AWTY 235 - Reduce, Reuse, Revenge (Afro Samurai)

Creation and education and anime. I'm your anime idiot, tess Dugan.

I'm your anime expert, D Hollander Gonzalez.

And I'm Brendan McCullough, your anime dragonborn sorcerer. Bard and Carlock Simp. I had to get this out of the way early because this will date the episode a bit. My brain is just fully rotten with ball straight into it. I have to address it right away because if I slip up in the episode, this is why I've done literally nothing else but play that goddamn game.

This is a Carlack household. I have been deep in it, too, and I also got it bad.

Nice.

You cannot like Carlock. You're objectively wrong and you will get the fuck out of my house right now.

Paul's been playing it and we tried multiplayer once. I would keep playing, but it's annoying to play with a controller. And you can only play multiplayer on the PC with the controller. But I made my character and I was like, she's so cute. Love her. And then it was like, make another one.

And I was like, no, do it again.

I can't do this again. It'll take me too long.

Yeah, I've been playing on Steam Deck and it works wonderful, but it eats the battery so fast. I get like a 1 hour charge, basically.

Yikes.

I'm basically just holding my PC while I'm tethered to the wall as it's charging.

My computer is a bit old. It's got a few years on it and it's getting a little fucky at times. So I pretty much bought a whole new tower just in case something goes wrong.

You got it on you?

Yeah, because I'm playing Divinity Two, the previous game by the same studio with friends. And that's full of fucking problems for my PC. But I think Balders Gate is much better optimized, so it's not nearly as bad. So works out so far. This is Balders. Gate Three Podcast.

This is the Balders Gate Three podcast. Welcome.

It might as well be my dwarf. Druid is one of the rarer player druid.

Mine's a Druid too, but she's a Drow.

Wait, let me see. A little shorty. I want that height difference at all times. And boy, does it mess with the camera angle.

It really does.

I think Paul's is a dwarf, too, and every time I look over and he's just, like, staring up at somebody, it cracks me up.

Yeah. Anyways, yeah, I'll cut myself off because I truly will just go on forever.

And I don't want to cut you off. The alternative is we talk about anime.

Anime, something we all love and respect and are here to consume this week. You downloaded the podcast. You know what the show is. We're watching Afro Samurai.

Yeah.

Bit of a throwback, kind of. Not too far. Oh, God. It's over 20 years.

No, it is 20 years, I believe.

2007.

Really? I don't know why I thought 216.

Okay, not two decades, but it can legally drive in some states, which still sucks. So either of you watched it before?

No, but I've heard of it.

No. All I know is this is the Samuel L. Jackson anime. That's all. Sometimes I think, is that all it was? Because I never hear anyone talk about I'm like, okay. It seemed revered at the time. I was also twelve, so I don't know.

But, yeah, I did have to look it up and be like, we didn't watch this right? Because I was thinking about Samurai Champlu, which we did watch.

It's a very close Venn diagram. It's quite a bit of overlap, that's for sure. Yeah, it's very short. So we're going to watch three episodes out of five.

Wow.

If you want to say you finished an anime series, Tess, there's another one. Two more.

Boy, that's very tempting. We'll see where that night takes me because again, I'm in the underdark. It's just really hard.

We can't go into it.

They're pretty busy.

I got a lot of opinions.

All right, we're going to watch the first Balders Gate Three episode. Let's do spin the roulette wheel of Sam Jackson references we can come in on. All right, everyone, I want you to give us your best shot. What's your best Sam Jackson reference that you can make about this show? My first thought is, I'm tired of these motherfucking samurai on this motherfucking. But what do you have? There are infinite choices.

Him looking at Droid version of himself and saying, does he look like a bitch?

Thank you, Brendan. I'm not I'm not topping that. I'm not trying. That's the best one.

I'm glad I thought of it because the only other thing I could think of was, like, Nick Fury, and I don't actually know anything about the Avengers.

I was combing through Pulp Fiction quotes and I could not pull one. For the life of me, I'm glad I got one.

Tasty lemonade.

I was going to say that one picture of him where he's old and on the porch with, like an A shirt, just giving a weird, stink guy I'm like, I don't even know what movie that is. All right, from the beginning, as is tradition, episode one, we open up with a samurai with a big afro, and it flows into almost like a smoke trail right away. Shows. Very stylized.

