Best Seat on the Couch

Real fans know how special the Avatar franchise is to the gang, and bringing the newest Avatar feature film was always going to supersede whatever episode we had lined up next, Xitter leaks and streaming services be damned. And Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is a great time! It's gorgeously animated, develops some really cool airbending techniques, gives us a broadly well-contained story, and...

After taking the magnifying glass to Disney's impressively lucrative Zootopia 2 , the gang continues joyriding the sequel train to talk about Frozen 2 , another movie that made a cool 1.5 Billy B's but perhaps doesn't hold under our impressively scrutinizing gaze. Indeed, there seem to have been some...disconnects...that occurred as this film was being written; the plot beats seem recy...

Alex hits the gang with the one-two punch this week, following up our discussion on the Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius film a month ago with our favorite characters, moments, and features of the 2002 TV series, The Adventures of ...et cetera. And it's a hit! Even Iris, without the nostalgia the rest of the gang frolics in all episode, is broadly impressed with the show post-season 1 and we're a...

Six years ago, the gang paid homage to one of television's most legendary cartoon franchises by bringing Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! to the couch, even though the series we actually watched as kids was 2002's What's New, Scooby-Doo? alongside those 4 direct-to-video Scooby-Doo films released in that Kids' WB era. This one, Cyber Chase , was close to our hearts as video game enthusia...

It's been a little while since the gang has discussed an animated Star Wars movie or series here on the couch, but Marcus promptly rectifies that mistake post- Gundam gauntlet with Dave Filoni's newest project, Maul – Shadow Lord. The show continues Maul's journey post-Clone Wars and perhaps bridges a few story gaps up to Maul's appearance in Star Wars Rebels, with a couple of hype...

Okay, admittedly, our previous discussion on Zootopia was a *little* heavy for what we can all agree is a pretty palatable and fun children's movie. The sequel introduces...well, a new kind of societal racism-adjacent allegory for our heroes Judy and Nick to tackle, tacks on a wonderful Ke Huy Quan as Gary De'Snake, and ends up making 1.8 billy B's. But does it pass our sequel test? Mi...

The gang returns from its unforeseen hiatus to bring you, our beloved audience, the second film from our 2023 April Fools' episode to receive a genuine standalone episode, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius . What may be surprising to hear is that this film actually predates the far more popular TV series—it essentially served as the series' pilot—so you can kind of see why the film was written the...

Iris takes the wheel to deliver our discussion on Season 4 of Invincible as soon as humanly possible, because by god we are BACK baby. Our discussion on Season 3 last year left us pleased with the Invincible War and arrival of Conquest arcs, and we certainly had plenty of praise for the dynamics between Mark/Debbie/Oliver plus Eve, but also somewhat hesitant for what this series could deliver that...

Marcus's fourth and final entry in this Mobile Suit Gundam saga, thankfully saving Iris from a descent into true madness, is a very recent 2021 theatrical entry that is the first of a planned trilogy in the Universal Century timeline. This film, Hathaway , introduces Hathaway Noa, a next-generation protagonist that carries on the legacy of previous UC greats like Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, as...

A long-awaited threequel to our episodes on Wallace & Gromit and legendary film Chicken Run , our discussion on the final DreamWorks & Aardman collaborative feature film Flushed Away feels somewhat bittersweet to Alex, resident Aardman enjoyer, who laments that perhaps the soul of the Aardman way is lost on this film's exclusively CGI production. But it's perhaps the opposite for I...

The highly anticipated second season of 2023's Frieren anime has arrived, and the gang spent a couple of evenings IRL together watching this season's 10 episodes and has now hopped on the mic to share our thoughts. In many ways, it returns to form, continuing to tell a slower paced and vaguely slice-of-life narrative that loves its flashbacks and references to Himmel the Hero and the origi...

From the same team that brought you 4 seasons of The Legend of Vox Machina (with a 5th on the way!) comes another Dungeons & Dragons campaign that's a little darker, a little grittier, and a lot of fun: The Mighty Nein . If Vox Machina was Critical Role's first attempt at a more traditional, capital-Q-quest-style of campaign with plenty of Big Bad Evil Guys and grandiose battles, then...

