Nerding with Friends

Episode Summary Fans have mixed reactions to the ending of Naruto, specifically the Fourth Great Shinobi World War. One of the most significant factors of the war was Kabuto's use of the Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation aka edo tensei. Characters like Asuma, Nagato, Itachi, and Madara came back to life in the war along with many other powerful friends and foes. However, there were some charac...

Episode Summary They say nobody stays dead in comics, but neither do these villains. Whether resurrection, fakeouts, or other means, the villains on this list always find a way to come back. Some notable names on our list include Frieza, Orochimaru, Elder Toguro, and other fan favorites. Who's your favorite villain that wouldn't stay down?  About Nerding with Friends — Beat by Mal (Twitter- @...

Summary My Hero Academia chapter 369 continues the final arc with an epic battle heating up between Deku and Shigaraki. In the first half of this episode we talk about the growth both our main hero and villain have showed since their first encounter in terms of character and power. We also discussed the epic cliffhanger we were left on before the transition to Spinner vs Shoji at the hospital. The...

Summary The time has come in My Hero Academia for Deku to use the 2nd user of One for All's quirk. With this quirk finally being revealed, Deku has unlocked all the quirks within One for All, but will it be enough to end TomurAFO once and for all? Check out our breakdown on the other One for All quirks here About Nerding with Friends — Beat by Mal (Twitter- @malphroditee904 & IG – @mallycyrus904)...

Summary Deadpool is coming to the MCU and he's bringing your favorite X-Men member Wolverine with him. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman recently announced the merc with the mouth and weapon x will be appearing together in Deadpool 3, the third installment in the Deadpool franchise. What does this mean for the future of Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men in the MCU? About Nerding with Friends — Beat...

Episode Summary Your favorite blerds are back with another new series! This go around we're looking at the rivals to our favorite shonen protagonists. In this first episode of the series, we take a look at Bakugo from My Hero Academia and Yuno from Black Clover. We covered these two with their rivals in an anime duo's video, but now we focus more on these young up-and-comers and the futures they h...

Summary Luffy and the Strawhat crew are leaving Wano with some new bounties! In this episode we're joined with Dequan Powell to go over them starting with the lowest and working our way up to the 3 Billion Berry Strawhat Fleet Commander himself.  Follow Dequan on Instagram at @quan601 and is event page, Trovay, at @trovayevents About Nerding with Friends — Beat by Mal (Twitter- @malphroditee9...

It's a tale of two cities; Marvel is giving us the best of times and DC is giving us the worst. While Disney announced the end of phase four of the MCU and presented their upcoming slate of properties for the subsequent two phases and San Diego Comic-Con, the HBO Max/Discovery merger couldn't seem to be going any worse.  About Nerding with Friends — Beat by Mal (Twitter- @malphroditee904 &amp...

Shonen Jump takes breaks; we don't (yeah we do). No manga this week gives us a chance to discuss the latest chapters of some of our favorite stories; One Piece Chapter 1056, Black Clover Chapter 333, and My Hero Academia Chapter 362.  About Nerding with Friends — Beat by Mal (Twitter- @malphroditee904 & IG – @mallycyrus904) Follow C.Ro$$ on Twitter and IG at @c_ross321 and Codename: Comet...

Episode Summary Black Clover is back! After a long hiatus, the Black Clover is returning this week for what mangaka Yuki Tabata called its final arc. In celebration of a pod favorite coming to an end, we got together to talk about everything we want to see in these final chapters. Topics include the cliffhanger we were left on, Yuno's future with the Spade Kingdom, and the other races we've yet to...

Summary With the unfortunate passing of mangaka Kuzuki Takashi, now is a better time as any to discuss his most popular work: Yu-Gi-Oh! Yu-Gi-Oh! is not only a great manga and anime but also one of the best trading card games to ever exist. In this episode, newcomer and long-time dueler Justin joined us to go over the show, the card game, and more. We went over the differences between the anime's...

Summary Gotham Knights joins a long list of Batman shows that don't center around the Dark Knight. The upcoming CW show features Bruce's newest adopted son, Turner Hayes, teaming up with the children of Batman's enemies after Turner is framed for Bruce's murder. We have a lot of complaints about the show based on the trailer and synopsis. This includes dragging two underutilized Robins and some ve...