Yeah.

One would argue that's most of what it is yeah, it's just indulgence. Don't worry about story structure. Just five with the style. That's all this show is. And it does it well.

This is perfect. Mute at a bar. Anime. Oh, yeah.

Just visuals all day. So we see tall, dark samurai with a sword holding the hand of a little kid, looking up to him. Safe to assume it's his dad. I see him holding his hand, saying, wait here a minute. It'll be over soon enough. And he starts walking out. As we see him walk, he's approached by another man in a dark cloak. Shroud. He's got a bit of a cowboy hat walking up to him. And we see the shrouded man saying he's been waiting a long time for this. And right on cue, they start a fighting start dueling, samurai showdown. We see the cloaked man immediately pull off his cloak and pulls out two like revolvers. So it turns out he is a cowboy.

That's not fair.

He brought a gun to a sword fight.

What the hell?

Easy visual for this guy. What if Slender Man was a cowboy?

And I run that scenario in my dreams. Every.

One of the tentacles comes out and tips the hat.

Slenderman Cowboy, save me from these train tracks.

I hope no one's hiding behind any cacti.

Oh, no.

Oh, God. I imagine him, like, riding on the horse to save you. But instead of the horse, it's his tentacles, like skittering, like a spider, like.

The tentacle monster into a slot canyon and plays with my slot canyon.

We're having fun here because there's just no plot. We got to rip. So they start fighting. It looks really cool. If this sounds cool, watch it, because we won't do it justice. Describing it and as they're going back and forth is an intense fight. What happened? The dad's head's gone.

No, it doesn't.

Got cut off.

That's not how these things are supposed to go.

Got cut off with a gun. I don't really know what happens.

I've watched blade out of gun, cut head off, probably.

So, yeah, they do the samurai slash and yeah, the dad's head falls off and rolls down to the kid's feet. And we see the son comes up, picks up the head and starts crying. Understandable? And also dead parent club check. And we see cowboy man picks up the head and takes off the headband from his dad's severed head. He said, it's the number one headband. It's for the number one swordsman in the world. And now it's his. As he takes off his headband off, his cowboy hat presumably says number two, puts on his new headband and he says, sono head.

Got it.

Thank you. So he says, the one with this headband strong enough to rule the world as God. So that's the premise.

A headband can do all that? Wow.

Honestly.

No, but I mean, Jesus had a headband. It was just made out of Thornton.

I was going to say, me putting.

On a naruto headband become as God. Also, the cowboy is voiced by Ron Perlman in a very unron Perlman like role. He's very wheezy.

I was trying to figure out who Ron Perlman played.

Yeah, interesting. It is a bang up cast. This is definitely one where they put big budget in the dub.

Absolutely.

Mark Hamilton.

Yeah, it definitely being in Futurama new series. Rerelease time. Very identifiable voice prints of certain Garcia.

We got Phil Lamar, we got Jeff Bennett, got the whole collective and cowboy tells the kid it's very unfortunate he had to see that, but he's welcome to challenge him when he's ready. And starts getting a moniacal laugh as he walks away with the headband. And I love he ends the moniacal laugh with a yeehaw. Thank you, Ron. Perlman.

Gotta stay on theme.

Then we get the title card, Afro Samurai. Cut to years later. See the kids all growing up, and he's the titular Afro Samurai. He's wearing the number two headband. And we see him surrounded by about 20 guys. One of them is yelling, saying, is it going to be? Then there's a bounty on that number two headband. They're coming to collect. A lot of rich people are putting money out on them. We see all the guys pulling out a bunch of different weapons and like rifles and stuff. And as they rush in to attack Afro Samurai, he cuts one of the bullets in half, immediately killing the two guys behind him and then just proceeds to just absolutely, brutally and viscerally tearing through these guys lot of blood. And imagine if Samurai Jack was allowed to murder that's this show. And while he's fighting, we see an old guy far away up in a tree, watched him with some high tech binoculars. And you see him zooming in on the number two headband. And it cut back to Afro Samurai killing all the guys. And we see the leader of the group get back up with, like, a staggered breath, saying he thought the effort was a legend, he thought he was a myth. And he says, Why is he doing this all for? It's clearly not to make a world a better place. He just killed a bunch of guys. He's clearly not helping the world. And then he falls over and dies. And we see Afro say he's just doing it for revenge. OOH, short.

