We’re back in Kyoto again to look at another new work from our friends at Kyoto Animation: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants To Be Loved, the feature film sequel to the beloved (and bizarre) slice-of-life TV comedy. Originally directed by Takemoto Yasuhiro in its first season before his tragic death in the 2019 arson attack, the series originally returned for a second season directed by KyoAni stalwart Ishihara Tatsuya, who again takes the helm for this film sequel. But with a more focused and bombastic story centering on the character Kanna, with much of the action taking place in the dragon realm, A Lonely Dragon Wants To Be Loved proves an even better fit for Ishihara’s talents than the TV series was, making for a surprisingly exciting and affecting film that delivers astonishing animation and some big emotional reactions. With the film now having screened in the US thanks to Crunchyroll, we break it all down, and look forward to the next era of Kyoto Animation as this one draws to a close. 

Enjoy! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:30

Intro and History: 0:01:12 – 0:52:17

Eyecatch Break: 0:52:17 – 0:53:01

Movie Review: 0:53:01 – 2:04:08

End Theme: 2:04:08 – 2:05:09

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “Happily Ever After” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com

After spending a full year chronicling the history of Kyoto Animation in 2024, we’re back for a brief return trip to review CITY: THE ANIMATION, the latest anime series from the renowned studio. Directed by Violet Evergarden helmer Ishidate Taichi and based on the manga Nichijou author Arawi Keiichi, CITY is one of the absolute greatest series KyoAni has produced to date, a return not only to Arawi’s zany comic stylings, but to the bold, experimental spirit of KyoAni’s early work. Seamlessly blending wild, anarchical comedy with heartfelt, shockingly rich storytelling about friendship, nostalgia, and community, CITY isn’t just a triumph: it’s an outright masterpiece, and we couldn’t be happier to talk about it at length on today’s show. 

Enjoy! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:30

Intro and History: 0:01:12 – 1:03:52

Eyecatch Break: 1:03:52 – 1:04:37

City the Animation Review: 1:04:37 – 3:29:08

End Theme: 3:29:08 – 3:30:10

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “Happily Ever After” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com

Demon Slayer is back in theaters with its second original movie after the record-breaking success of 2020’s Mugen Train, and the latest installment – Part I of the planned Infinity Castle trilogy, adapting the final arc of Gotouge Koyoharu’s manga – is proving every bit as popular, breaking box office records in Japan and now in America. That’s for good reason: Infinity Castle is an incredible film, depicting three major battles across its 155-minute runtime, and executing on all of it at the same insanely high level we’ve come to expect from ufotable over the years. This is a film with some of the most jaw-dropping animated spectacle you’ll ever see in a theater, but as always, its heart is with the characters, their backstories, and their interiority, and this film’s focus on the villain Akaza proves to be some of the most effective material in the life of the entire series. We talk about all of it and more, including the terrific vocal performances and killer soundtrack, as Kimetsu no Yaiba truly kicks off the beginning of the end.  

Enjoy! We will be back with more special one-off episodes soon, with our next major season – Tomino-thon – currently in the works behind the scenes! 

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “Rolled Into One” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com

The latest Gundam TV series, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, wrapped up its 12-episode run this week, which means Weekly Suit Gundam is back to break it all down! A collaboration between Sunrise and the Otaku madmen at Studio Khara – including director Tsurumaki Kazuya, writer Enokido Yoji, and Evangelion creator Anno Hideaki himself – GQuuuuuuX returns to the Universal Century for an alternate-history story in a world where Char Aznable, not Amuro Ray, got in the Gundam; but it’s also a brand new tale about three kids living in the aftermath of this revised history on Side 6. Those two impulses – Gundam fan service and telling an all-new story – don’t always sit naturally together within this short run, and while GQuuuuuuX is an undeniably gorgeous production, with outstanding character designs, animation, music, and action, we’re not sure whether or not it holds together as its own fully realized corner of the Gundam universe. 

