The Review Show

Episode 169. Kyle is back on the podcast with Melissa to talk about the romance manga Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higashimura. Tsukimi is a young woman obsessed with jellyfish who lives in an apartment building only for otaku women, with no men allowed. When a friendly girl helps Tsukimi bring her very own jellyfish home from the pet store, she's intimidated by the stranger's beauty and fashion sense -- until she discovers this is a fashion-fanatic boy who loves wearing dresses. Her new friend Kuranosuke has to hide his identity from the other women of the apartment so they don't kick him out, which is the last thing he wants now that he's falling for Tsukimi.

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Episode 168. Friend of the show and brother of the co-host Jams Wilkinson is here to talk about the webcomic turned graphic novel series Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu. Eric "Bitty" Bittle is a freshman on his university hockey team, looking to show off his figure skating skills, feed these hockey bros some real home-cooked meals, and gain the confidence to come out as gay. He finds a welcoming team, and a special connection with the captain Jack Zimmerman, who is trying to figure out his love life and his promising NHL career.

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Episode 167. Friend of the show Jacq is back to talk about Maniac, the 2018 Netflix limited series from Cary Joji Fukunaga and Patrick Somerville. Owen and Annie, two lonely New Yorkers with their own unique traumas, enroll in an experimental psychiatric drug trial. They experience hallucinations where they're living wildly different lives but they're always connected to each other, an impossible mental bond that puzzles the scientists running the trial. Can Owen and Annie learn to support each other and move past their pain together, and can these scientists stop a glitching computer from destroying all of their test subjects?

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Episode 166. Guest co-captain Audrey Stolze joins Melissa for a discussion on the graphic novel Folklords, from Matt Kindt and Matt Smith. Ansel is a teenage boy living in a medieval fantasy village who sees visions of our modern urban life. He's the only person in town wearing a suit and tie and using a handmade lighter instead of a torch. All kids his age must choose a quest, and Ansel wants to find the mythic Folklords, the forces controlling his world, to learn where his visions come from and if he really fits in here.

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Episode 165. We conclude our time in Winden with a discussion on the third and final season of Dark! We see an alternate timeline where Mikkel never vanished, Jonas was never born, and Martha grows to become the Adam of her world, pulling the strings and following her own plan to try to set everything right. As we learn more connections between the generations, we also discover the origin point of the time travel knot for both universes, and it'll take tremendous sacrifice to reset the town and stop the cycles from continuing.

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Episode 164. We watched a live-action Japanese comedy show on Netflix called Kantaro the Sweet Tooth Salaryman. Kantaro is a sales rep for a publishing company, but his true passion is sweets. He only took this job so that he could sneak away from bookstore sales calls to visit his favorite cafes in the area and blog about the desserts he eats. Can he keep this a secret when his new co-worker reads his anonymous blog and notices the pattern? Only sweet heaven knows!

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Episode 163. We're continuing our coverage of the German time travel drama Dark, talking about season two. Jonas travels forward another cycle to 2052 Winden, decimated by an accident at the nuclear power plant, and back to 1921 Winden, where the Sic Mundus society is beginning to take hold. He teams up with the older version of himself to try and prevent the cycles from repeating, but they struggle to find the true beginning point that they need to derail, and someone close to them is trying to sabotage their entire plan. Look for our episode on season three ahead of schedule in just two weeks, so we can finish the series before Kyle goes on vacation!

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Episode 162. We read both volumes of the 2019 Doctor Doom comic from writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Salvador Larroca. Doctor Doom has been framed for the destruction of a moon base designed by Reed Richards, and has no choice but to turn himself in and plead innocence. As he attempts to secure his freedom and keep Latvaria safe from political turmoil and a war at its borders, he's also haunted by visions of a possible future. He sees himself with a healed face, a loving wife and children, and a utopian world that owes its peace to him. How can he possibly get to that life?

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Episode 161. We watched the 2017 Hulu original show Dimension 404, a fun sci-fi anthology of stories about technology and how it can affect our lives for better or for worse. The show covers dating apps, 3D movies, video games, surveillance cameras, and more, with protagonists dealing with loneliness, the desperation to win, or just the need to share your favorite 90s cartoon with your friends, but whenever you look up the show you can't find any proof it existed. And yes, Virginia, there is a Christmas episode!

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Episode 160. Alan Busbee joins us to talk about the Netflix original anime comedy The Way of the Househusband. Tatsu was known as the "Immortal Dragon" of the yakuza, a top-notch gangster who survived every fight. Now he's left crime behind to marry a busy career woman and devote himself to domestic life, bringing his mob boss mentality to grocery shopping, cooking dinner, and doing the laundry, as his old cohorts and rivals try to reconcile the hitman with the homemaker.

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