In the grim darkness of the 17th century, there is only war! Don your armor and sally into the fray alongside the Podcastle in the Sky Crew as we discuss two works suffused with blood and battle: the 2012 trilogy adaptation of Kentaro Miura’s dark-medieval fantasy series Berserk and James Clavell’s 1971 cinematic epic of … Continue reading Episode 21: Berserk – The Golden Age Arc and The Last Valley

Podcastle in the Sky

Episode 21: Berserk – The Golden Age Arc and The Last Valley

Turn your 2020 frown upside down with some opera – the space kind and the regular kind. In 1995, Operavox created a half-hour cartoon about Richard Wagner’s Rhinegold. Four years later, Leiji Matsumoto created an anime miniseries about the same opera, added some space pirates into the mix, and called it Harlock Saga. How do … Continue reading Episode 20: Harlock Saga and Rhinegold

Episode 20: Harlock Saga and Rhinegold

We return from our hiatus to discuss two works about Westerns, indigenous representation, serial killers, and bloody violence. Yes, episode 19 is all about season 1 and 2 of Golden Kamuy and the 2015 horror-Western movie Bone Tomahawk! PodCastle in the Sky is here to provide some easy listening in your time of quarantine. You’re … Continue reading Episode 19: Golden Kamuy and Bone Tomahawk

Episode 19: Golden Kamuy and Bone Tomahawk

Get out your neon-tinged sunglasses and jack into our latest podcast about the cyberpunk worlds of Ergo Proxy and Neuromancer. Remember when anime was nothing but shows about mopey people dressed in black leather? Remember when Japan was the future and dead channels on TV showed grey static? We talk about all this and more … Continue reading Episode 18: Ergo Proxy and Neuromancer

Episode 18: Ergo Proxy and Neuromancer

Join us on this month’s episode for a blast from the distant past! The Podcastle crew sets out to learn the meaning of true friendship through two retellings of a classic tale from Greek antiquity about two best bros and the bond of trust they forge together in the face of tyrannical adversity; first in … Continue reading Episode 17: Hashire Melos and Die Bürgschaft

Episode 17: Hashire Melos and Die Bürgschaft

We spend our 16th episode pissing and moaning about a terrible movie we watched. We also spend it praising a fun movie we enjoyed. One of the films is Miss Hokusai and the other is Artemisia. They’re both historical films about female artists – the first is set in the 19th century Edo period of Japan, … Continue reading Episode 16: Miss Hokusai and Artemisia

Episode 16: Miss Hokusai and Artemisia

In this month’s episode the PodCastle crew looks back at the humble origins of two iconic science fiction mega-franchises with 1977’s ripping space opera Star Wars and the three film theatrical compilation of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s 1979 television mecha series Mobile Suit Gundam. In the years subsequent to their release, the aesthetic and narrative conventions of … Continue reading Episode 15: Mobile Suit Gundam and Star Wars

Episode 15: Mobile Suit Gundam and Star Wars

Witchcraft is the name of the game in our latest episode as we cover Studio Trigger’s  Little Witch Academia and the 2017 CBBC/ZDF children’s TV show The Worst Witch – two contemporary throwbacks to a simpler time in the media landscape. Do you remember getting up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and running home after school … Continue reading Episode 14: Little Witch Academia and The Worst Witch

Episode 14: Little Witch Academia and The Worst Witch

We go beyond good and evil as we discuss two superhero comedies: the anime One-Punch Man and the 2017 live action Amazon series The Tick. The nature of heroism, the ungratefulness of the common man, and the underemployment of Millennials are all things we cover as we solve all of Japan’s social and economic problems in episode … Continue reading Episode 13: One Punch Man and The Tick

Episode 13: One Punch Man and The Tick

For the 99th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, Podcastle in the Sky looks at two fantastical versions of that war from this year – the feature film Wonder Woman and the anime series The Saga of Tanya the Evil. Women with supernatural abilities, godlike beings engineering conflict, pop culture memory of a war … Continue reading Episode 12: The Saga of Tanya the Evil and Wonder Woman

Episode 12: The Saga of Tanya the Evil and Wonder Woman

We test our fortitude by watching two legendary works of fantasy crapitude: the 1996 OVA series Garzey’s Wing and the 1982 movie schlockfest The Sword and The Sorcerer. Incoherent writing, awful acting, and incoherent writing abound in both of the items we review. Can we actually find anything nice to say about either work of fiction? Is there … Continue reading Episode 11: Garzey’s Wing and The Sword and the Sorcerer

Episode 11: Garzey’s Wing and The Sword and the Sorcerer

In this episode we discuss urban planning and transformative pubescent experiences. Also we talk about the movies Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade and The Company of Wolves. Both adapt the story of Red Riding Hood, with the former being about an alternate history fascist Japan and the latter being a magical realist feminist take on the … Continue reading Episode 10: Jin-Roh – The Wolf Brigade and The Company of Wolves

Episode 10: Jin-Roh – The Wolf Brigade and The Company of Wolves

In this month’s episode, the Podcastle in the Sky crew take a journey back to an era when alt-rock ruled the world and ennui was in by watching two cult favorites, Gainax’s sci-fi infused coming of age story FLCL and the 1995 film adaptation of Tank Girl. Does FLCL stand the test of time as … Continue reading Episode 9: FLCL and Tank Girl

Episode 9: FLCL and Tank Girl

This time Podcastle In The Sky looks at two works of fictional sumptuous epics set in the shadow of a developing landscape and dealing with indigenous groups – The Last of the Mohicans having Native Americans, and Princess Mononoke having the Emishi, a now vanished people believed to be related to the Ainu.

Episode 8: Princess Mononoke and Last of the Mohicans

Celebrate Halloween the PodCastle in the Sky way – by watching Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales and reading Tales of the Dead. We discuss the two horror anthologies but also talk about horror in general, what scares people in the age of Twitter, and Steve Urkel (a.k.a., the greatest horror villain in fiction). Turn on, tune in, … Continue reading Episode 7: Ayakashi – Samurai Horror Tales and Tales of the Dead

Episode 7: Ayakashi – Samurai Horror Tales and Tales of the Dead

Podcastle in the Sky is dedicated to examining works of anime in combination with a selected piece of pop-culture, cinema, or literature. Join us in our shotgun approach to analysis as we discuss, compare, and contrast everything from high art to pulp fiction.

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Podcastle in the Sky

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