Anime

The Beauty of the Haikyuu!! Dub – or, Why Dubs Matter Just as Much as Subs

generaltofu 11 Comments

This might be controversial to say, but whatever, here goes.

I love the Haikyuu!! dub. 

Until about two months ago, I hadn’t even touched Haikyuu!! as a series. As fate would have it, though, my partner stumbled upon a video of some highlights from the dub, and we collectively about pissed ourselves laughing – the script was just so good, and the voice actors really delivered. We basically took this as a good excuse to start watching the show – I had intended to watch it for a while now anyway, and she had wanted to catch up on it to be ready for the next cour coming in a few seasons, so after watching that video, we decided, hell, why not watch the first episode dubbed? The first episode went by, and then the next, and then the next, and suddenly, we’re at the end of season 2 and are scrambling to see who has the dub for season 3, because if it’s out there, it just wouldn’t feel right to not watch it dubbed, you know? What started as a “haha funny goof” turned pretty quickly into an unabashed admiration for this show’s dub. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given that the anime fandom is so often prone to “discussions” about subs versus dubs, a fair amount of people are of the opinion that the Haikyuu!! dub is some hot, steaming shit. And to that, I say “yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

This is not about to get into a subs versus dubs argument, because that shit is just tired, uninteresting, and, since it all stems from subjective viewpoints, pointless. What I do want to talk about, though, is the importance of great dubs, how subs and dubs are essentially serving the same purpose, but in different ways, and the need to axe the elitism inherent in subs vs dubs “debates”.

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Log Time Seasonal Podcast | Beginning of Summer 2020 — The God of Summer Anime

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Okay, so it’s time for some good news, bad news. The bad news is that, due to obvious circumstances, the Summer 2020 season of anime is a bit shorter on shows than it would normally be. The good news is that there is still a ton of great stuff to watch, despite the delays in production, etc.

We do get to talk about a bit of a mixed bag of shows for the season: we mercifully get all of the laughably bad horny shows out of the way first, we all take a collective trip to the suffering zone, sponsored by Re:Zero and OreGairu, and we bask in the glory of beautiful shows like The God of High School and hilariously dumb shows like The Misfit of Demon King Academy. Don’t do yourself the disservice of skipping out on this season – hop on in, get some recommendations, and enjoy the season!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded July 16th, 2020.

Seasonal Showcase — Twisting Plots within Deca-Dence [Summer 2020: Week 2]

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Nothing is more surprising than when an anime throws a curveball at you within the first few episodes of a show. 

It’s not uncommon within shows to do this when they begin to ramp up its story into something larger than life or want to increase the scale of their plotline to emphasize their thematic point. Occasionally though, this does happen early on in the show as we see with this week’s’ episode of Deca-Dence, proving the reason that the “three-episode rule” mantra of many people’s seasonal habits exists for shows such as these.

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Seasonal Showcase — The Unstoppable Force of The God of High School [Summer 2020: Week 1]

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The first week of the Summer 2020 anime season has now fully concluded, and despite the lack in number of shows that the season has to offer us, there’s still plenty of great shows to partake in for our viewing pleasure. Since the season has such a small, awesome selection of shows, I figure this was a good chance to spice up the Seasonal Showcase posts by doing something a little different than the previous seasons. 

This time, I will be trying a different approach to the posts in selecting an individual show that I find interesting and focusing on that instead of lumping them all together in one post midway through the season. Think of this more as a weekly selective focus on a particular show than a general overview, although I also recommend checking out General Tofu’s new weekly seasonal check-in posts if you want that sort of content instead! 

Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy the seasonal anime adventure we’re about to set out upon!

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Log Time Seasonal Podcast | End of Spring 2020 — S(pr)ing “Anime” For Me

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It’s hard to believe that the Spring 2020 anime season, which never really felt like it got to truly start due to the whole pandemic business, is finally over. Despite all that, it really ended with a bang, because MAN, it still had a ton of great shows to offer.

Unsurprisingly, good shows bring out great talking points in this episode: we get to exorcise our strong feelings about Sing “Yesterday” For Me, Zack makes the bold claim that Brand New Animal is “a show done by Studio Trigger”, and Matt forcefully takes the discussion into his own hands to say that DADDY! DADDY! DO! is, to quote, “pretty good”. Strap yourselves in, because we’ve got a lot coming your way!

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded June 26th, 2020.

Log Time Podcast | Death March Discussion — “I Really Didn’t Mean to Call Him Kirito!”

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Remember how it feels like we just talked about shows in digital worlds, or with an isekai plot, or some combination of those ideas? We just watched another one. It was an awful decision.

