Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

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Soul Bro Ryu
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Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Gundamn! @ MAHQ Ep. 046 - "Otaku Confidential"
- Unplugged Version: 64 kbps - 127 min., 55 sec. (2:07:55) - 58.6 MB

Segment Breakdown for this Episode:

01. PETCO (Commercial)
Runtime: 0:00:00 - 0:00:43

02. Intro: "Neo News!"
Runtime: 0:00:43 - 0:24:54

03. Epic Sugar Works (Commercial)
Runtime: 0:24:54 - 0:25:29

04. 1st Segment: "Will Gundam will ever be as popular again in America as it once was?"
Runtime: 0:25:29 - 1:13:32

05. GoDaddy (Commercial)
Runtime: 1:13:32 - 1:14:25

06. 2nd Segment "Does the Macross Franchise have a future overseas?"
Runtime: 1:14:25 - 1:59:26

07. Epic Sugar Works (Commercial)
Runtime: 1:59:26 - 2:00:01

08. Outro: "Closing/Peep the Websites!"
Runtime: 2:00:01 - 2:07:55

In this episode, we have a rousing discussion about things American mecha fans will have to accept whether they like it or not. In the spirit of our specially themed episode, Chris proposed two topics to our listeners:

- Gundam will never be as popular again in America as it once was.

- Harmony Gold will maintain an iron grip on Robotech, and no one else is ever going to release any Macross.

Many thanks to all the people at MechaTalk.net & the Macross World Forums who participated and contributed responses! You helped make this a great episode and we can't wait to do more themed segments like these in the future!

Enjoy & thanks for listening!
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snoops619
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Great show as always guys.

Can't wait for that live action MSG movie. Tom Cruz as Hyato and Brian Blessed as General Revil.

I liked the UK user from MacrossWorld's comment 'cause over here we only have to contend with Manga entertainment and they're constantly tweeting and stuff to gauge what show people want to see. Doesn't mean we have every macross show there is going but they seem open to ideas. We also have Robotech but I've avoided it like a florescent plague rat.

And no, we don't get are own British dubs, we're stuck with your anoraks (Parker), bangs (fringe), candies (sweets), soda (pop) and sneakers (trainers).

Oh yeah, and Neo, my names pronounces "Es-en-oopy-six-hundred-and-nineteen" not "Snoops-six-one-nine" (Joke).

Also, I made this while I was messing about with my photo editing software.
Last edited by snoops619 on Sun Jan 31, 2010 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TheGoose
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Oh! I've been waiting for this episode. Can't wait to listen to the new format.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Downloading now! Really looking forward to giving it a listen. :D
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Dirty Foreigner eh Chris? :P
We got a colony dropped on us here in Sydney in 0083, so you know, sure it wiped out Sydney but probably some better cities around the largest island in the world. :P

Anyway glad to hear interestingly my answer got noticed by Soul Bro Ryu and read out.
I mean the thing with Madman Entertainment is, they are the biggest and main anime distributor in Australia&New Zealand.
(95% or so of anime titles are Madman releases)
I mean it took them a while to come around to releasing some more Gundam titles since on the forums there is a "Titles suggestion" type thread where people can name anime series.
And a fair ammount of people were requesting "more Gundam" or naming certain Gundam shows.
Like they even try to promote some of their releases in small adds in magazines or things like one is K-Zone and used to get that when was younger, so chances are kids notice it and might be interested in it or not, sometimes they even review new releases.
Oh and when I said they said "it was selling well" I mean it is because on their podcast one of the staff who got this idea going was asked during the episode and is my quote for saying that.
Since it's from a company employee, but on the other hand, they wont release the sales themselves, as they consider that commercially sensitive information.

As for the Macross stuff, surprised I got picked for it, I didn't have a big opinion on Shadow Chronicles but yeah, the trailer I saw didn't really make it look stand out.
And besides if it helps kill Robotech and Harmony Gold from their stranglehold on things it might help :P

If you ever want to know more about Madman Entertainment Soul Bro, be glad to give you info on them.
http://www.madman.com.au
They have a podcast and forums, screening room(streaming some of their newer release series) and other things, like competetions(art ones or all sorts of cool stuff).

So that is all I can add.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Okay, time to defend my position on Gundam and anime in the USA.

I think I am much more of a realist instead of a hoper and dreamer. I said that the chances of a resurgance of anime (and gundam) due to Hollywood was silm. However that is the only realistic way it can make come back.

The Anime industry will grow only if there is anime on television, the only way that will happen is if there is a network that thinks they can capatlize on something else, like a Hollywood movie.

As for gundam growing itself it depends on a lot of "ifs". IF there is a sucessful anime movie, and IF a network captalizes on it with anime shows, and IF those shows are a sucess then yes Gundam could be in for a come back. Gundam is a icon title for the anime genre, and sooner or later there would be someone who put a gundam show on.

Now like I said this is highly unlikely but it is possible, than again its possible I'm gonna win the powerball jackpot next week.

