Now I will be releasing those beta episodes on Robomiko.com at a rate of one a week. After that, you will occasionally get new, “real” episodes of this podcast, though I can’t guarantee how often “occasionally” will be. Please comment to let us know whether you A) like this show and want it to continue or B) hate it and hope it dies in a fire.

What follows is the original description for Beta 02. WARNING, stronger language present in this podcast than in other Robomiko.com shows!

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Today on Phenakistoscope, we review the 2007 action/black comedy, Shoot ‘Em Up. It was conceived, written, directed, storyboarded, fed, burped, raised, and rescued from badass, amoral assassins by Michael Davis, and it stars Clive Owen as the baddest motherf***in’ vegetarian ever.

Hey guys, Eryn here. You may be wondering what the hell is going on here, and why this isn’t a new podcast episode. Well, I decided that since I want to get more of my writing out on the internet, I’m going to start posting text reviews and articles here at Robomiko.com, making it more of a fleshed out website and blog rather than simply a front for podcasts. Hopefully my writing isn’t incredibly boring compared to my speaking. You’ll have to let me know if it is or not. My hope is that the sheer “dude, what the f***”-itude of the show I’m about to cover will carry the review in the event that I’m boring.

So, what show might we be tackling today, you ask? The show in question is a six-episode anime OVA from 2008 called Mnemosyne, aka Mnemosyne ~ Daughters of Mnemosyne, aka RIN ~ Daughters of Mnemosyne, aka Mnemosyne ~ Isn’t Mnemosyne a Totally Awesome Name For Series Guys? Seriously, Mnemosyne. I Wonder How Many Times I Can Work Mnemosyne Into the Subtitle of Mnemosyne.

Oh god. What to say about Mnemosyne? I actually watched this show a few months ago thanks to a LiveJournal roleplaying game, in which two of the consistently awesome roleplayers I knew played the main characters from this series. I was interested after seeing the characters interact both on their own and together, and sought out fansubs (this was before the series was licensed by Funimation). Before getting into the review proper, I just want to say that that’s definitely one of the things this show has going for it: Rin and Mimi are good main characters and I like following them. Rin in particular is both likeable and bad-ass despite the degree to which her bad-ass-ness is dependent on her non-fighting abilities, which I’ll get to in a minute. A good part of her appeal comes from the voice performance provided by seiyuu Mamiko Noto, who gets to show a bit more range in this role than she normally gets to. Most people who know Mamiko Noto are used to hearing her as either a cute moé girl or as a monotone, Hell-born moé girl (you might be surprised at just how much moé there is out there for Ai Enma). As Rin, she gets to use her lower register a bit more since Rin is an older woman, and she gets to explore both the playful and serious sides of her character, which she does very well.

Anyway, best not to get too far off on that tangent before proper introductions. As the main character of our series here, Rin Asougi appears to be a tall twenty-something with long, puke-green hair, glasses, large breasts, and a shapely ass. What an original concept: a modern anime female lead who has real adult sex appeal and isn’t appearing in a porno! And here I thought it was mandatory nowadays for female leads to look no older than twelve and wear skirts no longer than crotch-length. Anyway, Rin has her own consultation/private investigation business, Asougi Consulting, which she runs with the help of her younger partner/friend/sometimes lesbian lover, Mimi, and their sheepdog, Genta. She knows some kick-ass martial arts moves for those times when the men in black just gotta get curb-stomped, and carries around little knives, garrotte wires, and little knives on garrotte wires as her signature weapons. She’s an independent woman who always wears a suit and tie, and doesn’t cow-tow to men the way Japanese women are often expected to. Sounds like a great character, right?

There’s just one little thing that ruins all of this: Rin is an immortal. Because of this, Rin can recover from pretty much any injury imaginable. You can blow her up, tear her to pieces, cut off her head, destroy the brains, shoot her with silver arrows, throw her in the Star Wars garbage compactor – anything you care to imagine, and she will eventually regenerate and come back to do the same water and vodka joke with Mimi the next morning.

