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Anime Nano Podcast

Anime Nano Podcast #5: The Return of Hinano; The Loss of jpmeyer

jpmeyer missing.jpg

Hey everybody! Episode 5 of the Anime Nano Podcast is now ready for your downloading pleasure.

Hinano came back, but for some reason jpmeyer went missing. My Theory? They’re the same person! Your hosts for Podcast #5 are:

Bittorrent link (help us save bandwidth!): Anime Nano Podcast #5
Direct Download: Anime Nano Podcast #5

In this episode, Hinano recalls her Otakon experiences. We answer a bunch of fanmail (and get off topic). The mailbox included topics such as the definition of NEET, why Canada thinks anime = porn, and gender equality issues in anime and Japan. Also, we discuss the coming in of Hard Gay. How could you, HG!?

Also, please review our podcast at iTunes music store. They’ll be helpful to get more people to listen. Maybe. We’d also like to get your opinion on how long you’d like the Anime Nano podcast to be. Is 70 minutes too much? Too little Sound off in the comments section.
Show Notes:

OP: Wild Spice by Okui Masami
ED: Young Man by Hard Gay

Hinano’s Otakon return post.

Hinano’s Konoha Park parody, Ueki Captain Planet parody, and her various flash movies.

The sexual discrimination of Os.

Wikipedia entry on the Shamisen (that Japanese three string thing).

News item about cosplayers being heckled by baseball fans.

Wikipedia entry on NEETs.

Post about why it’s a bad idea to bring manga to Canada.

Copy of the Edmonton Post story about how anime == porn.

The Japanese About.com site has some pretty good starting vocab for anyone wanting to learn Japanese.

The Genki book that Hinano suggested learning Japanese with.

The Nakama book that Hung learned(?) Japanese with.

37 replies on “Anime Nano Podcast #5: The Return of Hinano; The Loss of jpmeyer”

Yay for Hinano! I was about to suggest in the previous podcast post about her reporting about Otakon, but someone already did after me. Rats.

Still, it was a fun addition to the “List of Topics to Talk About”. 🙂

… and now I’m wishing for jpmeyer to be back. 😛

Listening to podcast now. Regarding the Hello Kitty Vibrator, I got some interesting info about it from Peter Payne (J-List) at Otakon in response to an audience question.

Apparently when the trademark holders originally allowed the vibrator to be made they totally failed to grasp its implications, seeing only the “shoulder massager”. Then, some kind of weird Japanese licensing laws prevented them from ceasing its production by the company they granted rights to make it after it became clear how people were interpreting the vibrator. But then that company went bankrupt or something, and, naturally, they didn’t give anybody else the rights to make it.

Which is why, even though it was the ALL-TIME BEST-SELLING PRODUCT on J-List, you can no longer purchase the Hello Kitty vibrator.

Regarding the women’s issues in the Japanese workplace. All my book learnin’ on this is a few years out of date so there’s that disclaimer, but….

The traditional (post-War) Japanese business model re-inforces a specific model of Japanese family. For a typical large Japanese company, there are couple of expecations of/for the male employees:

1. They have lifetime employment at this company (compare the U.S. where changing employers at least once is fairly common)
2. Company business will consume nearly all of their day. In addition to a (relative to the “eight” hour standard in the U.S., though granted many U.S. companies expect you to work a lot of overtime) rather long working day, after work employees are expected to hit the bar with their co-workers. This is supposed to be important to building group-cohesion among the employees and their sempei/kohai, etc.

This means that a salaryman generally gets home very late and is very exhausted every day, but the expectation is that he is or is going to be (I think many sempei try to set-up their single kohai with dates, though I’m not sure) part of a traditional Japanese family model, which means his wife will basically take care of all the rest of the family business.

The wife’s “duties” cover several different things:
1. General household management (cooking, cleaning, etc)
2. Managing all the household finances (in the traditional model, the husband basically delivers all his paychecks to his wife who then gives him an allowance)
3. Educating the children. This is a big one actually. Yes the kids go to school, but their mothers are expected to very closely monitor their education, help them study after school, make sure they are doing their work, explain things they don’t understand, extend what is learned in school, etc. etc. This is one reason why it’s considered — let me just pause to make clear I’m writing all this “it’s considered” stuff from the perspective of the traditional model which may or may not actually be held by any/most families, but is clearly present in the cultural consciousness — important for a woman to have a good education: she has to so that she can help teach her children.

It might be nearly impossible for a married couple to both work like salarymen do *and* foster/raise children in the way that is expected of them. There’s no particular reason why the roles couldn’t be reversed (husband caretaker), except that it would be really at odds with all the encultured precepts of the traditional model. Nobody would expect that to happen, so there would be a ton of hurdles for a couple wanting to do that to overcome, particularly considering how much pressure there is to conform in Japanese culture.