P.S. Hey Soul Bro I really appreciate you giving me a shout out and calling me your freind but for future referance please don't call me your man. Being one of Soul Bro's Men is not something I aspire to..........if you know what I mean. (you knew I had to burn you back Soul Bro)
Last edited by jabman025 on Mon Feb 01, 2010 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Vent Noir
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

I wasn't sure about an episode devoted to this topic, but you managed to make it interesting and fun, nonetheless.

Given that Mick Foley is God and Setsuna is an atheist, I can't see them teaming up, though. Maybe they'll fight each other.

Foley vs Setsuna, Hell In A Cell - book it!
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

One thing about the Gundam being a male dominated franchise comment; while that might be true in terms of the series being filled with predominantly male characters I recall seeing a gender poll where Japanese males and females were asked seperated to name their favourite anime franchise. For males it was predominantly the moe shows like K-On, Lucky Star, Haruhi, Saki etc, but for the females it was actually Gundam by a wide margin with various other mecha titles such as Code Geass, Macross F, Evangelion and Gurren Lagann taking up a good chunk of the list.

Granted there's quite a bit of crossover between the genders, but for females it was mecha taking up the upper chunk of the list while moe took up the upper chunk of the list for males:

Here's the chart by the way

Anyway I had this big huge thing about how I think we're headed into a second dark age written up, but as I got further into the podcast I noticed Chris pretty much covered my feelings on the downward spiral our culture is in (and they called the 80's the me generation?) so I decided to cut it from my post.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Well, that's a poll about Japan, and I also don't place too much validity in the findings because it's from right now. The reason I don't put stock in it is because in this last decade, Gundam has gone out of its way to be more female friendly with the shows that aired. I've seen a lot of American girls who call themselves Gundam fans, but all they're interested in is SEED and 00 because they have bishonen characters. They don't care at all about older Gundam series, and some in fact are quite hostile to them. The same goes with Macross - I've seen lots of girls who like Frontier because of the boys and the romance, but don't care one whit about any of the other series. You find me a poll from 1985 showing lots of women in Japan watching Zeta Gundam (which I'm sure doesn't exist), and then you'll be on to something.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Chris wrote:Well, that's a poll about Japan, and I also don't place too much validity in the findings because it's from right now. The reason I don't put stock in it is because in this last decade, Gundam has gone out of its way to be more female friendly with the shows that aired. I've seen a lot of American girls who call themselves Gundam fans, but all they're interested in is SEED and 00 because they have bishonen characters. They don't care at all about older Gundam series, and some in fact are quite hostile to them. The same goes with Macross - I've seen lots of girls who like Frontier because of the boys and the romance, but don't care one whit about any of the other series. You find me a poll from 1985 showing lots of women in Japan watching Zeta Gundam (which I'm sure doesn't exist), and then you'll be on to something.
The yaoi factor perceived or otherwise is definitely the reason for the poll result and indeed probably wouldn't work over here where tastes are completely different and moe or yaoi have no place in mainstream culture. I just wanted to post it because I heard the suggestion that it's the same in Japan with men being the dominant supporters of Gundam, which isn't exactly the case if we consider the post Wing series.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Kaioshin Sama wrote:I just wanted to post it because I heard the suggestion that it's the same in Japan with men being the dominant supporters of Gundam, which isn't exactly the case if we consider the post Wing series.
I think it's absolutely the case. Even if women/girls in Japan are showing more interest in some series like SEED, Wing or 00, how far does that go? Are they buying MGs from old UC series? Did they watch Turn A Gundam in 1999? Are they buying Blu-rays for IGLOO 2? Are they buying games like Gihren's Greed or G Generation? I would suspect that on the whole, the answer to all those questions is "no."
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Awesome episode, thoroughly entertaining as always. I remember Wing being popular, and myself being upset because I didn't have cable and couldn't watch it.

About that poll, I thought Chris being the journalist he is, would be more concerned with the source rather than when it was from. It's from a social networking site for otaku, and it polled only self-proclaimed otaku, hence guys glomming over moe stuff and girls on pretty-boy stuff. Granted otaku are mass consumers of anime, I don't think they account for a nationwide trend in either Japan or America. That's all before you consider the sample size (900 male, 360 female).
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Hey guys, first time poster, long time listener, and I just wanted to give my two cents on the whole thing of Gundam not being as popular as it was.

First off, I think that Gundam has been slowly getting more of an audience as the anime fanbase has been getting exposed to Gundam through the newer shows and I have personally seen a renewed interest (Not a super big one but an interest nonetheless) in the older series like X and Zeta. That's not a replacement at all for say, getting model kits into Toys R Us or it being aired daily on Cartoon Network, but as anime fandom has been moving more towards the internet in terms of getting the word out, that's pretty much the only real way I can see for Gundam getting a larger audience (Although 00 has a pretty devoted fanbase here. Mostly among females, but more loyal and invested in the whole package then when SEED and SEED Destiny were new).

