We explore how various anime tackle controversial themes and ideas that would be taboo in mainstream Western media. Anime can act as thoughtful social commentary by framing issues abstractly through fiction. We discuss shows like Beastars, Darling in the Franxx, When They Cry, and the deeply problematic but conceptually fascinating Dears.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] So a lot of people would hear this and they're like, oh, it must be about slavery, right? But no, I don't think it's a show about slavery. It's actually a show about women.

And the way our society treats women, what if there was a group of people on earth that when they were born preferred to be submissive to another group of people? What if that, and what if our entire planet shamed them for that instinct? Made them feel like garbage for that instinct? Made them feel like they had to go out and try to be these These perfect politicians, these perfect citizens, which is what the Deers feel they have to be.

But it's all hollow for them. It's all a facade. Because what they really want is someone to believe in a worthy master to serve. And that is such an offensive idea. You could never say that. It's I mean, I did. I'm going to get canceled for this episode. Of course. Look, I'm not saying I agree with that, but I'm saying some people feel that way.

And it is an interesting concept to explore

Would you like to know [00:01:00] more?

Simone: All right,

Malcolm. So today we're going to talk about various anime shows and what they mean about larger society because, and I think you've made a really interesting observation about this.

fiCtion in the past used to be meaningful and something that we talked about in English class because it said something very profound and meaningful about society that was often subversive and that often couldn't be said out loud. So you had to say it through allegory. You had to say it through some like fantasy world or fictional story.

And everyone had to infer the meaning, the societal commentary. And now that doesn't really happen in that much in fiction. It's all like

Malcolm: context for this. So first, this is actually our second recording because we both forgot to hit record the first time we were doing this. And so Parts of this are going to sound a little rote.

I'm sorry about that. But we did want to do another anime episode because the last one wasn't one of our most watched episodes. People were like, really into it. They were like, actually, like, I'm really nerdy about this stuff and I appreciate you guys talking about it. So we're like, [00:02:00] let's go deeper into this.

But I think, so

Simone: for non, for non weebs. In this, in this audience and it's not like I'm, I'm a nerd too, but I do think that Malcolm is right in that if you want to see genuinely unique social commentary. You're going to see more of it in anime than you are, especially like also, you know, in Western media these days, so much has been sort of like bankrupt and hollowed out by the woke cult, essentially, that you're not going to see social commentary.

You're not going to see some subversive ideas in literature or in mainstream Western media. Where are you seeing it? Anime? So that's why, even if you're not into anime, we recommend. Well, considering some of the shows that we talk

Malcolm: about, we're at least considering the analysis. We'll add interesting ones and we'll talk about them later, so people don't need to actually watch the s**t, okay?

And this actually comes to a point. Somebody, in our last one, they were like, Oh my god, I can't believe the Collins is. Don't just watch Izekaya, but they watch bottom

Simone: tier Izekaya flop. Izekaya. Izekaya is a form of, like, Japanese tapas. [00:03:00]

Malcolm: Okay, whatever. Japanese, born in Japan. Anyway, so we no, no, no, but, but I wouldn't have had the revelations I had from that last anime had it not been such a low tier anime.

Had it not been such a low quality anime because the low tierness of it stripped out all of the nuance and engaging plot. So I was able to see what the core of the genre actually was with no scaffolding around it. Yeah, like in

Simone: other words. Lowbrow media is based and pure and straightforward about everything.

And we like that.

Malcolm: And, and it can often do things that other media wouldn't. And so this came, got me thinking, like, what anime have I seen where I might not have seen it if I was screening for quality? One that came to mind was one that some people mentioned in the comments, which was Thermae Roma.

True classic. Thermae Roma is a terrible Netflix adaptation. Do not watch it on Netflix. Find the original through some streaming site or something. It is. God tier anime, but the animation is basically stills. It [00:04:00] is It's, yeah, it's low effort, it's low

Simone: budget,

Malcolm: But what it does is, it's not just, like, a good learning opportunity, but it's, like, a good historic learning opportunity, because it's contrasting through time travel, the bath culture of Japan and the bath culture of ancient Rome.

And it's, it is both humorous and informative. But the, probably one of the most interesting plots I have ever seen in any show combined was one of the worst, most boring shows I have ever seen. Okay. Came from an anime from 20 years ago called Dears. And this anime It's that old? Yes, 20 years old. Well, let's see when it came out.

