The weather outside is frightful and you know what’s always delightful? Bundling up in some blankets with your hot beverage of choice and your favourite cozy comfort anime. In this episode, we talk about the wide umbrella that is comfort anime and share some of the anime that are always there for us.

What’s better than a love story? A dorky love story about nerds who love each other despite their differing dorky interests. We love Wotakoi over here at the BIIAST Pod and we were super excited to get into all the things that make this story so good. What does it mean to be compatible with a partner? Do we ever really grow up? Should you secretly ship your partner with his work bestie? Wotakoi has it all. But is it an S-Tier?

There’s only one thing worse than a predator...A child. (No!) There are a lot of strong anime characters who wield their powers for good - and then there are the walking misdemeanors. Maybe they are a little too interested in children, maybe they have a history of harming children, or maybe we just fear what might happen if we let them around a child. In this episode, we rank the Top 5 anime characters you should keep away from your children at all costs.

It’s Spooktober, baby! We knew we had to cover something creepy, and what better place to start than with the work of Junji Ito, the wholesome horror legend himself? This almost-scifi Jaws-inspired horror manga is gorey, bizarre, and rife with relationship drama. Gyo dares to ask the question: If humans pollute the oceans, do the creatures of the sea deserve to take over the land? Junji Ito doesn’t miss, but is Gyo an S-Tier manga?

Okay, maybe we’re not boomers but we’ve been anime fans for over half our lives, and we’ve seen some changes over the years. We get into anime accessibility, the fall of the filler, the rise of 3D animation, the globalization of anime, and tropes and trends we’ve noticed in anime storytelling. It’s just one of those fun little chats you have with your friends, you know?

Trigger Warning: Child sexual abuse. Because Future Diary is full of it for some reason. In this accidental hate episode, we revisit a series that was hugely popular when we were in high school. Klaus has never liked it, Jaclyn felt very nostalgic towards it...until she watched it again. Sorry if you like Future Diary. We gave it a fair shot! And we try our best in this episode to describe where it goes wrong, where it’s outdated, and how it fumbled a premise full of potential.

In this filler episode, we discuss the manga series we believe deserve an anime, for the illiterate among us (JK we all gotta read subtitles). What makes a manga deserving of an anime? Love, baby! (And some other things, I guess.) Mostly, we try to convince you to consume the collected works of Tatsuki Fujimoto and Junji Ito.

It’s scams on scams on scams in this episode of the BIIAST pod because we’re talking about Great Pretender, an anime all about con men who con and the con men they con and the con men conning each other. And a good number of con women, too. Join us as we plow through all the cons of Great Pretender.

In this filler episode we hash out the “debate” (is it really a debate?) of subs versus dubs! Mostly, we talk about the dubs that are worth watching, our favourite dubs from our childhoods, and the anime we choose to watch dubbed today. Jaclyn dives into the history of 4Kids (a real product of its time) and its influence on the Westernization of anime. And of course we cover the infamous dub of Ghost Stories (another product of its time).

It’s the first episode of our series on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and we are talking about Phantom Blood, the origin story of the Joestar family and most importantly: me, Dio! What is a noble protagonist without his cruel villain? Or is Dio the true protagonist here? Phantom Blood may be the first installment of an iconic manga/anime series...But is it an S-Tier? Come for the Jojo-Dio rivalry, stay for the Klaus-Jaclyn rivalry as we duke it out over where Phantom Blood deserves to rank on our official tier list.