Hey, folks, this episode is releasing…really late. Even by my standards. We get into what’s going on with Bakacast in the episode itself, but the short version is: I’m totally burned out. I tried various ways to keep the show going, but ultimately after 398 episodes (or more than that, if you include the episodes I lost to my hard drive crashing), it was getting harder and harder for me to watch the shows and actually provide a decent analysis. Even the shows I really liked felt like a chore to watch. Ultimately, the problem was that Bakacast became a thing I felt like I had to do instead of something I wanted to do.
So we’re taking a break. I don’t know for how long, and I’m not sure what Bakacast will even look like, format-wise, if I decide to start recording episodes again. But before we went on hiatus, we decided to record an episode looking back at the last decade of anime—which coincidentally happens to be almost exactly as long as we’ve been doing Bakacast—and giving accolades to some of our favorite shows of each year.
Read MoreIn a way, having belated season previews is almost better, because it’s much easier to see how very confidently wrong our predictions were, which is much more entertaining than being correct all the time.
Read Moresees original recording date of audio files is December 6th, 2019
“That’s not a real date. Pretty sure December never happened.”
checks computer time clock, which shows current date as February 4th, 2020
“January is fake, too.”
Read MoreHey, it’s the first episode we recorded after my hard drive died! Are we gonna cover the anime episodes that we talked about on those lost episodes? Absolutely not. I’m certain that would take a good year off my life if I attempted it. So yeah, we’re just gonna start our Fall 2019 reviews smack dab in the middle of the season.
Read MoreHey, folks. It’s, uh, been a while. As you may notice, this episode about the end of the summer season was recorded several weeks ago. I go into more detail on the next podcast, but the basics of what happened is this: I had been editing this podcast when my hard drive suddenly stopped working. I have three drives: one SSD and two HDDs. The one the failed happened to be the one I do all my projects on, which also means I lost the audio for three other episodes I recorded. I managed to save my audio for this episode before the drive completely died, but the first few reviews of the fall 2019 season are gone forever.
So yeah. Fun times!
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, I finally get fed up with Fire Force, my internet again tries to prevent me from talking about more dumb Fate universe stuff, and also I guess it was my birthday? Whatever, it’s probably not important.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, Fruits Basket has a shaky couple of episodes, Carole & Tuesday starts getting political, Fire Force slowly burns away its goodwill, and Lord El-Melloi is…maybe the best Fate show that’s ever been made?
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, editing became a nightmare, because my WiFi constantly cut out and I could never tell whether or not my cohosts were hearing me (or if they were even responding). However, I was able to find moments where I could talk about a few of the shows that we stuck with, thankfully.
Before we start our reviews, though, we take a moment to offer our thoughts about the KyoAni attack. We don’t go over the actual event in detail, because that’s already been covered extensively by proper news organizations and would feel far too morbid for a silly podcast like ours to delve into anyway. Instead, we talk briefly about what the studio meant to us and what made it unique.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we give our impressions of the first couple episodes of…a lot of shows. Too many shows, honestly. Between us all, we covered a lot. Ben even subjected himself to Arifureta, and somehow managed to trick Larry into watching it, too. One day, I’m sure, Larry will have his revenge.
Read MoreOne this episode of Bakacast, One Punch Man continues to be Slow Pacing Show, Fairy Gone finally starts to break my resolve, Carole & Tuesday plays it safe (and generic), and Fruits Basket is our only solace in these trying times.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, One Punch Man finally gets to the point, Fairy Gone (maybe?) reveals where it actually wants to take this arc, Carole & Tuesday lets Ben show off his TV idol contest knowledge, and Fruits Basket gets sad.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, Fairy Gone has some more fight scenes and then faffs around for a bit, One Punch Man refuses to get to the good part, Carole & Tuesday feels bafflingly outdated, and Fruits Basket starts ramping up the drama. Also, we actually went outside and saw some movies!
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we review the narrowed-down list we have for the Spring 2019 season. One Punch Man slows down a bit too much, Fairy Gone continues to be enjoyable (if somewhat baffling), Carole & Tuesday gets a bit goofy, Fruits Basket reminds us that it does have parts that don’t age well, and Sarazanmai slowly charms me.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we go back to reviewing current anime for the Spring 2019 season, largely because we all really want to talk about Fruits Basket and One Punch Man. Also, Ikuhara and Watanabe are both directing new shows this season? Talk about an embarrassment of riches.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we finish up our review of “Banana Fish”, and then we finally get around to handing out accolades to the 2018 anime season. If you’ve been paying attention to our reviews, the choices probably won’t be very surprising, but it’s nice to make it “official.”
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, Ben, Larry and I talk about a short and sweet comedy show called “Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san”. There aren’t a whole lot of anime out there that use retail jobs as anything more than a backdrop, so it was nice to see one that actually examined the joy and despair of working a customer-facing job. Also, we cover the second third of “Banana Fish”, a show I’m still not entirely sure I like.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we talk about the critically acclaimed crime drama “Banana Fish”. This one…ended up being a little rougher than I expected. Ben and I have a rousing debate about the representation of gay men in the show and the story’s use of rape. I think we ended up having a very good discussion, but be warned that this episode is more serious than most Bakacasts tend to be due to the subject matter.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we review the short but frantic (and highly self-indulgent) newish show from Trigger: Space Patrol Luluco. Is it a fun-filled celebration of Triggers’ best qualities, or an exhausting reminder of all their worst tendencies? Opinions are…mixed. We really wanted an excuse to say “Lu” some more, though, so we also reviewed Lu Over the Wall, another wildly entertaining and imaginative film from director Masaaki Yuasa.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we our minds boggle over the final episodes of Geneshaft. What was the point of all the DNA backstory? Isn’t it weird that there was basically no direct commentary on the weird gender dynamics? Did anyone actually know how they wanted the story to wrap up before the final episode? We may never know. Also, we watch the final Netflix Godzilla movie: The Planet Eater. Hey, Gen Urobuchi? Please stop.
Read MoreOn this episode of Bakacast, we review the first 7 episode of Geneshaft, a very weird show about DNA, buggy mecha, and using one song over and over again because it’s the only memorable one you have. We also talk about Fireworks, the latest movie produced by Shaft and directed by Akiyuki Simbo. So it should be great, right? We’ve loved a lot of their stuff, yeah? Well, things a little more tricky this time.
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