No, sweet.

To the point.

What a delicious voice. What a good voice Samuel L. Jackson has.

Yeah, we see the full range because he plays the two characters in this. So we get just like the very stoic one liners. And then you get the very high energy manic. And then we see the old man in the distance take out a cell phone.

I laughed.

What the fuck? It really is just like stylized to hell because it's like, yeah, there's super crazy future tech in feudal Japan. Sometimes for reasons just go with. So he takes out a cell phone and we see another warrior appear not too far from him.

I think it's that it's a normal cell phone. You know what I mean? That's what made me laugh.

Yeah, it's crazy future high tech stuff. But it's still 2007 when this was made. So it's still a flip phone.

It's the regular old flip phone.

Yeah. So it's dated in the mundane tech, but you still got, like, crazy cyborg shit. So then we cut to Afro walking on his way and we see I wrote down older. I don't know if he's older, but we see like a white haired ninja version of himself. It looks very similar to him with like sunglasses and stuff, real fast talking. This is the other character, Sam Jackson voices. And he's kind of just following along, being annoying, just talking real fast and just chattering away. While Afro Samurai doesn't say anything as they walk down the road. And he tells Afro that he saw an old guy watching them as they fought. So he points out the old guy with the binoculars and afraid, keeps walking on as the man chases after him. We see like the old guy looming in the distance. Cut to a town. Crazy little guy runs in saying, he's coming, he's coming. Calm down, there's some water. Tell us what's happening. Says Number Two Swordsman. Afro Samurai is coming into town. And a bunch of people start panicking, talking about the legend saying he killed this many guys or he did this without ever using his sword and stuff, just talking about all the rumors about him. And then we see a few big shots saying they're ready to take the headband from him. They want to take their shot. They're all on edge, ready to throw down. And we see Quiet Man off to the side of the bartender ask about Afro Samurai. And she's like, oh, you're from out of town. Let me tell you about it, info dump. And she says she tells him about the headbands and how the Number One headband lets you basically rule the world as God. And the Number Two headband is destined to take the Number One headband, but you're still mortal with the Number Two headband. So it's pretty much everyone in the world is going to be challenging Number Two constantly so they can take their shot at Number One and climb the ranks. So it's basically like, if you're the Number two, expect just a constant life of fighting and battling. And the man is interested in this. He likes to test his skills, so he's intrigued. We see a huge guy at the bar start picking a fight, some of the other guys in the bar. And the bartender is like, hey, if you're going to throw it out, take it outside. And right on cue, we see Afro Samurai walk into the bar, walks right past all of them, up to the bartender and asks for a nice, cool lemonade. And it's, I think, the first shot of color we see in this episode besides the red of blood. And we see like the yellow lemonade. It's very monotone. So there are colors, but it's very muted and splashes of like highlighted color. And we see him going to take a drink. And right on cue, the big guy that's talking a lot of shit takes the glass and smashes it in front of him.

What a dick.

Rude.

I love lemonade. I'd be so mad. I'd do what Afro Samurai does.

This is a reasonable retaliate. Afro Samurai immediately just backhands him and sends the guy flying through the whole bar into the wall at the end by the entrance, just crashing through it, and then orders another one saying that the big guy's paying for it. And bartender makes him a drink and he pulls out his personalized straw. Afro Samurai making metal straws.

Cool.

Before the pandemic.

He's eco conscious. We love it.

It's so stylized for a straw.

Reduce, reuse, recycle, revenge.

And then the bartender gives them directions saying like, you go down the mountain, you take a left here, you go across the bridge, and they'll be waiting for you. It's like, OOH, the bartender, she knows something about Afro Samurais. So cut to Afro walking there with the white haired ninja talking to him. Again, real, just fast talking, saying that they have someone following them. They gotta be on his guard. And Afro tells him to shut the oh, is it Spike and Chester from the Looney Tunes? The Big Bulldog and the Little Chihuahua.

Oh, I don't know.

Oh, showing my age again. Bye.

Time for bed, Grandpa.

Sure, Grandpa.

Spike and Chester.

With us right now.