You might wonder why this would ruin anything. You might even think that immortality only makes her cooler. You would be WRONG. You know why? Because Rin’s immortality gives the series creators license to repeatedly subject her to the worst tortures imaginable for the pleasure of the viewing audience. In fact, the opportunity to watch Rin suffer, often while either naked or in minimal amounts of clothing, is one of the main intended draws of the series. The kinds of violence that Rin falls victim to are often on the level of torture porn movies like Hostel and Saw, sometimes even beyond that.

There are also some unique things about immortality in this series that may or may not raise an eyebrow. Immortality stems from the tree of legend, Yggdrasil, which is constantly releasing spores that it uses to gather information and memories from the world. Occasionally, Yggdrasil will release special “time spores” that can be absorbed into the bodies of people and sometimes animals. Thing about these spores? Only females can gain immortality from them. Males will instead turn into what are called “angels”, named such because of the giant red wings that sprout from their backs. Angels are 1) ugly as f***, and 2) mostly mindless animals who only live to kill people and devour immortals. And here’s the sticking point: when a female immortal is in the presence of an angel, her body will be overcome by insatiable lust, and she will feel an overwhelming urge to go to the angel and let it devour her. Aside from feeling excruciating pain when the angel begins to eat her alive, she will also feel a shamefully large amount of pleasure from the experience. This is the only way in which immortals can die.

So yes. The immortal women in this series – especially the strong, independent ones – are often terribly brutalized only to regenerate and have it done all over again. Their judgment can be completely clouded by sexual desire. When they’re eaten to death, they writhe in ecstasy and beg for it to continue.

Do I even have to say it? Do I?

This picture doesn’t even begin to get across how degrading this series can get.

I’ve heard it rationalized on fan forums that perhaps the Yggdrasil spore stuff is set up that way so that the women can spend lots of time in the world gathering memories and experiences for the tree – hence their being “daughters of Mnemosyne,” the Greek personification of memory. The spores then eventually end up being brought back to the tree by the male angels after they devour the female immortals. That does make some sort of sense, I guess, but it still reeks of an excuse for misogyny to me.

Also, if that wasn’t exploitative enough for you, the series creators threw in more excuses for gratuitous rape with the inclusion of a female informant that Rin knows. We don’t know her name, only that she seems to love grasshoppers (the drink, not the insect). If the series is to be believed, this random skanky woman knows ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING EVER, even top secret information that no one else in the world knows. And here’s the kicker: if you want to get anything out of her, she demands lesbian sex as payment. …Yeah. So this leads to one consenting sex scene between this woman and Rin (admittedly not so bad), and at least two non-consenting sex scenes between this woman and Mimi. Did I mention that Mimi looks no older then sixteen or seventeen, by the way? No? Oh well, that’s okay since she’s actually supposed to be a couple hundred years old, right? Right. (Shoot me.)

Last, we have Laura, a red-headed assassin in a cat-suit who is hired repeatedly to take out Rin for the amusement of the series’ main villain, Apos. Compared to everything else that Rin has to go through, Laura is actually not so bad. She doesn’t savour torturing Rin or dragging her pain out. She just likes to shoot Rin full of bullets, drop her off buildings, or explode her with claymore mines. Painful ways to die, sure, but at least they’re quick and don’t stink of that torture porn element I mentioned earlier. Oh, and possible spoiler, but it’s too bizarre not to mention: at one point in the series, Apos converts Laura into a cyborg so that she can keep up with Rin’s immortality. …Except it’s revealed in the last episode that she’s also an immortal. At the same time that she’s a cyborg. I think? The fansubs might have been off. I’m not sure. All I know is that I was confused as hell by that point.