There’s a lot more to this, particularly the family model, but I think this explanation might clarify some of the challenges to women seeking business careers in Japan.

You should definetely Nanoha especially now that there’s going to be a third season. I agree the first few episodes start out like any other mahou shojo anime but the later episodes are more action packed. There was this comparision picture of Nanoha and Gundam Seed that was posted a while ago(Nanoha vs Fate / Kira vs Athrun’s Gundam). I don’t have the picture but this video is better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLVMXWkJnP4

As for the length, I think around 45 minutes per podcast is long enough.

That was a hilarious podcast. I agree with DigiKerot (who writes awesome blog posts) when he says this is the best Podcast so far.

I guess here in Canada, the anime fans are more “hidden” away mostly because it almost hurts to have somebody come up to you and go “hey, you look at porn?”. I dunno if I mentioned it, but a teacher came up to me in a computer programming class and asked me if it was true that anime fans were really looking at what was labeled “softcore porn”. If I had a gun, I would have shot him right there (because substitute teachers are replaceable). I’m not sure about the whole crossing-the-border-with-manga thing, if you’re in a car it’s okay because they can’t see it if you hide it. Of course, I have yet to be caught so I wouldn’t really know about this. But now I know not to take my book of Kamikaze Girls on the plane…

In a week or so, Anime Evolution is beginning. It’s not really big (have you ever heard anyone mention it?), and it’s one of the only conventions that happen in Canada (aside from all the ones in Toronto).

Agree, this was a good one. I think 30-40 minutes is long enough, unless ya’ll get on a roll with a topic.

I like maid characters.

I don’t have any questions, because I don’t want to upset the delicate balanced genius that is the Nano Podcast…LOL

This is the best podcast ever. I’m not joking, DiGiKerot sounds hot, and he speaks terse and salient sentences too. It’s quite hilarious as well. 😀

>>LMAO that preview turned out so well ! XDXD

Haha! Yeah, that’s a really hilarious way to end the podcast. Plus, it makes it more “unique”, per se. 😉

I’m cool with whatever length you’ve got if the content is there.. that said though, Hung could stand to be a little more ruthless with the editing.. and on the same topic, you probably don’t need to read out the entire question when answering the mailbag. Paraphrasing is okay.. especially if the person writing it starts rambling to get their point across or going on with “so like” and “i mean”

and now for my question!

Q: If anime studios make all their money through ancillaries (eg. dvd sales and merchandise), how come Mushishi doesn’t have more explosions and tits?

[not Mushishi specific, but you get what I’m tryna say]

Oh and yeah, props for digi holding down the FLCL knowledge.. you just gotta look at the whole thing (well not the whole, since some of it just is nonsensical) as a metaphor.. like you could consider each robot that pops out of his head to be a by-product or representative of these new emotions he starts having (given when each one occurs)

On with the funny!! Hilarious podcast. I love the extro music.

As long as the ep does not reach LoTR hours, I’m good with any length under that. ;p Plus, content is still king.

Question: Does reading a manga beforehand affect watching its anime adaptation? Are you bothered with the “spoilage”?

i found flcl to be a more enjoyable watch when you accept its terms, as it were, and take it seriously; so there is a crazy battle going involving intergalactic forces and robots as opposed naota just growing some pubes 😛 anyway! what do you guys consider to be “must watch” anime since 2004?

Another awesome podcast Hinao, Hung, and DiGiKerot!

Just wanted to mention on the hair color bit, Hung’s answer isn’t always true. There’s been cases where anime characters have dyed their hair so… unless they do a complete job, the hair down there will still be their natural color 😉

… yes, this is the kind of thoughts I have when bored.

This is my favorite podcast. You can never go wrong with British accents and Hinano is back! But too bad jpmeyer wasn’t there.
This applies to manga and serialized manga like Ribon or Shoujo Beat when they have chapters from different manga serials. Would you choose manga serials or the manga compilation?
Okay, which country do you think would have the best dubbed animes? Because most of the time, American dubbed anime have less of the chaotic anime voice and their tones are lower.
Do you think American Companies have become more liberal when they licensed mangas and made it more PG-13? Confusing but I mean, for example, in Sailor Moon, they made Haruka and Michiru cousins instead of lesbian lovers. Has it changed since then? Don’t have to answer if it’s confusing.
Okay and last question. Do you think the reason manga girls have large breasts and multi colored hair because mangakas like women that vary from the average Japanese woman?
Thanks and keep up the great work!

Ok since you are waiting fo JP to answer the game question, I will only add one question yo your queue, but it is one of great social and political importance [not really]: What bittorrent client do you use, and why? [or do you download anime off IRC?]