Back in my day, animals talked. And Afro Samurai tells him to shut up. And he runs off to the side as Afro Samurai turns around to face the guy that's following him. Turns out it was the quiet guy from the bar from earlier. The man says he's a weapons dealer and he's looking to test his might against Afro Samurai and pulls out an automatic crossbow, starts shooting at Afro Samurai. Naturally, he's a god gamer and starts deflecting all the shots. There's a grenade launcher also in the crossbow. Again, dodges them all, easy peasy. And then the guy shooting him ends up luring Afro Samurai up into the air. And he's like, ha, now you have no place to dodge. And starts shooting him with more CrossFit bolts. But somehow average amrit dodges all of them because he's good. So he's able to close the distance and stabs the guy right through the head. Kill him, no problem.

Easy.

See the white haired ninja looking up what white hair ninja looking man. God. My notes are says that the assassins are after him. And he still feels that something's off, but he doesn't know quite what. But something's weird.

Is he real? Am I spoiling something?

I don't think he is.

I don't feel like this man is real.

No other character interacts with him.

I don't know why you I won't say Tyler Durden.

Who? What? I didn't say who. Yeah, basically, it's kind of like Afro Samurai is like inner monologue.

Yeah, I called him in my notes, I called him inner guy.

Yeah, basically, a later episode, he says Afro Samurai close off all his emotions and they kind of just bottled into this other guy.

Got it.

And then we cut to the old man we saw from before. He's on his cell phone again. Millennials. Am I right? He says he's talking to his group back home and they say, thank you, Brother Two, for reporting in. Keep watching Afro Samurai. So we find out this guy's name is Brother Two. And we see he's talking to a bunch of men back home. They all look like him and have numbers on their head, presumably brothers One through Seven. And Number One starts explaining their whole plan while a woman is just there naked and licking him.

Delightful. Who doesn't want.

The woman is supposed to be super sexualized, but the way she's looking was like a cat where it's like, I'm ignoring you right now. I need to get on with my day. If I interact with you, this will just encourage you to lick me more. Sort of like he's just dead eye.

He gets out a spray bottle, go.

I got an infestation of sexy women. Get them out of here. Put up the glue traps again. And so he says, they're part of the Empty Seven clan. We see they're all seven identical brothers, or pseudo identical. And they start chanting, saying, come on, brothers, we have to pray for the divine, for guidance. And then we get shots of a bunch of different weirdos all sort of getting like a message all at once. So it seems like the hunt's on. We're going to expect these guys going after Afro Samurai. Activating the saying number two will pay. Oh, yeah. They all get the messages and they're saying that the Number Two headband will pay for this. Cut to Afro Samurai and the Inner Monologue man walking. And suddenly Afro collapses, feeling weird. He's got some funk about him. And he notices he's got a small cut on the side. Must have been one of those crossbows. It turns out they were poisoned.

No.

And then we see the warrior that's with Brother Two, sees that as an opportunity. It's like, I'm going to get him. Brother two is like, no. So the warrior jumps down and confronts Afro Samurai, thinking this is his chance. Like, yeah, another battle while Afro is poisoned. No. The man pulls out a fucking rocket launcher and shoots almost point blank at.

Afro Samara, taking no chances.

It's the right move. And we see the explosion. We see Brother Two yelling at him, saying if he destroyed that headband, he's dead. You got to get the headband back. And we see Afro fall down the mountainside in the debris. And that's episode one. It would have been great if Afro Samurai fell down that mountain with the goofy yell, just, Whoa.

So we start out episode two. So I'll say this episode intercuts time jumps, basically scene by scene. So I'm going to do it in chronological order for my brain, most of it.

Love it, appreciate it.

So we see baby Afro Samurai being chased by bandits they're looking for the bandana because he's the Number two now, I guess. So they knock him around. They destroy his stuff. He's gross. Carrying around a backpack with dad's head in it.

Hey, it's how he copes.

So head.

Yeah, so head.

And they just throw him into a shrine. Oh, he's so impaled on spikes and stuff. But he's found by two children and their master, they save him and he's like, yes, I'm the fagan. I take in all these orphaned children and teach them how to kill. So he starts healing, getting stronger, building up rapport. They go fishing. He's like becoming one of them friends. Time passes and they're selling stuff downtown. And they overhear two people talking about how Number Two is in town. So he goes and tracks down one of those people, naturally, mid fucking, of course, and stabs him and is like, where's Number Two? Who does number two work for?