When did the Dears anime come out?

2004. So it's yeah, 19 years old at this point. Wow. Which is wild to think about. So this anime, to understand how low tier this anime was, [00:05:00] back then, You did not get much sexualization of women in mainstream anime that you, you, you know, you would get like the transformations and something like sailor moon or something like that, but like this level of, of sexualization was actually pretty rare, except for that one anime.

I'm thinking where are you saying that he was a little girl and the girls who turned into a spaceship, but we're not going to talk about that one because

Simone: that's, are you saying that deer was, was pretty sexualized?

Malcolm: Yeah, that one was pretty sexualized. It's the only other from that time period I know of that was like as sexualized as Dears.

No, Dears was more sexualized because like many of the characters wore like kink get ups most of the time. It was almost borderline like pornography. When for the time period now today, it would be considered very mainstream anime in the amount of essential eyes. But back then low tier writing low tier that but the plot insane.

And so she was talking about how anime can sometimes go into things. And the point of media is to challenge our preconceptions about things. So we look at the [00:06:00] closest show to dears that has come out in Western media. It's I think it's called like area 51 or something. It was about those aliens that crash landed in Africa.

And then we're basically treated like apartheid blacks were in Africa. And it's like, wow, that is super on the nose. And you were not shouting. No, there isn't like some big group of watchers of this that were like, I used to be pro apartheid and now I'm anti apartheid. And then I watched this movie and I realized the whole thing for me.

But in this anime it just, I'm not going to go too deep into it because we're going to save that for later in the episode. But in this anime the aliens that crash land on earth are actually bred and designed to be a slave species, to be a servant species to another species. And they cannot achieve fulfillment or real happiness without doing this.

However, Landing on Earth, they believe due to Earth's history and the biases of the people of Earth that if the people of Earth learn this about them, that [00:07:00] they will treat them poorly and potentially even force them to leave. And so they feel constantly sort of oppressed and bigoted against and have to hide their true identity.

Which is slaves who want to be slaves. And that's really interesting. Like that's so much more interesting than like the house elf way of doing this in Harry Potter or something like this. Because it genuinely causes you to ask questions, which we will get to later in this. Because it combines this with a bunch of other themes, which lead to other interesting things.

But! Other animes that cover topics that like

Simone: why don't you want to just dive right right into this? Why don't we just

Malcolm: dive into because it leads more people watching what you do is you you drop a few breadcrumbs then you cover it at the end of the episode You typically want to break up an idea like that but! To another anime, because you were mentioning this in the unrecorded bit, that you were like, oh yeah, this is really a topic you couldn't touch on in the way it touches on it in Western media..

Simone: Yeah, so. Another anime [00:08:00] that I, I think is really good at sharing subversive ideas in, through, through anime, like, in modern media, is Beastars.

Which is, like, most animes, it takes place in a high school setting. It's basically, imagine Zootopia, but in a high school setting, and super f*****g dark. Like, because, actually... There is, we'll say like, you know, the equivalent of human trafficking with like, there are some predators who will actually pay money to kill prey in this world.

And the, the high school students who go to school together are in active tension where predators will.

Malcolm: This is really tempted to kill prey when you, this is really important. It's a, it's a world in which the different species of animals are actually systemically different from each other. And in some ways, a threat to each other, and this is really important.

If you're going to talk about things like sexual differences in humans, you can look at something like Zootopia where. The solution is that actually any threat that some of them pose to other of them was completely artificial. And [00:09:00] contrast this with Beastars, where when we live in a society where when a woman goes out at night, she is genuinely at risk.

In our world, At risk of another part of our species, men, targeting her, preying on her, this is, and finding out how to structure our world in which it heightens these differences between individuals, and says, okay, if there really are systemic differences between individuals, if there really are things like night markets, predators go to basically eat other humans or buy meat from other humans that have been dug up in graveyards or other ways, smuggled into this.

Like, how do you live with that? How do you have that as a coming of age ritual? But what I

Simone: think even more interesting about the show is one of the main characters is prey is a basically like a slutty rabbit. And they really, cause you can't talk about this in modern society. But she while being prey also really like.

plays around with the dynamic of being prey and often tempts people and [00:10:00] baits people in a way that makes her demonized throughout the school, but also like gives her various advantages and in a sense power over other people. And I think it really plays With the, the concept of, you know, like blaming the victim.

