Today we're going to be talking about the most complicated media property we've ever covered on the show, and maybe one of the more complicated ones out there. Just reading the story from start to finish, like Nick did when he was 14, there's already amnesia, dimension hopping, little furry dudes with earrings, dimension-specific magic powers, global illusion magic, secret clones, amnesia again, mind control, cursed twins, time paradoxes, and soul-trapping glass tubes, but after all of that is said and done, the amount of intertextuality, crossovers, cameos, and references to other series by the same authors is mind-melting. Reading this one first is like if you watched Infinity War first, but if Infinity War was anime. And also, it's the same people who did the Kakyoin lays an egg thing, so that's fun. This week, the Nicks talk Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. Will it turn out that one of the Nicks is a clone of the other Nick while that Nick is also the first Nick's father because of a time paradox? In this series, it's more likely than you'd think. 

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) and check out their NEW ALBUM, Hey There Stranger! AVALIABLE NOW! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

We didn't start out this episode intending to talk about the 2001 spy-comedy kids film "Cats & Dogs," but I think we can confidently say that we've all been enriched by the experience? Sure. This film dares to ask: what exactly is funny about household pets doing spy stuff? It's conclusion? Scientists are still searching for the answer to this day, but in the meantime we've got some trash tier jokes, some bizarrely dark plot developments, and some truly early-2000s animation and filmmaking techniques to sift through. The real question at the end of it all is whether or not we actually care, and that depends: does it count if you care about the fact that something exists, but not about the thing itself? This week on Nostalgia Blinded, it's time to dive deep into the philosophical questions surrounding the very idea of nostalgia, so strap in folks: it's "Cats & Dogs!"

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) and check out their NEW ALBUM, Hey There Stranger! AVALIABLE NOW! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

For our 40th episode, we decided to do something a little different. And also finally tackle Zoo Pals, but that's neither here nor there--the point is that we know it's an audio medium, but this time we decided to get some friends together and go straight to the source, watching some nostalgic commercials and offering our own twisted and skewed views on them. Of course, that isn't to say that some of these commercials aren't quite twisted and skewed already, but that's just part of the fun and also the existential horror of living in a media landscape that's been wild for longer than most of us care to think about. 

To watch along with us, head to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEWnN04lwZo, mute your sound, and follow along with the time codes as we call them out! If you're around the same age as us on the call, we can guarantee you'll have some pretty intense memory activation experiences, so prepare yourself! 

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) and check out their NEW ALBUM, Hey There Stranger! AVALIABLE NOW! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

In the grand tradition of half-assed podcast gamification, the Nicks are shaking up the formula this week. Instead of talking about a media property only one of them half-remembers through the haze of a Brisk Iced Tea sugar crash in the late twenty aughts, they're talking about a media property neither of them know anything about. How? They're reading the wiki!

Wiki Warrior (n.) - a person who is exhaustively familiar with a media property or cultural phenomenon not through direct experience but exclusively through cultural osmosis deliberately sought using sources intended for reference by people already familiar with the source material. 

The Nicks have only ten minutes to browse the fan wiki page for a media property neither of them are familiar with. Then, they must explain that media property to one another as completely as possible using only what they've gleaned along the way. 

This time around, the Nicks will be educating themselves on the newest Disney Channel smash hit, The Owl House!

Many thanks to the fine folks over at The Owl House Wiki, https://theowlhouse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Owl_House_Wiki, and at all fan wikis! 

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) and check out their NEW ALBUM, Hey There Stranger! AVALIABLE NOW! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

Today, it's a trip back to one of the most performatively rage-inducing media properties of our elementary school years. And also its sequel. And its bad sequel. And the meta-mockumentary TV series starring Olivia Rodrigo. In retrospect, is it as lame as we thought it was when we were eight? Well, now we understand: it's not an actual musical, it's a pastiche of musicals! And with that slightly intellectual vocabulary choice reinforcing a protective shield of irony, we can finally enjoy the catchy songs and cheesy romance that we always wanted to enjoy but couldn't because of identity policing imposed upon us by the gender binary and arbitrary ideals of social conformity which the movie itself actively criticizes! That's how that works, right? Also, this was supposed to be a Romeo and Juliet thing? This week, the Nicks get their heads in the game to talk some High School Musical!

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) and check out their NEW ALBUM, Hey There Stranger! AVALIABLE NOW! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

Happy belated Mario Day, paisanos! Today, the Nicks wrap up their first two-parter episode by definitively, objectively, unimpeachably, for all time and all people, don't-want-to-hear-any-guff-from-the-peanut-gallery-about-it-ly, ranking all of the 3D Mario games. There are debates, there are relitigations, there's second guessing and hemming and hawing, there's an overcomplicated and inconsistent bracket system and an entirely separate overcomplicated and inconsistent scoring system, and there are several confessions that at least one of them hardly knows what the hell he's talking about in the first place. But when all the dust has settled, they're proud to say that they came out with an official Nostalgia Blinded ranked list, which is, once again, also now your list, because it's objectively correct. Or maybe Mario Odyssey... you know what, nevermind, actually.

For your reference, the list is...

You sure you want to read it? It's a spoiler for the episode... 

Here it comes...

7. Super Mario 3D Land 

6. Super Mario Galaxy 

5. Super Mario 3D World

4. Super Mario Sunshine

3. Super Mario Galaxy 2

2. Super Mario Odyssey

1. Super Mario 64

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) and check out their NEW ALBUM, Hey There Stranger! AVALIABLE NOW! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

Listen everyone, the Nicks are having a bad, bad day. I'd say it's about time that they get their way. So they're steamrolling whatever they see, on their way to talk about Despicable Me. 

That's right, it's the...classic? film franchise that spawned a nationwide carpet bombing of culturally ubiquitous cartoon character pablum, the fallout of which we're still dealing with to this day. The question is: is there something behind all the billboards and Facebook aunt viral marketing? What does this movie offer artistically, on it's own terms, with its own narrative, themes, and characters? That is to say, characters that aren't the... well, you know. 

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) for amazing music stuff! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity

It's going to be pretty hard to top this week's two topics in terms of pure nostalgia, but for completely different reasons. In one corner, we have an absolutely timeless classic that was completely formative to Nick's childhood and that other Nick came to appreciate later in life, and in the other corner we have an extremely flawed but ambitious and moderately charming cultural artifact that other Nick couldn't even bring himself to finish and that the first Nick barreled through only to realize afterward that it was sort of crappy. Well, at the very least, you'll get to hear from the two of them in a more innocent time, when The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was an unassailable instant classic and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was just old news, unappreciated for its true merit. This week, it's a Zelda double feature!

Follow Andy Huber (@yafroglog on Instagram) for amazing art stuff! Follow Nick and the Leg-Heavy Boys (@nickandthelegheavyboys on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok) for amazing music stuff! If you’re looking for anti-racism sources and have the means to help out both Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community, you can find them at these links! https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter https://linktr.ee/aapisolidarity