I was thinking it, but I didn't want to say it.

Just God love. A main character, just being shit terminology. But he stabs him. But he's like, all right, kid, if you're going to stab me, you got to kill me. But he doesn't do it. He's but a boy. It's his first taste of blood. So the guy shoots himself because he's like, you at least have the dignity to make it quick.

Yeah.

So of course, he being a child traumatized love. So he goes back and his master scolds him. And he's like, oh, you have to break the cycle of murder. Petty revenge is nothing major to live for, all that sort of stuff. He really takes it to heart. Based on, as we've seen, he's introduced to lemonade. Yeah, he loves it. Everyone else thinks it's swamp water.

Yeah. What's wrong with them losers?

Yeah.

Go to hell. I mean, if you've never had, like, refined sugar before in your life, and then you get lemonade out of nowhere, I could see it being startling, I guess.

Yeah. Cup of battery acid. Yeah, it bit me. So later on, he's found by the victim's friends, and he uses his small size and speed to make them kill each other. Clever, violent, bloody murder child. And then the orphan friends show up and help. And then the last guy, right before he's dying, he says, oh, the Number Two you're looking for, he's dead. There's already a new number two. And you have no idea who it is? You'll never find him.

No.

So we time jumped to him being Number Two.

Guess he found him somewhere.

So again, this is all intersplaced between going back and forth. But this woman found him after the explosion. Poisoned, broken in a river. This is Okiku. So she takes him in and nurses him back to health. Help. She helps him nurse. Back to health, love. It two different words. So then, yeah, brain afro is like, oh, she's hot. This is a cool house. Taking a little vacation. You should fuck her.

Intrusive thoughts. I know him well.

But later on, he finds there's an assassin waiting in the rafter.

Wow.

Over dinner, she wants to cook him fish like he caught as a child. She seems to know he likes fish, so he's about to leave. He's better. He's like, here, take some money for your troubles. But she's like, but no, the plans tomorrow. The festival is tomorrow. You should hang out for another day. I want to watch the fireworks with you. Wink, wink. Nothing else.

Not suspicious.

So of course, Brain Afro is like, yeah, she wants to fuck you. All right, do it. I want to see you happy, buddy. Please. I want to fuck, too. So she's taking a naked waterfall shower, of course, on her cell phone.

I got a problem with that. I don't care what fantasy world it is. I don't care how much rice you got. In feudal Japan, don't shower with your cell phone.

But it's the place she can talk with. There's background noise, and he can't hear secret calls to the brother assassins. And she's like, yep, I've been fishing all those memories of his childhood out of his brain with technology, I guess.

How could this sexy woman do this to me?

But he happens to walk by and see her naked.

Check.

So it's the night of the fireworks. They're watching it. Oh, it's beautiful. But not as beautiful as a kiss. And then they start making out. And then they start fucking.

It's always a jump scare in anime that you don't expect to be sex in to have sex in it. But it's also, like, in this one, it's like, not out of the land of probability, because it's like, this is clearly an adult show. But still, I was like, oh, my God. This is going on for a long time.

This reminded me of early 2000s HBO animations, like the Spawn cartoon, where it's like, you're right. Where it's like, oh, this is for an adult audience. We can have sex in it and say fuck. So let's give a good three minutes of very graphic sex.

Man have to do it.

Yeah, you could speed it up a little.

We have no choice but to be gratuitous.

My animation team spent three months drawing those titties.

You're going to see them show me penis? I'm tired of not seeing never once.

Hang Dong, don't be a coward. But she pulls out the comb from her hair, and there's a knife in it. Is she going to stab him? No, she comes instead.

You ever come so hard you forget your assassination mission?

Yes. And now I'm married. Sorry.

That was weird. Hey, congrats.

Paul has a mysterious past.

That he was the target. But.

Yeah, sex going to kill him. Doesn't. And yeah, she got fucked so good, she gives up her life a cry. She destroys her phone and vows to not betray him. But it's too late. The ninjas are there and they attack. And she's the orphan girl, I guess.

Was she?

Yeah, it doesn't really matter.

It's not super clear.