That's pretty much all I've got. I personally think that Gundam will be able to keep a fanbase in the states and it will get slightly larger as we get new shows every few years or so, but unless, as you guys mentioned, there is a whole generation that isn't exposed to it sometime down the road and somehow, someway, we have a Toonami like solution to all this, I think the internet is the best way we will see if Gundam is sucessful or not.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

For this particular topic, I believe the stigma on anime is one of a few glaring problem, as Chris & Adam said, there are still people thinking anime and cartoon are one and the same (my parents included); especially when Pokemon came to North American television, and some audience thinks anime are all kids shows without realizing that not every show are for kids. Another problem that has been long-standing is how America censors children program, particularly with many death scenes and some of more adult contents are cut away before being broadcasted to US television. Then, there's the dubbing that could get horrendous. When some of those screenwriters did the scripts for voice actors for sake of just doing it, plenty of errors incurred thus making some of those shows less than enjoyable (to say the least).

As far as the subtitles from Hong Kong (or Taiwan), my only complaint is with the English subtitles due to the fact that most of the characters' names are wirtten in either Wade-Giles or Pinying. Now since I was born in Hong Kong, I have no problem with the Chinese subs for obvious reason. Same cannot be said with he English counterpart. While I could understand some of them, but the misspelling and bad translation on the characters' names forced me to stick with the Chinese subs.

As for Harmony Gold's stranglehold on all the rights on Macross, I only have one suggestion for Bandai or Funanimation: rather than going after Harmony Gold with lawsuits, just buy up HG outright. That way, instead of spending years in litigation, Bandai or Funanimation will be getting those rights in a matter of months. The only drawback with that is whether HG will allow that to happen.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Your out-of-the-box solution with HG might be more feasible in a better economy. Just yesterday, FUNimation's parent company Navarre reported that its 3rd quarter sales were down 22 percent. I doubt they'd be in any position to do acquisitions. Also, even though Robotech is well-known in America, it's not anywhere near as popular as Transformers, which makes me wonder if it would be worth buying one whole company to get just one title. If you're Microsoft, you can easily do that stuff (ie buying Bungie to get HALO), but anime companies don't have that sort of cash.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Vent Noir wrote:I wasn't sure about an episode devoted to this topic, but you managed to make it interesting and fun, nonetheless.

Given that Mick Foley is God and Setsuna is an atheist, I can't see them teaming up, though. Maybe they'll fight each other.

Foley vs Setsuna, Hell In A Cell - book it!
I don't care if Setsuna is a Gundam or not, my money's still on Foley.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

Chris wrote:Your out-of-the-box solution with HG might be more feasible in a better economy. Just yesterday, FUNimation's parent company Navarre reported that its 3rd quarter sales were down 22 percent. I doubt they'd be in any position to do acquisitions. Also, even though Robotech is well-known in America, it's not anywhere near as popular as Transformers, which makes me wonder if it would be worth buying one whole company to get just one title. If you're Microsoft, you can easily do that stuff (ie buying Bungie to get HALO), but anime companies don't have that sort of cash.
Chris, you are quite correct in your accessment, and I've read the article you mentioned on the Anime News Network last night before writing the previous piece. What I left out was quite obvious: that senario should/could have occurred 5 years ago if the likes of Bandai & Funanimation had all those revenues. Now, not even NBC Universial & Time Warner (ironically enough) has the money to pull it off. Although, I have also been thinking of wondering if HG is willing to make deals with Bandai & Funanimation for sublicensing contracts, much like an anime company you've mentioned some time last year had done with Funanimation. If that ever happens, just maybe we can totally forget that "Robotech" nonsense.

Having said that, the American way of producing television series is simply expanding the storyline rather than constant reenvisoning, and with series like M.A.S.K., ExoSquad, Batman/Superman/Justice League animated series and Gargoyles were essentially backstabbed by studio executives who only see revenues than keeping viewers' anticipation, thus creating the "niche" culture that even expanded to include the likes of international football (soccer). While we all want to have such anime to be successful, the stigmatism and the complacency in American culture have reduced the amount of people keeping interest.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

jcncasval76 wrote:If that ever happens, just maybe we can totally forget that "Robotech" nonsense.
But there is the whole problem, and the point of the segment. HG doesn't care about Macross. They never have. They really have little interest in pushing Macross as a franchise. All they want to do is push more Robotech, so from their perspective, there's no deficiency and nothing to change. I don't think they care about burning Macross fans, because their interest lies in building up Robotech fans.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

In that case, we'll be counting the time when HC runs out of materials after they are done recycling their available footages with Macross, Moespeda, Orgass, Southern Cross & Megazone, someone will buy them out from bankruptcy court.
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Re: Ep. 046 - Otaku Confidential

jcncasval76 wrote:In that case, we'll be counting the time when HC runs out of materials after they are done recycling their available footages with Macross, Moespeda, Orgass, Southern Cross & Megazone, someone will buy them out from bankruptcy court.
You're still assuming that one thing happening will lead to a certain outcome. The Macross name is not well known in America compared to Robotech. Even if HG went up on the auction block, it's probably not worth it for any anime company to buy them just to get Macross. There is no market for Macross in America, despite what fans like to believe.
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