Looking for one of the cutest stories about a tortured artist? Look no further than Barakamon, which focuses on a professional calligrapher (who knew?) who butts heads with the Tokyo art crowd and is sent to live on a remote island to cool his head and refine his art. Doesn’t sound cute? Just wait until you meet the village brat Naru … not to mention an entire cast of characters so charming of course you’ll only find them in fiction. Jared and Ink discus the values of fluff, how they relate to some of the story lines, and more! Barakamon is currently streaming on FUNimation.com.

Oldtaku no Radio #035 – Barakamon

In each episode of Oldtaku no Radio, Ink and Jared Nelson don a new lens to delve into a specific cartoon series, animated movie, or game that's affected one or both of them and pull it apart before your very ears to explain why.
Ink's drunken-master style of theorizing and Jared's combination of foreign experience-based insight and raw smarts make a ton of information fun to swallow.
Episodes run about an hour each (unless the hosts gets overexcited and get caught up in their own or each other's over-analysis) and come out every month.

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TV & Film

Reuniting for the annual Anime Secret Santa project, Jared and Ink stuff your stocking with opinions about 2004's Planetes via a special episode of Oldtaku no Radio. Thank you, Santa!!! The choices originally presented to Ink were Stars Align, Planetes, Godzilla Singular Point, and Project Blue Earth SOS. When Ink told Jared Planetes was gifted, the stars aligned, and both hosts, who previously only read the manga, decided they needed to watch and talk about the anime, which had been on their radar for years.

Since Planetes takes place in space, we've formatted our review in line with our other Oldtaku in Space episodes (available to $5/month Ani-Gamers Patreon subscribers here). See the show notes below if you don't care to hear about the real world and just want to get to the anime hot takes.

Oldtaku no Radio #062 – Planetes

Jared, Ink, and Phillip continue their dive into Satoshi Kon's anime career with Millennium Actress. Joined by the movie's number one superfan, Evan "Vampt Vo" Minto, the hosts discuss this movie of movies about movies and memory: those who make them, those who love them, and how both nations and individuals are changed by them.

Oldtaku no Radio #061 – Millennium Actress

In Primal, a caveman and dinosaur travel alongside one another through the unrelenting nature of prehistory. Director Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack), in a true return to form, ups his minimal dialog ante by almost completely eliminating it and leverages his visual storytelling expertise to evolve the bonds between the travel companions as they face omnipresent threats both natural and supernatural. Along with Genndy Tartakovsky Correspondent Kate from the Reverse Thieves, Jared and Ink discuss the highs and lows of the series and speculate about where Season 2 might lead.

Oldtaku no Radio #060 – Primal

Oldtaku no Radio's celebrating Halloween a little early this year with Lily C.A.T. Gather around a campfire or point a lit flashlight up towards your chin as Jared and Ink pick apart this 1987 OVA from Hisayuki Toriumi and Studio Pierrot about impostors, aliens, and rot.

Oldtaku no Radio #059 – Lily C.A.T.

For this episode, Jared and Ink talk about Kaiji - the anime about a hapless loser with a heart of gold (and a gambling problem). This anime from 2007, which adapts part of Nobuyuki Fukumoto's original manga, is competitive gaming like you've never seen before and still stands out visually and thematically among its peers. So listen in and find out all that's to love about the first season of Kaiji!

Oldtaku no Radio #035 – Barakamon

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