Best Seat on the Couch

Baccano! is an electrifying and boisterous 2007 anime series that Alex and Michael consider a "gateway" anime - there's a fantastic English dub, it's set in Prohibition-era America chock full of gangsters, gambling, and guns, and the story is told is a unique way that we've never seen on the Couch before. And while the twists and turns and constant time shifts can confuse the hell out of you and l...

On January 18th, 2021, the gang brought Akira to the podcast, a legendary pillar of Japanese animated media and the cyberpunk genre today, though as a film itself is flawed somewhat. But there is another: 1995's Ghost in the Shell feels deeper, more introspective, and more ethereal, and it demands multiple rewatches to fully understand - and appreciate - how important this movie is to future block...

Kubo and the Two Strings had a bit of a muted release in August 2016, but its beautiful stop-motion animation and interesting feudal Japanese setting were enough for us to bring it to the Couch this week to discuss. Broadly this movie suffers a bit from "spectacle-itis" as Michael dubs it, as it's got wondrous professional stop-motion animation, gorgeous frames and fight scenes (the Sisters are ac...

Soul is the first Disney/Pixar installment delivered direct-to-Disney+ as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why, for a lot of us, this movie kind of missed us in the buzz of animated movies of the last few years. It feels a little different than Pixar's award-winning formula, with heavier emphasis on the existential and ethereal quality of life after (and also before) death, and it's fas...

It's been a long time since we've touched on another Miyazaki + Ghibli work on the Couch here - and there aren't many left to discuss - but Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is a charming movie, perhaps directed towards a younger audience, full of the trademark magic and gorgeous animation that's a hallmark of the movies in this pantheon. But how does this film hold up to Miyazaki's other works? It's...

Back in the day, when existence was only in black and white and our parents rode horses to work, Tom and Jerry was an American TV series of short films that was just nonstop hijinks between a house cat and a scheming mouse (and their friends!), and that simple premise became a legendary forefather of animation. In this episode, you'll find out who thinks Jerry did nothing wrong, whether or not Qui...

Steven Universe crawled so Gravity Falls could walk so She-Ra could run so The Owl House could fly like a weird owl-beast-harpy creature, and dare we say that this is probably the most polished and well-constructed children's animated TV show that we've ever seen. All of the characters, especially our main protagonist Luz, are wonderful and have excellent growth through two seasons, it&#39...

Another line in the sand has been drawn, and this time, Iris and Michael show off their   d r i f t   c o m p a t i b i l i t y   as they face off against Marcus and Alex's love for the live action 2013 film Pacific Rim . But unlike its progenitor, the Netflix anime series Pacific Rim: The Black is an entirely different beast, with similar emphasis on the Kaiju and Ja...

On this episode of Best Seat on the Couch, the gang asks: what if feelings had feelings? One of Pixar's top works of the 2010s, Inside Out brings out the emotions in us all, including a couple of our scarily deep-rooted thoughts of depression and existential dread. Nah I'm just kidding, we're all very excited to talk about this movie, so much so that we invite our #1 fan Sarah back ont...

It's Alex's turn on the carousel of...not great shows...this week, and Alex's childhood love for Kirby the Ninteldritch horror and the early Kirby video games brings us to Japanese anime TV series Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, which was dubbed for Western audiences in 2002. The dub is amazing, with voice acting performances from King Dedede and Meta Knight as the highlights, and the 5-episode finale d...

The height of the Disney Renaissance made the Mouse fabulously wealthy, and so alongside powerhouse films like Aladdin came many direct-to-video sequels like Aladdin 3 , or Aladdin and the King of Thieves . Iris's childhood nostalgia notwithstanding, the gang is pretty whelmed by this film overall, and in this episode we discuss the hard hitting questions like: what makes a sequel worth making? Ha...

Osmosis Jones is the first movie that the gang - even Marcus, who brought this film for discussion - unanimously dislikes. Split between live-action sequences of Bill Murray's truly abhorrent mid-life crisis lifestyle and an animated TV series buddy cop back-and-forth, we can begin by completely disregarding the live-action half of this movie as irredeemable. Ozzy and Drix's camaraderie, Fishburne...

In this latest episode of Best Seat on the Couch: Civil War, the gang is split on our opinions of computer-animated 2005 film Hoodwinked , which is regarded to be the most profitable animated film in movie history - one of its many accolades. It's undeniable that this movie is probably the worst- looking animated movie we've ever seen, perhaps looking even worse than Polar Express , but the story...