But yeah. Ninjas attack and they're going to kill her for her betrayal. But what do you oh, sorry. I misread my notes. They do kill her for her betrayal, but they get the Dana run away and burn the house down. And Afro's like ah, everything I touch is ruined. Okay. I'm keeping this sick knife. Afro pick though. That's episode two.

Ain't that just the way you ever.

Fuck so good you murder a whole town and burn it down?

Listen, the last time I fucked, there was enough friction to start a fire.

Episode three. We open on a flashback. Afro Samurai is being told by his master that we saw in the other flashbacks that he has the skills, but his face gives his moves away. So he's got to be one with his moves. And don't think about it too much. Back in the present. He and Inner Guy are rowing to a spooky island. And Inner Guy is just running his mouth afraid. Tells him to shut up. He's just walking right up to this place. And Inner Guy is like, are you really just going to go in there? And he's here to get that Number One headband. He's going to kill the guy. But Inner Guy kind of seems like he doesn't want that to happen. Right now. He doesn't feel ready. But they're on to him. The old guys know that he's here.

The brothers, the empty seven.

And they want to get to Number One. But first they need to kill Afro to get the Number Two headband. So they discuss who they should send to kill him. Because they have like a whole group of assassins. And Brother One, the leader of the crew, much like Donkey Kong, you know him well. He turns down their suggestions, saying that he has had a vision and he's designed a weapon more dangerous than Afro Samurai. And they go out to talk to their group of assassins that they just keep on deck to talk about this weapon. And they're none too happy that they don't get to kill him. But Brother One says he hasn't found someone but something to kill Afro Samurai. A demon machine made from the memories that Okiku took from him. So they unleash the beast. Afro droid.

I love metal sonic.

He steps out. He looks just like him. But he's wearing a gray top instead of a white one.

That's how you know he's evil.

Yeah.

Sorry I stepped on Jinx.

Except I didn't even get to say it.

Sorry, we hang out too much.

No, that's okay.

He got a yellow sword too.

Oh yes.

Most evil color.

So he's like it took so much to make this guy. But their foreign assassin guys still want to be the ones to fight the real Afro. Samurai. And that gets the brothers back to discussing who should be the one to defeat Afro. And Brother One says skill should be the deciding factor. And he suggests a battle royale. And I was like, I fucking love those. Let's go.

I live for this shit.

I live for it. I live to see people die.

Hey, D, can we talk over here?

No. Unless it's about The Hunger Games, I'm not interested. Just kidding. Sort of. So last man or Machine standing battles the Afro Samurai. The assassins love this idea. And I was like, Is this going to be the episode? How exciting. No, I see that it's no contest. The Afro Droid kills them all in no time. And that's why Brother One was like, pushing the idea. Because it's like, I'm just going to prove that this thing is the best.

Thing to kill Afro Samurai by wasting all of our resources and all of.

Our age so much money.

This is how confident I am in this man, this fake.

We need no one else, ever.

So back with Afro Samurai and Inner Guy. They're still walking up the mountain, and Inner Guy is like, I have a bad feeling about this. They arrive at the bridge. Afro Droid stands on it. Inner Guy is not he does not want this. He says, let's go home. But Afro Samurai is ready to fight himself. He does look like a, uh, Inner Guy already. It's a joke. But he's like, I can't even tell who the real one is now, just because they stand next to each other.

It is also the only person who is less talkative than Afro Samurai is the robot version of Afro Samurai.

True. So they draw their swords, they're fighting. Afro starts bleeding from his head. They're extremely evenly matched, of course. But Afro Samurai is having a bit of trouble because Afro Droid can't anticipate his moves from a distance. The brothers are watching. It starts raining. Good for the drama. The fight continues. Inner Guy tells him to stop thinking. They face off. They're staring at each other. And Afro Samurai hears his teacher's voice in his head. You gotta let your moves flow through you. They have to come from your essence. And he's able to avoid Afro Droid's swipes sick. Afro Samurai gets Afro Droid right in the face, right down the middle. The old men, the brothers, look very surprised. One of them presses a button and the bridge explodes.

They're like, could you sped up that a little faster? Done that from the beginning.

True. They want to see a cool fight though, I think.

Brother One says it took millions of man hours to make just Afrobot's head. Yeah, it's a cool. Afro Samurai beat him in three minutes.

