In September 2010, it was announced that Weekly Jump would have a special series of one-shots called “Top of the Super Legend” starting with issue 45 and going through issue 50. Current Jump artists would be contributing these new, short stories… but a certain “legend” of the recent past would also toss one into the mix: Akira Toriyama. A little later on, we learned that the story would be called “Kintoki“, and that was about all we got.

Toriyama’s work, KINTOKI: 金目族のトキ (Kintoki: Toki of the Golden-Eyed Tribe), was the last one of the bunch and released within issue 50. All of us from the extended Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai communities are big fans of everything Toriyama has done over the years, but beyond comparing DragonBall to his prior works (especially its direct predecessors such as Dragon Boy and Tongpoo), we never have an opportunity to go in-depth about them about on our DB-centric sites.

Well, nothing’s really stopping us.

I decided to do a fun “bonus” podcast, and invited on Heath to talk about the new one-shot with me. Much like the “Manga Review of Awesomeness” recurring segment on my main show, what we did was recap the actual story of the manga, and then dove head-first into all sorts of things: name puns, correlations to other Toriyama works, our own thoughts on this new one, etc. It runs around 45 minutes, so it’s a pretty decent length show without going completely overboard (especially considering the one-shot itself is only about thirty pages!). We definitely had a fun time with it, and if you enjoy it and want to hear more like this in the future, let us know! We will probably do it anyway just to amuse ourselves, but it would be nice to know that someone out there actually wants to listen in, too.

OP/ED: “Riding on a Time machine~サイケデリック☆５５” by Hironobu Kageyama (from the album Cold Rain — CDJapan / Amazon Japan)

The spontaneously-combusting XLR cables are not my fault, though. I swear.

I know it has been well over  a year since the last podcast episode (if you could call it that) for this blog, but I made it a point to say that shows here would be when I have something to say, and I would not do them just for the sake of doing them. That being said, I actually have an idea for a show to do. It is incredibly “meta” (and specifically about podcasting), but that is OK with me if it is OK with you! You have read before how I have upgraded equipment over the years, and what my typical workflow is for producing a show. That was a while ago, though, and a few things have changed.

I really want to do an updated version of that, but more from the audio end of it rather than a text-and-images description. It fine and dandy to talk about it, but what does it all sound like…? Sure, you could compare the earliest episodes of Daizenshuu EX‘s podcast to some of the most current ones, but that would be a pain to do.

What I am planning on doing is recording a few segments, under very controlled (read: “ideal”) situations in terms of surroundings and acoustics, to showcase exactly what my different microphones really sound like, and how that makes a difference for the listener. With myself more than anyone else you will be able to tell how upgrading and tweaking a few things can make a huge difference — it’s no secret that my regular male co-hosts Jeff and Julian have amazing, deep, booming, perfect radio voices, where-as I have to over-compensate.

Not that I can’t form a coherent sentence, or anything like that. Oh, Hell… if you’re reading this blog, you know what I’m talking about!

In a nutshell, I have a pretty good idea of how that part of the show will go. You will hear the different types of mics, positioning from them, what the most basic of software can do to help with it, blah blah blah. What about the other side, though? Is there anything about the behind-the-scenes production that you are interested in learning about? Not necessarily the tech behind things… but the research, methods, reasons, schedules, time-sinks… that kind of stuff.

In general, is there anything about any of the shows I am involved with (Daizenshuu EX, lo-fidelity, vgconvos) that you are curious about? Why we do the things we do and how we do them? Let me know! I will probably pull Jeff on that later segment to answer with me, because he’s just such a swell guy.

What you’re about to hear is a little bit of an experimentation on a few different fronts. The beginning of the episode (the “meat” of the episode, if you will) was actually recorded after all of the other stuff, which in this case is the end of the episode. Follow all that?

In a nutshell, Jeff is working to revive Lo-Fidelity (his music review/appreciation podcast), and we were farting around with my mixer and his MacBook Pro to test levels and all that kind of boring pre-recording stuffage. We ended up amusing ourselves in the process and were wondering what to do with all of that material. I suggested we just dump it over here on WTF EX, and then further decided that rather than just dump it, let’s record an “intro” to it and make it an actual episode. Furthermore, let’s not edit a damn thing other than dragging it into the production timeline and creating transitions between the “segments”.

So here you go. If you ever wanted to hear us completely unedited, uncut, and uncensored (but thankfully not in a cropped-widescreen presentation), this is it. I hold myself absolutely non-responsible for anything I said, and instead place all of the blame of Jeff. What you’re about to listen to is the ramblings of one man who had already recorded an entire normal podcast, and another who’s itching to record his own.

You have been warned. Please enjoy.

Jeff is back on this episode, and Meri also joins us, as we talk about our first-ever e-mail addresses and some early internet ignorance. I thought we had a couple pretty interesting stories, and it certainly drives home the idea that we were all stupid early teenagers at some point in our lives.

Enjoy the show, and have a great Thanksgiving weekend~!

That’s right, I’m doing a third podcast (#1: Daizenshuu EX, #2: vgconvos.com, #3 this one). As you’ll hear on the show, this is going to be about whatever I want it to be about, whenever I want to do it, and whoever I want to do it with. I have a bunch of random topics flying around in my head that I would absolutely love to talk out with friends, and this gives me an excuse to get them over here for said topical discussions.

For this first episode, I decided that Jeff (a familiar voice to those who follow anything else I do) would be a great guy to have on. We talked about how we manage to accomplish all these various things in life… things like going to work, paying bills, going out for a walk, and all those extra nerdy things in between.

I don’t really have a whole Hell of a lot to say about it. If you’re here reading this (and listening to the episode), there’s a good chance you already know who I am and have at least a quasi-stalker-ish interest in following the things I do. If you don’t already know me…? Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m the most bad-ass person on the planet, and you’ll be a fan immediately. I think.