a lot of the emotional high points and death in the show I derived from speaking of drama
I love the way the series bypasses a lot of the standard drama traps uh for example in the fifth episode
it's the first time of okaron and momo seeing each other at school after their first set of adventures
and okaron is very self-conscious and doesn't know how to treat momo in public um because he doesn't
want to embarrass her or himself uh by her having to associate with him because you know he's a loser
and she's a popular girl so when she waits at the gate obviously for him he is just walking
past her and intentionally ignoring her but she gets what he's doing and is just doing a soft tackle
and saying you're late let's go um the look of joy on okaron's face when he realizes she's still
willing to be his friend out in the open is so cut and precious you're gonna melt away uh
it's really good and the show is also so good at conveying the real life desire to just
endlessly talk about the common interest with this amazing person that just entered your life
and that you have this previously unknown feeling of an emotional connection towards
both of them can barely tolerate sitting in class because they can't see and talk to each other
since they are in different classrooms it's so god damn cute and
don't get me wrong there is drama in this wrong com obviously in the same episode actually
and misunderstandings not my favorite plot device as you are aware john
not the same but you know what these misunderstandings are resolved in the course of one episode every
time and you'll never guess what outrageous tool the show uses to accomplish that incredible feat
it has the characters just talk to each other to clear things up
what crazy concept i know outlandish
wow that's yes it's out there i know um novel although i got to say it's a bit ridiculous that
due to all of his fascination with finally being able to make a friend it takes ochorin several
episodes to notice that momo is cute like what the hell i mean you know sometimes people are like
that you know really pay attention to the physical i get it but like making friends is cool but
you should definitely be aware when you made a hot friend come on now so we got these two which are
already enough to carry the show to be honest but then you add some other cool characters into the
mix and things really start popping off you got momos way too hot grandma sayko who is as already
established a spirit medium she's also total badass with the baseball bat often voiced by nanamizuki
so supasar from some fogir she is obsessed with this one comedian obsession with celebrity seem to
run in the family i guess she of course acts as a somewhat unwilling mentor and a guy to our
two main characters helps them develop their powers gets them out of some hairy situations her
house is basically the hq she's very cool and funny uh in general the show is incredibly funny like
we're talking laugh out loud dialogue slapstick puns and non-sequitur humor bangers one after another
add to that all the crazy funny and sometimes very scary designs of the aliens ghosts and monsters
and you are basically bombarded non-stop with cool visual shit in this series especially in the
fights of course as just a super energetic great looking show signs are is as expected as usual
on point when it comes to hyper expressive faces and body animation for some their design choices
might be too cartoony at times but i love it too bits it's just so much fun to look at you sometimes
also get these very pretty naturalistic backgrounds as a counter point here like there's the scene
with the forest and hills surrounding a cursed tunnel which look very pretty so it's not always super
cartoony and the action scenes are fucking insane a lot of twists and turns because the powers of
our team's opponents work in very specific ways and the presentation is of course top-notch there is
the big confrontation with trovo granny the ghost that possessed okarune in the fourth episode
where our two leads are chased by her zombies and a giant enemy crab i'm sorry yes none of this was a
lie John and then even though i'm spotting stuff but i need to say this even though he is almost
of juice okarune transforms one final time into his possessed form and an edm slash techno version of
the willhelm tell overture starts playing he starts running at the show goes wild it's magnificent
i knew science sorrow was capable of good action scenes they showed it in devil man crybaby
Scott pilgrim and partially keep your hands off asicon but this is on another level it's so much fun
and the musical choice is not a coincidence if a comment on the youtube clip of that scene is to be
believed i didn't verify it but it does seem to make sense that track or kind of music is apparently
often used in school track and field races in japan so there's your reference and they used that
actually twice so that's pretty damn cool defied in the ninth episode had me jump back and forth between
cheering and howling it's so cool but also so funny crazy and stupid a fantastic mix of intense
action with cool choreography wild visuals insane physics and very dumb but also very funny jokes
a real blast all around like is one of the best things i've seen a recent times just so good
and the story itself as you might already guessed from the setup and everything is wacky as hell and
has some definite mop cycle 100 vibes in the best way possible though instead of broccoli we have
a focus on bananas like the aliens are after the banana organs of humans or reproductive organs i
guess which is also pretty much the only thing i didn't like in the first episode and in the show in