And we can't salvage any of it because we blew it all up.

We blew it.

Shit.

Thanks, Six.

But Afro Samurai does get off the bridge in time. And under the water. After the explosion, we see Afro Droid's eyes glow red again. That can't be good. He's still alive. Afro Samurai has found one of the brothers. I believe it's. Brother number three. Yeah, and he's speaking really bad Japanese because of course, we watched the English dub for Samuel L. Jackson. I think he's probably asking to be spared whatever it is after a samurai just walks past him.

It's jeff bennett. Who's? The voice of johnny bravo. Speaking japanese And I love it because I think it's supposed to be just very off putting of like, oh, that doesn't fit at all. But I think it's hilarious.

Arigato pretty mama.

Yeah, pretty much. It's just like, OOH, what if Johnny Bravo was a weeb? It hits weird.

So Brother Six is in the next room ready to fight. So they do. But Afro Samurai gets him pretty easily. Inner guy keeps like, freaking out at the beginning of every fight and then being like, I knew you could do it. But Brother Six lets two more brothers out of a box on his back. Surprise. It's brothers four and five. Afro Samurai's sword is still in Brother Six's stomach, so they think that he's at a disadvantage, but he can fight with the sheath of his sword. No problemo. He kills them.

Great. No problem. They saw him. Brother Two was scouting him as he fought like those 20 guys, most of them without his sword. They know this.

Fools.

Fools.

He goes into the room from earlier with all the dead assassins in it. Brother Two is watching him from a distance from his fancy little binoculars. But Afro Samurai finds him and kills him too. All right, brother One, you're up. Your turn. But before he finds Brother One, afro Droid cuts through the ceiling and jumps down. Wow, he's all messed up. And he's lost most of his fake skin. So his face is like half human, half robot. Very Terminator. But then he just gets rid of the rest of it. Full Terminator.

Now it's full terminator. He looks like the T 1000, very inspired by he still has the metallic Afro, so he looks like Toad from Mario.

He's got a chef hat.

He got a big old head.

He's got Remy under there.

It's a little robot mouse controlling.

Afro Samurai was never actually good at fighting. It's a rat in there.

Robo Remy at your service.

So, yes, scary robot guy. He's ready to fight Afro Samurai again. And this time he's got lasers. So Afro Samurai deflects it with his sword. But oh no, he also has a gun in his mouth. So Afro Droid shoots a couple times, but he doesn't get him. And then Afro Samurai gets on Afro Droid's head and starts banging on it. And Afro Droid retaliates by launching them both into the sky. Then there's more cool, sick fighting, but in the sky.

Sky fight.

Sky fight. Afro Droid is out of bullets. Back to swords. Afro Samurai pushes him down into the ground. It's not looking good for Afro Droid. So he pulls out his biggest weapon yet, bigger laser in his chest. It charges up, pointed right at Afro. And this part is a little unclear, but I think what happens is Afro Samurai throws his sword at the last minute and the laser, instead of shooting at him, shoots upward.

I think it was Afrobot's sword came down from their fight. That's what I saw it as.

Yeah, there was a sword. There was a shot of a sword. And then instead of Afro Samurai being shot with the laser, it went up.

Yeah, it cuts the robot while he's charging.

Yeah, he cuts a laser in half. Got it.

So Inner Guy pulls the micro chip that Okiku, made out of the robot or that was made from the memories. And Afro Samurai slices it in half. So now it's time to fight Brother One. But inner guy still isn't about it. But Afro frame Rai Samurai tells him to shut up again. So they're going up in an elevator. And then Brother One lands on top of the elevator and shoots into it with a machine gun. But once they get to the top and the doors open, afro Samurai has taken care of Brother One.

He is no longer I know it's a desperation move. I know it's like I got nothing else left and I need to kill him. Let me try my shot. But if I was the bad guy, I would see someone kill everything that's been thrown at them so far effortlessly and just be like, hey, I'm out. I'm going to go to a different country and be like a farmer or something, not trying to shoot this guy that's killed everything in this path so far.

Yeah. To be fair, he is in an extremely enclosed space and he's right on top of it, shooting directly into it with a machine gun. So you're like, maybe he also just.

Saw this dude fall from the stratosphere and kill a robot version of himself.

