Akihabara Renditions Online

MomoCon 2011

akibaren — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:21:15 +0000

The cast of Akihabara Renditions will be visiting MomoCon this weekend in Georgia Tech Square in various capacities! Here are the following panels that you can find (some) of us in -

New Media/Podcasting in Anime Fandom: Drew is acting as a moderator for the discussion, so AkibaRen is sure to be mentioned. But this is about other podcasts and “new media”. (Saturday, 4 PM. Room 102)

XDR: Marc and Drew head up a ridiculous clip show. (Saturday, 11:30 PM. Room 101)

10 Years, 10 Anime – Japanese Animation 1980 – 1989: You know Drew loves the ’80s and its Japanese cartoons. Stop by to see what he considers some important and must-see anime year by year! (Sunday, 5:30 PM. Room 202)

When not giving presentations or assisting in general con business, we’ll also be promoting our ever more time consuming product, SeishunCon! Stop by and say hey, our table will be right near registration!

Episode 35 – Christmas Craptacular 4

akibaren — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 03:59:59 +0000

We’re back on schedule for our fourth annual Christmas Craptacular special! And we’ll probably only be on schedule for this episode. Especially after the debacle with last year’s Craptacular and not to mention the debacle that is, well, our recording/posting history for the year 2010, it doesn’t hurt to get one thing out on time.

Hosts: Drew Sutton, Richard Hoelsher and Marc Smazik.

Download this episode, you geek!

We’d also like to take this time to preemptively wish our listeners a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year as we are all ready to bugger off for family, food and copious amounts of booze. Akihabara Renditions will be back shortly after the new year with the same resolution (to do better) for 2011!

Episode 34 – Crisis on Infinite Californias

akibaren — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 02:01:11 +0000

Richard and Drew get together for a podcast where we talk about the 1986 OAV, California Crisis. California Crisis is a bit like Please Save My Earth in that in this episode, Drew couldn’t stand to go looking for screen shots or an audio clip. Richard and Drew just get right into it. In fact, this image was taken from the site Anime Classic Reviews, run by a really awesome fan, “Area88″. Be sure to check out the site and what treasures lie there – we guarantee you’ll see future reviews coming from that treasure trove of titles!

Download this episode, you geek!

Hosts: Drew Sutton and Richard Hoelsher

Episode 33 – Space Battleship Yamato

akibaren — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:51:26 +0000

Not only did Drew take an inordinate amount of time to edit the episode, Space Battleship Yamato was a series that the Akihabara Renditions crew had been meaning to do since the inception of the podcast. Well, we finally got to it.

Download this episode, you geek!

Hosts: Drew Sutton, Richard Hoelsher and Marc Smazik.

There is nothing that we could write here that would be considered influential in the realm of Space Battlehsip Yamato (or, Star Blazers, as it is also known), so we’re not even going to try. If you search on the Internet, you’ll find a lot of articles that are much better (and already) written. Our review, we feel, cannot be parroted here in show notes. And besides, you don’t want to disappoint Leader Dessler, do you?

Be sure to check out our next episode where we tackle the 1986 OAV California Crisis!

Episode 32 – Richard’s Bizarre Podcast

akibaren — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:42:44 +0000

In this episode of Akihabara Renditions, Drew, Marc and Richard sit down and discuss a couple of OAVs based on the anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Download this episode, you geek!

Hosts: Drew Sutton, Richard Hoelsher and Marc Smazik

The Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure OAVs are based on a shonen manga of the same name by Araki Hirohiko. It began serialization in 1987 in Shonen JUMP and is the second longest running manga that magazine has published with collected volumes in the triple digits. Due to its length, it was not starkly different from other Shonen JUMP titles of its time but fans who first got into anime and manga like Naruto or Bleach will probably find it to not look shonen at all. It is also very beloved by our very own Richard, who’d been wanting to do a Jojo’s review for quite some time.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adeventure lives up to its name in that it is about a vampire named Dio and a myriad of fighters who use spiritual assistance, known as Stands. Actually … you should just check out the rest of the screen shots and download the episode. In another rarity – the entire series was enjoyed by all members of the podcast!

Here we see a sample of the animation used in the 1993 OAV. The second OAV (which is a prequel) was done in 2001.

A typical shonen fare for 2001, indeed!

Proud producer of Internet memes.

Stay tuned for our next episode where we go after a true classic and what could be called a National Treasure of Japan – Space Battleship Yamato.

Episode 31 – Talking About Baseball

akibaren — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:05:25 +0000

After our latest hiatus, the crew from AkibaRen returns with another fantastic podcast! On this episode, we tackle a review for a trilogy of films that are condensed from a longer TV series and manga. This episode was recorded earlier this year and Drew’s only just now gotten around to editing it.

Download this episode, you geek!

Hosts This Episode: Drew Sutton, Richard Hoelsher, Marc Smazik and Taylor Hall

Another one of Drew’s favorite series is up to the plate in this episode but unlike many of the others that are lambasted by his co-hosts, Adachi Mitsuru’s Touch holds up very well. This youthful baseball drama has something for everyone that we rarely find with other series, particularly those of the last five or six years.