You can never talk about a woman being victimized in some way and it, and her having a role in that

Malcolm: victimization. She is an active predator and yet she is a diminutive prey. And that I think in a lot of shows like this, they would have an individual act this way and they would either. Completely shame it.

Just be like, she's a bad guy. Like this is what would have happened if this was done in like an 80s scary movie, right? Like she'd be the first to die. Or they would have a character act this way and be like, but she's an empowered woman. And it doesn't take either of those easy routes. Her actions actually do hurt some of the people around her.

And first you see her being bullied and you think it's just slut shaming and then you see the real damage she is doing to other people's lives. And, and, and [00:11:00] real systemic damage. So for example, in the first episode, so this isn't giving that much away. You know, you learned that she had broken up the relationship between an endangered species with another one of their kind in sleeping with this girl's boyfriend.

And that's why this girl. is bullying her. And you're like, Oh s**t, like that was kind of justified bullying. I hate to say it. Like sometimes if you are actively going out and targeting people who are in relationships and that you learn that she is doing this to gain a feeling of power, but that she actually yearns almost for self victimization because she feels like right in her role as prey, which is also a very interesting.

emotional subset that I think we as a society are shamed in talking about or engaging. And I won't go too deep into what I'm referring to with that, but what I will say is throughout this, we're going to get spoilers. So just spoilers, spoilers, spoilers throughout this, when we talk about things.

But keep in mind that [00:12:00] there's been a great study on this. And it's one that Simone always cites to me, which is completely desensitized me to spilling spoilers, which shows, what does it show Simone?

Simone: That people actually enjoy content more when they have been exposed to spoilers. And so I love spoilers.

I always want to want to know what's going to happen. I enjoy things more. Of course, Malcolm has grown up in a family where spoilers are like. worse than like killing the family dog. So I understand that many people are very against spoilers, um, but

Malcolm: not in this house. He's not in this house. So another anime that, that I think is really interesting in regards to the concepts that touches and very, very relevant to this show is an anime called Franks.

This is a studio trigger anime. So, so absolutely wild. Like they, they typically are, but as to where it's relevant to this show, it The first area is you see in it you at first believe it's just a bunch of young kids in a school fighting in mechs against aliens. And as it goes [00:13:00] on, it unveils more and more about the world.

So it starts as like the most generic anime you could imagine. Yeah. And then it begins to unfold and you see more and more. And these kids had originally thought that they were like kids who were recruited into this. Or at least this is the impression you get by their parents, by a society that's threatened by these aliens.

And as time goes on, what you learn is no, they aren't actually. What they are is the people who they are trying to protect because they accidentally get into their settlement at some point. thEy've lived for thousands of years. And

Simone: Meccas not know

Malcolm: that? No, they don't know that. Whoa. These, well, or they may not know that, like they, they, they genuinely are unaware of what's going on in the adult world.

And these people will have, because they've lived for thousands of years, you know, they've all been in relationships with each other multiple times. They live with this enormous ennui. They all seem to not hate their lives, but they live completely passionless and sympathy less existences because they have [00:14:00] been around for so long.

Not only do they take almost no passion other than like. That fleeting type of passion you might get was the 50th, 60th person you've had sex with but they also this was sort of like this sad passion they get from the things that do give them passion. Like it feels very hollow and it's portrayed as very hollow, but they are unable to value the lives of these people who haven't lived as long.

And. What these shows because to them, there's these little blips that they created in a lab and yet it contrasts. It was like the, the dynamism you see was in these individuals, young lives, young love for the first time, you know, finding out who you are sexual identity for the first time. You know, exploring friendships and, and betrayal and all the stuff you would see in an, in a high school anime.

And it just contrasts this enormous passion in these disposable young people versus this ennui, this ennui in these people who have extreme life extension technology. And [00:15:00] I think that this is actually kind of an inevitability that we keep learning about with life extension, but it's so rarely framed this way among the life extension proponents.

How is a person who's lived 1, 500 years really going to see a baby or a 10 year old or a 15 year old? Will they really have the capacity to value their lives in the same way we value other human lives? Us young people, will they really have the capacity to enjoy life anymore in the same way? Even as a person who's in my mid thirties, I can tell you.

