Key Frames

Episode 139 of Key Frames, a podcast about anime. I admit, what we called this episode isn't exactly parsable if you aren't a fan of slapstick comedy Hundreds of Beavers and absurdly long titles in the fashion of light novels and light novel-derived adaptations, but trust us! It's funny enough that we had to cut more than a few bouts of gasping, tear-soaked laughter from the edit. Anyway, in the moments when Ben and Duncan aren't being genius of transmedia humor, they bid farewell to the anime of fall 2024 and welcome those of winter 2025. You'll never guess what they pick for the shows they're most interested in seeing play out! Somehow they're not the second season of Apothecary Diaries.

Episode 36 of Key Frames: Inbetweens, a mini-podcast about anime. Koyomi Araragi must just be the most insufferable person to have at your college, right? Like, you're sitting in Philosophy 101, going over different perspectives on theory of mind, and here's this dude who looks like he hasn't gotten a haircut in years wasting the professor's time with a rambling story about the time he became a vampire, a supernatural being living eternally in the moment, and how his perception of reality was forever and fundamentally altered by the experience. "Oh well," you think as you head to math next, "Philosophy courses are always going to have at least one douchebag who won't stop talking..." and then he's waiting for you there as well, already droning on about how his cryptography skills were crucial in defeating another vampire, apparently not even the one who bit him in the first place! How many vampires has this weirdo met in his eighteen years of life, exactly? All you can do is make a mental note of who seems to be part of his social circle (the mean-looking girl with the stationery fetish and the robotlike girl who fawns over him despite them just having met are who spring to mind) and hope that you'll be able to avoid all of them over the next four years. How hard could it be? It's not like he's the magnet for trouble he's desperate to make himself out to be. Anyway, Ben and Jeff resume their discussion of Nisio Isin's work in adaptation, after much delay, with Monogatari Series: Off & Monster Season. Enjoy!

Episode 138 of Key Frames, a podcast about anime. Remember back in the 2010s, when anime only ever aired for a single cour, so there wasn't any of this nonsense about shows holding the top spots year after year? Well, at Key Frames, we're fully back on our bullshit, with many returning 2023 favorites topping our list of best anime of 2024, so you really need to listen in to know what's new out there. Don't worry, we cover some manga too, and Ben talks about Texhnolyze again.

Episode 35 of Key Frames: Inbetweens, a mini-podcast about anime. Have you felt like something strange and terrible has been hanging over your head for four years, maybe more? Does today seem like it could be the moment when it all comes crashing down? Does it seem at the same time like it could stay up there forever, a sword of Damocles under which you'll be forced to live your life just out of the universal indignity of being born? Will today be the day you make a change, something proactive for once, and avert the disaster that you can't help but see in your future? Will you listen to us talk at last about the works of Inio Asano, the brains behind the recent movie duology and ONA series Dead Dead Demon's DeDeDeDe Destruction? It's not likely to help with all of the above, but it might make you feel like someone else gets it.

Episode 137 of Key Frames, a podcast about anime. Isn't it kind of amazing to think about how many foods are the result of essentially being left to spoil or mold? Yeast gives us bread and beer, other types of alcohol use fermented cultures of microorganisms, cheese is coagulated and curdled with enzymes from bacteria (or, more incredibly, mammal stomachs), and you can pickle all sorts of things. What sort of superior being could have the thought in the first place to eat food or drink gone bad, though? He'd have to be a genius straight out of a shounen anime: a person with exceptional strength and even more exceptional vision, someone who could bring peace at last to our broken world... Anyway, Ben, Andy, Duncan, and Jeff go over the results of the summer 2024 season, with juicy results. Dig in!

Episode 34 of Key Frames: Inbetweens, a mini-podcast about anime. What do you do when your podcast spotlights something that no one particularly liked? Well, maybe you should listen to this episode and find out! In honor of a second season being announced, after an interval of a decade and a half, Ben, Andy, and Duncan all watched Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, an anime that aspires to the transgressive heights of turn-of-the-millennium Western cartoons by the likes of Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. Is it a successful pastiche of all things American? Well, things are said, some of them even nice. To tell you more would be against the rrrrrules!

Episode 136 of Key Frames, a podcast about anime. Is Crayon Shin-chan the most popular and successful franchise in anime that has little to no foothold with Western audiences? Maybe it's Sazae-san or Doraemon... Anyway, Ben, Andy, and Duncan all decided to watch the best-reviewed of Crayon Shin-chan's thirty-one feature films (soon to be thirty-two, literally this coming Friday) and talk about it! Does it hold up, almost a quarter of a century later? Is it easy to relate to and cheer for its cast of characters if someone hasn't seen all 1,320 episodes of the anime or read all fifty volumes of the manga? What, exactly, does nostalgia smell like and why is it stinky feet? All this and more will be revealed if you listen in!

Episode 135 of Key Frames, a podcast about anime. Baki Hanma did not even need to look up from the glass he was cleaning to know that it was Yujiro, his father and the strongest bartender on earth, who pushed aside the door that separated his eight-seat bar from the wind-scoured streets outside. "Good bars have a smell," the hulking figure murmured as he took a seat. "You can search the world over and still not come across a smell like this. Give me something to warm me up." Baki froze for a moment at the request, but soon a glass sat full in front of his latest patron. "Kentucky bourbon. You suppose is sufficient?" Yujiro made it barely sound like a question. "A man needs more than fire for warmth. Maybe you're still just a barback after all..." "Old man, this is George T. Stagg. Famously strong, yet rich and complex, it warms body and soul." With a chuckle, his father raised the drink to cruel and menacing lips. "Nice" was all he said then, but with that single word, Baki the Tippler had won.

Episode 33 of Key Frames: Inbetweens, a mini-podcast about anime. One does not care to acknowledge the mistakes in one's podcast, but know this: each host has their own sense of fandom inside of themselves, and they fight desperately to protect their credibility from naysayers! Even when you understand most of the references, even when you realize that it's just people quoting Char Aznable from Mobile Suit Gundam, you keep watching more... That is how true fans operate. Right now, Ben, Duncan, and Jeff are discussing Aoi Honoo, also known as Blue Blazes, as well as its almost-but-not-quite companion piece Otaku no Video, and you're free to listen in... if you can handle them giving Toshio Okada the side-eye. Podcast quality isn't determined by differences in audience numbers, we'll teach you that!

Episode 134 of Key Frames, a podcast about anime. It's our first non-tween episode without Ben! Time to shame him by knocking out the end of the winter and the beginning of the spring anime seasons in a single go. Hear Jeff briefly FranXX it up about Metallic Rouge, while Duncan insists it's just the first anime written by AI! Wonder at Andy calling Train to the End of the World cringe but not Gushing over Magical Girls! Nod along with Duncan's plea that shows like Weakest Tamer play their fantasy settings straight rather than always through the lens of isekai! It really is a madhouse (and not the Japanese animation studio founded in 1972 by ex–Mushi Pro staff) without a certain someone there, huh?