I'm going to take a guess as to what that was. Do you have a harmonica? Yeah. Are you playing the harmonica? I thought it would be fun to do a little. Like, yeah. Play us a new intro song. Okay. Discord picked up none of that. So I'll have to listen to it. Okay. Well, my podcast. Wait. Yeah. Just like, yeah. That's great. Just play us a harmonica song. That could be our new intro music. I just, I found it and I was like, oh, this will be fun. Just start the episode with a little fade in.
The end of the year we can have like a, like a harmonica album release. Yes. Cause I totally know how to play a harmonica. Yeah. Why else would you have one? Yeah. Well, just cause I was from a Jean through some old stuff and found this like camping kit and had a harmonica playing cards and like marshmallow roasters. And so, yeah. Anyways, welcome to so Joe. This is a podcast about anime.
You may not have picked that up from our beginning here, but that's because we aren't just the anime podcaster. Just lovely to listen to regardless of what we're talking about. We're partially a camping podcast now. What's your favorite type of tent? All I know is that Joe is ready to make his return to camping after we've heard his previous saga of camping disaster. Yes. Disaster camping. I do not want to be a podcast about camping actually. They got to be out there already. Oh, for sure.
What do we think the audience overlap between like people who like camping and anime fans already think it's big? I don't know. There was an anime about camping. There was. Oh, you know, it's not these girls, right? That like, yeah, it's like, it's like the cute girls doing mundane things genre of anime and just go camping. And apparently it's, I don't know. I've heard it's like, all right. Okay. Go camping. Yay. Yay, camping. Yeah. I'm Sarah. That's Joe. We make up the dynamic duo of so Joe.
Which one's the Robin? Am I the Robin? No, I think you're Batman and I am Robin. Oh, I'm the Batman. Yeah. I feel more like the Alfred to be honest. Yeah. Oh, he's cool. He is cool. Robin does turn into Nightwing. Well, there's, which Robin are you? There's multiple. That's a good point. I always, I am very partial to Dick Grayson Robin. So I do like the Nightwing Robin. Yeah. I haven't seen that much stuff with the other ones, I guess to be honest.
I don't like the, I don't like his kid, his actual kid. I think that Damien, I think, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's wild. Which can be fun, but it's kind of exhausting, you know? Hmm. Oh, Tim's cool. I don't know which one. Drake, is that it? All I know is from young justice. Yeah. He's the one in that one. Cause the other ones. Yeah. Yeah. Already. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we've, we, I should probably be like, Oh, me and Joe, good friends for over a decade.
We both love gaming and anime and I wanted to stay in touch. So this podcast has been our way of doing that. Um, and we wanted to learn, I wanted to learn. This is new to me. So I'm learning a lot about, um, show Joe anime, anime that is geared towards, uh, women and girls, I guess, we're kind of in the little Josay space technically. So that has been interesting to me. What's the consensus so far? What does Joe think of the consensus?
So Joe, so Joe, Well, we watched, we watched four things, right? They haven't compared to like, so like I've watched a lot of shown it obviously. Um, that tends to be more fantasy oriented. And so far we haven't watched anything that's super fantasy oriented, even the thing that we almost watched, Kami-sama kiss, like fantasy elements, but it's still fundamentally like in the normal regular world, right? Yeah. Yeah. But there is, I haven't seen that as much even like Sailor Moon, right?
Like it's, it most of the time, Yeah. In the regular world. Yep. Yep. I haven't seen, you know, it's not like one piece or, um, what else is like, like Naruto or whatever, where it's like a fantasy world that just like doesn't reflect reality at all. Full metal. I haven't seen that. Well, yeah. I guess it's kind of industrial based. Um, Which is interesting. Yeah, I just wait till we do Fushigi Yu-Gi, which is an ancient China. Or whatever. But ancient China is still a real place though.
Well, okay. Totally fictional. Um, Oh dear. So that one podcast or that one anime I talked about on the very first thing we recorded for this sugar apple fairy tale with the enslaved fairies thing. That's It's a world. That's okay. That's a good point. Uh huh. But that just feels like that feels like a very prevalent thing and shown in. And I just really haven't seen it at all in the world building aspect. Yeah. So that's a good point. Yeah. I guess cause. Show, Maybe shown in is more about.
Like, Like doing things. And Shojo is more about. The characters. Um, So it's like, It may also just be the environment and just more about. Yeah. Yeah. The character specifically. That may also be like a more recent thing that got more popular. Cause we're watching stuff that's like a little bit older, right? And like it's been adapted from manga that's older. Yeah. Like a lot of old. Stories like this being written listening.
Yeah. She's just like, I know like a lot of details into like I'm sending them about. tao nazis. But I think is just narrating in that you've done that a lot of. Brick on the reed like really well. When you before the age fantasy world, everything's different is like a newer. A favorite Risen popularity recently, I'm thinking of like, Y a books that like our popular with women, like the. I read the first volume. OK, is that a book? Is the first volume a book or is it like?
Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's a book and a series. OK, it's. What was mediocre about it? I don't know, like the writing average, you know, like what? It's like Twilight level. No, get their ass. I don't care. I have no stake in this. I think I don't know. I just it's like the new Twilight where it's like the love triangle and, you know, oh, she turns into this, you know, she was human, but then like turns into the other thing. Blah, blah, blah. I don't know. It just it was fine. It was fine.
I feel like a retread, like you're just doing this again, but like with a different coat of paint. I mean, I just kind of the whole time I was reading it, just felt like this is someone I just didn't feel very sophisticated writing or it felt so cliche and of like, I'm the tough girl who knows how to fight and I hate being girly and this and that. And oh, really? Like it means like really hard. That's funny. Yeah, my sister frigging loves a series.
It's fine. It's OK. Maybe it gets maybe the author gets better at writing. I just I just didn't feel remarkable to me in any way as someone who's read a lot of romance and fantasy. I don't know. Christopher Poloni or whatever, 19 year old dude, just something he just crushed it. Ergon is probably one of my favorite books. Oh, I couldn't read that book. I tried reading that book and I'm like, I can't do this. And it's a little bit of a slusser.