I don't enjoy life with the same amount of fire and gusto I did when I was, you know, 15. And I see it in our little kids, the amount that they really, you know, so, and in the show, eventually this old society dies out and humans start breeding again . Like, this is seen as the solution to life extensionism is pronatalism, is intergenerational.

Aging and death and growing again, and that that is a [00:16:00] a and and behind all of this is human sexuality, which I also think of a really interesting and human gender, which are major themes in this. The robots that they are using to fight in this war, they can only be piloted by a, a, a biological male and a biological female or a male assigned a birth and a female assigned a birth.

However you want to use these words, like biological might be an offensive way to put it, but like. Cis male and cis female is also the wrong way to put it, because there is a gay character in this, and she tries to pilot a mech with No,

Simone: I mean, a lesbian would still be cis if she was born. Okay,

Malcolm: so yeah, I guess there's no like, intentionally trans characters, but it's made really clear in this, you have to be with the opposite birth gender for the mechs to work.

And, and even if you have an attraction, even if you're like, yeah, but for me, I'm attracted to girls. That next won't work. And I think that that's capturing an element of this. An almost inescapable element of the human history where if you're dealing [00:17:00] with this one group that's fighting for sort of intergenerational human dynamism they can be as tolerant as they want to people of different sexual orientations, which they are in the anime.

But it doesn't change the way that those people are able to participate with current levels of technology, at least in this sort of intergenerational dynamism.

I totally forgot, but actually the show does address this late in the season. There are same-sex couple pairings that work, but only with additional technology and like cutting edge stuff. And. And some of these pairings it's even heterosexual couples but with the woman topping the man

Malcolm: And that was really fascinating that they went there with those themes. And I actually looked it up afterwards. I want to make sure I remembered it.

And the first comment I saw was somebody on Reddit being like, I watched the first half of Franks. Does it somehow get less problematic? And the first comment was like, Oh, my sweet summer [00:18:00] child, you have no idea.

Another theme of the show that I found very interesting. Is that at the beginning of the show, many of the men will want to pilot the meccas with the same women who are seen as the best pilots. And they do this, not because they like the women or anything like that, but they see it as a status game amongst the other men. And obviously this has much to the chagrin of, of both of the women who are seen as the high status pilots and the women seen as the lower status pilots.

But as the show goes on, it becomes clear that everyone pilots best with one person who they are uniquely compatible with. And. The desire to pilot a Mecca with, , another person's compatible pilot or with multiple pilots increasingly looked juvenile and, obviously not optimal The message being that it is juvenile for men to choose a partner for status rather than compatibility. And that basically they're, as they say in a another movie, I really [00:19:00] love we're in this for the species boys and girls. Um and it's not about individual status games amongst other males

Malcolm: but I love that because those are all themes. That you would just never see in a Western show. You would never see these themes in a Western show. And it is fascinating to explore them, but in a way, I find these themes are sort of muted, in that they are just thematic and aesthetic in that show. It's more saying, this is good, This is bad.

You know, now we're going to get to Dears, which is very different. Oh, circling back. Okay. Circling back. Simone was asking me, Malcolm, why don't you just finish talking about it now? And I go, because it's good plot structure in terms of how you deliver a podcast. You have to give the bait, show why it's interesting and they should keep watching.

And then you say some interesting things as meat in the middle, and then you close it off at the end with tying back to the original bait. You've got to make it juicy or people won't continue to watch. You see, story [00:20:00] structure, Simone, story structure. But so deers, as I said, slave race crashes on earth.

They feel the need to hide this. It turns out that one of the slaves is defective and is, essentially meant to be discarded, like turned to ooze and then returned into usable product. And she accidentally is dropped out and she is found by a human. And this human ends up bonding with it.

Like he becomes its master. And what you realize is the way it's defective is both considered a defect worthy of recall. So the, the mastership wants to destroy her, liquidate her, reform her, and give the Fixed version to the guy, which obviously as a human, he's not super cool with that idea. And but also sort of a God among her species.

And what makes her a God is a superpower that she has, which is also her defection, which is that she can, whenever she wants, choose who she wants to be her master. Oh, interesting. Now she can only [00:21:00] choose one master, but she gets to choose that master. She can initiate the engagement ceremony on her own without being pre programmed or command from the central ship.

