Anime Sickos

Tom and guest co-Sicko MinovskyArticle sing the praises of the incredible 2010 anime The Tatami Galaxy. If you watch one anime in your life, I recommend this one. This is an anime that feels like a novel, that revels in the richness of language, that understands the abyss of anxiety, and that will make you a genius to watch. This is the kind of show that tricks you into thinking anime is good

These days everyone has a hot take about Hollow Knight: Silksong. Folks get heated and tilted and let their feelings cloud their judgment. The world calls out for the Sickos to put the discourse to an end by doing the perfect, fully objective review of the game via the ultimate game design analysis technique: ranking mechanics on a tier list.

Tom and guest co-Sicko KC Green are tired of being "sickos" and wish instead to develop positive habits. Thus begins "Anime Health Nuts," the new long-term plan for the show and not just a bit we are doing for this episode only. We talk about doing little tasks, watching the incredible skateboarding obstacle course show KASSO, drinking little bottles of Fireball, and more. Check it out!!

Tom joins Casey Toney and Mike Migdall from GUTTER to experience a new dimension in stupid bullshit your chair can do at the movie theater: "4DX," an insane gimmick in which your seat violently jostles you and sprays water in your face. It is so, so stupid and distracting and is also the single best time you can have in a movie theater. Hear Casey and Mike on GUTTER: https://www.gutter.show/

At the behest of guest co-Sicko Jeff Stormer, Tom finally watches the classic comedy Walk Hard. Turns out, this shit is incredibly good. Join us as we go nuts about all the gags and become baffled that the upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic appears to be doing all the Walk Hard jokes again but this time not supposed to be funny. Find Jeff's excellent Party of One Podcast here: https://www.partyofon...

Nani? The Sickos are talking about anime? Masaka! But I assure you: it's true! Quinn Welsh-Wilson joins as co-Sicko to get Tom back up to speed, discussing Twelve Kingdoms, Apothecary Diaries, Shangri-La Frontier, Log Horizon, Lazarus, and the first new anime Tom has watched in ages, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Turns out anime is the same as ever: it fucking sucks but also is so good. Confoundi...

The Sickos are tea sandwich guys now. We made, ate, and reviewed 11 insane sandwiches with such inexplicable ingredients as "onion, mayo, and parsley," "radish, butter, and parsley," and "salami, mayo, and grapefruit." It sounds like these would suck ass but tea sandwiches are bugged and somehow roll back around to being great. Listen to our sicko sandwich journey. Featuring Sicko homie Dylan fill...

Patrick Cosmos goes guesto mode! We discuss his new album Future National Sports, how weird it is to self-promote independent art in hell times, the idiotic appeal of being a vinyl guy, and what it's like to constantly have to go to physical therapy all the time. Also, Joe's here for this one. I know we said he was going to take a break. He is. He just took a break from the break. Get Patrick's mu...

Folks, we have been trying for ages to get enough raw material for a classic posting episode but it just isn't happening. The well is dry. The thing about the posts is that now, they suck ass. Everyone is stuck in a rhetorical quagmire, nothing new is being introduced into the ecosystem, and the freaks who previously provided goofy spectacle are now very scary as they are all now allowed and encou...

Hello Sicko fans.   If you are a dedicated listener you know that for a long time Joe has been struggling with chronic pain due to a hip impingement and labral tear. Basically his shit is so fucked up and it hurts all the time, and the only solution is a lot of physical therapy, which does not really solve the day-to-day pain issue.    If you have experienced chronic pain, especially pain that can...

Writer, homie, and genius Josh Watkins goes guesto mode. We celebrate Josh's return to Chicago after four years of grad school, discuss the highs and lows of working in a bookstore (sometimes people write fanfic about you where you are a pony), and explain why Josh can't be allowed to touch a smartphone or video game. This guy is one of the all time guys. The vibes on this one are simply stunning

Writer and comedian Dan Sheehan goes guesto mode again! Dan is about to crowdfund Who's A Good Boy: The Game Where Dogs Can Sin, a comedy card game with art by Julia Glassman, and he's here to tell you why it kicks ass and deserves your grubby dollars. Plus, we discuss how we hate the computer and the putrid posts within, and Joe shares all his wisest fatherhood tips as Dan awaits his first child!...