Enjoy, and be sure to join us later this year for the next season of Japanimation Station, where we will be surveying all the works in the career of original Gundam creator Tomino Yoshiyuki!  

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

Our Grand Tour comes full circle for its final stop, as we return to the world of Dragon Ball – and the premise of Goku becoming a kid again – for the latest installment in the franchise, and the last supervised by Toriyama Akira himself: Dragon Ball Daima! Like other recent Dragon Ball stories overseen by the original author, Daima revisits concepts from earlier anime-original works – in this case, Dragon Ball GT’s broad premise of Goku being turned into a kid and going on a big journey to reverse it – but now with Toriyama’s authorial touch. In the case of Daima, that means a ton of great character-driven humor, an extremely rich setting in the Demon Realm, and a handful of wonderful new characters. All of it is brought to life with some of the best animation, voice acting, music, and action to ever grace the franchise, from a big group of Dragon Ball veterans and artists new to the series. The result is one of Dragon Ball’s finest hours in animation, and a perfect final tribute to the singular work of Toriyama Akira. 

Enjoy, thanks for listening throughout this season, and we will see you all again this fall for Season 6! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:15

Intro and History: 0:01:15 – 1:33:27

Eyecatch Break: 1:33:27 – 1:34:07

Dragon Ball Daima Review: 1:34:07 – 2:58:43

Season 5 Wrap-up: 2:58:43 – 3:19:28

Season 6 Preview: 3:19:28 – 3:27:16

End Theme: 3:27:16 – 3:29:07

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Romantikku Ageru Yo” – Composed by Ike Takeshi, Lyrics by Yoshida Takemi, Original Arrangement by Tanaka Kōhei; cover Arranged and Produced by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com

Our Grand Tour finally arrives at one of the most-requested shows in the history of Japanimation Station: the 1997 adaptation of Miura Kentaro’s seminal manga masterpiece, Berserk! Created by OLM – best known for their decades of work on the Pokémon anime – this 25-episode series adapts the Golden Age arc of Miura’s manga, brilliantly employing a ‘limited animation’ style reminiscent of the works of Dezaki Osamu. With outstanding scripts, inspired direction, and some of the best voice acting we’ve ever had the pleasure to discuss, the series is a truly remarkable feat of adaptation, doing Miura’s work justice in so many ways. 

Enjoy, and come back next week for the final installment of our Grand Tour, as we come full circle back to the world of Toriyama Akira for this year’s incredible DRAGON BALL DAIMA! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:15

Intro and History: 0:01:15 – 1:52:44

Eyecatch Break: 1:52:44 – 1:53:28

Berserk Review: 1:53:28 – 3:51:09

End Theme: 3:51:09 – 3:52:39

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “ice” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku & Megurine Luka. https://www.thomaslack.com

Our dirty pair of Dirty Pair episodes continues this week with a look at the theatrical feature film and cavalcade of OVAs that followed in the wake of the original TV series. Dirty Pair was so popular on the home video market that it got two feature-length OVAs – 1985’s Affair of Nolandia and 1995’s Flight 005 Conspiracy – and an entire ‘second season’ of 10 TV-length episodes, known as Dirty Pair 2. There is some fantastic stuff among these home video releases, but the real highlight today is the 1986 feature film, Project Eden, one of the most spectacularly produced anime of the 1980s that feels a lot more like a feature-length music video than it does a conventional narrative. Whether it truly works as a Dirty Pair story is something we debate, but there’s no disagreement that’s an absolutely eye-popping tour-de-force of synesthesia. 