Anyway, if it weren’t for all of that, Mnemosyne would be a somewhat decent anime series. The plot gets a bit tangled sometimes, which is frustrating, but thankfully, those moments of confusion are mostly found in episodes 1 and 6. The time that’s spent not stringing Rin up by barbed wire is enjoyable enough, especially when Rin is with Mimi or one of the various Maeno family members she comes across throughout the course of the series. The initial investigations in the early parts of the first three episodes, while a bit pointless, are nice diversions. Also, any action that doesn’t directly result in more exploitation of Rin is pretty well-done. For example, in the first episode, when we see Rin take on some men in black who are attacking Kouki Maeno, she pulls out some decidedly bad-ass moves that I would have liked to see more of throughout the series.

The major thing I like about the series, I think, is the passing of time. The first episode takes place in 1990, and by the fifth and sixth, it’s 2055, with each passing episode jumping forward a different number of years into the future. We get to see non-immortal characters age, have kids, move up in the world, and sometimes die while Rin and Mimi move on, frozen in time as they are. In the last three episodes, we get to see the rise of near-future technology, which I’ll admit looked pretty well-designed and fairly realistic given the path of current technology. The virtual reality internet elements of episode four were believable, and the idea of being able to download virtual clothing and items into the real world in episode five was more than believable and even a bit awesome. Maybe the murderous sex android premise of the fourth episode wasn’t quite so inspired (do you know how many times I’ve groaned writing this review so far?), but the more mundane future technologies at least were pretty well-done.

I ended the series kind of torn. Sometimes the things I liked about Mnemosyne were enough to justify me watching through the more reprehensible parts. During other times, however, such as the infamous piercing torture scene in episode one or any scene featuring Apos’s impalement bitches, I felt like I wanted to throw up and turn off the show altogether. I also was not sure what to think about the ending, which makes me wonder just how worth it it was for me to get all the way through the show. On the one hand, I liked elements of the ending, mainly Rin and Apos’s ultimate fates and the revelations about certain people in Rin’s past. On the other hand, the construction of that last episode is unbelievably haphazard, ludicrous, and more exploitative than ever, so I can’t actually bring myself to say that I liked it.

I would say to try episode 1 of Mnemosyne if you have a strong stomach. If you like the characters and can get past the awkward segue from “Ha ha, Rin’s ass is too big to slip under the laser alarm!” to “Oh shit, piercing torture!”, continue from there and see how you feel. At the very least, like I said, Rin and Mimi are good characters, and I can see why those roleplayers I mentioned would have chosen to play them. In fact, I think I’d like to see a lot more done with these characters in the hands of people who aren’t actively out to demean them. Maybe if more people watch this series, more people can create Mnemosyne fanworks that are more worth reading than the original source material.

So I guess that’s going to end up being my bottom line for Mnemosyne: go watch this series, strip it of the horrible rape and torture porn, and then go create a bad-ass action doujinshi where Rin gets to totally punch out anyone who dares mention angels, grasshoppers, or retrograde amnesia.

More of this please.

Less of this.

[P.S. - Anime Utamiko episode 3 and Phenakistoscope Beta episode 2 should both be out within the week.]

Now I will be releasing those beta episodes on Robomiko.com at a rate of one a week. After that, you will occasionally get new, “real” episodes of this podcast, though I can’t guarantee how often “occasionally” will be. Please comment to let us know whether you A) like this show and want it to continue or B) hate it and hope it dies in a fire.

What follows is the original description for Beta 01. WARNING, stronger language present in this podcast than in other Robomiko.com shows!

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Today on the very first beta episode of Phenakistoscope, we talk about the 1976 Oscar-Award-winning film Network! We barely cover the movie’s premise, and then proceed to spoil the hell out of it once we pass a certain point in the episode. Also, we have troubles with our microphone’s mute/cough button.

Wondering about why the audio is so bad? Well, all we have for easily recording two people in the same room currently is a couch, a table, a basement, and this:

Maybe we can cover ourselves with a blanket next time to cut out the echo.