Joe becomes mentally healthy forever as we curate a therapeutic gaming curriculum designed to provide him with the maximum concentration of vital gaming nutrients such as "dig big hole," "upgrade town," "low-stakes grind" and more. Follow this curriculum yourself and you too will develop a perfect brain Featuring discussions of: SteamWorld Dig 2, Digseum, Donkey Kong Bananza, Slime Rancher 2, Clai...

The most important thing in the universe is to chill and hang and vibe. If humanity is chilling then the utopian society must inevitably follow. But the man hates to see you chilling. We discuss this phenomenon and share our tips to ensure your chilling is at maximum effectiveness. Thanks to Cohen Edenfield for playing Jigsaw in our great intro sketch

The Sickos go on and on about the classic 1982 spoof show Police Squad. Its film version, The Naked Gun, is much more successful and well-known, but the TV sitcom original is where this kind of humor shines brightest. As appreciators of comedy, the Sickos really go nuts over the craftsmanship on display. What a show!

How come all this fascism and tariff shit is allowed to happen? Why are so many critical US agencies being deleted? Why isn't anyone stopping this? The Sickos have the answer: We live in Corpse World, a post-function existence where the concept of "doing" has been phased out entirely. Intrigued? Yeah bitch I know it's brilliant. Listen for the full story

We return to our ongoing project to rank all game mechanics, but when it comes to the immersive sim and fighting game genres, we don't have the expertise required to make those decisions. So we had Josh Boerman from the Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast join us to help us with the imsim mechanics and our buddy Dylan (aka Jordi from Sicko Shock 2) do the fighting game ones. What's better than th...

It's another grab bag of bits. We introduce a new segment about the most insanely fatal "non-lethal" attacks from the Yakuza games, find insider knowledge about the grim state of radio, and invent a new coffee sensation: The Americano 2. Check it out! Play our new video game Time Force X: Mission of Lennon here! https://anime-sickos-podcast.itch.io/time-force-x

Dono from the excellent podcast Radio Free Tote Bag goes guesto mode! We yammer about how getting into synth music is just an excuse to make your room look like where Daft Punk does their taxes, Tom & Joe answer relationship questions with their perfect brains, and Dono joins us in ranking some classic game mechanics. It's fun as hell folks, check this one out. You can listen to Radio Free Tote Ba...

The Sickos do a special unemployed version of Cog Talk where they do the unthinkable and wish they had an evil computer that took up half their time with awful job tasks. As bad as it is, just sitting around all day is worse! Plus, Tom yammers and yaps about The Bee Sting, a great novel by Paul Murray.

The Sickos continue to fill our their definitive tier list of all game mechanics, this time saying the final word on runs, consumables, joke classes, pressing the thumbstick down, and more. If you skip these episodes you're basically worse than Elon

Shit is so bad! The dumbest evil man is wrecking the country using a cadre of Nazi zoomers named after an outdated meme! Da future is grim and we are miserable! Therefore, we do the only thing we can do to keep our minds from total destruction: complaining!!!

We never thought we'd see the day: it's a posting episode. The insane repliers of Bluesky have stepped up, providing a critical mass of deranged posts without us having to log on to the odious X. We have sex poems, joke correctors, the Hawk Truth, and leaked photos of Heaven. Check it out

After the most harrowing week of fascist American leadership in our memory, the Sickos must seek the healing aura of Resident Evil 4, the platonic ideal of video game, and the real-life manifestation of Bonestorm, the game Bart wants on the Simpsons. We talk both the original and the remake. They both rule. It is fun when you kick an old old Spanish man and his head becomes deleted

The Sickos watched the unbelievable indie silent slapstick comedy Hundreds of Beavers. Here's the thing: This movie is gaming. Watching this movie is the same as Minecraft except every two minutes you see the dumbest image of your life and go haw haw! We are absolutely in the tank for this movie and will go to war on its behalf. It's the only movie with a UI. You can watch the entire movie legally...