Best Seat on the Couch

In a first EVER on the Couch, the gang is together! in person! in the same room! coming together literally minutes after watching the finale! of Arcane's second and final season! This season is awesome, and while we don't have the benefit of extra time before recording to let the season marinate in our minds, we can still make valuable commentary while riding the high of a phenomenal Act 3. It see...

While Halloween has come and gone by the time this episode releases, the gang is in full Spooky Season spirit with 2009's Coraline , a Henry Selick stop-motion animated film that follows in the footsteps of The Nightmare Before Christmas . There's an awesome pairing of traditional stop-motion with CGI bells and whistles, and while this film definitely qualifies as a children's movie, the horror el...

Widely considered to be one of the best anime series of all time (especially to Western audiences), Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan has action, gore, giant organic mecha, bureaucracy, and subterfuge all packed into a TV journey bolstered with great animation from Studio Wit and a baller soundtrack from my boy Hiroyuki Sawano. Given that resident weeb Alex has already watched the entire series, th...

Iris steers the gang back onto the anime track with 2018's Violet Evergarden , a story about a girl who makes the ridiculous character journey from overpowered shōnen-esque child soldier to emotionally stunted post-war ghostwriter, all while tugging on our heartstrings through each individual episode. While Marcus and Iris drop the ball on watching the complementary film, we all get to delve deepl...

The list of Disney/Pixar films we haven't yet touched upon here on the Couch is getting pretty slim, but 1998's A Bug's Life simply demands discussion, mostly because child Alex's love of insects cannot be denied. Hot off the heels of Toy Story , this film actually holds up quite well; its animation is solid, its characters are honestly quite impressive (with special mention to the villain Hopper...

Ignoring that this movie is owned by furries, Disney's Zootopia is an impressively rich world teeming with the kind of social commentary that Disney just barely makes enough of to be thought-provoking without necessarily stating too much. The gang has an exciting discussion about nature vs. nurture, racism, fascism, fantasy worlds, and the role of the police both when this movie came out in 2016 a...

The gang breaks the 4-week anime streak to bring one of the most incredible animated TV series of 2023, Scavenger's Reign, a show that got canceled by HBO Max after its premier season but got picked up by Netflix within the last few months. It isn't hyperbole to say that this show moved us; the worldbuilding is phenomenal, the characters and their stories are rich and emotional, and the wa...

It has taken the gang 165 episodes to bring an Isekai anime to the Couch, and while they may not be to resident weeb Alex's discriminating palate, Iris brings us a wild first installment all the same with 2023's I'm in Love with the Villainess . It's got drama, it's got magic, and it's exceedingly gay, but as the show goes there are a few characters and moments that really...

Now that the gang has completed our reviews on legendary anime film director Makoto Shinkai's Your Name, Weathering with You, & Suzume , we dive into four of Shinkai's films-before-the-fame so to speak, created in the years before Your Name became an international hit—2002's Voices of a Distant Star , 2004's Places Promised in Our Early Days , 2007's 5 Centimeters Per Secon...

Hayao Miyazaki deserves a shrine here on Best Seat on the Couch, and The Boy and the Heron is his final masterpiece and bookend to an illustrious career—or would be, if he actually confirmed his retirement. There's like 5 different metaphorical through lines and yet another stacked English voice cast in this Ghibli film, but perhaps the strongest message that comes through is an allegory for M...

Better known as Dungeon Meshi in weeb , Delicious in Dungeon is a show that brings anime, cooking, humor, Dungeons & Dragons, studio Trigger animation, and character-driven narratives together like the Avengers to put together one of our favorite anime shows of all time. Longtime listeners know from our episodes on The Legend of Vox Machina that D&D is held near and dear to our hearts, and...

Disney's put out quite a few bangers, and even some underrated sleeper hits, but then, what does that make Treasure Planet? A bonafide box office bomb and a top 3 expensive animated theatrical failure of all time, the film does join Atlantis: The Lost Empire as a "cult classic" in the Disney pantheon—can the gang find redeeming qualities and give this movie a thumbs-up? Overall, yes...