UPDATE: Oops, I didn’t see those photos of Catherine St. Onge correctly. I don’t know which restaurant she worked at, but it looks like it wasn’t McDonald’s.

Songs played today:

• Bleeding Edge: “Asu e no Kizuna” by HIMEKA (Valkyria Chronicles)
• Scar Tissue: “Stardust Boys” by Hironobu Kageyama (Uchuusen Sagittarius)
• Eryn’s Pick: “Peony Pink” by ALI Project (CLAMP School Detectives)
• Request Flow #1: “Kao Dekaai” by FUNTA (Dr. Slump [TV 2]) *requested by cielmort!
• Request Flow #2: “Hikari no Rock” by Sambomaster (Bleach: The DiamondDust Rebellion – Mou Hitotsu no Hyouinmaru [Movie 2]) *requested by SexySesshyLover!
• Request Flow #3: “A Little Pain” by OLIVIA inspi’ REIRA [TRAPNEST] (NANA) *requested by sakuraslight/John Astle!

Song clips used:

• “Violence of the Flame” by Hironobu Kageyama (M.D. Geist)
• “Rara Shinseiki Eve” by ALI Project (Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo)
• “Otome no Inori” by ALI Project
• “Fukai Mori” by ALI Project
• “Wish” by ALI Project (Wish music video)

References:
- Let Me Google That For You – LMGTFY.com
- Animax Anison Grand Prix @ Wikipedia
- “Asu e no Kizuna” PV
- Musings on HIMEKA aka That Gaijin Anisong Singer @ THE JPOP MUSEUM
- Catherine St. Onge’s 1st and 2nd Stage from Anison Grand Prix 2008
- “Sayonara Solitaire” cover on the B-side of “Asu e no Kizuna”
- Uchuusen Sagittarius opening sequence
- Sagittarius French opener (”Les Aventuriers de l’espace”)
- Wish music video
- Code Geass R2 ED1 set to the B-side song from the same single, “Ara Gawa”
- 4chan 4evar
- Anime Music Podcast

Songs played today:

• Bleeding Edge: “Fuwa Fuwa Time” by Aki Toyosaki, Youko Hikasa, Satomi Satou and Minako Kotobuki (K-ON!)
• Scar Tissue: “Gatherway” by Hidemi Miura (Brave Exkaiser)
• Eryn’s Pick: “Koyoi, Tsuki ga Miezutomo” by Porno Graffitti (Bleach: Fade to Black – Kimi no Na o Yobu [Movie 3])
• Request Flow #1: “Yuki, Muon, Madobe Nite” by Minori Chihara (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) *requested by Maru Chan!
• Request Flow #2: “Danzai no Hana ~Guilty Sky~” by Riyu Kousaka (Claymore) *requested by wildatheart!
• Request Flow #3: “Shining Days” by Minami Kuribayashi (Mai-HiME) *requested by cielmort!

I would call this is a rise from the ashes, but Anime Utahime already rose from the ashes more than a few times in its day, so I won’t. I suppose I’ll call this more of an experiment, then. You all wanted the anime music back. I wanted the anime music back. So let’s try this again and see if I can get the ball rolling.

I won’t promise anything long-term yet, because you all know I’m bad at making those sorts of podcast promises, especially when I have a lot on my internet plate already. However, I’d like to try anyway, just because I miss the hell out of talking to the internet about anime music. So long as I stay amateur, don’t set off to make a cent from of this project, and always link to places where you can buy the music played, hopefully that’ll keep us out of trouble. Cross your fingers, guys!

References:
- K-ON! @ Wikipedia
- Karmaburn – I dropped K-On! twice
- Fuwa Fuwa Time music video
- Exkaiser @ Wikipedia
- King Exkaiser Info
- GaoGaiGar review @ Anime World Order
- Bleach Movie 3 @ Anime News Network
- “Koyoi, Tsuki ga Miezutomo” PV

For once, the lack of updates has not been due to laziness or bad schedules. The simple fact of the matter is that Iggy’s new puppy, while sweet and adorable and OH SO WUVVABLE, has a thing for headset cords, apparently. Goodbye, Iggy’s headset. We mourn for thee. It’s only been within the last week that we’ve finally been able to secure a new one, and that means the recordings can start up again soon. Expect a new episode sometime within the next month or so.