I can't do fantasy tropes where like the thing is obvious what's going to happen, but they have to act like this is the draw. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's the thing I can't do where it's like, oh, I'm like an orphan. And I don't know who my parents are, but I'm really good at this thing. I'm like, let me get your parents are like, that's true. Legendarily good at this thing. And it's like, yes. And I'm just like, dude, I can't like that can't be the core thing of the book.
The book has to have something else for me to latch on to. Yeah, that's a good point. That's because I'm an adult and I've read a bunch of other stuff. And this is like not written for a bunch of other stuff. So yeah, I'm a novel or an adult genre. Both of them. Well, now the. Act are, I think, is what the short hand for a court of thorns and roses. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That sounds right. I it's I don't remember how it's I feel like it's not that explicit. That's what. What, like there's sex in it?
What do you mean? Yeah, yeah. It's like it's like it's muddy a little bit, which is like the big draw of it, I think, for most chicks. Oh, really? Yes. I kind of didn't read 50 shades of gray, but I'm assuming it's less than that. I don't know. It's fine. That makes sense. Whatever gets women or just people more interested in fantasy and stuff is good. But yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's just like it's an interesting thing that I know is popular now that is not present in any of these shows
that we've watched so far. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to think on that. We've only watched four shows, so that's what I know. Although I looked at the list and don't see a lot on the list either. That really falls into that. Yes, you're right. I mean, like everything I think is a show, Joe is a shonen. Now it turns out. Or me, a shonen and just layer. Yeah, shonen. What is happening? I mean, there's going to be some stuff that is like, I know Utena is like a weird fantasy world, kind of.
Uh huh. Um, yes, well, we'll get to that at some point. Yeah, we'll get there. It just seems a lot of these are the. I'm a high school girl. Things happen to me that are either like unusual or in some cases, kind of one day. And I mean, Kimi Nii Tadokie was kind of just like, this could be someone's life. I guess there's nothing like stopping it for being someone's life.
I guess it could be like when the demographic gets like basically relatable, because if you're in school and then protagonists is in school and then they have these interesting things happen, that's exciting. Thinking about them happening to you. Whereas boys like just want to fan her or more inclined for like more exciting than what life is currently, maybe. Or disasphide or. Yeah, I'm trying to think of like, like what is the like US equivalent?
Like what were you watching that was not, you know, like anime in like middle school, high school. Avatar Lost Runner, which is technically not anime. Well, but like geared towards like geared more towards women, right? Like I'm thinking about like there's a lot of TV, like there was like that's so Raven. There was like, you know, Wizards of Waverly Place, like that kind of like the live action kind of like Disney. Because you had like a victorious that was on what? Nickelodeon. We were.
Yeah, yes, we were. We were like Ham on Tannin. So I would sometimes see it by proxy. But I feel like I think. What I watched that I don't know, Teen Titans. I try to think. I don't know if I can see that much. Because I started watching anime when I was in middle school. So then that's like all. Yeah, but I mean like. Oh, OK, I see. I see. Yeah, like a lot of like cartoons. Race Face. I was a guy. They weren't. Yeah, they weren't like explicitly gendered.
I mean, it's mostly just like like is the power of girls for girls. Oh, totally spies. Totally spies. Right. Like I also watch that even though it's like all women. Yeah, yeah. Then you had stuff that's like kind of on like Code Lyoko, right? Like there are women and guys. People watch both of that stuff. So it's like there's a lot less obvious demographic. Like shifts or like marketing for stuff, right? And then you have like SpongeBob and things like that, which is just.
Rodney for everyone. Long American Dragon was Danny Fanta. These are things like Justice League Unlimited. Yeah, but like I feel like maybe the like Hannah Montana kind of thing is the analog I should be drawing for this because that fits more into what we've watched, right? Where it's like, oh, you're like a high school girl and here's some weird stuff going on in your life that's like goofy and bizarre, right? Yeah, I having the hardest time of thinking of like live actions that I watch.
I really was just more into the animated things. Once I was of a certain age. I don't know. What were you watching? I mean, I watched those shows like I mean, I watched like a bunch of cartoons. I kind of just watched like everything cartoons. I didn't watch any anime really because I didn't have any shows or like channels that would play it. I watched two Nami, you know, like once a week, essentially. Yeah, like I would watch all the stuff that people remember, right?
I'd watch some of the stuff people don't remember as well. Like I'd watch Cat Dog. I'd watch Angry Beaver. You know, I did like Nets Declassified School Survival Guide. I like that one a lot. That's another kind of gender neutral one, though. I did watch Zoe 101. Yeah, Zoe 101. I did watch that. A little bit of The Sweet Life of Zack and Cody, I guess. But Drake and Josh. That's another one that I liked a lot. Drake and Josh. Yeah. Yeah, not like very. Very much targeted content.
Yeah. Yeah. Like I watched even Stevens, you know, I mean, like there's stuff on there, but it's like not as impossible. Impossible. Yeah, I did watch Kim possible. That was that was quite good. Yeah. But yeah, nothing like super. I did like the Barbie movies when I was a younger girl. Like I probably got myself sealed by the time. Yeah. And those sometimes those are set in like fantastical places. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Like the comparison point of like what.
I guess like US media has to offer or did have to offer us growing up versus like kind of what is we're watching now on this show and like the different anima's and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, they have that stuff there. Like, you know, I mean, because they're just fun to know what the like frequency of cartoons released at that time versus frequency of anime released at the time, but if they had like a lot more anime coming out, then maybe it's just easier to turn out.
Yeah. Comparative action stuff than it is here. Yeah. So it is still like, oh, that's for kids. Or at least for the older generation, very much like. Yeah. Anime is not for adults. Yeah. I mean, I think that's especially true here.
Like cartoons is like definitely coded for kids stuff, especially because like, I don't know, like my parents were very much like, thought it was weird that I would watch cartoons as I got older, which makes sense because they the cartoons they grew up on were like the Transformers TV show and like Thundercats. And if you watch that nowadays, it's very obvious that this is just like an ad for toys, essentially. Yeah. And we did not have writers. And then when I grew up, they had writers.
