Best Seat on the Couch

Miyazaki's films are officially a mainstay on the Best Seat podcast these days, but it's always nice to have a little debate once in a while about movies that never really get any worse than "really good" - Kiki's Delivery Service is a charming tale about a girl who learns how to live on her own, make a living for herself, meet new people, and find her niche in a brave new world. It paints a world...

Marcus and Iris put literal thousands of hours into Dota 2 , the wildly popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) video game, and in this episode we finally see a benefit come out of all of that playtime in our discussion of the spinoff anime series DOTA: Dragon's Blood . The show definitely hits different depending on your background knowledge of Dota lore, and Alex and Michael don't...

It is our honor to collab with Alex's friend and fellow podcaster Ben, who co-hosts his own podcast Reel Beasts on Spotify, as we tackle a movie series that baffles both memelords and actual paleontologists alike - Blue Sky Studios's Ice Age . A couple of us praise the movie's through line emphasizing family as well as some of its humorous scenes, while a couple of us are more critical of the loos...

Considering our last magical girl-related anime we discussed was Madoka Magica , studio Trigger's Little Witch Academia is a comparatively fun and exciting anime series that follows the bright and boisterous Akko, best girl Lotte, moody mushroom girl Sucy, and her various friends and professors as they get in trouble, get out of trouble, and unlock immense magical power. This show really has every...

The Best Seat gang has officially been podcasting for an entire year! And yes, this past year has been a bit of a wash overall thanks to a certain global pandemic, but we hope you've had half as much fun listening to us talk about stuff as we've had recording it for y'all. To commemorate this momentous occasion, we go back to our roots a la Episode 0, and talk about a topic we've all been interest...

Over the Garden Wall is a miniseries that clocks in at just under 2 hours total, and if you watch it front-to-back in one sitting you might think it's a little strange. The experience of watching it, and feeling the sensations Wirt and Greg feel as they wander their way through the Unknown, is arguably more valuable to the viewer than what Wirt and Greg are actually doing. The show makes no attemp...

Kung Fu Panda is an incredible movie that feels like a once-in-a-blue-moon complete package, with an incredible villain in Tai Lung, rich performances from Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman, a gorgeous and culturally rich ancient Chinese setting with deep respect to the art of kung fu, wonderful fight scenes and choreography, tasteful humor, and a really powerful message for children and adults alike....

The Miyazaki time machine beckons again! This time, the gang takes a trip to 1986 to Studio Ghibli's first feature film, Castle in the Sky , which is a wondrous adventure that follows two orphans as they run in with family-style pirates, magical stones, giant robots, Mark Hamill, and the titular castle floating in the sky. Classic Miyazaki/Ghibli hallmarks such as strong female characters, beautif...

Even from minute 2 of this episode, it's very clear: there isn't any anime - or hardly any animated show at all - quite as interesting to watch as Gurren Lagann . Now you might be wondering "well, I mean, it's a show about giant robots fighting, what's so complex about that?" Tune in as we discuss hard-hitting questions like: does the second half's glory atone for the first half's sins? Are the co...

Big Hero 6 feels like a holy unity of the the superhero craze brought on by the Marvel Cinematic Universe combined with the new-age Disney animated movies born with the dawn of the 21st century - and considering how wildly successful both phenomena have been this last decade, it's no surprise that Big Hero 6 is a hit with the gang. We discuss Baymax (the decidedly best character) and his supportin...

We dipped our toes into the vast DC Animated Universe with our episode on Teen Titans a few weeks ago, and today we dive deeper with a little bit of a cult classic - Batman Beyond . There are many more examples of cartoons that stick to the classic Batman script (including Justice League , which we reference a lot in this episode), but Beyond is a complete re-imagining of Gotham City, Bruce Wayne,...

Still running at 13 seasons strong, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants is a show that practically every child watched in the early 2000s - every child except Iris, apparently ;) This episode touches primarily on the first 3-4 seasons which we all consider to be prime SpongeBob , but we take some time to discuss the first movie, future seasons, and - the elephant in the room - whether or not S...

