Are Fun Things Fun?

Fish Friday, Good Friday, Food Friday; no matter what you call it, here we are! We discuss our first ever freshly aired anime, Slow Loop, as well as the rest of the Winter season that passed and what we're looking forward to in Spring! A long episode awaits filled to the gills with fish facts and knowledge! Enjoy heartily along with your Abrahamic religious holiday of choice! Timestamps below: Sta...

Join us as we kick off Season 2 of the podcast with Season 2 of Hidamari Sketch! If you're wondering how we could possibly cover more of a show we've already done 4 hours on, you don't know us well enough! Between Ranka's careful YunoMiya note taking and Mallory's obsessive and smothering love for all things HidaSketch, we have a 3-hour follow-up on our hands! If you heard us talk about the myster...

Episode 12 has come and gone, and this (somewhat arbitrarily) marks the end of our first cour of the podcast! We thought it'd be fun to go back and do an Official Ranking of both our individual favourites and also a combined Podcast Official List to clarify which shows are worth your time, which come with caveats, and which are outright skips. We honest to god thought this would be a shorter episo...

Wow. Wow wow wow. Has it really, truly, only been 12 episodes? Time sure flies when you're deciding if fun things are fun. Loyal listener, you have reached the finale of our humble podcast's first cour, and as a reward we have a meaty one for you! This finale is another one of our 4-hour spectaculars, featuring special guest Andrew a.k.a. Piss a.k.a. @TsukihimeDemake from excellent anime podcast N...

As we approach the end of the first season of the podcast, we continue to aim for anime we consider to be quintessential Kirara-core, and instead find a show that no-one particularly remembers or likes. Is this us finally showing our age here? Has A-Channel been entirely superceded despite its insane traits of 'having Yui from K-On voice a girl with even less social intelligence', 'making an obses...

"Three Leaves Three Colours" ? Where are they even FINDING these shows? Are you sure this is real??? Yes we are! Not only is Sansha Sanyou a real show, we've got good news regarding its quality! Discover another forgotten gem that left the Fun Finders pleasantly surprised. Our most tangent-filled episode yet, prepare yourself for delightful rambles and archbishop-level bants as we try our hardest...

England. A fabled country somewhere in "the Europe". Some say every single woman there is blonde, and they are all the height of maybe a small rabbit. At most they stand 3 to 4 apples tall. What if we told you there was an anime which looked into the specificities of such a country? But before we get ahead of ourselves, we must first contend with how much Englishness is even in Kiniro Mosaic; the...

Happy New Year!! Fridays have returned, and on this first Friday of 2022, we have returned in kind! This week we discuss Kanamemo, the most forgotten of the early(ish) Kirara adaptations, not to mention one of the only Kirara-published manga to have a Yuri Hime certified author. We discuss its depictions of found family, on-screen homosexual activity, alcoholism and the rare case of the 'slice of...

Whoa! It's not Friday?! Hell, it's Monday!! And we have something special for you! During Ranka's stay over at my place earlier in the month, we got together some roms of some JP-exclusive games, and wouldn't you know it, all these games are from our Essential Three Pillars (K-ON, HidaSketch and Lucky Star) that we've covered on the podcast! So we thought it might be nice to play each one for abou...

We ask quite often (every episode, really!) if fun things are fun... but are sports things sporting? Are we even allowed to cover a sports show? It's Kirara-published, so can't we just do what we want?! Sounds good! Join us for an exciting reach outside of our wheelhouse as we discuss the #Rare Kirara sports series, Harukana Receive. Full disclosure that this episode will, by the nature of this an...

It's here! Our third and final pillar! Or... is it? In this installment, our Fun Finders are joined by an intrepid expert of the KyoAni oeuvre (and Lucky Star in particular) @no_stunts AKA our friend G, AKA the Fandem Mandem, AKA the Hound of Barkerville. Join us three in our discussion of what is undoubtedly one of the most important shows to the modern era of otaku culture, let alone anime, let...

In our fifth episode, the fun finders explore what can only be called the 9/11 of the magical girl demon corruption romcom genre - Machikado Mazoku (The Demon Girl Next Door), one of the more popular recent Kirara offerings with a second season on the way. Faced with a series with things like 'actual narrative stakes' and 'character development', we discuss whether the usual Kirara analysis method...

In our fourth episode, we return to our roots with a look at the foundational work of the modern slice of life anime, Hidamari Sketch - a show that is near and dear to both of the hosts' hearts. Does it withstand its eighth rewatch by Mallory? Can Ranka prevent themself from writing Yuno x Miyako fanfic live on air? And how does Shaft's unique visual treatment of the series provide an insight on c...

This week we tackle something of a hidden gem in CloverWorks' studio debut, Slow Start! In our first true going-in-blind episode, we toss around some poignant observations on ship dynamics and discuss what happens when a true doom yurihead starts writing her own manga! Is Slow Start iconic from the beginning, or does it take some time to warm up? If you're ready to hear several iterations on that...

Time for the second selection! In an effort to ease themselves in, Mallory and Ranka have watched Yuyushiki, one of Mallory's favourites. Does it hold up like she remembers? Does Ranka love, like, or even tolerate it? What does it even mean for an anime to even be a slice-of-life anime? And what does Norm MacDonald have to do with all this, anyway? Discover all these answers in Episode 2: The Fun...

Welcome to the first episode of Are Fun Things Fun? Podcast, where we seek to find out if fun things are truly fun. Join Mallory and Ranka for 2+ hours of discussion: first, on the history and legacy of Manga Time Kirara and what makes something "slice-of-life," then we dig into discussing season 1 of K-ON! as we tease out what made it such a defining pillar of the genre.