general is the alien abduction stuff being too rapy for my taste like the the aliens have like these
robo scorpion dick apparatus thingies and those are absolutely not necessary they're scary all right
like if you want to get scary those aliens look fucking scary when they do this shit
even though they do for uncomfortable yes and even though they look in their real forms pretty goofy
and if when they're like hidden there like these have these weird celery man bodies with
or office man bodies with these with big heads and everything but there's still super irian creepy
like i said very there could be something right out of mop cycle 100 but you know you have
momo getting stripped naked not completely naked but in her underwear and tied down and then threatened
with these metal monstrosities growing out of the aliens growing areas i don't know why anime still
has such a problem with grasping that sexual assault as a very low success rate when it comes to
being a hilarious punchline especially these days maybe to show jump didn't get the memo but
thankfully that is turned around very quickly comes up like again later in in a later episode but it also
but also there it's immediately diffused or rather dismantled so that was a relief but you know be
aware of that like just the imagery nothing comes of it really like there's no actual sexual assault
in that regard or anything but and it's you know most of that is counterbalanced by some form of
legit humor but you know it's still a very fucked up piece of imagery just saying that and just
the implications are horrible the more funny side of this kind of humor i guess is trooper granny
stealing ocaroans dick and later his balls um which give which gives our character some urgency to
be turned kid ocaroans junk back and yes all of this is as stupid and hilarious as it sounds but we
also got some cool lore sprinkled in here like aliens and evil spirits maybe have some common
origin because the evil spirit doorbell at momos grandma's place reacts to a giant sumo alien
and momos is able to kill it with talismans also the aliens might or yokai as well um might be
beholden to the rules of their chosen form like the sumo alien can touch the ground with its hand
or the hands dissolve it's pretty cool momo constantly needs to control the curse and stop ocaroans
from turning which makes the battles more tense you know because kind of limited it in a way and
when momo keeps ocaroans mind intact and lets him unleash the full power of the trooper
granny curse he turns into this half demon with a half face mask with giant teeth and looked very
ragged and is super fast and strong however in that form he is also super depressed in a very funny way
and also it takes a big toll on his human body so he can't use it for too long so there's a
limit on that as well uh momos psychic powers on the other hand enable her to see the aura of things
and living things she can subdue and move the oras and everything they envelop in a very limited
area and since like i already said her powers manifest in the form of giant hands she can also do
other stuff like grabbing pulling and throwing things which opens the battles up to a lot of dynamic
cool shit with heavy use of her environment which is always neat and exciting to see then we have
trooper granny formally 1000 kilo granny who becomes a side character in her own right um is a
strong yoke spirit a voice by yummy mayumi tanaka so louvier from one piece and krillin from dregable
they find a reason for her to stick around in the show which also adds a fun tool for the show to
easily explain away some plot conveniences and i'm very interested to learn about her backstory which
so far they have only teased then at the halfway and endpoint of this first core respectively we
get two additional characters to run out the main cast aira and gg aira ostensibly is a horrible
incredibly shallow person with severe main character syndrome oh boy i'm being overly mean of course
she's she actually has a good heart but that doesn't show in the beginning also she's a giant idiot
voiced by aya nesakura so gaby from attack on titan and ocheko from mahera academia she picks up one
of ocheko's lost balls by chance don't ask um start seeing spirits and thinks herself a magical girl
that is destined to save the day it is very funny that she is basically fondling ocheko and severed
golden ball the entire episode she is a this is series of words yes it's like she's sitting at her
desk in her classroom and just just the golden ball it looks just like a marble but you know the
implication is there and she's just rubbing it between her hair it's so funny uh yes very naughty
humor in this show uh but in a very good way mostly so yes yes um it's not attached to his body so
there's that but yes but still yes and this all results at a clash between her and momo who aira
is convinced as a demon but then an actual ghost slash yokai shows up due to reasons i don't want to
give away but this is also where we learned that yokai are not just mindless hulking monsters in
episode six and seven the set of episodes where aira is the main focus the gang encounters spirit
of a woman and in one breathtaking and heartbreaking montage we learn both about how she and aira
come to be how they came to be how they are and how one moment in time connect their existences it's
a masterful act both from a presentation and storytelling perspective and a real tearjerker i love
that scene uh fantastic although the upbeat ed gave me total whiplash on that episode
