Best Seat on the Couch

As far as slice-of-life animes go, Frieren completely shatters the mold with a brand new premise in the fantasy-DnD-adjacent genre and a level of quality (in terms of adapting a manga) that really hasn't been matched before or since its 2023 release. With the eponymous main character experiencing the passage of time so differently than the peers of her past and of the present, it's incredi...

Nestled at the tail end of the legendary series of films within the Disney Renaissance, Hercules is both a musical fantasy reimagining and kid-friendly family film that paints the traditional story of Heracles from Greek mythology in a brand new light. It's a bold film that cashes in on some of its bold choices (the Muses are such an excellent edition both tonally and musically) but perhaps encoun...

As promised in our discussion of Love, Death & Robots ❤️❌🤖 Season 1, the following two seasons received higher critical acclaim but needed to tweak the formula a bit, toning down the nudity and gore from the first season but also having to traverse the difficulties introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. And while we all have our favorite episodes and notable stinkers like with Season 1, Marcus...

Disney/Pixar's slate of films in their "Disney+ streaming era" as it was post-COVID-19 pandemic, to put it shortly, might have been a bit forgettable: the gang has discussed Soul and certainly enjoyed its mellow vibe, but Onward got dumpstered in March 2020 and Luca appears to have completely fallen out of the cultural headspace. 2022's Turning Red , on the other hand, was actual...

While many kids our age orbited around Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh in the late 90's/early 2000's, a small subset of children—our host Alex included—built their childhood personas around Digimon , starting with 1999's Digimon Adventure and the strange "film" released a year later to cap off the series. And as Alex introduces the show and draws his line in the sand, he braces himself...

This week on the Couch, the gang enshrines some well-received fan mail from the mythical Josh, who provided us with our topic for this discussion this episode, The Mitchells vs. the Machines . Released during the COVID-19 pandemic from a number of the same people who brought us Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, this film definitely feels like it was created in (and marketed around) the cultural s...

Earlier this year, the gang discussed Tim Miller's Secret Level on Amazon Prime, an anthology series designed to highlight various animation studios' chops as they created short films centered around a variety of video games. But before Secret Level , Tim Miller fought through 11 years of development hell to create Love, Death & Robots ❤️❌🤖, an anthology series designed to highlight...

Though not technically a Miyazaki film, the gang believes that 2010's Arrietty belongs in his pantheon of works with Studio Ghibli nestled in between Ponyo and The Wind Rises , with thematic and artistic similarities to Miyazaki's more carefree films like My Neighbor Totoro. It's a film that leans heavily on Ghibli's masterful work with scenery, colors, and the whimsy of Arrietty&#...

Alex, tapping into his memories of the future, assembles the gang one final time and masterfully MC's our final discussion on this legendary anime series, Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan . While a couple of us had some doubts coming out of Season 4, Part 1 given its lack of Titan-on-Titan action, more slow-paced and methodical storytelling, and animation studio change, the show sticks its...

Hot off the heels of our discussion on Kung Fu Panda 2 , the gang comes to you with the final film in what may be Dreamworks Studios' finest animated trilogy...if you simply pretend 2024's Kung Fu Panda 4 doesn't exist. It's got multiple dads, several more pandas, another villain voiced by another banger voice actor (hi J.K. Simmons!), and yet another really solid character arc for...

In a film that crosses two very distinct fandoms in a manner like oil and water, Kenji Kamiyama's War of the Rohirrim is the world's first Lord of the Rings content since Amazon's The Rings of Power and perhaps the only LotR media that truly puts a woman at the forefront of the action! That's nice. It also reimagines a story out of J.R.R. Tolkien's own work and feels like it fi...

Once the highest-grossing animated film of all time and certainly a cultural phenomenon that revived Disney with a hefty almost "re-renaissance" as Michael puts it, 2013's Frozen is a trope-subverting musical-movie that had the entire world belting "LET IT GOOOOOOOO" in both appropriate and inappropriate social settings...so why did it take us 185 episodes to finally bring...