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody is a pretty decidedly “meh” fantasy MMO isekai harem series, and we had to watch all of it. It’s not all bad, of course – we get some pretty good discussion out of some of the show’s clever use of UI elements (until it starts to suck), for instance, or how the protagonist definitely isn’t the same guy as the protagonist in the other fantasy MMO isekai harem series. That being said, what you really want is the complete and utter beatdown that we give the show, and by god, do we give it to it. In a loving, constructive criticism sort of way, of course. Don’t watch the show, but do listen to us tell you why not to watch it.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded June 4th, 2020.

Improving Tiresome Anime Debates — A Response to Irina

Owningmatt93 6 Comments

In the past five years of being a blogger and almost eight years of being an anime watcher, I’ve personally seen a lot of discourse and discussion over a variety of topics from plenty of angles – opinionated and factual alike. There are always those debates, though, that continuously circle back around after some time again and again, almost as if they are scheduled to appear once a few months have passed. There’s never really any reason for them to re-appear sometimes, nor is there really anything new to add to the discussion, but they reappear anyway and suddenly they become the hot topic of whatever your preferred social media platform is. It’s akin to watching some horrible rendition of Re:Zero where instead of watching Subaru trying his best to reach his goal and making several mistakes that result in his death instead, it’s watching people you know engage in futile discussions until they’ve either said their piece or become a completely different person than you once knew.

This is why when I found that fellow blogger Irina posted an article about this sort of phenomena that occurs so frequently, I was curious to see what sort of community debate overlap or dissonance we were experiencing within the anime community. I found some of these topics discussed in the post lined up pretty well with what I had noticed from the community and definitely shared some of those same sentiments. While I could also add many other topics to the list, I wanted to take some time to focus on what Irina is talking about in the post itself: the nature of how these debates are no longer “interesting” to have.

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Log Time Podcast | Dennou Coil Discussion — If Google Glass Was Good, But Also Sometimes Cursed

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Collectively as a group, we’ve watched a fair number of anime about digital and physical spaces, like .hack//Sign, Log Horizon, Serial Experiments Lain, and something about swords making art on the internet. But it’s pretty safe to say that we have yet to watch anything quite like Dennou Coil – a story about kids with really powerful augmented reality glasses tech that blurs the line between the physical and digital worlds.

Join us as we talk about some really, really bad computer viruses, tech from the show and world-building elements that we’d love to see more of in other series, and sentient facial hair (it’s actually related to the show, I swear).

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded May 14th, 2020.

Help! The Tears Won’t Stop! — A Spring 2020 Seasonal Showcase

Owningmatt93 2 Comments

This season has led me to two major realizations within the space of seasonal anime and how we perceive it, as viewers and fans of anime. 

1) With a lot of shows delayed until this crisis is over, I was initially disappointed by the lack of my “main” shows such as Re:Zero and OreGairu S3 and wasn’t sure how I was going to fill the “anime void” left in my heart. However, I think this also has been ground-breaking and intriguing in its own way. Having an anime season happen that has negated a lot of the “hype” surrounding series such as these has left a lot of space for lesser-known series to make their own name based on their own merits, and likely more people have given them a chance because of this.

2) It’s not necessarily the name or popularity of shows that make them desirable as shows; it’s because of the animation quality and emotion delivered with each released episode. It’s so powerful that these shows can stand on their own, without needing any of the advertising frills or gimmicks to really sell the shows for them; they don’t need any of that. This may seem rather basic, but it can be hard to realize when giant anime companies constantly try to force their own interests into your social media, inbox, or in-person merchandise. 

While I don’t think my picks of the season necessarily have all the relations to either category, I think these are things we should be considering when watching seasonal anime. Thinking about “why” we watch anime to begin can be interesting at times, and I think that these shows below capture what I think is “interesting” within anime. I hope that you can find the same sort of shows for yourself within this season as well!

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Log Time Seasonal Podcast | Beginning of Spring 2020 — Spring Anime: (Mostly) UNLIMITED

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The Winter 2020 season ended on quite a lot of strong notes! There were a lot of contenders for what we would talk about on this wrap-up cast, but for the sake of not having this take three hours, we had to narrow it down to some of the season’s best of the best. It’s not like we were doing much else during a global pandemic, but hey.

Although there have been a lot of delays due to obvious reasons, the Spring 2020 anime season is still coming out strong. We encounter a few minor confusions about what shows are what, but it’s all part of the trademark Backloggers charm, tee hee! Not to toot our own horn, but we’ve got some good stuff this episode: we get to explore the absolute trainwreck that is Tamayomi, we find out that Matt thought Wave, Listen to Me! and Sing “Yesterday” for Me were the same show, and, somewhat inevitably, we find out mid-recording that some shows we recommended to each other had been delayed.

Oh, and we talk about some absolute bangers from this season that haven’t been delayed (yet), like Kakushigoto and Tower of God. In short, it’s exactly the kind of anime content we need right now as the world continues to burn to the ground.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

Intro/Outro Music: The Elephant by A Shell in the Pit

This podcast was recorded April 24th, 2020.