Like normally you would be assigned by the central ship and this is the way the other aliens

Simone: are being assigned. So in this world. But it's still, it's not like a serial monogamy world. Once she chooses her master, that's it. Yeah,

Malcolm: that's her master. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. And it exploits interesting concepts like this. Like another one had had a master. Who actually was, back in the day when she was an actual alien, you know, in, in one of these.

From another planet. And her master had died, and she can't recreate a connection. Oh. And so, yeah, it's, it's sad. And so the show deals with like a lot of stuff where you're like, oh, this is really interesting. But, um, what's fascinating about the show is what this is obviously supposed to be about.

So a lot of people would hear this and they're like, oh, it must be about slavery, right? Which is an interesting thing and it would [00:22:00] be interesting if that's what the show was actually about or the themes that it was getting at. But no, I don't think it's a show about slavery. It's actually a show about women.

And the way our society treats women, what if there was a group of people on earth that when they were born preferred to be submissive to another group of people? What if that, and what if our entire planet shamed them for that instinct? Made them feel like garbage for that instinct? Made them feel like they had to go out and try to be these These perfect politicians, these perfect citizens, which is what the Deers feel they have to be.

But it's all hollow for them. It's all a facade. Because what they really want is someone to believe in a worthy master to serve. And that is such an offensive idea. You could never say that. It's I mean, I did. I'm going to get canceled for this episode. Of course. Look, I'm not saying I agree with that, but I'm saying some people feel that way.

And it is an interesting concept to explore. But yeah, I, I, I [00:23:00] really liked that framing. And then on top of all that, they say, and imagine that your superpower is one that every woman has. Which is that they can choose who they want to spend their lives serving. So it shows sort of like a be happier for what you have than you should, you know, a lot of people frame it as being, it's not a bad thing to live your life in service to somebody else.

If that's what you want. And I'm not saying all women are born this way. I'm just saying that if we are realistic and we look at the data and we've obviously done the data on this. A huge portion of women desire relationships in which they are the subordinate partner. But

Simone: you can also choose to look at it from the perspective of, and this is a chapter from the Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality, Humans as a Slave Race.

You point out in that book that there were a lot of actually selective pressures Encouraging most humans to be comfortable with and well adapted to essentially being a slave to

Malcolm: someone [00:24:00] higher. So I'll, I'll, I'll word this differently. Most of the selective pressures throughout human history were applied to the humans of the lowest social status, not the humans of the highest social status.

You are much more likely to lose access to mates or much more likely to be killed if you were a low social status. That is human who flip messed up than a high social status human who messed up. And because of this, the selective pressures applied to our species primarily applied to people in surf like roles.

Simone: But they do show up in people with super senior roles. I mean, like in the past and in European Kings, they were still slave. God, they served God. So, like, you can even see it in various echelons of various cultural

Malcolm: clusters. We as a species feel uncomfortable without a master often, and then you see this in the king saying, well, my master is really God, or in the present, my

Simone: master is really the people, or

Malcolm: everybody has to be a servant to something.

That's really fascinating. Are we a slave race? Are we meant to be, you know, [00:25:00] we

Simone: live in a culture, especially United States. I mean, it's, I would say Japanese culture is a little bit more amenable to hierarchy, but in the United States, it's like super not okay to be a boss, the entrepreneur, like the one calling the shots.

And that does create a lot of tension, perhaps unhappiness, lack of fulfillment, not just for women. But also I think for many men.

Malcolm: Yeah. So, you know, something I was going to say is, is my brother, he had this idea and I was going to share it with him on the show, but he's, you know, we don't want to get him canceled or anything.

So we're not having him on the show anymore. And the idea was really interesting to me. It was what if aliens find humans and the thing when we first meet aliens that they're most shocked about, about humanity. Is there like, Oh, you're a swarm intelligence. What does it feel like to be part of the swarm intelligence?

And what she was like I don't think we're a swarm intelligence. And they're like, what is the internet? How did you build this spaceship? How did you build this product? How did you build this company? Hundreds and thousands of you working together, all contributing little bits of ideas. All [00:26:00] communicating.

You are a swarm intelligence. What do you mean you're not a swarm intelligence? And I found that to be a really interesting concept of what actually turns out to be weird to humans is one of the things we expect to be weird about aliens. They come here and they're like, Oh, why are you guys all. like looking for masters.