Summary Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness and What If were two Marvel properties that gave us deep dives into the multiverse. With both of these now streaming on Disney+ we thought it was time to review the Dr. Strange sequel, but with a twist. Rather than a standard review, we looked into different timelines, or universes depending on what explanation you follow, and see how things played out fo...

Summary With the return of Hunter x Hunter, we couldn't think of a better time to return to our anime duo series. Gon and Killua are the two Hunter x Hunter protagonists we spend the most time with and they arguably have the best friendship in anime. From their bright beginnings to them going their separate ways at the end of the anime, we cover their friendship from start to finish. We also took...

Summary Since debuting in summer of 1999, SpongeBob SquarePants quickly cemented himself as an icon. After decades of airing the hit show has spawned numerous movies, spin-offs, memes, theories, and other contributions to pop culture. SpongeBob SquarePants was a big part of our 90's Nickelodeon episode, so we had to bring SpongeBob fan and the host of Friends in High Places Nicole back for this on...

Summary We all know characters that never lived up to the hype. Anime characters disrespected by their writers isn't anything new. Foreshadowing and hidden potential had you waiting for them to break out, but it just never happened. And why? Because the writer said so, that's why. The characters we discussed in this episode have every reason to be great, but for one reason or another, their storie...

Episode Summary *spoiler warning* The Black Clover manga is on break until at least August and it left us on a cliff hanger involving Wizard King Julius Novachrono. Before we get into the Wizard King reveal, we start this episode with more reveals. Yuno's mom is alive and he is presented with the opportunity to lead the Spade Kingdom. Meanwhile, Asta and Liebe discuss avenging their mother and are...

One Piece Theories Summary One Piece is one of the longest-running shonen manga.  And with that longevity comes a lot of unanswered questions flooded throughout the community. Recent chapters revealed a popular theory revolving around Luffy and his devil fruit, so in honor of that, it's time for our first One Piece episode. In this one, we talked about some other popular theories including those a...

Episode Summary Atlanta, FX's smash hit is back with season 3 right as we wrap up season 4 of the podcast. Atlanta fan and friend of the podcast Nicole joined us to talk about the show and talk about her podcast, Friends in High Places , a show where universal topics meet conversational love. In this episode we discussed seasons 1 and 2 of Atlanta including our favorite characters, episodes, and r...

Episode Summary It's a great time to be a manga reader! Shonen Jump has released some pure bangers lately, but we're here to talk about One Piece and My Hero Academia. Both stories are heating up as the end of the Wano Arc and the end of the My Hero Academia manga are slowly approaching. In this episode, we have our very first discussion of One Piece and the huge reveal of Luffy's devil fruit and...

Episode Summary It's been a while since season 2 , but The Boys are back! The Boys Presents: Diabolical is a short anthology series of eight, quarter-hour episodes based on the world of The Boys. Not quite season 3, but Diabolical does give us all the gore, guts, and great storytelling from not only the show but the comics as well. In this episode, we ranked and reviewed season one of The Boys Pre...

Episode Summary Every month is Black History Month! February was a busy month for us, but we're back! Even though there wasn't a lot of time to record we still managed to get some content out. If you follow us on Instagram, you might've noticed we celebrated Black History Month by posting a fictional black character every day of the month. We broke down black characters from anime, comics, cartoon...

Episode Summary The DCEU and the MCU have multiverse fever! Long hinted at in both franchises, the multiverse is getting explored in 2022. Marvel Cinematic Movies like Avengers: Endgame and Spider: No Way Home just scratched the surface of the multiverse. This year, Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness will dive deeper into different worlds. Likewise, The DC Extended Universe releases its live-action...

Episode Summary Naruto's Hiruzen Sarutobi has many titles. The Third Hokage, The Professor, The God of Shinobi. These titles glorify this character, but is he really more of a villain? In this episode, we're joined by first-time guest and long-time anime-watcher Dequan Powell (Twitter - @ObiQuanKenobi, IG - @quan601) as we debate on whether or not Hiruzen Sarutobi is a trash character. Dequan defe...

Spider-Man: No Way Home Review (feat. Gareth) Episode Summary Spider-Man: No Way Home is easily one of the best Spider-Man movies . The multiverse event was a film nearly 20 years in the making and fueled nostalgia for the previous franchises. The Spider-Man "Home" trilogy goes off on a high note by including not only the live-action villains from the Sony-only movies, but we get Tobey Maguire and...