So the writing was actually good. So yeah. Significant difference in terms of quality. I don't know. Yeah, I enjoyed being a kid. So maybe it's just like being a kid at that time. There's extra fun or I don't know. Are we, um, I don't think I. I think my family just knew I was quirky. So they just, and my mom had my sister to be the normal one. Okay. Do the normal stuff with. Yeah. Yeah. Well, any other catching up you want to do? Do anything fun, watch any anime?
I did try a couple of series and couldn't get into. Any of them. Let me pull up. Okay. Um, let's see. I tried solo leveling. I watched six episodes of that. Okay. Very, very unlikable protagonist. So don't want to watch it. Um, I tried the 12 Kingdom show that like all 2002 one. Yeah. It's a little rough. Okay. Or everything feels like a knockoff of fishy. You sometimes like same with them. Yona of the dawn, but. Um, I was like, Oh, maybe I'll try that new Rooney Kenshin remake.
Um, I never really watched the anime. I just had the manga. It was like a really gritty manga. And I don't understand why that was like one of the first series that I finished when I was like 13. Um, Yeah, I can't watch that show anymore. Yeah. Even the stuff about their creator of it. What happened with the creator? Oh God. What? Oh, you don't know this? I don't stay up to date with anything. Oh God. What is it? Okay. Let me make sure I'm saying the right thing here. So keep talking. Oh dear.
Okay. Well, everybody's sex. It's just who's secrets come out or not. I guess. Oh dear. Keep talking. Let me let me. Yeah. Cause I have. It's like 27 28 volumes. Uh, And yeah, for some reason I picked that up and it's so gory and so political. And I feel like I understood maybe like 50% of what the, like I was so dumb. I don't know why. I don't know why that's a series I had. I still have it, but I need to reread and see.
Um, Cause I have the sense and goomy, which I only know from the dating thing called Hakaoki. Um, I don't know what I'm talking about. So. What? Well, the creator of a runny kitchen in. 18. Um, was charged for possession of child pornography. Uh, basically it seems got a slap on the wrist. Uh, because you know. Yeah. Just as systems. Yeah. Uh, I don't know if that's like totally resolved yet, but yeah, so ever since I learned about that, I cannot engage with that.
And also like a lot of these manga creators hang out with each other and see still like pals around with people like the guy who made one piece, which makes me pretty like not, not great. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, yeah. Anyway, that's, that's, that's, that's my thoughts on that. Okay. Gotcha. Well, anyway, it's not nothing caught my eye really. How about you, Joe? I watched the first episode of the Ronma one half remake having never watched the original show or like knowing very little about it.
All I knew was the gender swapping thing and there's a character named shampoo. Yeah, I love shampoo. That's all I know. I don't know who she is. I just know what's her name. She's the lady with the purple hair. Yeah. Yeah. So this was originally what in the nineties or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was probably the nineties. Yeah. 89. So 89 in the nineties.
Okay. Um, this is a show about a guy named Ronma who is like a martial artist and him and his dad go on a trip to China to like train, do some kind of special training and then go to this like cursed springs area where if you fall into one of the pools, you, um, turn into whatever creature died in that pool. So the dad falls into a pool that turns it into a giant panda. So when he gets wet with cold water, he becomes a giant panda. Oh, when he become, he gets wet with warm water.
He goes back to his like regular self and Ronma falls into one that turns him into a young girl. So it is a gender swapping thing where when he gets wet with cold water, he becomes a girl and when he gets wet with warm water, he goes back to being a guy. He is engaged to some other chick because their families arranged this marriage to keep their dojos going. Um, and so it's basically just a story about that. It's like a comedy.
Uh, from what I, you know, from what I remember people talking about, this is like a pretty, the original was like, you know, had a lot of, um, Oh, you have the manga for it. Yeah. I have the entire manga series. Um, Wow. Okay. I really liked the cover with this first one. Um, Yeah, it looks nice. I've heard that the, I haven't, I've only watched the first episode as well, but like it's heavily censored for this one.
Um, as far as just minor things like, uh, apparel that had certain symbols on them and stuff like that. Yeah. Like it, like, you know, the original show, I know had like some like nudity and stuff in it. The new show doesn't, I don't know if I would consider that censoring because I think it's just like a more pleasant show to watch. I mean, there's not like detail really being shown more than there is in the anime. As far as I don't know, I didn't watch the way you said it.
I can't do like, oh, they censored this. I don't really think censoring like nudity in this show is that big of a deal. I think that kind of doesn't matter. I mean, I haven't seen the original show. So I don't know how much comedy in this, in the martial arts in this series. Um, Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I found the show pretty charming. Like I think, like Ron was pretty fun. Um, I like sub or dub. Uh, I watched the subs of it. Okay. Has the original voice cast. Oh, really?
Um, that's what, that's what Jenny told me. Okay. Uh, I'll watch that instead. Did not like the dub. Yeah. I like all the characters so far. It's pretty funny. Um, it, you know, the art looks pretty good. It's just like, it's totally charming so far. I know this is like a long running series. So I'm sure at some point. It will be less charming or, I don't know if it'll fall off or it'll maintain, but so far I'm having a pretty good time. I'm like three episodes in or something.
Nice. Yeah. Um, it's the only like, really it's like comedy first. It's only series that I own. That is like, around that. Um, that was a huge cast. Like, I don't know if there's been a series of more rivals introduced than this one. Like, they just, so many characters get thrown in. Uh, there's like 32 volumes. Uh, but there's like fun stuff like, just like, I really like that. Yeah. So it's like, I'm like, I've never had a show like this before. Um, I've never had a show like this before.
It's, it's just like, I've never had a show like this before. Yeah. I've never had a show like this before. Um, I was really excited for yoga and shampoo. Have you ever met yet? Um, but yeah, it is good. So I hope you enjoy it. Yeah. So I'll keep watching that. Otherwise I'm still going through Gundam wing. All right. Well, all right. I guess we should get this ball rolling because I got to go for my freaking third wedding dress. Expersion. OK. All right. Sorry. Sorry. Make sure to cut that out.