The gang finally completes the Makoto Shinkai trilogy, closing the book on our previous discussions on Your Name (Episode 7) and Weathering With You (Episode 12) after many years with 2022's Suzume . There's a lot to like about this movie (it's just as beautiful as its predecessors, if not even more gorgeous) but it's definitely not as good as Your Name and arguably may not even be...

In regards to Pixar's latest slump at the box office, Coco is perhaps the studio's last exceptional movie before the downturn, with its dazzling display of el Día de los Muertos, exceptional score, powerful emotional impact, and emphasis on family. Join us as we gush over the beautiful lights and usage of color in this movie, praise its rich storyline and clever writing, and joke about Mar...

Your fight-or-flight response might have already triggered upon reading the title of this anime series, but our resident anime expert Alex assures the gang that this show is not, in fact, fan service brain rot. To be honest, it's actually quite introspective - plus it has its emotional moments - and sheds a light on the issues and social pressures impacting teenagers as they learn to navigate...

Along with like half of the gang on the Couch, you may be surprised to know that this isn't actually a Disney movie; as 20th Century Fox Animation's first feature film, it's technically a competitor - so how does it stack up? Well, when you come at the king, you best not miss. The music is actually quite good, and it's an affable take on the Bolshevik revolution (as Alex phrases it...

The first season of Amazon Prime's Invincible was pretty groundbreaking stuff; subverting the superhero genre with deep emotional human elements and excellently written morally gray characters was delightfully refreshing in the face of pandemic-era MCU content. It's been nearly 3 years since our 52nd episode was recorded, and though it was marred by a 4-month mid-season hiatus, season 2 of...

It's another throwback today on the Couch, and we complete the trifecta of The Magic School Bus & VeggieTales with David McCall's Schoolhouse Rock! , a Saturday morning children cartoon's interstitial designed to provide educational content with the power of catchy songs. Our experiences with the show range from it being critical to Michael's childhood upbringing to Marcus near...

Perhaps the single greatest animated film at the turn of the century, Chicken Run is legendary claymation studio Aardman's first feature-length film, and our previous discussions on Wallace and Gromit on this podcast should clue you in to just how awesome we think these folks across the pond are. The voice acting is superb (hi Mel Gibson!), the animation exceeds even our high standard, the cla...

Blue Eye Samurai is Netflix's latest blockbuster adult animated series, joining the likes of Arcane and Nimona (which we've already discussed on this podcast - check 'em!) as proof that extremely high quality animated television exists, and it's not just for kids. Mizu is an incredibly well-designed protagonist, with so much to unpack on her biracial background and the way she navi...

It's been a little while since we've had some Star Wars content on the Couch, but the gang is hungry for Filoni's latest Clone Wars -era project, The Bad Batch. It's four clone dads voiced by the same guy, and also Omega, as they learn to navigate the dark times in between the fall of the Republic and rise of the Empire, and while a lot of it is more of the same, we're graced w...

It's a return to form for the gang, featuring Alex's unbridled dad energy, Michael's brain damage, Marcus's corporate depression, and Iris's in-depth analysis of the ramifications of this universe's makeup, and with Monsters, Inc. on the docket today, we have plenty of good things to say. Headlined by Billy Crystal and John Goodman as Mike and Sully, it's got an excepti...

Best Seat on the Couch celebrates another milestone as we reach Episode 150, and like our 50th episode on Space Jam almost two and a half years ago, we're choosing another live action + animated mish-mash masterpiece, but this one is perhaps the most important of all! Who Framed Roger Rabbit , released in 1988, was an engineering and filmmaking marvel of its time, joining a classical LA Noire...

On this episode, the Gang gets biblical (again!) with a refresher on each member's religious (or non-religious) childhood upbringing as we discuss 1993 hit animated series VeggieTales , featuring Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber - certainly a stark contrast to The Prince of Egypt 's Moses and Ramses from that discussion nearly a year ago. This show occupies a weird headspace: is it te...

The gang activates the Couch's time machine to go waaaayyy back, to a show that first aired before we were even born: the original 1994 run of The Magic School Bus . The theme song goes hard, the video game is iconic, and Ms. Frizzle belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of the Coolest Adults to Ever Grace Our Childhoods - to say we all have fond memories of the show understates just how important (and...