That's a good point.

The robot version of himself, which I feel like we need to address, had a big cannon in his chest that looked like a dick and they said he shot his load.

Yeah. Yes.

It needs to be addressed. The people need to know about the chest penis.

Canada.

Can'T keep hiding this from America.

Can't keep hiding. They need to know.

So they're at a snowy clearing, there's some person standing there with a teddy bear head on their head and they say, long time no see, Afro Samurai. And that's where episode three ends.

Who could it be?

Surely no one else from his childhood trauma.

The fish he caught, of course, the lemonade lady.

That's why he wears a teddy bear head, because he's ashamed of his fish.

Head, because he's actually a fish.

It's also full of water so he can breathe.

He's Abe Sapien from the Hellboy comics. He's got a water suit. He's also voiced by David Hyde Pierce. This is going deeper for no one on this podcast. This is for me. Now. Are weeb there yet? Three out of five episodes. We're more than halfway done the series.

See, its problem is the cliffhanger at three is, hey, watch the furry sword fighter. Less incentive to go back. But no, this number one. The cast is amazing. It sounds good, which is sometimes with dubs. Yeah, pretty rare. So one big point in its favor. But, yeah, it's just mindless fight, fight. Don't worry about the plot. It's mostly, hey, you're either ranked number one or number two. Also, there's Assassins, ranked one through seven. Okay. We're really putting the thought into the order of this world. Just be number one. Cool. Got it.

The brothers weren't even ranked. They were just brothers one through seven. But it does get confusing with, like, number one, brother number one, number two, brother number two. It's like, guys, there's 20 characters in the show. Can we start not number them. The same numbers. There's more numbers.

Call him Jeffrey.

Just all with the same first initial.

Yeah, I honestly appreciate that. Rather than them earnestly being like, no, you'll remember seven Japanese names.

Correct.

But, yeah, it's fun. Like I said, at the top, it's the perfect put it on the background. Maybe don't mute it because it sounds good, but at a louder party than actually paying attention to a show. So every once in a while, you can look up and be like, is that Johnny Bravo? Why is Bender doing walla in this bar, Conrad? Yeah, because brother number one was definitely just the robot pastor from Futurama. It was really bugging me.

If you hear voice actors enough, you hear their go to voices and it's like, that's just someone else now in my mind, that's not who this character is.

But, yeah, it's a fun time.

Yeah, it was very good for the vibes. It reminds me of this game called Fury.

Yeah, I was going to plug that at the end.

It's literally just boss fights the video game. And he has big hair.

Also, Yuri is incredibly Afro Samurai inspired. It's very similar.

Yeah, but I had fun watching it. It was cool and neat to hear actual celebrities in an anime and have them do, like, a really good job. They've started casting well, they've always cast celebrities in Ghibli movies and they're usually pretty good. But they still do, like, the anime thing. Yeah, and same with Makato Shinkai movies. They've kind of started casting celebrity. Well, I guess, like in Belle, too. Whatever. They're casting celebrities in big anime movies now.

Yeah, they got the money for it. Ghibli at least is distributed by Disney, so they got the budget for the dub for them at least.

But it's nice to not to say that all of these celebrities are doing a bad job, but they're doing the anime thing and it's nice to hear some characters in an anime just be well voice acted and not have the anime thing.

Being a character first and not a genre. What a concept?

Weird.

If there are other farfetched concepts you want to send to us, mostly in the forms of anime will like, you can send recommendations to our email areweebairyat@gmail.com or you can reach out to us on Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, the X one, I don't know. Are we there yet?

Yes. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at honeyperiod or on Tumblr at Honeyd. Honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. Find me deep.

In the underground in the underdark safe, coming my way through Balders gate three. If you're not Balder's Gate three, I don't want to be associated with you. You can find get out of my life.

Burning alive. Fucking the hot tie fling.

God, I have so much infernal iron. I'm going to make her touchable.

Where is it? I found one.

I got like six. Jesus.

I'm sorry I said it to the outro.

Thank you to Camille Riley for our artwork. Thank you to Louisong for our theme song stories. You can find all of Louis'music at Louisong bandcamp.com. Thank you and we hope you'll join us next week for another episode of this show. That's not how we do it. Baldwin's game free time.

Bye Bye fury is a great game. Play it.