Mark that down. Right. My sneeze is cute. Um, all right. So Chiaya Furue, I've learned a couple of things by paying attention. Number one, they call the episode versus. So I'm going to start calling them versus now like that makes sense. Yeah. Yes. But we'll start with with a voice actor talking about that. We're going to talk about the voice actor for Tai Chi, who is a repeat. We've had them before. The voice actor for Tai Chi is Mamoru Miona Miano.
Sorry, who was the voice of Shofu and Skip beat the show we just watched. It always plays the jerky characters. He plays the jerky characters, but also, yeah, I guess he does kind of play the jerky characters and a lot of stuff. He has a thousand million credits because his dude has done like a bunch of stuff and work. You may know him as Light Yagami in Death Note, the main character. He's also Kiba in Wolf's Rain, which you told me to watch. Yeah, you saw it.
He is Ren Okabe in Steins Gate, the main character in that. And for me, he is Riku in Kingdom Hearts. Is that the white haired one? Yeah, that's the like rival. It's like you got you. The Sasuke. The Sasuke. But better than Sasuke because he's an actually evil. He's just he's just going through it. Oh, Kingdom Hearts is good. Did you play that? You let me your PS2 once and I tried to play it. I just could not get into it. You know, it's OK. I'm getting we got Jenny to play it and she hates it.
She's she's having the worst time ever. I just it was like, I didn't I tried it when I was a high school. So I didn't have like that childhood fondness for it. I'm not like especially I to Final Fantasy or Disney and I don't know, combat, whatever. Or like I don't know, goofy having freaking goofy in your game. It's it's rules. Goofy should be in every game. You just throw goofy as a party member. Like if you could play Dragon Age and one of your party members is just goofy.
That would be that would be awesome. Should be DLC for every single game. All right, Gehia Furu, verse five is called the site of a midnight moon. I'm trying to think of why that would be the game. Yeah, please try to interpret what these mean. I don't know. Does Arata's name have like some double meaning? This is the episode where they go see him. So yeah, that's why I'm saying this. Anyway, we open on Chihira and Tai Chi running on the running onto the morning train together.
They're wearing their street clothes because they're on a trip to see Arata. Tai Chi doesn't seem all that worried about him, but Chihira is extremely worried. She knows how his voice is different now. And he has a Bakui accent, which is the region he's living in currently. But if she doesn't go and see him now, she'll never see him again. As a reminder, the end of last episode, she like called him to tell him that she made class A and he was like, don't call me anymore. I stopped playing.
Karuta. Yeah, so angsty. Yeah, so angsty. On the train, Tai Chi speculates Arata just got a new hobby, and it's not that big of a deal, but Chihira isn't having it. He changes the subject to ask her if she likes anyone because he's worried about love rivalries. She says she tries to give Dr. Harada chocolate every Valentine's Day, but he refuses because he's married. Tai Chi says that it's not what he's talking about. He means like actual love. And she's like, well, what's love then?
And then he pauses and says it's when you don't enjoy being around each other. And Chihira is like, what? You don't enjoy being around your girlfriend and Tai Chi deflects, but he continues in a monologue that love is when nothing goes your way and you're not having fun, but you want to be with him anyway, because he is going through it. I think that's the universal experience for love, my dude. No, he's just describing what's happening to him right now.
Yeah. He's got to kick the girlfriend to the curb, man. This is eye control. It's not great. Again, not the best look for you, bud. No. She's also not going to be into you. She knows you have a girlfriend. Like this is your, this is a little self-sabotaging. Tai Chi is so clearly in love with Chihira. It's not even funny. That's my next note. He's frustrated and thinks this is a trip that's kind of a waste of time, but keeps on going. Anyway, they take a taxi to Arata's house.
Chihira almost chickens out from ringing the doorbell and tries to make Tai Chi do it, but Tai Chi doesn't think that he had the best of relationship with Arata, so he doesn't want to do it either. A schoolgirl sees Chihira and Arata standing in front of Arata's house and tells him that she's their neighbor and that he has a part-time job at the bookstore now. So they rush over while bickering about it. Chihira is better at running than Tai Chi, even though she's a little bit of a loser.
Tai Chi is better at running than Tai Chi, even though she's wearing boots. Well, she was in track and her running form is really good, because she has her arms going to the side, popping wears. Freaking Tai Chi is almost doing the anime girl run, where his arms are going side to side and sloppy running form. Tai Chi cannot run for shit. He tells her to stop running because she's just going to chicken out approaching him anyway.
She stops and looks up at the cherry blossoms because they're running through like a trail. It's like very scenic. A road with trees over our trees. A road with trees, but it's not for cars. The walking path. She asks if she really wants to see Arata, and Tai Chi says he doesn't really care either way, and they can just go home if she wants. We can just leave.
They walk next to each other and we have several shots of their hands slaying as Tai Chi decides if he's going to try to hold her hand before they see his love rival. He almost goes for it when a guy on a bicycle rides past. She hire notices that it's Arata and runs after him, pulling him off the bike very dangerously. They both tumble down a hill and Arata ends up on top of Chihaya. Arata takes a moment to recognize her and only does when Tai Chi calls out to her.
Chihaya cries saying that she missed him. She's so pretty and he is blown away by her beauty. She's so pretty. They both fell down a hill. He landed on top of her. How the tables turn from Tai Chi trying to hold her hand to Arata being on top of her. Yeah. Oh, man. They go to Arata's house. Dangerous. Yeah. Chihaya has to take a bath because she got covered in dirt while falling down that hill.
The next door neighbor girl, Yu, her name is Yu, helped them out and Tai Chi offers her some sweets as a thank you. She seems somewhat off put and rushes home. Tai Chi and Arata both catch up and sighs each other up at the same time. Chihaya comes in and starts talking about her underwear with Tai Chi. I don't know why this happens. Arata's not having it.
It just kind of shows how like she hasn't matured because she's still kind of panty like a little girl and like not aware that she shouldn't be discussing those things in front of dudes. Yes. She does not have boundaries with Tai Chi, which is bad news for everybody. Yeah. Yep. Arata's not having it and tells him to leave as soon as her clothes dry. Tai Chi is like, whatever, we'll just leave. But Chihaya insists on reading a letter she wrote to Arata.