In Episode 1 of Best Seat on the Couch - yes, our first recorded episode, on Avatar: The Last Airbender - we not only embarked on a podcasting journey that has spanned over 2 years, but Alex also surfaced a cherished memory of U-Pick Live that we, for a very long time, believed was lost to the aether. But fear not, dear listeners. It is lost no longer.  Content warning: bamboozles

Death Parade is a home-brewed anime series that rests at a short 12 episodes and talks about purgatory, the meaning of life, and the philosophical ramifications of life after death. It's beautifully animated and emotionally heavy, has a banger opening track, and relies heavily on its audience to humor it as it asks thought-provoking questions and explores interesting topics about life and death. N...

Pokémon has had an arguably larger impact on millennial/Gen Z culture over the past 20 years than similar elementary school foundational pillar Yu-Gi-Oh! , and in addition to the popular trading card game and campy Japanese anime that the two franchises share, there's a whole suite of award-winning video games, not-so-award-winning movies, and Detective Pikachu too. This episode discusses the very...

Megamind is another Dreamworks staple from 2010 that seemed to miss a lot of us on the Couch, but it's experienced a bit of a resurgence in the pop culture sphere as of late, so we gave it a watch. It's unassuming and well animated, and has an interesting subversion to its plot, but it's actually quite well-written and has wonderful characters and voice acting, plus Tighten is a pretty complex and...

If you've ever dabbled in Dungeons and Dragons, then you've likely heard of the immensely successful web series Critical Role , where critically acclaimed voice actor Matt Mercer runs a D&D campaign for a bunch of other big name voice actor friends. After a record-breaking Kickstarter, the group was able to take their first campaign and translate it into an animated TV series (a feat never don...

The Couch has suffered great emotional trauma over the last few months thanks to Alex's brutal anime recommendations, so as penance Alex brings us Laid-Back Camp , known as Yuru Camp in Japan, to soothe our souls. It's the epitome of slice-of-life, moreso than Bofuri was, but still hits excellent emotional notes while presenting a lovely story about high school girls camping around Japan's picture...

Season 8 on the Couch starts with yet another nostalgia trip for the gang, as we deep-dive into our childhoods filled with buckets upon buckets of Legos and how special these little plastic building blocks were in our lives. Naturally we're all very high on The Lego Movie and what it brings to the table - and boy does it bring a lot to the table! The pseudo-stop motion, photorealistic animatio...

Somewhere in the realm between Shrek and Bee Movie in the Dreamworks pantheon, Over the Hedge is an initially unassuming and formulaic animated movie of the 2010s, but Marcus's dad really loves this movie, so what exactly does he see that we don't? Well, it's got a crew of surprisingly dynamic and memorable characters voiced by a weirdly B-list voice cast (hi Avril Lavigne!), genuine character dev...

Encanto! With its songs all over the radio and memes all over the internet, we figured we'd talk about Disney's latest big hit, touching upon Lin-Manuel Miranda's spellbinding soundtrack, the beautifully animated scenes of Colombian countryside and the Casita, the unorthodox no-villain plot structure and unique conflicts that arise in the movie, but decidedly not talking about Bruno. P...

Somehow, Alex manages to bring us the most emotionally traumatic animes ever constructed under the guise that they're "beautifully animated" and "a fun watch" and keeps getting away with it! Land of the Lustrous is strikingly similar in tangibles to Steven Universe as these shows are both about agender female-presenting gemstone/alien beings that are fun and varied in personality, but that is wher...

Disney's The Lion King is synonymous with "classic" and feels like Disney's strongest entry in their Renaissance era, which in itself might make it Disney's best animated film of all time - OF ALL TIME! Jeremy Irons and James Earl Jones put on absolutely masterful voice performances, it's perhaps the best 2D animated work of its time, it has some iconic musical-style numbers that elevate the movie...

We've been seeing quite a few video game-related animated anthology series popping up on the Couch and our latest one brings the magic of Bungie's longstanding Halo franchise to our podcast, with an anime twist - and also brings special guest Andrew to join us! Similar to our Star Wars: Visions episode a few months ago, Halo Legends presents 7 anime-inspired minisodes that each bring a unique Japa...