To as not sound too redundant, if you need to read notes or an article before actually downloading the episode, Drew wrote a piece for GaijINside that sums up the series as a whole from the TV series perspective. The review in this episode is based off of the first three theatrical films.

Sports, Hacking and Terrible Robots – AkibaRen at AWA XVI!

akibaren — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:36:59 +0000

It’s that time of year again! With plenty of episodes in the editing engine, Akihabara Renditions is gearing up for panels at Anime Weekend Atlanta! Here’s our listing of events that we’ll be present for at this year’s convention.

Engrish Jamboree (Fri. 1:00 PM/13:00 Kennesaw Room) – Drew and Basil from our Podcast Super-Friends, the OSMCast!, bring forth examples of Japanese animation and some pop-culture of ridiculous portrayals of the English language!

Wide World of Sports Anime (Fri. 4:00 PM/16:00 Galleria 104) – Drew and Basil are back with Michelle to talk about the most over-looked genre of Japanese animation: that dealing with games of sport!

Podcaster’s Roundtable (Sat. 3:30 PM/15:30 Kennesaw Room) – Members of AkibaRen will be stopping by to say what’s up with other podcasters and chat with folks interested in podcasting.

Hacking in Anime (Sat. 7:00 PM/19:00 Galleria 104) – Marc and Drew are doing a last-minute replay of their successful panel from MTAC this year! They’ve got some clips from a few different anime that depict some elements of computer hacking – they’ll let you know what’s fact or fiction! Please check your neckbeard at the door.

My Life on the Super Robot D-List (Sun. 12:00 PM Galleria 104) – Mecha aficionados Drew and Richard are combining with Dave Merrill from Let’s Anime with a list of Super Robot anime that can be described as anything but good.

Why Anime Cons? (Sun. 3:30 PM/15:30 Galleria 104) – Drew and Marc will be there to talk about running anime conventions.

We’ll be posting some lists of clips we use in our panels so drop in and stay tuned!

Omake 2 – Memories of Macek

akibaren — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:55:32 +0000

With the news over the weekend about the passing of Carl Macek, we decided to get together for a quick bonus episode to discuss the most impacting death in the US anime industry. Carl Macek has fundamentally shaped the industry as we know it.

Download this episode.

Hosts: Drew Sutton, Richard Hoelsher and Marc Smazik

Show Notes:

Akihabara Renditions has made it clear before that we’ve not agreed with Macek’s practices and opinions, even if we can see the reasoning behind the decisions made. This episode will undoubtably sound harsh to the family and friends he’s left behind; however, in the coverage we’ve seen thus far, we’ve seen little attention to the controversey of his legacy. This is not an indictment of his life or what sort of person he was to those he met – this is about Japanese cartoons, the stances he’s taken and the products he’s worked on.

MomoCon 2010 – this weekend

akibaren — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:04:34 +0000

Marc and Drew will be down at MomoCon again this year promoting SeishunCon! Swing by the con table for some swag or just a chat. We won’t be doing a typical convention review for MomoCon since we’ll just be promoting this year.

Episode 30 – This End Up

akibaren — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:47:04 +0000

Our first podcast of 2010 is finally available three months into the year! As we begin 2010, we start out a new method of selecting what gets reviewed on a more permanent basis – the Rotation Schedule! Up for this review, we let Marc take us down to another favorite of his, one of the reasons he heavily got into anime and Drew takes the opportunity to take off nostalgia glasses and gets to rip into someone for something they love more for nostalgia than any real quality of the product. As expected, Richard always has and always will hate this show. This episode, we’re talking about Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-oh-ki OAV 1.

Hosts: Marc Smazik, Drew Sutton and Richard Hoelsher

Download this episode, you geek!

There are a couple of reasons why we’re only tackling Ryo-oh-ki OAV 1 for this episode. The first is that each of the first two OAVs, produced as the bubble was bursting in the Japanese economy, are six episodes each. This is a time factor for three fairly busy individuals. Second is that even though the OAV series all contain the same name, each portion is self-contained although self-referential. The problem with Tenchi Muyo! being so self-referential is that it essentially tells the same story three different ways, making it hard for someone who actually cares about the show to get confused with the alternate ways they write the story lines, so Marc makes many references and mentions to portions of the story that aren’t really explained solely in Ryo-oh-ki OAV 1. But Richard and Drew roll with it and you should, too, dear audience! Besides, even though there are a bunch of details from other series dropped in or time lines from different series confused, this series tends to have either a love it or hate it verdict as time marches on. If you’re not up for watching the series after this review, you probably weren’t going to watch it in the first place. If you’re up for this whole harem-pandering-genre-thing, then you’ve probably already seen it, unless you’ve been living under a rock.

The only podcast not to mention digital bikinis or "special tea"! Here we have three of the main archetypes/marketing demographics - Ryoko the tsundere, Aeka the ojousama and Sasami the Loli.

While I am sure the production staff had honest intentions to make something with some mass appeal, I have a feeling most of the people who bought Tenchi Muyo! looked like this.

Episode 5 of 6 - here comes the plot!

With Marc’s selection for the rotation complete, it turns now to the chief, Drew. Drew decides to have the crew tackle three movies which summarize one of his favorite Japanese cartoons of all time, Touch. Join us for episode 31 as we delve into sports anime!