Enjoy, and come back next week for something completely different, as we look at the classic 1997 adaptation of Miura Kentaro’s seminal Berserk! At least it is true that podcasters have no control, even over their own will… 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:15

Intro and History: 0:01:15 – 0:18:44

Affair of Nolandia OVA: 0:18:44 – 0:44:55 

Eyecatch Break: 0:44:55 – 0:45:34

Project Eden Movie: 0:45:34 – 2:10:24

Dirty Pair 2 OVA: 2:10:24 – 3:11:27

Flight 005 Conspiracy OVA: 3:11:27 – 3:29:28

End Theme: 3:29:28 – 3:30:29

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “Rolled Into One” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com

Our Grand Tour takes us back to outer space for the irreverent sci-fi comedy classic Dirty Pair! Produced by the amazing talent at Sunrise and inspired by the light novels by Takachiho Haruka, Dirty Pair chronicles the adventures of Kei and Yuri, two 19-year-old ‘trouble consultants’ for the WWWA, who travel the galaxy solving problems, sometimes so aggressively they create many new ones. The original 26-episode TV series is a model of great episodic storytelling, with a series of stories that are fun, zany, clever, and sometimes even a little bit heartfelt. It’s also one of the most insanely 1980s shows ever made, from the fashion to the music to the animation, and while it bears certain similarities to other caper-driven franchises like Lupin the Third, there’s truly nothing else quite like Dirty Pair! 

Enjoy, and come back next week as we continue our Dirty Pair adventures with the 1986 film Project Eden, the 1987 OVA series Dirty Pair 2, and more! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:15

Intro and History: 0:01:15 – 1:24:02

Eyecatch Break: 1:24:02 – 1:24:41

Dirty Pair Review: 1:24:41 – 3:56:13

End Theme: 3:56:13 – 3:57:15

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “Happily Ever After” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com

Before Anno Hideaki and the team at Studio Gainax changed the course of anime history with Neon Genesis Evangelion, they produced Gunbuster, aka Aim for the Top!, a 6-episode OVA with some of the era’s most spectacular animation, and an overwhelming amount of personality. A mash-up of sports shows, mecha anime, high-concept sci-fi, and American 80s movies like Top Gun, there’s nothing else quite like Gunbuster, and across its 6 episodes, the series showcases a huge range of ideas, themes, tones, and even styles, with the finale shifting to a truly astounding use of widescreen, black-and-white imagery. Join us as we dive into not only this great series, but the fascinating history of Anno and Gainax up to this point. 

Enjoy, and come back next week as we begin a two-week journey through the wild and wacky world of the 80s classic DIRTY PAIR! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:15

Intro and History: 0:01:15 – 1:06:22

Eyecatch Break: 1:06:22 – 1:07:07

Gunbuster Review: 1:07:07 – 2:14:18

End Theme: 2:14:18 – 2:15:49

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “ice” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku & Megurine Luka. https://www.thomaslack.com

Our Grand Tour now takes us to the turn of the century, and the dawn of modern comedy anime, with the classic series Azumanga Daioh: The Animation! Based on the celebrated four-panel manga by Azuma Kiyohiko, which has proven itself one of the most influential series to the last 25 years of comedy manga, the TV series is a landmark in its own right, helping to crack the code of how anime can adopt short, gag-driven, mostly plotless comedy manga, and in so doing helping to birth the ‘slice-of-life’ genre now beloved around the world. Historical import aside, the show is also just a ton of fun, with a memorable group of characters we follow throughout their high school years, and a tremendous vocal cast giving consistently hilarious performances. It makes for an episode where we ourselves can’t stop laughing as we talk about the show – and that’s always a good sign. 

Enjoy, and come back next week as our Grand Tour takes us back out into space for the classic Studio Gainax OVA Gunbuster: Aim for the Top! 

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:15

Intro and History: 0:01:15 – 1:01:34

Eyecatch Break: 1:01:34 – 1:02:18

Azumanga Daioh Review: 1:02:18 – 3:01:13

End Theme: 3:01:13 – 3:02:15

Subscribe to our YouTube channels! 

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to PURELY ACADEMIC, our monthly variety podcast about movies, video games, TV, and more: https://purelyacademic.simplecast.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

“Welcome to Japanimation Station” – Music by Thomas Lack, Lyrics by Sean Chapman, featuring Hatsune Miku. “Rolled Into One” – Music & Lyrics by Thomas Lack, featuring Hatsune Miku. https://www.thomaslack.com