She gets it from her bag and she sees like a stack of Karuta cards that she brought with her. I have a note here. This is Arata like tells him to leave, but he also brought out tea for everybody. So like what's going on, man? I think it's just like the obligation or expectation that you have tea for guests, even if you don't necessarily want them there. Yeah, which is weird. Just be mean. Whatever. You're telling me to like fuck off forever and stop talking to you.
You don't need to bring the tea. It only made two cups of tea. It only made two cups. Who are those for? Him and Tai Chi? What's happening? Maybe because she was still on the bath. Maybe. Yeah. Weird. She pulls out the Karuta cards and says that the three of them should play. She walks over to a side room to like set up the game. Arata doesn't react and Tai Chi thinks that this is a bad idea.
Chi Hira talks about how much she loves Karuta and how much they used to love Karuta growing up while setting up the board. Arata walks over and kicks the cards. He tersely tells her that he can't play anymore. She turns to see that the room she's in is actually a family shrine to his now departed grandfather. So he died. Eternal master. That's right. The big shot. Tai Chi rushes over and shoves Arata.
He tells Chi Hira that they're leaving and that Arata isn't the same anymore and then drags her out telling Arata that they're not coming back. Tai Chi tries to drag Chi Hira off, but she tries to like get away as they're like walking back down the trail. She breaks free and starts to head back, but sees an upset you running at them and shoves and she shoves the Karuta cards at her saying that they can't leave those there. Like you got to take the cards.
You can't leave the cards with Arata, which means that you came back at some point, which is wild. She is the neighbor. She is a neighbor. So she could have heard them like storm off or something and then gone to check on Arata. Maybe. Perhap. Chi Hira picks up the cards out of a puddle and explains how Karuta gave her life meaning. She asks you why Arata quit and you explains that four years ago his grandfather had a stroke. So Arata had to come back and take care of him.
That's why he, you know, had to leave after elementary school. But one day when Arata had gone or was gone, his grandfather had a relapse and died. He would have normally been there to take care of him that day, but at that time he was at a Karuta tournament getting his class a rank and ever since then he hasn't played.
We got a flashback between young Arata and his grandfather where his grandfather explains that the secret of his Karuta playing is that a Karuta God whispers to him while he plays. We jump back to Arata in the present day. He sees the envelope that Chi Hira, that Chi Hira's letter was in, but she never got to like read. He picks it up and a bunch of notes fall out with questions and reminders about meeting Arata like get his cell phone number and also take a picture of him for Dr. Arata.
He takes out the actual letter. It says that Chi Hira thinks of Arata as a Karuta God and Arata says that he is no God. He just wanted to play with their friend, with his friends. We got the Tai Chi and Chi Hira on the train. Chi Hira is depressed and says that she never should have come. Then she hears something and looks out the window and she sees Arata riding his bike alongside the train. He calls out to them and they bang on the window.
He thinks to himself that he didn't want them to see what he had become, but in reality he had really missed them. The train pulls away because it's a train. Chi Hira collapses and cries, thinking that it's so good that he doesn't hate them. Tai Chi is like, come on, we're in public. You need to like not cry on the seat of this train. He wonders if she's able to hear Arata somehow like through the train. Like how did you even know he was there?
He looks at her and tells her that he'll help her start a club at school. At school we see a mysterious girl in full Kyoto gear, which is the Japanese archery thing with like the huge ass bow. Looking at the Karuta club poster as we cut to credits. Who are first? The T's. The T's. The T's are the newest member. They mentioned in the part where they're walking as April, so good to note that the time of year we're at right now.
What do you think of, I feel like Arata is the only one who had anything distinct on his clothes. He had like a jacket that said ER. Arata has the best fashion sense, I feel like. It's just straightforward, I guess. It's straightforward, but I do like, I mean, you know, they're all weird. They all just have weird phrases on it. I think it's funny.
Yeah. I feel like the voice actor, Arata especially, I don't know, the voice actor did a really good job of when he was on the bike and the yelling to the crying. Yeah. It sounded very authentic. There's a lot of saying words while you're like upset in this episode. That was good. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's nice, right? This kind of had a nice little mini resolution, at least where this didn't drag on and weigh on T-PIA for tons of episodes and stuff.
Yeah. I mean, it's good that we get this addressed immediately. It's very funny, the last episode. I'm like, I wonder when we'll see him and you're like, ah, he's probably like a train right away. And then yes, he was a train right away. Yeah, so sweet. Now that you've seen Arata and T'aiichi as a older, who's cuter? Arata looks the same just as an adult. Arata looks the same, but taller. Yeah. T'aiichi looks different. T'aiichi looks taller than T'aiichi.
Well, T'aiichi's like the pretty boy and Arata's more just the, I mean, I know who's personality. I'm liking a little bit better, I guess. They both kind of suck actually. It's like Arata, he's going through it. It's fine. Although, but like his neighbor, Yu does seem like kind of scared of him. I mean, he's a little emo boy. He's a little emo, but he's not, he's not like being emo. You know what I mean? He just like has the emotions of an emo, but without any aesthetics of it, right?
I don't know. Maybe she's just, I was like, maybe she has a crush on him or something. Well, I mean, she's like, it feels like she's taking care of him. Like he's like suicidal or something. You know what I mean? Like it seems like she's doing like wellness checks on him. It could be like her mom asked her, oh, that poor Arata boy, keep an eye out on him. Won't you dear or something? Like that maybe. Or small community, small town community just take care of each other kind of. Yeah. Perhaps.
We don't, we haven't got anything about his like immediate family situation, like his parents, right? Yeah. Was the implication that like if he was there, his grandfather wouldn't have died? No, I think just like he missed out on the chance to say goodbye to him. Okay. Or like when it was his grandfather was in dire straits that he wasn't there to. They say it in a way that makes it sound like that could be the case, but then it's also like, but he had a second stroke.
You can't stop somebody from having a stroke. You know what I mean? It's not even you could do. No. So. Interesting. Yeah. Good episode, I think. Yeah. Like this one felt like a lot happened in it. Really size. Yes. Yeah. Well, it's nice to get this payoff right after the three episodes of the show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That feels pretty good. How do we feel about a tight G being hope we'll say in love with Chiaya? I mean, nothing's changed since she was a kid, I guess.