Yeah. That's a really weird thing. Why do you

Simone: all flock in the same, you know, mimetic direction and, and we get

Malcolm: classified as a slave species, like a season desperately desires a master. So, so that's fascinating. If If so, so I love those themes that, that it is able to explore.

Another thing that it explores, which way ahead of its time is a teacher who is constantly trying to push her sexuality on the students and the students who are, is this

Simone: in which anime?

Okay,

Malcolm: I'll have a little like shot of it. It's very clear. And students were completely nonplussed by this. They're looking at this like, Oh God, not again. You know, not one of these stupid things where you try to sexualize a [00:27:00] situation. We're just here to learn. So also another very problematic anime from Western standards. Wow. People, now, now we've gone through the, the main anime we wanted to touch on. Oh yeah, another reason why I would say it does make sense to sometimes I think much more than with western shows continue to watch an anime even if it seems kind of bog standard at the beginning.

Animes are much more likely to have like wacky plot reversals. So one that I would think of here would be Shuffle.

Anyone who's seen Shuffle immediately knows what I'm talking about. So Shuffle starts as like this slice of life. Harem comedy. If people are familiar with harem comedy, we've all seen them, you know, where one guy is dating many women.

Now, typically the convention Not

Simone: necessarily dating, like maybe like, Oh no, I live in a house with like 15 gorgeous women. That kind

Malcolm: of thing. And they all have a crush on me, and now I need to choose. You know, that's typically but typically within a harem comedy, the convention is, is there's one character that like obviously is the one he's going to pick in the end and then all the rest are more just [00:28:00] for jokes.

And in Shuffle, he ends up choosing one of the characters, like actually choosing one, and it's not the one who's like supposed to be his main one from the beginning, and then she has like a mental breakdown and tries to kill everybody. Oh, you mean

Simone: the one who? Who should have been the one.

Malcolm: Oh and, and it shows you, I think really interestingly, what would happen if you actually pulled this harem comedy s**t on a real girl.

Amazing. That she would immediately go crazy and try to kill everyone. I don't

Simone: think women's murderous capacity is, is, is realistically as high as you think though. I think maybe from a fantasy standpoint, I actually heard a fun theory today that like the reason why women are so into real crime podcasts and documentaries and stuff is like, they are fantasizing about the real crime that they themselves are too weak or low testosterone to commit essentially.

Malcolm: Interesting theory. That is an interesting theory. Well, I mean, okay, so we can talk about like. An anime that got multiple seasons that I actually liked. [00:29:00] Somebody here was like, oh, why don't you talk about, I can't remember. It was some like dark anime. And I was like, oh, I don't know. I don't love animes like that.

And I was like, oh, well, I guess I did really like When They Cry. This is the one that was

Simone: just murdering like every day. It's like Groundhog Day,

Malcolm: but with murder. Episodic. It later becomes like, like individual episodes are mostly disconnected from each other. And it's the same characters, but they're in different stories.

And every story basically ends with. One of the characters, all the characters are young kids you know, killing most of the other characters

in very gruesome ways. if You want to, you're like, I don't get why this would be entertaining. Imagine like the Arya Stark plotline, you know, you might like it.

You're like, oh, young girl goes through some s**t, becomes really resilient, ends up murdering a lot of people, trying to save everyone. Imagine that, but it was just over and over and over again until you begin to, like, become sort of numb to the brutality of what's going on. Oh, God, no. Now as an adult, I don't know why.

I don't think I'd like it as an adult. I think it's one of those things [00:30:00] that was, like, fun for teenage me, but would be horrifying for adult me. But if we're talking about, okay, I, I'm going to give a few anime recommendations that are like slop, if you want. But,

Simone: but hold on the theme of this, and I want you to hold to it is slop that has subversive or interesting commentary on mainstream

Malcolm: society.

Uh, she can't keep me from adding one. That's not controversial here. A complete bog standard animate, worth checking out. If only because roberta has strong simone energy is black lagoon If you like kings mini james Bondy sort of stuff

Malcolm: okay. I can't think of any of that.