Ya like jazz? Marcus's third Mobile Suit Gundam entry continues the gang's discussion on the Universal Century and the One Year War, with a grittier, more self-contained narrative than what we discussed in our episode on Unicorn. Musically unique and visually stunning, Thunderbolt gets our praise primarily because it feels less focused on the minutia of Mobile Suit Gundam and more focused...

With our episode on Toy Story 3 fresh in our minds, the gang picks up where we left off with 2019's Toy Story 4 , a film that cements itself as the—wait a minute, why'd they make another one? Toy Story is literally the best trilogy of all time! Join us as we try and figure out the most important question of all: does this movie have a reason to exist? Some of us say yes: the animation is r...

If Alex can make Iris break with his episode intro, you know it's gonna be a banger. Praised as one of 2021's best anime series, Odd Taxi is a short mystery-esque series set in Tokyo where all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals, centering our walrus-man Odokawa, the taxi driver. The show initially touches on the pleasant sentimentality of meeting all of these people with their o...

With our episode on Toy Story 2 fresh in our minds, the gang picks up where we left off with 2010's Toy Story 3 , a film that cements itself as the conclusion to one of the best film trilogies of all time. With many years having passed between 2 and 3 both IRL and in-universe, we here on the Couch get to feel like we've grown up with Andy, and get hit with some of the best emotional payoff...

Marcus's second entry in our multi-month saga in the Mobile Suit Gundam Universe takes us into the franchise's Universal Century, but (perhaps questionably) the gang is starting at the very end, with 2010's Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn . Everyone's intros can be boiled down to some variation of "this show doesn't work without prior knowledge of the Universal Century," a...

Once again the gang turns back the clocks to follow up our episode on Toy Story with our discussion on 1999's Toy Story 2, a film that really kickstarts the Pixar meme of "so what if ____ had feelings?" and sets the foundation for the entire Toy Story franchise...that's still going on to this day! This movie introduces Jessie and Woody's Roundup, the evil Emperor Zurg, and th...

Just in time for New Year's resolutions to begin falling apart, the gang brings a full-blown Japanese PSYOP anime designed specifically to get the single Otakus to hit the gym: How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? So the question is...does it succeed? As far as edutainment animes go, Iris said it best: the 'edu' part is good, the 'tainment' part is where we have some issues. I...

ONE PIECE fans around the world can finally close the book on Eiichiro Oda's 1155-episode first season, with the Elbaph arc kicking off season 2 in April 2026! Okay, people who actually watch this anime know we're on season 21, but it's a funny meme. Alex once again assembles panelists Ayana, Katy, Lony, and Owen to discuss the episodes that aired in 2025 and bounce ideas around some r...

The film that heralded the end of Disney's 2D-animated era, 2009's The Princess and the Frog came as a last hurrah after Disney's foray into Chicken Little , then was followed immediately by Tangled ...so where does it stand amongst the Disney greats? Its animation and soulful soundtrack certainly elevate it to that illustrious Disney standard, and Marcus can't get through this epi...

Alex is thoroughly out-weebed on this week's episode of Best Seat on the Couch, as Marcus, hot on the heels of Love, Death & Robots and Transformers One, arises with a multi-month saga planned around the universe of Mobile Suit Gundam , beginning with 2022's The Witch from Mercury . Longtime Gundam fans may find this choice of a beginner's series questionable, but the show is simul...

Happy New Year and welcome back to Best Seat on 2026's Couch! Our first episode of the new year calls back to our 99th episode on Toy Story , as Lightyear takes the mythos of Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear character and creates a whole narrative and backstory to him that, apparently, in-universe inspires Andy to buy the Buzz Lightyear toy — fancy that. The film itself stars Chris Evans as a mu...

After a brief holiday hiatus, the gang is back to the recording studio with another anime about high school girls doing...things! Like our episodes on Yuru Camp and Bocchi the Rock! in years past, this slice-of-life series released in 2017 appears often on top anime lists and provides a genuinely sweet and enjoyable story hidden behind its unassuming appearance. We get travel montages! Antarctica!...

'Tis the season for sequel films here on the Couch, and coming off of our discussion of Moana not too long ago, we've got the perfect perspective on its totally-not-planned-to-be-a-TV-series-originally-but-was-then-haphazardly-converted-into-a-feature-film sequel, 2024's Moana 2 . It's a tall ask to follow up a film like Moana and while the gang agrees that the story and narrative...