It's not, it's not happening, dude. Like she's not really fixated on Arana. Yes. But like, I don't even know if she's fixated on Arana in that kind of way. Anyway, I think it's going to be the worst of all worlds for him, which is like, you think of Arana as your love rival, but he's not even that. Yeah. Well, you can't have a love rival with someone over someone who's not your freaking girlfriend. Break up with your girlfriend, dude. My God. Yeah. Break up with it.
I mean, I guess it's been like one day, right? Yeah. There hasn't been like a ton of time. No. Shall we get into versus first? Yeah. This is, we're like immediately pivoting to something else. So this is kind of the end of the Arana talk for the most part. Yeah. You know, you should like talk about his feelings instead of keeping them all bottled up all the time. Always been his problem. But also I'm like the least convinced that Arana and Tai Chi were ever actually friends.
Like they just played a game together. They were like teammates. Both into Chi Haya. So they just happen to be around each other. Chi Haya is like going to get a rude awakening at some point and realizing that she doesn't understand the social dynamic that she's in. She got her sand. It's tough. Have guy friends. Yeah. The only one who's truly the friend of everybody is Dr. Harada. Yeah. Who's like a picture of Arana for me. Also don't give me chocolate. I have a wife. Yes. Yes. So good.
Very good. All right. Verse six time. Verse six is called now bloom inside the nine fold palace. And this is where I decided that these are meaningless titles. I was saying that's a reference to one of the poem. Yeah. That's like how often do like folding. Folding dividers. That makes sense. That's probably what it is. That would make sense. Yeah. They're all like the first line. Yeah. Something. We should look at it. But I'm not going to. Look at your cards.
Look at your card of cards and see if they. Start with those. You're not going to do it. Yes, I am. Get to it. Verse six. Verse six. We open on Chi Hai and Tai Chi carrying a Tommy Tommy. It's Tata me Matt up a big ass hill while the students watch. If you don't know a Tata me Matt is like a soft mat that's used as like flooring. It's what they play on. So like you can be on like your knees on it and it doesn't hurt because it's like a soft padded boring. The Q-Doh club passes.
That's the Japanese archery club and they comment that one of their members is missing. Her name is Oe and she skipped today. We see her in the storehouse reciting a poem as the OP plays. Tai Chi and Chi Hai make it to their destination, which is one of the store rooms in a separate building. Chi Hai says that they need three more members to make a club and Tai Chi is not confident they're going to be able to find those.
They leave to bring over more Tata me Matt's they want to have like something we cut the Oe. We learned that she doesn't really like Kyoto all that much and she just likes the uniforms where they're wearing like the old style clothing. She sees that she sees the Karuna club flyer and things that she hire must be very pretty because her sister is you know a famous model and that this game is old. So maybe they can be like fancy ladies together. She checks out the storehouse where the club is.
She's nervous to go in and here is the tape recording of the poems. So she goes and looks through a window and sees Chi Hai and Tai Chi playing Karuta. She's surprised to learn that Karuta is like that because I don't think she's actually familiar with this game at all. Chi Hai and Tai Chi finish their game. Tai Chi is still shaking off the rust and loses but he notes that Chi Hai relies on her ears too much because she's not good at memorizing the card positions.
So like where they start at the very beginning of the game. They notice they notice Oe outside and Chi Hai is way too excited to greet her and she like runs away. So Chi Hai like chases after Oe and like runs her down. She asks Oe if she likes Karuta and Oe says yes. Then she proceeds to give a detailed account of the history of Karuta poems like their authors and you know like which authors were from which eras because she really likes the history and the poetry aspects of Karuta.
Chi Hai is like yeah that's cool but like do you like the game though and Oe asks if they get to wear Pakama which is like the big flowy pants you wear over a kimono. Like it's you know they wear that in archery thing and Chi Hai is like what no we don't wear any special clothes playing this game. Oe is frustrated because yeah. Sorry I was like oh I should give Joe a break. No it's okay.
Okay did not see any cards or whatever but I mean I like that it's like a different you know showing that there's different ways to enjoy Karuta you know it doesn't have to be super competitive like that you know.
Yeah well this is funny because it's like this is the part of the game like it's a game about like poetry technically but like you could swap it in for anything right like these could just be any phrases you remember so unless you like actually care about the poetry it kind of doesn't really have that much to do with Karuta so it's very funny to see somebody who cares about the like history and poetry of it not the actual gameplay which I think is funny but I'll have more to say about
that later. Oe is frustrated because archery and kendo club get to wear the Pakama so why don't they. Tachi Shihaya says that they're expensive and hard to wear. Oe cries and explains that her family owes the traditional clothing stops so she's like super into clothes but they don't get business for like the nicer clothing because people only want cheap stuff. She eventually calms down and says that if she can't wear a haka mother she isn't going to join.
Tachi comments that she doesn't really seem it into the game so she probably wasn't that cut out to be in it anyway but Shihaya has some different ideas. Shihaya ambushes Oe in the library. We learned that Oe's first name is Kana so I'm just going to call her that from now on. Shihaya invites her to play kata Bakana insists that she isn't interested in the sport only the poems. Shihaya tries again but Kana rejects her.
Tachi has to tell Shihaya to stop pushing so hard since she's like not going to be into it if you just keep asking her. We cut to Kana at her family's clothing shop. Her mom steps out leaving her to watch the place alone. She looks at an ornate kimono that they have on display. When Shihaya walks in and compliments the kimono. She recites that Shihaya Furu poem and says that it's about a beautiful river.
Just like there's a river on the fabric design of the kimono they're looking at because that song is about scenery. Kana comments that classical poetry is interesting when you know the context behind it. She says that she thinks that Shihaya Furu poem is about love and then explains how the poet wrote the poem for a lover that he couldn't be with since she was a betrothed to the emperor. Which means he had to conceal his love for her in the guise of scenic language.
Kana then says that Shihaya Furu means impassionate as a decorative word for gods that implies great force. Then she basically walks through the entire poem line by line explaining the hidden meaning behind all of the words. Shihaya is blown away by poetry and asks Kana to do that again for all 100 poems. Yikes.
