Minami OZAKI

ANNCast - OverCooked
Funimation dub honcho Justin Cook joins us to talk about all things English Language Audio, including the dramatic changes made to many of their comedies and Funimation's insane production schedule. Also: a huge bummer has Zac and Justin wallowing in grief! Fun times!! 2010-08-27

Hey, Answerman! - Rub-a-Dub
This week on Hey, Answerman!: Brian downloads the entire internet. In it, he finds a few questions about dubs - how they're written, how they all sound the same. He also takes on yet another question about piracy. Then! There's the requisite Flake of the Week and Very Special Hey, Answerfans! 2010-08-27

Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Rica Takashima and Yuri Monogatari
Jason takes a look at an example of a genre many consider seriously underrepresented in American manga fandom, yuri. 2010-08-26

The X Button - Brush with Greatness
Okamiden's producer talks about wolf pups and painting! Plus: the new Atlus RPG, the next Naruto wave, Cave's latest shooter plans, and what Ace Combat has to do with magazine history. 2010-08-25

House of Five Leaves Episodes 1-12 Streaming
Deliberately unconventional and even alienating at times, Five Leaves doesn't forget that it must also entertain. It just does so without pandering or compromising.

Vampire Knight DVD 1
Perverse, overwrought, and executed to near perfection, this adaptation of Matsuri Hino's vampire melodrama qualifies as one of anime's great guilty pleasures. Both in guilt, and pleasure.

Asobi ni Ikuyo: Bombshells from the Sky ep 1-6
Though this catgirls-from-space series gives every outward indication of being just another Magical Girlfriend/Harem series, its cleverness, subversion of genre conventions, and willingness to push its genre's envelope help make it one of 2010's biggest and most pleasant surprises.

The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (Novel)
It hops, skips and jumps through a number of familiar genres ... Yet each tale comes with its own physics-defying twist, the kind only Nagaru Tanigawa can dream up. In short, Haruhi's boredom is anything but.

Initial D: Stage 4 DVD Part 2
In case you missed it somehow during the first half, part two of Initial D's Fourth Stage broadcasts its message loud and clear: If you aren't here for the racing, then you may as well not be here at all.

Negima! GN 27
Yes, it takes almost a full nine chapters for two fighting wizards to beat the daylights out of each other—and it's nine chapters very well spent.

Bakuman GN 1
Clings to the traditional shônen ideals of friendship, challenge, and victory, only with our hero wielding a pen instead of a sword. Literally.

Tytania collection 1 DVD
A laid-back hero butts heads against a quartet of powerful Dukes in this space opera laden with classical European styling. The series definitely gets better after a weak start and should be of particular interest to those who favor sci fi anime with a broad scope which features action but is not a slave to it.

Wolf God GN 1
Unfortunately this first volume still falls short of being much past mildly-entertaining, especially when things start looking too familiar – Koyuki is kidnapped and Kyounosuke is now enrolled in her school, you say? In combination the story and art may be enough to give Wolf God a fighting chance but it's not likely to leave many howling for volume two.

Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime (Novel)
The book tries almost too hard to be everything at once: a mystery wrapped up in an enigma wrapped up in a slice-of-life slightly-magically-realistic school story.

Samurai 7 GN 1
After going out and getting remade as a mecha-saturated anime, The Seven Samurai wanders onto the printed page, where it realizes too late that it made a horrible mistake in its choice of manga artists.