even aside outside of that the ed is great the op is great too and especially the ed i let always run
from beginning to end because it's really really fun uh it's hi da da by zutomayo okay yeah so
let's go chill dop auto noke by creepy nazis great as well so we got her and then at the very tail end
of this core we get jin jiji and joji voiced by kato ishi kawa so either from my hero academia or
jinos from one punch man jiji is momos chato friend and her first love he's very flashy and
chuni and obnoxious but his humor and way to talk to the ladies has grand masiko fully backing him so he
is here to stay so now we have this love triangle quartet with ira having the hearts for okaroon
jiji having the hearts for momo momo being a bit torn between her feelings for okaroon and jiji
and okaroon definitely having feelings for momo but not being confident enough to at this point consider
her anything beyond a friend or even a real romantic option period he's trying though hashtag is
complicated like okaroon feels threatened by jiji because he and momo of course have a repertoire
and chat memories and in jokes that okaroon doesn't feel like he can compete with of course that
gets even more complicated when okaroon realizes that jiji shares the same interest in the occult
that he does and they could actually become really good friends and this is basically where the first
core just ends in the middle of the introductory episodes for jiji where he momo and okaroon
investigate jiji's house because it might be cursed or possessed by something we're getting
core to in summer and i urge you all to check out the first half until then because this is one
of the coolest most visually striking funniest and heartfelt shows i've seen in quite a while
and with amazing characters to boot a romantic couple with amazing chemistry believe the hype
this shows the real deal um you can watch it all on crunch your own Netflix depending what region you're
in also some other services and please please do so momo and okaroon are so cute together they
must be protected at all costs that these kids into your heart you will not regret it i promise you
that and with this we have reached the end of our reviews for this season but as usual
there's just one more thing to do
vast of this season
all right john best of the season time what you got i mean we only have two shows so yeah
there's a little limited yes and i mean i could
so i said stuff in the quick and the dead but you know i don't feel like a lot of that really stuck
as much as of course i don't think that ever really sucks just like the stuff that we mainly talk
about so i mean it sounds like you had fun with dandadan i did and i we both thought mecha ude was
you know a good time we did so i guess my pick is mecha ude yes and my pick is dandadan obviously
that makes it pretty simple yes mecha ude was a lot of fun it moved like a million miles an hour but it
works surprisingly well for that and you know it was i still am like boy it was really cool to see
this like little kickstarter indie project get turned into what it is and i think you know
they did a good job and i i don't know if it's possible to see more of it because you know the story
is was what it was but you know if the studio comes back to do other things in the future that i'd like
to say so i would like to see both i would like to see them do other stuff but also i wouldn't mind
another season of mechanical arms if they can make it work yeah yeah i mean they teed it teased some
potential story development stuff in like the very end credits of the final episode was like hey
this is where it could go next this is what could happen and i wouldn't mind to see a full season of that
so we'll see i enjoyed that show a lot as well and i thought it was super fun so yeah definitely
definitely more of that more of that studio more cool kickstarter projects that turn into actually
cool show full shows yes yeah just do that make that happen i want these success stories and yeah
i mean i just fucking fond over dandadan for quite a while so you already know everything there's
to say about that show i am so looking forward to when it continues in summer maybe i will be able to
convince john to catch up with me i will do my best listeners i will maybe i'll try i mean there's
actually a surprising number of spring shows i want to at least look at but you know yes
let's see what happens see what sticks and see what how much time i have yes but either way
please do you listen to check out any of these two shows both preferably because they're worth it
and they're also smart shows both only 12th 12 episodes i think mechanical
meco de also only had 12 right or was it 13 it was 12 yeah 12 so see there you go a quick watch for both
of them and then you're just in time to caught up to check out the second half of the first season of
dandadan and i'm so excited to see where the show is going next and yeah i guess that's it for
this season we're probably also gonna have a short season against next time although one episode
more probably so we'll see you soon for the sneak peak of spring season 2025 and until then
enjoy springtime i guess and see you soon see you then everyone
and that is a wrap on the 164th episode of anime brain freeze all the music in our podcast is from
the double drangley on sundry by the amazing jay kovman please go to vart.bentcan.com and check out
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next time on anime brain freeze it's a mystical adventure in a demonic wonderland
in the green hour upon the magic wave i heard i can see your true nature come and meet her
your true nature come and meet her in the green hour