Fear not, dear listeners—we are almost at the finish line. Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan endures a little bit of a shakeup for Season 4, Part 1, with studio MAPPA replacing studio Wit on the animation front while a brand new cast of Marleyan characters take center stage as opposed to the familiar Eren, Armin, and Mikasa. This final season has impressively lofty thematic goals that are power...

It's been a very long time since the gang discussed the original Kung Fu Panda , a film that we universally praised for its completeness, excellent performances from Dustin Hoffman and Jack Black, and impressive animation. And somewhat surprisingly, not since Shrek 2 have we seen such an impressive sequel! The animation is fresh with 2D animated storytelling interspersed with the impressive 3D...

With the season finale having premiered just a few weeks ago, the gang's discussion on Season 3 of Amazon Prime's Invincible is hot off the presses, and we're pleased to announce that we enjoyed it quite a bit more than Season 2. Mark's got a rapidly aging alien little brother, an increasingly strained relationship with Cecil, a hot new superhero gf, and like 18 other alternate sel...

This week's episode presents a chance for Michael, Trekkie of the Couch, to show his quality. Star Trek: Lower Decks is an animated 5-season series from Mike McMahan and heavily channels the vibe of McMahan's previous work on Rick and Morty, while also crafting a narrative about Star Trek's lesser known non-bridge crew that's funny, whimsical, and chock full of nerdy references for...

Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan has, through the previous two seasons, provided broadly more questions than answers. But fear not, dear listeners! If you've stuck with us thus far, then you'll be proud to hear that Season 3 is the undeniably euphoric catharsis the gang has been waiting for. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together! Flashbacks galore! A return to Shiganshina! MANIF...

Iris takes a page out of Alex's playbook and proves that sequel episodes here on the Couch aren't just reserved for award-winning animes: following our previous episode on 2001's Justice League , today the gang presents to you 2004's Justice League Unlimited , the eighth and final series of the DC Animated Universe and cherished childhood Saturday morning cartoon for everyone here...

After almost 3 years, special guest Andrew returns to bring his keen insight and top-class banter to the Couch as we collectively discuss a childhood darling, Xiaolin Showdown . Some parts of this show have aged...poorly...(guys, Omi is such a racist caricature) but it brings a Teen Titan -esque unity of classical Saturday morning American cartoons with anime styling and mythos with creative Shen...

It's anthology szn again! Today the gang discusses Tim Miller's Secret Level , with 15 animated short stories from video games ranging from Armored Core to Warhammer , to complement our extensive history with video games of yesterday and today. While some of these "levels" feel more like glorified trailers than actual worthwhile media, we come away with the impression that what&#...

You ever hear of this movie? Pixar's anticipated follow-up to Inside Out ? Their first EVER box office failure? Marcus certainly hadn't. We all generally agree that Pixar's standard of quality for their movies prevents them from being truly hot garbage—which is a good thing, mind you—but The Good Dinosaur lacks a fair bit of expected Pixar magic, and ends up being fairly uninteresting....

The gang returns for Season 2 of Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan, and boy has it gotten spicier! Alex recounts that this season was released 4 years after Season 1's final release and only has 12 episodes, so hype might have died down a bit for Alex and countless other fans eagerly looking forward to the answers to S1's many questions—but that doesn't mean S2 didn't live up to...

It's a certified Best Seat Tradition now to have Alex's group of straw hat buddies join him over the holidays to talk about Eiichiro Oda's legendary anime series ONE PIECE, at 1123 episodes released at the time of recording with still more content on the way. We've got Katy, Lony, Owen, and newcomer Ayana joining Alex today, and even though the series is on a minor hiatus mid-Egghead arc, the gang...

Long before the Avengers released in theaters and Zack Snyder produced something several notches lower than absolute cinema (twice!), the DC-flavored Earth's mightiest heroes made their animated debut in Bruce Timm's Justice League , allowing kids across the world to learn about Superman and Batman's friends like Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter! And also Hawkgirl is t...

A film that released on 09/09/2009 with an absolutely kick-ass trailer and tantalizing action sequences checked all of the boxes for the gang's tweenage selves, but 15 years later our discussion unearths a movie that's honestly just barely okay. We on the Couch take it upon ourselves to literally re-write Shane Acker's passion project/short film and expertly fix the film's confusing and somewhat d...