I do not know how I forgot this one, but the second season of Garan log-in, which is also one of my favorite anime, I actually think the first season of Greenlaw game, which is just sort of mega show, um, it has some unique things, but it's pretty bog standard Eve. We have considered a classic, but the second season is really interesting because it takes place after the heroes have won after they have reconquered the world from the alien furry bad [00:31:00] guys, and now they need to reestablish a society and actually deal with like politics and humans just being terrible and everything like that.

And I really like such a comically heroic, you know, good and bad anime first season, then completely translating into a oh s**t. S**t. What do we do now? That we've one situation, Impart wisdom realizing most if not all of what the villains of the show had done are things that they now need to do that they are in a position of power with. As I think happens many times in the real world, you know, whether it's Winston Churchill or the mystic Lee's. The populous of a democratic country, turning on the person who made their very freedom possible. In times of peace

Malcolm: I, I can suggest a few that we didn't suggest last time that might be, well, a good one for mainstream society commentary is psychopaths. If people are interested in that, I'm just not even going to give anything on that. That's just like a high quality anime. And Future Diary, that's another, like, high [00:32:00] quality anime with good commentary.

 And we already mentioned Goblin Slayer, whether or not that has good commentary that is timely and relevant. Uh, It has

Simone: very timely commentary, but not Commentary that we can talk about because it's too cancelable.

Malcolm: No, no, no, no, no. We're talking about his persistence. We're talking about his persistence.

His mission focused and his persistence. Don't you dare say anything else there. We're definitely not saying anything else. Cut some lines here. And what else would I say? Ashaka no Shana I definitely recommend. As another like high quality anime. But I don't know if it has like themes that, that I'd really recommend.

Can you think of any other with themes where you're like, these themes were really interesting?

Simone: Sadly, I've just not watched that much anime. So I, I cannot, I mean, we already talked about through Isekai anime, like what that means about larger society. So I would say that entire genre is pretty good. at revealing some, some deep set problems and many developed societies, but

Malcolm: that's it.[00:33:00]

Since who knows how long it's going to be before we do another anime episode, there is one plot line that gets regularly covered in animate that I feel has been done. Criminally poorly every time it's been done. And it's just a gripe I have that I need to get out there. So hopefully somebody can do this right. So it's a plot line that I sell first competently introduced in Rosario plus vampire, but it was later redone in demon school. The idea is, is a human gets sent to a school full of monsters or demons or magicians or where, something like that. And if it's found out that this human has no magical powers, that this human is going to be killed. And they have to hide that they have no magical powers from the school around them. You know, I'd prefer to see them do it using modern technology that the world doesn't have a full grasp of yet. Like whether it's it's gunpowder it's, it's totally. Was there anything like that? , or magnetism, et cetera. I think that'd be really cool, but the way it's done in Rosaria plus vampire. Is just powerful monster girls end up getting crushes on him and [00:34:00] end up hiding for him that he, the human, , And then in demon school, it's just all luck. He just. He has this enormous luck armor and never does anything through his own competence. Uh, which is really sad.

I have seen one anime that might be doing this. That is next on my watch list, which is called mashable magic and muscles but in this one he seems to be hiding himself or i don't even know if he is hiding himself just by being incredibly strong like physically strong in a world where everybody cares about magic

Malcolm: All right. Well, Simone, I love you to death.

I may even, if I'm able to get away with it, do this episode was the outro from deers, because I think it's a great outro and I don't even know if anyone cares about that property anymore. And you are. Absolutely amazing and I love that you love nerdy

Simone: stuff.

I love that whenever I walk by your room at night, there's anime on and it's ridiculous and I just adore that about you. It's wonderful.

Malcolm: You are spectacular. Have a [00:35:00] good day. You too. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye,

let's go! Ashita no Happy! Go! Go! Fushigi

na Happy! Minna minna irasshai! Happy Cosmos! Kitto

watashi no Fuwa Wa Wan Kanjitanda ne! Sore wa tennen datte!

It's just a coincidence! Let's fly, let's fly, let's make a ruckus Happy Cosmos I'm definitely invincible, yo yo yo Even if I make a mistake I don't care If that's the case, I'll manage somehow I don't care About the people around me[00:36:00]

What do we need? 空の彼方へ ときめき探して 高く高くね 3, 2, 1 で行くんだよ 未来の地図は どこにもありません だから元気な 笑顔で 進みましょう Go! Go!

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