Kana is into it though and starts going through some of the juicy details behind the poems like how some of them are attributed to authors even though everybody thinks they were like shadow written by someone else stuff like that. And other historical context that makes the poems make more sense. Kana and Shihaya have a blast talking about poetry. Later that evening Kana thinks about how Shihaya was the first person to take actual interest in her love of history.
We cut to Shihaya and Taichi playing Karuta. Shihaya can now look at the poems in a new way and has refreshed her interest in the game. Kana outside and goes to see her. Kana says that she'll join on one condition. We cut to Shihaya doing a promotional photo shoot for Kana's family's product catalog. We jump back to school and Kana says that they need to wear Hakama during matches and that's her condition for joining.
Also she wants them to clean up the club room so they can like have space to do things so they all get to work clearing out the storehouse. Taichi starts teaching Kana how to play the game and we get a quick scene of Arata before we cut to credits. Kana and Taichi playing Pajama. What is the information on Karata with Karuta cards? He's got inches of weight back into it. I don't know what the duration of time between when he stopped playing and now is. I don't know how often that is.
Oh yeah, Kana. Kana is great. I love her. Yeah. I mean, I think her full name is... It might be Kana. Full name is it might be Kanade, but kind of for short. But yeah, I mean, I mean, my sister, when we were in Japan, we did the whole she were come out and I wore a comma. So it is like the big flurry pants, which I found I thought would be more comfortable to wear and they're really cool.
It's fun to like, because you get to pick like the sleeve part and then like the OB, which is the bell and then like the fabric that's under that and the pants. So it's like fun to because you kind of like pick which parts you want to go together. It's not like the common set of individual pieces that you assemble, but whatever color coordinated patterns you want. So it's really fun to pick those out. And yeah, so we just rented them.
I could see most people not owning those because they wouldn't have need for them for the most part. So I could see the shop struggling a bit if you're not in a touristy kind of place. Yeah, this would be like equivalent to like getting a. Like a tuxedo or like a suit for like a prom or something right, where it's like you probably could just rent that because you're only going to need a dress five times in your life or whatever. Yeah, yep. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I love kind of like she's a little nerd. I like that she's like into history and likes Carter from like the history perspective and like the poetry perspective as opposed to like the sport side, which everybody else has been so far. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.
This is the most like I think she's just straight up right about like poetry is interesting if you learn about the context around it, because most of the time, like especially in a lot of me growing up has been realizing that if you get context for things, they're actually interesting. We're most of the time if you're just told about them, they don't matter that much, you know what I mean?
Like things like Shakespeare are a lot more interesting when you understand like the context in which they're written in and like who the audience is for. And what else is going on in the world at the time that they're written in like what this is a reference to? Then if you were just to like read it, which we kind of just did in high school.
You should get because I have the like direct translated card that's set, but they have like the English poet version is said where it is like Shakespeare and all like what we would consider like classic poetry on the cards instead. You should get that set. Uh huh. Yeah. It's great. I think this is really fun.
I do like the like again, a lot of the ways in which I can enjoy things now are like I need to dig deeper into a thing to understand what's going on, because I can't just like enjoy the surface level thing of it anymore. Yeah. So kind of doing this and like teaching Chiaya that like the stuff is like stuff has meaning behind it.
If you understand why things are this way, it'll make you appreciate like why we're playing a game about poetry as opposed to just like a poetry being on the cards better of the game. Yeah. So this is very fun. I think this is great. I think it's great. So now they have three members and then need five total to make a club. So we've got two more to recruit. Right. And yeah, each of them kind of has like a different relationship with the part, which is fun, right?
Tai Chi is much more like technical and like memorizing and Chiaya is more like just impulsive, but fast and kind of, you know, with the sentimental value. And so we'll see what else we get. Yeah, this is where we get the new folks that we're going to get more of like an introduction to how the game works over time, because they'll be teaching these new folks how to play. Yeah, we haven't gotten as in depth on that end yet.
Right. Right. Yeah. Because I guess if I think about like what kind of players everybody is like Arata is full memorizing everything, really leaning into the fact that he's really good at memorizing stuff. That's his basic like tactic, whereas Chiaya is all about speed. It's all about going real fast. This is why she did track and the starter gun and all that stuff. Tai Chi kind of seems like an all rounder. He's kind of just trying to do it all. Balance. Yeah. He's like a more balanced player.
I don't know how the Kano is going to play. She was just learning how to play at the end of the episode. So tiny. He's also very small. Tiny. Yeah. Very small girl. Very cute. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll be interested to see like what her play style is. I'm very interested in how her and Tai Chi will interact. Are they going to get along? I don't know. Oh, Kana and Tai Chi. Yeah. Oh, because he was like dismissive of her reasons.
Well, it's like she can bond with Chiaya over the like history stuff because Chiaya takes an interest in that. I don't know if Tai Chi is going to take an interest in that. Maybe he'll pretend to so that him and Chiaya can talk about more stuff together. Yeah. Well, it's just interesting because like this his interest in Carda has been so driven by his crush on Chiaya that like I don't know how it would be him interacting with other people around it. Yeah. Mm hmm. We'll see.
So I'm looking forward to seeing how all the other people interact with all the other people. Yeah. I feel bad for Kana and all of her friends make fun of her for liking history. Well, they're not really her friends, are they? I guess not. Just former teammates. Yeah. Her peers. She's blamed for liking history, which is so wrong. You know, history is cool, it turns out. The problem is that you need a good hook.
This is the thing where like if it's presented to you, so many things in my life were not presented to me in the right way. And so I wasn't interested in them. And then later on, they were presented to me in the right way. And now I am interested in them. Like the presentation of the thing. Is like critical as to whether or not you're going to be interested in it or not. Like Chiaya would never learn about history or poetry if it wasn't for this game, right?
And even this any card to as the game was only introduced to her as like a vector for interacting with Arata and like having a thing outside of her sister. Like the motivations don't really match like what the actual thing is. But the way it was introduced like makes a profound difference. And I really do think that's true for a lot of stuff. Like I kind of like for me, I can be interested in a lot of different stuff. As long as it's like pitched to me in a way that I'm.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, so I find it fascinating to have an episode that's basically all like about that. Right. We're like. Kana is able to pitch learning history or like, you know, teaching her history or like showing her about like the poetry and stuff through the lens of Karate. And then Chiaya is able to do the opposite of like pitching the sport aspect of it through the lens of you get to interact with the poetry and pieces like that. And also, you know, we'll wear the old clothing.