My Hero Academia feels like the perfect show of the 2010s - a shōnen anime with incredibly animated action and fight scenes, that capitalizes on the superhero craze, and also highlights the high school experience for teens and young adults? Sign us up! After a short hiatus, the gang opens April with our resident Professor of Weebology Alex spearheading our discussion on My Hero Academia and its fr...

In general, the gang enjoys watching shows with many facets to pick apart and appreciate, which has at least partially contributed to the content of this podcast, but Bofuri is a very special case of an anime that's basically a slice of life episode...every episode. Set in a fantasy massively multiplayer online video game, Bofuri is a hilarious and lighthearted journey following a teenage girl who...

Iris describes this movie as "THE definitive Disney Renaissance movie" and she's not entirely wrong - not only was it the highest grossing film of all time upon its release in 1992, its incredible soundtrack and wondrous premise paved the way for the movie that would eventually surpass it, The Lion King , just two years later. A movie that legendary warrants a special guest, so our friend Vanessa...

In Episode 32 , the gang embarks on a perilous adventure through the cursed realm of fanfiction.net as part of the all-new Writer's Desk segment, and unfortunately for all of us, we correctly guess one of the four stories' main duos and resign ourselves to a live reading of that story from Alex himself. In this minisode, we listen to a smooth oration of "Their Happily Ever After" and react to its...

The OG Teen Titans TV series from 2003 might have been rebooted one too many times for the sake of the IP, but the gang unanimously agrees that this series from our childhood is by far the best one. A perfect marriage of psuedo-anime style humor and animation, clowny and 4th-wall-breaking jokes, incredibly diverse villains, and lovable protagonists, Teen Titans feels like an actual kids show about...

Shrek , nearly 20 years old and close to induction to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, really needs no introduction both as a movie and as a cultural monument. All you must know is:  Shrek is love, Shrek is life. And even when you think it's ogre...it's never ogre. Content warning: strong language, the Writer's Desk (possibly the most cursed special segment on Best Seat...

Few films come around that feel like a truly complete package, and fewer end up being animated - but Spider-Verse checks all the boxes, whether that be its characters, voice acting, humor, visual scenery, animation, style, soundtrack, emotional pacing, or even its treatment of a traditionally tricky subject like a Multiverse! It has plenty of memorable scenes that the gang reminisces on, and the f...

Infinity Train is a relative newcomer to the animated miniseries scene, first created as a pilot concept from Owen Dennis in 2019 which later blossomed into a 3-season show released through 2020. Small as it may be, it packs a powerful punch with its simple but instantly mysterious and captivating setting on the titular train, star-studded VA cast, excellent music, and underrated humor. Who is fun...

You may be under the impression that Akira , our topic of last week's episode, is what the gang considers the most legendary piece of animated media in history. You would be wrong. That distinction belongs to French-animated faux-anime cartoon series Code: LYOKO , which ran during the height of our collective childhoods and had a profound impact on the people we are today. With a revolutionary...

1988's Akira is legendary. From it came incredible leaps in sci-fi movies, the cyberpunk genre, adult animation, and what I guess we call Japanese anime today, but the real question is: why meat baby ? In this episode, the gang discusses Akira from many angles, and while it is not without its faults as a film, it provokes a lot of thought about humanity's potential future in a cyberpunk setting. P...

With the main cast on vacation for the holidays, Alex brings his close friends Katy and Kyle to the Couch for a very special episode on wildly successful anime ONE PIECE , based off of the 20+ year-running manga series of the same name. At almost 1000 individual episodes spread over 20 seasons as of the new year, there is an almost insurmountable volume of content for interested newcomers, but Ale...

In an effort to continue indoctrinating the gang with anime propaganda, Alex takes us back to the classics in our episode on 1997 sci-fi space western Cowboy Bebop . Wildly different from the animes of today and the ones we've discussed on the Couch, Cowboy Bebop infuses classical space western characters (including an excellent English dub, with smooth voice acting) with phenomenal jazz music, de...

The dynamic duo of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli returns to the Couch this week with our discussion on the legendary 1997 film Princess Mononoke . Similar thematically to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind which we discussed previously, Mononoke almost feels like Miyazaki's second, more expansive attempt at conveying his messages of environmentalism and anti-war sentiment, with his trademark st...