Show #206: Space Jam

Before it's New Legacy dunked our collective brains 25 years later Space Jam was pioneering new and innovative ways to exploit our most merchandisable popular culture figures. With an existing working relationship Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan teamed up on the basketball court in a baffling display that somehow netted an adoring following, inspiring fashion designers, music mash-ups and salacious art for decades to come. Does the original squad still have the stuff to take it to the hoop though? Athletic actors and the genesis of the green-screen cinematic wasteland also get some play, with a Post-Podcast Repaste that's guaranteed to put you back in winning form.

COME ON AND SLAM!

OH! That's A Baseball Episode #3: FLCL, Samurai Champloo and The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya

 

The tour heads back Eastwards again for another triple-header of anime athletics, facing a team of 2000s era titles that had the good sense all those decades ago to stick some baseball episodes in and force us to confront our own mortality in the present day... Anyways, FLCL #4 dials down on the robots erupting from heads for a poignant baseball meditation on growing up (and boners~); Samurai Champloo #23 has Team Japan beat the USA at their own (not) game; and The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya #4/#7 threatens to destroy us all unless they can throw the opening pitch! Stay in your seats folks, it'll all make sense soon!

Listen up!

OH That's A Baseball Episode! #1 - Dorohedoro, BNA: Brand New Animal and Dragon Ball Super

Striding out onto the field with a cocky swagger is a whole new ball game for SOTSM as a one-off idea has swerved wildly into a format wherein we look over baseball episodes in otherwise non-baseball cartoons. Special correspondent Jake De Búrca is called up to serve as somebody with hands-on knowledge of the sport, depicted this time around in a trio of episodes from the world of anime! Dorohedoro #7, BNA: Brand New Animal #5 and Dragon Ball Super #70 form our starting line-up for what we hope is a championship season! Put on a helmet and get in the game!

Listen up!

SOTSM x DITB: The Anime That Didn’t Make Us #1 – Captain Tsubasa, Fushigi Yugi, Bonobono

Niall recently took a wander down a hypothetical memory lane with Brian and Anthony over on Dynamite In The Brain as they sampled some anime series that could have been formative experiences in their youth had they ever been released in their parts of the world. Captain Tsubasa cashed in on 80s World Cup fever, Fushigi Yugi whisked us to another world before it was cool and Bonobono innovated children's television with the addition of existential dread. Find out how this experiment in manufactured nostalgia unfolded when you listen up!

Show #175: Ballmastrz 9009

It's high time to resume our workout plan so we're up and atom with the most popular pastime of the post-apocalypse in Ballmastrz 9009!

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Christy Karacas of Superjail fame let his passions run amok on Adult Swim last year with this grungy love letter to the anime, comics and sci-fi movies of his youth delivered in speedy ten minute chunks. It plays fast and loose with the rules but can this ragtag bunch of misfits put in the hard yards where it counts? Cinematic bloodsports, adorable aliens and our own anime leanings are fit to play in your earholes!

Show #162: Animalympics

It's the first proper show of the new year with a semi-different format that we're still working out! The obvious starting point for this approach? The TV movie Animalympics of course!

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We're always looking to do better here at SOTSM so 2018 seems as good a time as any after putting this out for so long to freshen up our methods a little bit. What we're hoping to try here is to divert our tendency to overthink & tangentialise to the purpose of highlighting those hidden links and pathways lying just under the surface of the animation world. To that end while we figure out where to begin with this we thought we'd look at a more auspicious start in the bright career of cartoon creative Brad Bird, with his first professional credit on this 1980 TV special from the director of Tron, and follow his route from there. What other surprising staff will we discover? Is this format really going to inspire any substantial change? Will Niall's voice hold out until the end of the recording? The answers to these questions may only be found on the almost new, almost improved Secret Of The Sailor Madness!

THE SHORT VERSION

Athletic animals

Spaced-out sports

Formative experiences

SOTSM x DITB: Famous Anime Podcast – Bats and Rackets

Before summer holidays are over Niall heads outside with the Dynamite In The Brain duo for a vigorous rundown of sports anime worthy of the hall of fame, and we find out just how much Mitsuru Adachi can get away with making a career out of telling the exact same story multiple times!

Listen up!

SOTSM x DITB: Ping Pong - The Animation

Just before Niall took his extended break he got a chance to drop in on Dynamite In The Brain for an intensive look at anime auteur Masaaki Yuasa's TV adaptation of Taiyo Matsumoto's titular manga. Balls, bats, boys, brotherhood and badassery all feature along with a few out-of-date plugs, but to find out more you'll have to listen up!

Show #122: The Unbeatables (2013)

It's a game of two halves, or indeed thirds, quarters or fifths in the football fumble that is The Unbeatables, AKA Underdogs, AAKA Metegol!

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A sports story about a rag tag bunch of misfits with nothing to lose and everything to gain? A young man finding what he truly values in life through courage and sacrifice? A foosball table team comes to life and have zany adventures barely relating to the game? The Unbeatables is all those things but not in the ratios you'd expect, as for a film selling itself on the prospect of high stakes foosball to save the village you get very little of that and a whole lot of other inconsequential fluff. A wealth of ideas can be great, but to use a sports analogy we need one cohesive functioning team and not a bunch of glory-hounding superstars.

THE SHORT VERSION

Players on the bench

Space pirate footballers

The baleful eyes of a man consumed by foosball

Show #106: Madonna (1988)

Niall and Dwayne tog out and get on the pitch to scrum down with obscure school rugby OAV Madonna!

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Rugby World Cup fever strikes SOTSM but we're hard pressed for appropriate rugby cartoons, leading our gaze to fall upon this 1988 anime OAV which is dang hard to find due to its naming. A strange mixture of underdog sports story and puerile delinquent school comedy, Madonna stands out even further by often breaking with the conventions of both and focusing on a sport with sparse coverage in the animated medium. But who knows, with recent real world success by the Japanese rugby team the next anime craze mightn't be far away!

THE SHORT VERSION

Unorthodox educators

Ragtag misfits

The next big thing?