Me, I love meh utorrent [mutorrent?] it seems faster than any other client I have used and uses very little system resources.

I find it interesting that all the people on the podcast are “closet” anime fans. Maybe it’s just because I live in California. Do people elsewhere really shun you for being an anime fan? Around here, I see people walking around wearing anime shirts all the time (Mostly DBZ). The manga section at our local Borders has like 2 rows of manga and a dedicated anime DVD section, plus there are always like 3~10 kids sitting on the floor reading manga. Hell, check out this license frame I took a pic of.
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e61/alexl55/P1010037.jpg
Maybe it’s because of the larger asian community in LA. Also another thing is what ethnicity/background are your real life anime-watching friends. I tend to find that white friends watch more anime than my more asian friends (I know I’m generalizing alot). Particularly my japanese friends. I think they see anime as a big misrepresentation of their culture. Or maybe it’s because otakus are kinda shunned in Japan (LOL Densha Otoko) and they carried that mentality to the US. Despite “hating” anime, alot of my japanese friends do read manga. It seems “One Piece” is their favorite. I would like to know your experiences with native japanese friends.

hmm… leme add in a random question..

i know the fact tat a heckuva lot of anime fans condemn dubs, or comment that it makes their ears bleed, but to what extent is this real? i believe the english dubbing of your under arrest! was exceptional, and im persuaded to say they’re on par with or maybe even better than the japanese dubs. yet the dubbing for negima was horrific @@.

so what’s your stand on the condition and not the general idea, of anime dubs? are there any particular anime dubs which got you thinking “hey, this doesnt sound half bad!”

I’m disappointed by the lukewarm response to the new Nanoha 3rd season. Get jpmeyer in there so he can talk about some Nanoha.

For the record, I’d like 45 minutes to be the upper limit. So yeah, 70 minutes is too much. 🙂

Are you guys going to ever have four hosts… that might be interesting. Personally for the length of the podcast… the longer the better XD.

The whole issue with all anime being considered hentai doesn’t really seem to be a problem in Toronto, maybe its more apparent in other parts of Canada.

Hmm some questions…

Do you really have to have your whole room stacked with anime goods to be a real anime fan?

What are some good places to import anime products from Japan on the internet?

Random question… Just why do Japanese voice actors sound so much better than english ones (its the truth lol they seriously do)?

Tiamat – to be honest, I don’t think having four hosts would particularly work very well. It can be hard enough to get a word in sometimes with just three people, and with four I think we’d just end up with a bunch of people talking over each other.

Question for Mailbag: Does Newtype USA come with freebies like the Newtype Japan does? I’ve noticed that it always comes with a free dvd. Anything besides that? (Like the calender from Newtype I saw on a blog, which issue is that?) Also, does Newtype USA have the same pictures/content as Newtype Japan?

I don’t think its that interesting a question for the actual podcast, so I’ll just answer it here (well, as long as Hung doesn’t mind :P). Generally, Newtype USA comes with the DVD and a centerfold pull-out. Thats typically about it – given that Newtype Japan doesn’t always ship with a bonus item of some sort, its technically a one-up on the Japanese release. I think there has been a couple of other items in past issues of NUSA (like larger posters), but they aren’t particularly frequent.

The actual magazine content is split between content sourced from the Japanese magazine and new content for the US release. The series specific spreads towards the front of the magazine use artwork sourced from the Japanese magazine, but its rare (if ever) its at the same time as it appears in the Japanese version. Not all content from the Japanese version will make the US release, and there is no obvious schedule to it – we might get art from over a year ago if a show gets suddenly licensed, but at the same time they’ve recently done spreads on unlicensed shows as well. Its a bit of a crapshoot really.

Since I’ve stolen a question, I guess I’ll add another – has watching anime ever influenced you into taking an interest in a field outside of anime? Like, playing go after watching Hikaru no Go, developing a sudden urge to bake bread watching Yakitate Japan or reading Hyperion after Yuki described it as “unique” in Haruhi?

Have any of you ever tried to put together a model kit of an anime character? If so, how did it go?

I also love the “next episode” bits. More nyoro~n! :3

Seeing as we’re not spreading into Tokyotosho nor advertising anywhere, I think we’re not really classified as “competition”… besides, our target audience is solely the thirty-fourty odd people who frequent Anime Nano.

Hei! I randomly found this site, and I’m loving the podcasts.

As a suggestion, how about talking about the “gender-bending” genre (crossdressing, à la Ouran, Power!!, Princess Princess and when a character physically changes into a girl like in Kashimashi, Ranma or Pretty Face), and why it appeals to people?

Also, I wonder how mainstream is anime and manga in the US? It’s pretty much a geeky internet thing over here (Norway).

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