Part 4 concludes the Nostalgia Hangover Season Finale with a long discussion about the two endings of Neon Genesis Evangelion: first, the final two episodes of the television show which provoked a major fan backlash (that included death threats sent to the creator of the series), and second, the movie that was made to ‘fix’…

This didn’t quite fit into any of the other episodes so it got spun off as a bonus. In this episode. We discuss the character of Kaworu, who appears in only a single episode yet has a phenomenal fan following and popularity (the “Boba Fett” of Evangelion). He is an enigmatic love interest for Shinji,…

Part 3 is a deep dive discussion on the character of Asuka, who stands in perfectly as a microcosm of the series as a whole. Asuka originally appears in episode 8 and is introduced as a shrewish cliché with a lot of problematic elements. But by the end of the series, she is one of…

In part 2, Usman and Noah cover episodes 8-24, the bulk of the series, and go into more depth about how the tone and content of the show fluctuates over the course of its run. Starting with episode 8 Evangelion veers away from its more serious elements involving war/trauma/depression into a sillier and more cliché…

Nostalgia Hangover Season Finale: Neon Genesis Evangelion Part 1: Life During Wartime Neon Genesis Evangelion is an iconic Japanese animated series (now on Netflix!) that uses a common anime premise (teenagers piloting giant robots that fight monsters) to tell a story about depression, loneliness, PTSD, parental estrangement, teenaged angst, and life during wartime (content warning…

Michael comes on the show to talk about the Star War. Specifically, two live-action made-for-tv Ewok movies. Did you know that two original live-action Star Wars movies were made in the mid-80’s after Return of the Jedi? Noah didn’t! We discuss these lesser-known pieces of Star Wars media and how they compare to both the…

Ben talks about Monster Zero, a Godzilla movie his mother created a bootleg copy of from a VHS tape borrowed from a grocery store video rental chain. He watched it over and over again as a child, and from this humble beginning came a lifelong affection for Godzilla and other kaiju. Monster Zero features most…

This weeks’ guest Classy Cassie saw The Fast and the Furious in theaters with her parents when she was about eight. What’s more remarkable is that Cassie and her parents went on to see every Fast and Furious movie together in theaters since, marking that afternoon in the year 2000 as the beginning of a…

Julie Andrews stars in Thoroughly Modern Millie, a 1967 musical that features catchy songs, fun dance numbers, delightful performances, and egregious racism. The movie is about Millie, a ‘modern’ woman of 1922, trying to make her way in the Big City. While Millie’s attempts to find love is the main focus of the movie, the…

Ben “Not the Playwright” Johnson ordered an old Berenstain Bears book on Amazon last month and wanted to talk about it. The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Dream, like every other book in the series, tells a simple, wholesome story for children that imparts an equally simple, wholesome moral or message. And that’s it. What…