Yeah. Yeah. Also, it's fun to dress up. Yeah, it is. Although that is heavy clothing that doesn't seem the best for movement or sitting, which is like what you do in Karate. So we'll see. But it's only on your legs. Yeah. I don't know. I guess it's like this is that fabric crinkle. A lot. Or is it like what these buildings look kind of shoddy? Maybe they're conditioning socks and then they're going to be really hot. And well, they're only wearing it during matches.
They're not going to wear it during a. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm not doing that kind of aren't those kind of pants like pleated. I guess they're pretty. They could fold, right? Yeah. Yeah. They're not like confining or anything. Um, anyways, we should we should move on because I am a tight schedule. Yeah. Um, so. Let's breeze through our recommendations of the week. I'm going to start. So I don't know if you've ever tried a tax based game before, like where it's entirely tax that the game.
Plays is. Yeah. Like an old game. Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's not like where you input commands or anything. This is just narrative where you like read and then you like select your choice and then that affects how the rest of the story plays out. Um, and so there's this developer called choice of games and it's not a long time since I played one of them.
But the first one I played is called heroes rise the prodgy and kind of like, you know, this world with superheroes and your new hero and you get to like, kind of determine like what you're here to look like and what kind of combat and that like changes all of the tax that you read through. And there's even a little romance romance and stuff. Um, let's see. A hundred thousand words of interactive fiction, multiple endings. Um, let's see.
Yeah, I just, I mean, if you like reading, it's probably not the highest quality writing, but it's like a fun little thing to try out. They're super cheap games too. Um, so maybe get they have and they have a bunch of different. The like dragons or, you know, werewolves or kung fu, you know, all kinds of different settings for the voice of robots, be a robot, you know, all sorts of stuff. So maybe check those out. Yeah. Yeah. That's my recommendation. Yeah, I'm looking at it now.
It looks pretty interesting. My recommendation is going to be a recommendation I gave at the very, very beginning of this show, but I didn't give it as a pitch specifically to you and I feel like I probably could, unless you looked at it in which case I'm giving this to nothing. I'm going to pitch you on the webcomic. Harpy G, did you ever look at that? Uh, no, I haven't like actually read any of it. I do just simply remember you and I had like looked at the cover and stuff.
Yes. So this is a webcomic about an elf named harpy. She is going on a journey to where that's brought her to this kind of like small town name. I think it's punkadillo maybe something like that. That's cute. She makes some friends there. They go on adventures together. It's very cute. The art is really, it's extremely charming. There's some romance subplots. There's some magic subplots. Harpy is like a kind of a go getter, swashbuckler. It's very cute. There's magic in the world. It's very fun.
You can, you know, it's a webcomic. It's not super duper long, but it is like pretty substantially long at this point, so it'll take some time to read it. I'm just going to like blow through all of it in like an hour. It's very cute. I like almost all of it. I'm a little behind right now, but I need to catch back up. You should definitely check this out. I do think you would be interested in it. I do think the art style is very nice and you would probably like it.
And, you know, it's kind of a, you know, she's like an elf girl. So it's like it's like a fantasy thing, you know, yeah, kind of like it feels like there are aspects of when I watched you play Dragon Age, Vale of like, yeah, that kind of thing, which might be okay. Banser party Banser. Yeah. So, I think you should, I think you should check it out.
Yeah. Where we like follow up and see like you even, I hadn't recommended this to you, but you've like tried which spring are and so I should try something you recommended. So I do read webcomics. So yeah, I should check it out. So back on that one. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's the show. Please rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice. Please leave a comment. If you have any questions or comments to send to us directly, you can email us at showjoepod at gmail.com.
Please tell us or tell your friends about us. We are, you know, kind of going through the first season of Chi Hai figure at the moment, we may go directly into season two, kind of depending on how we're feeling or we may take a break from the other. This is a good time to get on board. If you have any friends that, you know, like this show or interested in this show, this is a good way to watch along with it. So please tell your friends. Yeah. Pretty please. All right. Sweet.
Okay. Thanks for listening, everyone. Thanks for spreading the good word about so Joe. We expect many new listeners next week. So get on it. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and remember that classical poetry is only interesting if you know the context behind it. Don't just try to look at classical poetry without knowing anything. It probably won't work for you. Yes. Yeah. Shakespeare has never hit with me.
So Shakespeare still does hit for me sometimes. Like that one survives time pretty well. There was older stuff. Like one time I read the night of the burning pestle. I had to get that explained to me. It plays much fun. I'll never get it. Listen, sometimes you just need someone to explain what's going on in a thing. Sometimes just experiencing the thing isn't enough. That's fine. You don't even feel bad about that. Sometimes that's just how things are. Yeah. That's like one time I showed up.
For a test in AP English and then everyone was talking about beforehand and that's when I realized, oh wait, that's what this book is about. I was totally, I was on her. Totally different person. Good thing I found out right before I started doing the test for this book called I am the cheese. Yes. I did not pick up on. Never feel bad about that. Like I don't pick up on shit all the time. Even though it seems like I won't. No, but it doesn't matter.
Like if you aren't in that exact headspace while reading a thing, you may just not pick it up and being like, oh shit. Like, oh really? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So I just picked up and being like, oh shit, like I'll read like a review of a thing or like a criticism of a thing. And all of a sudden I'd be like, oh, it was about this.
I didn't even notice. Totally a normal reaction to have to stuff. Okay. Cool. Sweet. That's all right. I'm not a dummy. Joe said so. No. It's hard. It's not a skill that you have to use all the time. I'm not going to say anything and she had a free room. Maybe we'll catch on. We're going to, we're going to get to the end of this series and it's all been about like a metaphor for like growing apart or something. And we're going to be like, ah, shit, but we didn't know this. That's anime.
All right. Okay. See you. Yeah. Bye-bye next time. All that. All that.