Sorry again for the delay!

-Eryn

Today’s reviews are…

Eryn’s Review – Anime: Baccano!
Iggy’s Review – Movie: The Forbidden Kingdom

Our Music of the Moment today included the instrumental version of “Guns & Roses” by Paradise Lunch (the opening theme to Baccano!), and “War” by Edwin Starr (WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?!?!). And we have a lot of random plugs this episode, so here they are split up by person:

Iggy’s Plugs: Boy Meets World Karaoke Contest, David Caruso One-Liners, CSI: Jim Carrey, David Caruso School of Acting, StumbleUpon, My Immortal @ Encyclopedia Dramatica
Eryn’s Plugs: Danjo, Baccano! Danjo, Weeeek, Baccano! Weeeek, Caipirinha, Landel’s Damned, Ubiquity, Capoeira Fail

Other random things mentioned this episode:
- Watch Baccano Ep 1 Free on Funimation.com (password: flying pussyfoot)
- Anime Fansub Documentary
- Baccano Opening Things: Original, Gundam 00 Version, Nintama Rantaro Version, D.Gray-man Version (Partial), Prince of Tennis Version, Ookiku Furikabutte Version

The recording for episode 4 went on so long that we had to split it into two parts. The first you can listen to now, and the second will be up in a day or two so that your readers/podcatchers have time to download this part first.

In this half of the episode, it’s all news, news, news, some of which is relatively old. Give us a break: we haven’t podcasted in about two months.

UBER NEWS
- Toonami is Dead
- Stargate: Atlantis Cancelled
- “The Graysons” is Not a Good Idea (Related comic from Shortpacked!)
- Pressure Campaign to Reveal UFO Infomation
- Unknown Aircraft Over Dr. Who/Torchwood Location
- LHC Starts Up, Shuts Down
- iMovee
- Harvey Dent is Dead as a Doornail
- Don Cheadle Replaces Terrence Howard in Iron Man 2
- Upcoming Marvel Films: Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America, The Avengers, Spider-man 4, Venom
- Tobey Macguire IS Going to Be Spider-man Again. BOO.
- Funimation Streaming Ouran and School Rumble 2 Eps
- Edgar Wright Directing Ant-Man and Scott Pilgrim
- Various Bits of Transformers 2 News

We hope you’ll be looking forward to Robomiko Episode 04B, in which Eryn will review the anime series Baccano! and Iggy will review the kung-fu movie The Forbidden Kingdom!

EDIT: Nope, guess not. Sorry, guys. Iggy’s got a cold. We’ll have to wait at least another week. Be sure to wish her a speedy recovery in the forum! <3

Anyway, we attempt to switch up the format of the podcast today to see if it works better than our first format! What do you think? Is this better? Should we change it back? Do you have any ideas for a better format? Let us know in our forum at http://robomiko.com/forum.

For our review today…

Iggy and Eryn’s Joint Review – Movie: The Dark Knight

WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS! If you wish to avoid these spoilers, stop listening at 29:31 and restart listening at 50:46.

In the Mixed Bag of Segments following the main review, Iggy and I did some miniviews for your listening pleasure.

Eryn’s Segment – Miniview: Batman: Gotham Knight

Iggy’s Segment – Miniview: Okami (Wii Version)

Our Music of the Moment today was “Plenty of Grit” by Megumi Hayashibara (!!!), and “Voodoo Child” by Rogue Traders. Our other miscellaneous plugs were for Empty Movement/In the Rose Garden and the Zombie Infection Simulation.

Links:
- Don S. Davis – 1942-2008
- Superdickery – Batman’s Boner
- Behind the Scenes: Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark