AWTY 144 - Reshrubbing (Wakfu)

Hello and welcome to our week there yet in exploration and education and anime. I'm your anime idiot, patrick dugan.

I am an anime expert, dee hollander.

And I'm brenda mccullough, your anime avatar. Le do a moa etoa e dela.

I don't think that was real French.

It was real, real bad.

We know that Brendan has an inability to speak any language, including I forgot.

How to say please in French.

I am perpetually mocked in my dnd group for not knowing any of the NBC characters. It carries over into every aspect of my life. Now I'm just a big old dumb dumb.

Don't worry, it's universal.

It's not that I don't care about them, I just don't care to remember them. That applies to both dnd and anime.

Fair. Well, why are we hopping across the pond? Different countries, regional thing, but same concept.

The Atlantic this time.

Oh, the other side. God, I missed the Atlantic. A beach where the water was actually warm. What a concept. Not over here, not on the west coast.

I was used to the North Atlantic, so I only know frigid water.

That's fair. I'm used to Jersey, so it's like 50% water, 50% switch oranges on the beach. So like, give or take 50% water, 50% hot gas. I'm cheer burning pseudo French because this week we're watching Wakfu, which is colloquially known as just French avatar by a lot of people. So it's pretty much an avatar last night bender, but with a twist to it. I feel like it's going to be a safe bet. Neither of you know anything about Wakfu?

No.

No. I think in discussing shows, there has been mentioned that, yes, there is a French anime out there. It's weird, but yeah, we try to keep it pure because we don't want to just diffuse the definition of anime into vaguely anime themed cartoons from wherever. So I think this is our first time not going with a Japanese.

I believe so.

I think so.

I think so. Yeah. Interesting. We're doing for 4 July. Happy Independence Day. We're celebrating the French because America is kind of high garbage right now.

This feels like a prank, elaborate prank. Because we could just be watching avatars.

No, that's a merrick.

That's American anime.

No, we already know that's.

Good.

We've all watched that five times over. We know what that's about. We can't pretend to be ignorant about it.

There are 100 podcasts out there telling you about how good avatar is. You don't need another.

There's that one avatar podcast, an official one that's just talking about I don't know, they announced like, hey, we're doing something new in the avatar world. And it was just like a podcast. No, that's not what we wanted.

No bad words to say about viacom CBS.

But yes. Walk foo is a series that was originally it is a TV show that is based off an old mmo Flash game from 2006. So it's 15 years old now. Good guy.

And do you know how much we love anime based on games?

They always go so well. Especially high quality games.

Oh, yeah. Not those free to play games. You know, they got budgets.

Yeah. We're not talking about like, a World of warcraft anime.

No, we're talking about that Adventure Quest anime or game that was on the spanner ads for all those clickbaby virus riddled sites, but like, French.

I'm waiting for the club. Penguin anime.

There is we've talked about there are penguin centric animes. We've seen some. There are few.

That's not club penguin.

It's just an orange penguin runs in and is about to say a curse word and then gets banned and you just seem blink.

Well, we're really talking around this because we don't know anything. Shall we get right into it?

Yeah, let's dig in. Let's get back on the cyberspace. mmo days. Got to hit that grind rainbows.

It's weird. It made us wait 18 hours between watching each episode or you can pay $3.

Oh, God.

So weird. That cooldown. Time.

That is where we are with streaming services, aren't we? You can pay a premium and get it early or you can wait an unknown amount of months until we release it for free on YouTube.

No, it's like that website. Was it? Daily motion. No, there was some website where you watched a certain amount of time and then it would be like, you have to wait 72 hours.

I think it was daily motion. Yeah, I think that was it. That sucked. That was a bad business model.

Back in my day, I watched anime and three parts on YouTube in 480.

P. And we were grateful for it.

We had fan dubs because we didn't have anything else.

I was in a fan dub once.

Feel like we all were.

What show?

Lucky Star. We haven't watched it yet.

My mom is something black Butler. Anyway, no, I would anyway.

Cast anyway.

Engage our interest in this show by how much we're avoiding.

Yeah, this is definitely.

Something.

I don't know.

I mean, I'll put the disclaimer out in front for anyone who actually enjoys wakfu. I've watched all of it. I also enjoy wakfu. So take it with a grain of salt that we're not just dog piling on it for no reason or at least one of our systems.

There are some interesting ideas in here, but the execution is very, I will say amateurish, to put it.

Yeah, this is one I watched the first episode dubbed so I could take notes while watching it. I'll go on record the dubs garbage. It doesn't sound great, and it's not synced up well with the mouth flaps at all. And it's like this is very shoddy. So this is one. If you do intend to watch it, definitely watch it in the original French. Yeah.

I also watched the first couple scenes in French to be like novel anime in French. I was like, this also is not great.

It's better. So we start with episode one. We get the opening sequence right off the bat, which is rare for animes. And it's done in kind of a 2d platforming sidescroller adventure because, like I said, this is based off the mmo video game, though this isn't, like, what the game is like, but it's a neat way of introducing the characters and the scenery. And at the end of the intro, it shows who, like, the monster of the week is for that episode. So the intro changes a little every episode, which is always something I appreciate. And then we start off on a small village. We got a bunch of different people walking around, all sorts of kinds. And all of a sudden, in an alleyway in this small village, a portal opens up and we see an old man walk out with a baby carriage. And everyone's like, Here comes trouble. Oh, boy. Children really surprised. Like, oh, there's a portal opening. But it's not like, what on earth is happening? It's like, this shit. Again, he just got called into work on the weekend or something.

And then the guy comes out and they're like, we hate your kind.

You suck. So we see this old man walking around with the baby carriage, and the villagers are like, oh, here comes trouble. And we see a little robot bug following him around. He's got, like, a little aperture eyeball, a camera lens, spying on the old man. And as the old man gets to a bridge, going across a river, you see someone stop him seeing, like, that woods in the baby carriage. And he just passes by them and they jump out. And it turns out it's three people in a suit, three cobbleds in a trend, and it's just three little gremlins that try to jump them and try and rob him. And he just beats them away immediately without even waving his hands. And he keeps on going. And then as he keeps walking, a new guy shows up. He's the leader of these little gremlins, and he's the guy we saw that was spying on him earlier with the little robot bug. We saw, like, the bug. And then we see, like, the camera zoom into the camera, and it shows him looking through the other side. And he's talking. He's the bad guy. He just starts monologuing immediately, and he's just lamenting. And he says, I'm on a quest to devour all of the wakfu that I encounter. I need it for its power. waku in this case is the deus ex machina bullshit magic. It's just the life energy. Essentially, it's just life force, but it's got a silly name. So he's trying to devour all walkthrough he encounters. So there's inherent walkthrough and all living things, but some have more than others. So he's looking for the big ones. And the old man tells the zello caveat I got to explain all the people in this. All the different powers are based on the classes you could play in the mmo. So this guy's a Time Wizard of zelor. We see an archery person later. We see, like, a Night person later. We see a plant like, druid person later. They're all the different races that are the classes you can essentially play in the mmo. So that's why they all seem so unique and already have their superpowers that don't really explain any of them because it's from the game. So the old man's pushing the baby carriage, and it comes across the zellor, who is a Time Wizard like yukio. And as the zelda is scanning him, he's like, oh, you're full of walk through. You're not like an old man. You're full of shit. Like, what's going on with you? I got to drain your body. And as he goes to attack the old man, I got to slurp down this old man. He goes to attack him, thinking this old man is just full of old man energy. And sure enough, the old man is a crazy name. It's a crazy old name. And the old man is super powerful because he's full of that life energy and starts beating the shit out of this Time Wizard. And so the Time Wizard, like, attacks him a few times and even freezes them in place with his Time Magic. And the old man is able to break out of it and just takes a deep breath and does, like, a dragon breath on the whole scenery. The whole environment just turns to ash as he burns everything around him. And it turns out the old man's a dragon.

Wow.

And the Time Wizard we saw fighting him, he's still alive. He, like, pops his head back up, and now he's all burnt, and his cloak and the hat are all burnt off, and he's looking like a robot man, and he's all excited he found the dragon because they're not supposed to be around anymore. They're supposed to be extinct. So he's all giddy. He found a big source of magical energy he can drain. And then we cut two we see two bounty hunters arresting a dude. He's just trying to steal some food for his family. He's just a poor guy, but they arrested him because that's what bounty hunting is. And as they're waiting, they're just, like, taking a pit stop. We see the thief's daughter show up and sees her dad in chains and starts crying. And the one bounty hunter gets sympathetic and breaks the chains and lets them go. And he gives up the bounty hunting business. He can't take it anymore. It's too much for his whole old.

Manheart just to attest how not great this dub is. I love that there's, like, a close up of the little girl, mostly expressionless. She's looking a little sad, and the actor is crying, so it's just crying.

Over yeah, I think it's not clothes.

Mouth, like yeah, like swimming or sniffling, just very funny. It was weird, yeah. Watching this stuff. I was like, ooh, this isn't what a choice. I don't know why, but yeah. So if it's two bounty hunters, one guy's a little younger, one guy's older, the younger guy says he's going to give up the bounty hunter business and lets him go. And he shakes hands with the old guy and say, all right, I guess we're going our separate ways now. And we see the old dragon man from before watching them from behind a tree, like a pervert. And he sees something in the young bounty hunters. He's got a heart, he's got some empathy. He might be a good father. So he reaches up and grabs a bird egg from a nearby nest and casts some sort of spell on it. So the bird immediately hatches, and then he takes that bird, like egg shells and charges them. He uses them for a spell or something. And we see him give the bird, like, this big old feather, and he gives the bird to the baby and leaves and disappears and mist and smoke. And he leaves the baby with the.

Balcony hunter to find this guy is just playing like musical chairs with babies, just like, yeah, you go with this family and you go with this family.

Oh, he's a protector, like giving away to good families. I don't know, maybe. What? What do you mean maybe?

He runs an orphanage.

Bird was sitting there just staring at you like, what are you doing?

You both took a human baby and my bird baby. Why? And when he leaves, the fountain hunter walks over and sees the baby character. He's like, oh. And he picks them up, and sure enough, when he picks it up, he picks up the little bird and the magic comes out of the feather of the bird that the dragon cast on it. And we just see, like, letters appear in a circle and it just like, shoots into the guy's head, like into his eyes, and he's like, huh, neat. I guess I'm a dad now. And we're just like, what happened? It was some sort of magic, but it's like, oh, okay.

It beamed what to Expect When You're Expecting into my brain. I know it now.

I'm the perfect dad, basically, so that we jump ahead a few years, the baby's all grown up. Not all grown up. He's like nine now or like twelve or something.

Yeah, all grown up.

He's a plucky young adventurer oh, God. rogue ass. He's a plucky young kid adventurer, age, primed to save the world, insane expectation for a child. Check. Haven't had that one in a while. And now the bounty hunter guy is a chef. Turns out he's like the mayor of like a small village, and he's just settling down. He's got a little restaurant and stuff. He's living a good life, my dream. We find out the kid's name is hugo and he runs out the bedroom all excited because his dad's making bread. But he burnt it all, so now he has to go and go get more loafs. So he runs off to do some errands. And then we see two birds just fighting over some money for a while. This went on for way longer than it really needed to.

Yeah, the pacing, especially in this first episode, is just so drawn out and too much.

Yeah, there's like a lot to cover, but they do it in a very small burst, so there's just like a lot of small bursts, but it's like Pete.

Yeah, it's weird exposition dump, but let's watch these two birds play tag for.

Five minutes, a real long time. So as they're fighting over a coin, we see Rule show up. He is the old man bounty hunter that was with the dad bounty hunter earlier, before they went their separate ways. And he waves the two birds off and snatches up the coin. Rule loves money. He's a cheap old man. He's Mr. crabs in human form. As he's walking, he comes across two girls that are traveling and they ask him for directions on a nearby village. And he goes, oh yes, I can give you directions and even guide you there for a price. Or if you're ruling the witness, his dub is truly unforgivable. It's so bad.

This is me doing my old man voice too much.

Yoda. I'd argue that's even better than what his was. So he tries charging them for directions and they say, fuck that, and leave. And then we see the little robot bug we saw before. It's spying still, it's sneaking around, it's got its eyes on people. And then we come back to hugo back in the restaurant. He's cooking up cooking up a meal in the back. And then we see Rule show up, seeing his old buddy hanging out, chit chatting, talking about old times. He's saying like, I might be retiring too. I'm getting too old for this. It's like you say that all the time and then Rule is like, hey, where did that kid come from? Who's the mom? You didn't have a kid last time I saw you. Who's the mom? It starts like prying for information from the dad.

Did you know I got him 2 seconds after you left?

And after him, I saw you twelve years ago. And he teases him like, ah, I'll tell you who the mom is if you pay the tab. Planting those seeds early of like cheap old man. And we see you go cooking in the back. And he drops a few ingredients and as he drops them, he puts his hand out going like, no. And a portal appears underneath of them. And all of the stuff falls through this portal and he's like, oh, weird. He tries to do it again and he opens up the portal and all the stuff that fell through shoots back out at him and knocks him over. So the boys got portal powers and he's like confused at first. He's like, whatever, I'm on the clock, I'll do that later, I got work to do. And he goes he finishes cooking and he goes out to serve it. And instead of handing them off like a normal person, he just starts throwing the dishes with all the food and the utensils at the people, and they land in front of two of the people, perfectly fine. And then for rule, it hits them in the face. haha old man covered in food. And then we cut away to a man jerking it in an outhouse. There's no other way to describe it. And while he's in the outhouse, he notices that the village is being attacked. And then we cut back to the restaurant, see them chatting still a bit, and all of a sudden a big old ogre kicks in the door. He's got this big orange hair and he breaks in the door and he's looking around and he just seems to be distracted by the trophies on a shelf nearby because they're shiny and pretty. And hugo comes out, tells him, like, hey, fuck out of here with the fuck off. Like pretty much you don't want to.

Be if only there were some adults that could do this. God damn it.

You know anyone besides his eight year old child? But yeah, what happens when you tell if a monster the monster gets mad and starts swinging at you? So the monster starts punching and you guys hop around dodging them and like, climbing on the back of them and stuff. And they fight for a bit, but eventually you can get knocked away. And Rural steps in to fight him because he's an actual bounty hunter who should be doing this. And he says that the big ogre, he's got a third eye, like on his forehead and he says he's possessed by a shoe shoe, which is an evil spirit that possesses an item, and if you get too reckless with it, it can then possess the user. So he says he's one of those. And while they're still fighting it, yoga opens up a portal on top and attacks yogurt from above, knocking them out, and it pris the eyeball off of the body and it turns back into like, a little sword, like a little dagger. And right when he sees those powers, Yugo's dad remembers the message spell from before, the message that was given to him and shot into his brain, and it was basically saying, like, hey, this kid's a main character of an anime. He's got big ramifications and powers to learn about good luck. That's basically it. So his dad remembers, he's like, oh, I got to tell you, go and after you go, freeze. The guy that was possessed by the demon he rips the eyeball off and it turns into a sword. The guy turns back into a lob, which is the race of his people. Like orange hair. I don't know. He looks like an elf.

Yeah, they're really throwing a lot of lore. That does not matter at no, I've.

Never played the games, so you can fully watch the show without having context of the world. But it is a lot of special terms that are from the game and stuff. So it takes a bit, but yeah, he frees the guy. The guy's thankful and immediately falls asleep because he was possessed and took a lot of energy out of him. And he goes, dad's, like, I have to tell you about your powers and where your family like, where your real family's from. And lo and behold, the village is under attack again. And that's it for episode one. And then the ending sequence is just like the credits are going upstream and one of the characters from that episode runs out and talks for like 15 seconds. So opening. Neat ending. Pretty lackluster. Yeah.

So we start episode two. We see the two women travelers setting up in their camp for the night, talking about their adventure and oh, the prophecy, will it come true.

Ha.

We'll get there late, so we go back to the village, attack. There are a bunch of just like little, very tiny black little monsters. Kind of like a mix of the monanoke monsters and the soot monsters, spirited Away, kind of that sort of vibe of just little mischief guys. But they're running around attacking people. If they touch you, you turn into a shrub. Cool. So dad tells the boy, dad tells you, go, hey. Oh, shit, I should have warned you about this before, but now is a perfect time. Go find your family. It's not me.

I'm not your real dad. bonded.

But yeah, this is where he gets turned into a shrub. My notes are bad because this was not great.

Yeah, he's a shrub now.

Yeah. So dad gets turned into a shrimp. There's shrubbing and destrubbing and re shrubbing.

So there's a lot going on in the word reshrubbing.

Well, it's the name of the episode now. No, just despite you.

You cursed us.

That's fair.

So we see one of the little spy bots that we saw in the first episode. It sees you go in the bird and is like, magic here. But then the bot gets destroyed and turns into a giant tree. Yeah, I feel like this episode has a lot of like dream logic to it where it's like yeah, naturally when a robot's destroyed, it turns into the world's largest tree. So, yeah, we have stuff like that going on.

So we see the little spy bots are siphoning off walk through the life energy. So when it's destroyed, that life energy goes back into the Earth and boom, tree. It's not great logic, but there is.

Some still more of an explanation than what we got in the show. Yeah, at least so far. But yeah. So they fight off the attack. We see the troll possessed boy comes out. Yeah. This is Sir Persidil of Sadly Grove. Just real emo grove. And just your cocky comic relief going to be super horny. You're zanders of the world, filling that type. And, yeah, the possessed demon sword thing is just talking a lot of shit, being like, oh, you're nothing. You're the sad, pathetic knight. Let me go be evil again. He's like, no, we have a odd couple dynamic ten. Yes, exactly. So they're like, okay, we got to figure out what's going on. These things came from the forest. We got to go into the forbidden forest. So then we cut to the Time wizard's robot factory.

What a sense god.

That wizard came from the moon. Time wizard has a factory.

Baby. Drag. Time wizard.

Oh, God. The show is nothing anyway. villains just doing a lot of exposition of awe. There was a race of humans that were descended from dragons, and if you find them, they will take you back to the dragons. And I'll be unlimited. Power man. Got to find this boy. Okay, yeah, we knew what you were trying to do. I don't know why you had to stop and tell us again just in.

Case anybody missed the first episode and.

It'S really confused or watched the first episode and it's really confused.

Yeah, when you got three minutes into birds fighting over a coin and turned it off and like, let me skip ahead. Let me get past this filler.

Yeah.

So they're walking through the forbidden forest. hugo is playing with his portal powers again, just a two long sequence of nonsense of him just, like, playing around, playing tags, sneaking up on people and scaring them.

Cool.

Great. He's learning his power, but he scouts ahead and oh, another giant ass tree is in the forest ahead. Let's go there and see what's up. But first they hear screams. They have to go rescue someone. And it's the two traveler women we see in the beginning, who knew their paths would crop. But they're being attacked by these little sprightly things again, so they fight them off. It doesn't really matter. But then they're all connected. This is evangeline and amalia and the prophecy destined that they would meet. So the prophecy said, go to the forest, and what do you know? We met you in the forest. Cool. Destiny.

Great. Moving on.

So they travel together. Cool. So we get to a burn section of the forest. Oh, nature is destroyed. Makes sense. Evil presence and some ant like tree creatures attack, all crusty and old and burned down, too. And malia gets grabbed by one, and then the tree is like, oh, is that you, Lee? She's like, no, they kind of leave it there.

No, it's not.

But she does reveal I am a princess of the nature kingdom. So got our parties druid. The tree is like, oh, hello, leaf princess whatever. You told me your actual name. I'm just going to keep calling you by the name of the person I think you look like.

That's what I do.

And it's like, oh yes, some mechanical things stole all our SAP and turned humans to trees and balance not right in the forest. As this exposition dump is happening, personal gets turned into a shrub as he's trying to kiss the other girl. Give me a kiss, lady. I saved your life.

I was going to put him down as himbo on the bingo card, and then I forgot one of the key aspects of being a hymbo is you got to drink your respect women juice.

And he does not. No, absolutely not.

He's also not even that big and strong. He's like lanky teen, sort of.

Yeah, that's true.

I he's just an idiot. All due respect to this actor, but I was referring to him as E. Bradley Baker because he was just second repeat baker turning up enthusiasm to eleven on every line delivery. And it's like in your contract.

Good.

And specific burn.

But yeah, so he gets shrubified, and at this exact moment, the tree is like, hey, I can undo this shit because we have to to move the plot forward. And for fighting off the forest, whatevers, undoes all of the shrubbery curse and turns everyone back into a human, including the people in the village, including hugo's dad.

Great, thank goodness.

So they're like, cool, we are sent out off on an adventure, time to backtrack and go home. They go back to the village. They're like, hey, we just need to make sure you're cool. Everyone's free. Perfect. Great. But oh no, the Time Wizard is here. He's attacking. This is knox, the time wizard. And he's like, you tell me. I'm going to tell you exactly what I'm looking for so you know to withhold it from me in the future. Where are the dragon men? And sensing the power from the bird thing as well, plucks the magic feather off of it. And the message the prophecy said he had to wait for speaks directly to hugo, I think, I guess. And is like, oh yes, your family is on omu Island. Go find them. And then knox is like, hey, tell me what that thing said. You guys like, no, what the knox, why? So then they scuffle a little bit. I thought dad died here.

It made me feel that way. Yeah.

Time wizard like, attacks, hits dad, dad falls, hits the ground, and we cut away. The next immediate next thing we see is them leaving the village, going off to find omu Island. And they're like, hey, you go stick with it, buddy. We're here with you. We got this. And then they leave. But then the last scene is dad back. In the village being like, well, I hope my boy's okay. All my kids being like, we're going to help you fix up the village so he didn't die. I didn't understand this. Truly recounting. It does feel like describing a dream when you're trying to tell the plot of episode two of a Ship.

I don't know. It's very clear. They were fighting knocks. They were all held in stasis. By the time Magic dad broke through, by the power of parental love, he was able to attack knox, fend him off, but the backlash of the Time Magic made him very old. It's very simple.

Yeah, his beard turned white. I'm sorry, mustache.

I didn't even pick up on that.

I was like, okay, he's now an anime protagonist. He has white hair.

Perfect.

Okay, your turn.

So my first note is, I hate viewing this with my eyeballs. One thing I thought about during I guess, this episode maybe is just the designs of the characters is like, the two girl characters are like, they look like they could be from an anime. And the main boy, who I called Child Boy, he also looks like he could be from an anime. The old man and Sword Boy, Emo Boy, they look like they're from newgrounds, which is they look like they're from, like, Home Star Runner or something. It's just interesting. They look out of place.

It's from a 2006 mmo, for sure.

Yep. So we see some black birds land on a tree that turns out to be the portal that our adventurers are going through. And the old man says he's an expert on these portals, but the boys poke fun at him for falling when they emerged from such portal. And then evangeline says, don't bicker. We shouldn't bicker. And amalia says, yes, I agree. Okay, thank you for that input. Yeah. Child Boy runs off to the market. evangeline says that they're there to buy a world map, which, again, is just very evident that this is a video game.

We need something to attach to our hud.

Hey, I'm going upstate California. I need a map of the continental United States. You can get more specific for the area. You don't need everything.

So while they're at the market, a villain shows up, the Black Crow. He shows up in a tax, and evangeline says that she'll take care of it. And emo Boy. Sword Boy wants to help. So the Black Crow is talking ominously about fearing his power or whatever, and he launches out more of those little black birds that we saw before. They were important, and some of the gang is hiding behind something. And the Old Man says they should just sit and wait until the attack is over, but Child Boy won't have that, so they're going to work together to attack him. And this happens. I don't know. My brain is fried from this television program. They like, Get ready to attack, and then nothing happens. And in my mind I feel like that happened all the time. But also I don't know.

I think the joke was that they were counting to three of when they would attack. So evangeline said three. You go. Said two. And in percy Emo Nightboy was supposed to say one, but he's a big old dumb dumb and had trouble counting backwards.

Well, the other thing is that the Black Crow doesn't even make contact. He kind of swoops down and then he just leaves. He does some property damage and fucks off.

Yeah.

So the villagers have been attacked by him before. And the Child boy goes up to the merchant they were speaking to before and apologizes for not doing anything. And then the old man says, well, we better leave because we need a world map and now we're not going to get one here because everything is destroyed. fuck these people.

I see you're busy.

We'll go, no.

So the merchant man offers the information. He says, oh, you can go to this merchant and you'll probably find something because they have everything. And Sword Boy says that they'll get the Black Crow next time and they're on their way to see this other merchant and they get there.

They have no problems along the way.

Yeah, this shows things just happen. It's not an issue, ever. So it's an impressive shop and everything is expensive. And then a furry woman comes out. Hell yeah. When the old man, he says, this shop is nothing compared to the shops in this city. This place is a hovel. And he apologizes since she's hot. And then an old creature dude comes out and he welcomes them to the shop. And in order to ensure that their customers are trustworthy, they have to go through a test. And I'm thinking this is going to be combat of some kind. No. She pulls out a little creature that sniffs for money. So the more money they have, the more the creature likes them. And the old man has money. Great. Yeah, they trust them because they're rich, short.

And evangelin says, that capitalism.

We love it.

Evangelin says that they're looking for a map, but maps are very rare is what the shopkeep says. So obviously it's going to be a hefty price. And then Childboy finds a trophy room and the old creature guy brings him seeds because he had asked for seeds for his bird pet. And he's like, oh, are you the one who hunted all of these creatures? And he's like, I sure did. I used to love hunting, but then I got married and all my hobbies went to shit because now I have to spend all this time with my hot wife. And now they're all in there. They're all in the trophy room. Yeah. Furry Woman is like, your hunting days are over. And he seems sad, but also like, no one cares.

Sad old man.

She pulls out the world map. And he doesn't want her to sell it because it's very powerful. And she unrolls it and it's blank. But then when she talks nicely to it, a face appears and it's like, oh, yeah, I'll show you the way since you're so nice to me. And then it shows the place that she asks for. And she says that they can have the map for free if they get rid of the Black Crow. But Creature Man says, why would we do that? He's never actually hurt us. And all he ever does is like, get rid of other merchants. But she's worried about him driving away customers. So they say that will be easy. And they've got to make a plan. So their plan is to disguise Old Man as a merchant. And he asks why he has to be the bait. And it's because earlier in the episode, he lied about having money. He said that he didn't have any money, but that was a lie. And we know from the sniff sniff liar. I wish that creature was actually called a sniff sniff. I don't remember what it was called.

Might as well be, yeah, it works for us.

So they lure the Black Crow over with this fake merchant and he starts monologuing when childboy interrupts. And he's like, what kind of name is the Black Crow? All crows are black. And then there's a bit where they talk about what a better name would be for this villain because it's not good enough.

We need to help you rebrand before we destroy you.

So he takes the Old Man, and to find him, they're like, oh, we'll use the sniff sniff. And then somehow they get the sniff sniff without going into the shop. I guess it just comes out, hello, friend.

I think you go like, lord it out with a coin. Yeah. It wasn't really clear because then we see the door opening a later of like, wait, yeah. Did he not go in? What?

Yeah. I don't know. So Old Man comes to and Black Crow asks if he oh, finished his he must have said nap. I thought he said map with an M map. So he says that they're going to have an epic battle, to which I thought, I doubt it. And he's like, yeah, I brought you up to this mountain because the view is amazing and the setting for a battle is just as important as the fight. So I wanted to bring you to this picturesque place. So he says the old Man's got some balls for chatting up his wife. Which is not what he actually says, but in my mind, it's what he says. And it turns out the black crow is the Creature guy. Wow. And he says this is verbatim. Even though he has the finest and most delicate woman there is, he needs to get out there. He misses hunting. He needs to have his free time because he and the Old Man are the same, that they need adventure.

Got to go out with the boys.

On the I just need a croquet.

I just thought it was wild that he called her delicate, because even in the show's context, they kind of show us that this furry woman is pretty. Like, she stands up for herself.

Yeah, she's like a shrewd capitalist. She's like the shopkeep stereotype of, like, yeah, if you don't have money, get out of my way. And they're looking at her like delicate flowers.

Did you watch this? Dubbed this episode. Okay. That's why I watched this stuff. And he didn't say delicate translation.

Yeah. Honestly, I didn't even know I had another option, so I watched all three.

He could have watched the German. You watch anything.

Oh, damn. I'll have to go back and try the German. Maybe that's what will do it for me. Now, he says he destroys the merchants because he hates being one, so he takes it out on the other merchants, who like being merchants, maybe. So the kids show up, and Old Man explains exactly what we just heard. Cool. But Black Crow still wants the battle, and if they lose, he takes all their equipment, which does again, that sounds like the consequences from an mmorpg boss. So he flies into the clouds, and they wait for his attack. Battle happens. It's a fight scene. They're going back and forth, and he knocks down the Sword Boy. He grabs Child Boy, and Childboy uses his portal powers, and he knocks the Black Crow down. Great. They got the map. And Black Crow says, well done. And then he sits on a rock at the edge of the mountain to be dramatic. And he tells Childboy that he'll be a great adventurer when he perfects his power. And then Furry Wife shows up, and she's like, I thought you said I was your adventure now. And he's like, no, I just do this to restock the shop, and that's.

Good enough for her inventory money.

So our gang is off on their way, and Sword Boy is trying to get the map to show them the way, but he's not being nice enough, so the map won't show him. And that's the end of episode three.

Are weep there?

I did not have a good time watching this show.

Dz is an easy sell, so that sells awesome.

It's because it feels similar to me as a rave master or a zach belt simultaneously. Feels like so much is happening, but also nothing at all. Absolutely bonkers.

That's fair.

This one, I will say the third episode was, like, the most interesting to me, but it could be because there was a furry wife.

I'm so glad you brought up Ravemaster, because I was just looking at the cast and crew, and do you know who did the translation and an adaptation? Good friend Bob.

Got talked to Bob. That's the thing. When I saw this. It's on Netflix. For anyone who is interested after our glowing endorsement here. I watched it before it was on Netflix back when there wasn't a dub like the first time I watched all of it. So this is a show where I am more partial to the original language. But yeah, this dub, like I said, it's out of sync with a lot of the mouth movements and it's just the choices of characters. And clearly they change some of the actual scripts, calling it like a Delicate Wife and stuff. So I'm like, I hope there's not too big, too much of changes. We did neon Justice evangelion that got a lot of trouble for its Netflix adaptation because they changed plot relevant dialogue, especially at the end of the series. So sometimes the translation does actually make the show worse depending on who translated it. So if it helps, I think the show does get much better. It is slow to pick up. I was tempted to do the one piece thing where we watch episodes one, two and 17 to watch, like, the big epic battle between the dragon and knox. But then I realized you're not going to give a shit about that. And that would be hard to describe on a podcast. So I chose to just stick with the three, which I don't think are great episodes, but it'd be really fucking confusing to watch anything else.

Yeah, after the first two, if you showed me that this episode did a Citizen Can adaptation and has that much prestige, I still would not care.

Yeah, you're not going to be hooked by episode two. You're not going to care about anything else after that. So let's just go with three. Yeah.

This visually looks like new grounds. Looks like a web comic art style, not great audio in French. I watched a little bit. I was like, eh, acting still exaggerated and a little too big. English dub just not good. So visuals and sound bad. So that's already a hard thing. Like the closest I could tell the designs. I didn't realize this was based on an actual game. I thought it was just doing, like, homage to gaming. I didn't realize it was based on a game. It has a lot of jack and daxter similar, like, designs of the world and old ancient precursor technology sort of thing. So it's like, okay, aesthetically, you're almost there, but you also have it in this very cartoony, very basic. A lot of the visuals I wouldn't feel out of place if I saw them in, like, a student showcase is where I'm at. So it just feels very amateur and where there's so much anime out there. That is beautiful. Well done. The story is amazing good. With all that out there, I don't see this really cutting through to be like, well, no, you do need to watch this, though, because it's so good. It's like, I would watch anything else. Really.

I can see how this would be a hit with the kids. As in children, as in five to ten year olds.

Yeah, definitely. That seems to be where they're going with it. So, yeah, I can't really fault you. Like, oh, this doesn't hold up. Compared to the big three animes. It's like, yeah, we're not trying to.

But like, yeah, something different.

Yeah, there's also good children's. Meet yat.

I say it's akin to avatar at the beginning because it does deal with a lot of very heavy topics later on. So knock the villain. His whole thing is he was a human and then his family died, and now he's on a quest to gather up enough energy to turn back time to bring his family back, but he's kind of gone like, insane in the process. And the origin with ego and his family and what his people actually are deals with very similar topics, akin to avatar with ang and the Air nomads and stuff like that. So I think aesthetically, you're probably on to something with it being akin to a child's show, but content wise, it gets moved to I would disagree with the aesthetic. I don't think it's necessarily amateurish, but this is the first season of a show, so they're not quite in their full swing of things yet. But then again, we have seen other anime that come out to the gate, fuck, it swinging hard with the animation, so I don't disagree with that statement, but I think that is very much excuse me? I think it is very much. They were following the aesthetic of the game, for better or for worse. So I wouldn't necessarily call it amateurish, but it is definitely compared to some of other series we've watched, it's definitely like, it's a lot simpler. It's definitely a choice. It was a choice, yeah. Yeah.

I also didn't realize this came out like, two years after the game. This is a 2008 show, so I didn't realize it is also, like 1213 years old now. So I'm like, okay, I'll give it back. I'll pull back a little bit, but I still feel like it's a little too web comicy.

Yeah. With that, like when you guys were saying it's akin to new grounds. Yes, I would agree with that. And yeah, that's just it. There's nothing to do about that. But, yeah, it does ramp up. And I would say, like, hey, if you watched it listener and you're interested, it does get pretty good. It gets pretty high octane in later seasons, but yeah, but like, with a lot of these adventure shows, you got to learn to love the characters and sometimes that takes a while. And like with the emo nightboy, sometimes it never happens. He's a fun idiot. He is just kind of a shit person. He's a fun character, but he would be a shit person if you knew in real life, so but I am interested to hear your reactions to this. Let me just post it in our chat.

No.

So there is some time skips later in the series and Emo Boy and elf archer Girl end up hooking up and having children.

No way.

He canonically fucks great.

I love giving the horny pervert exactly what he wants, so that's always a good trope to see pay off.

Oh, he also literally becomes god spoiler for her. She cares about the sword. His race is a lob, so he becomes like a lob god in later parts of the series. And it's like cool fight sequences, but it's like, yeah, does he deserve it?

It's the same thing, though. The girls and child boy, they look fine. They look like they're from an anime.

Cool.

Fine design. I especially like Princess girl. I think she looks great, but he just looks so bad. It's his eyes.

Yeah, the eyes. It's one of those things that you could yeah, this was designed from the game they carried over, which, like, it's real hit or miss for people.

What a journey.

You could also watch the prequel series Doofiss.

Yeah.

So I'm going to say no. And are we?

Yeah, not today.

Happy birthday, America. Here's your ass.

Well.

Yeah, sorry.

My brain needed to buffer for a second after learning the sequel series to the show is called Dupus.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to tell you.

Okay.

The main character is like a small marionette puppet boy that's living it's like pinocchio. And then in walkthrough, he becomes like a grand master elder, like super powerful. He's got a big hammer.

Okay, well, next week we're talking about a show that doesn't star a doofus. I've only seen clips of the Internet from of just some domestic hotness we're watching The Way of the House Husband. Yeah.

Looking forward to this one.

This is something where I'm like, I want to watch this. I will keep forgetting it exists until after I pick my show. So thank you, dee, for reminding me it exists and that we have to watch it.

Yay.

But yeah, if there's a show you the listener would like us to watch, you can send your recommendations to us. Our email is rwebariat@gmail.com, or you can reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram at arweedveryet on both. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at mrpatrick. dugan and listen to the various other podcasts, including echoed locations. And besides Net busy boy, you can.

Find me on Instagram at honey. Period d on Twitter at honey d eight and Honey dart or on twitch at honey. D and Honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. You.

Can find me on Twitter at abts. Brandon stands for Almost Better Than Silence, which is a video game podcast I also do. You can also find me on webmd, where I'm trying to Google why my feet perpetually sweat whenever I record podcast. It's weird.

Specifically, the negative energy must flow out of you. Thank you to camille ruley for our artwork. And thank you to Louisong for our theme song stories. You can find all of louis's music at Louisong bandcamp.com. Thank you, and we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to live with anime.

I wish strongbad was in this show.

Thank you.