Audio EXP: #187 – The best anime of the year and racists

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for 4th March, 2023 so happy GM’s Day. The episode title is “The best anime of the year and racists”.

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #187]

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Of Gods and Gamemasters is in the Spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.

In a way, this podcast is not starting with an RPG story despite traditionally being roleplaying game focused. But not really, as it’s the start of the month – and can you believe it’s March already – which means a new RPG Publisher Spotlight.

As you’ve just heard, Of Gods and Gamemasters won for this month, so I better hustle and get in touch.

Who are the candidates for April? Glad you asked. Here they are;

• Raakill Press
• High Level Games
• DeepDark Designs
• M.T. Black Games
• Spectrum Games

You know the drill, podcast Patrons can vote for which creator, writer, designer, illustrator, curator or RPG community contributor gets some extra publicity.

Let’s now dig into anime and the claim of the year’s best anime. I’m talking about the Crunchyroll Anime Awards for 2023.

Anime is booming, for the first time, Crunchyroll streamed the awards from Toyko, and a staggering number of people cast votes. 18 million. If you started counting to 18 million, doing a number every second and never stopping, you’d finish counting in 30 weeks.

In 30 weeks, it’ll be the end of September, and so I think it’s safe to say these Crunchyroll Awards have import. But it wasn’t a Crunchyroll series that won.

I won’t go through all the winners; you can find that on the blog via the show note transcript link, but here are the highlights.

• Anime of the Year – Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
• Best Action – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc
• Best Animation – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc
• Best Comedy – SPY x FAMILY 
• Best Drama – Attack on Titan Final Season Part 2
• Best Fantasy – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc
• Best Film – JUJUTSU KAISEN 0
• Best New Series – SPY x FAMILY
• Best Romance – Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -Ultra Romantic-

So, an American franchise spawned from Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop RPG won. You can find it on Netflix.

I think Crunchyroll are okay with that; they just want people to remain anime hot. As the FT pointed out a few weeks ago, games, music and pictures now make up nearly 50% of Sony’s money. Cameras and image solutions are about a fifth, with tech and other entertainment offerings another fifth. The rest, nearly, goes to finance deals such as paying your TV off in instalments. 

That seems to align with the Cyberpunk future. Technology is everywhere, and you might loan it to keep your head above water so you can work and hide from reality in entertainment.

On that note, I updated Geek Native’s AI content policy. I was inspired to do so by Paizo banning AI art in their books.

Geek Native’s policy covers all AI content creation. I think that’s the right approach because surely generative AIs are as much a threat to illustrators as they are writers. Just a few weeks ago, Business Insider reported that hundreds of books on Amazon have ChatGPT listed as either author or co-author. Other sites have talked about a flood of AI content.

The Geek Native approach means I declare the use of tools like Grammarly, which I use for spellchecking and writing clarity. Yeah, I know, laugh, but I do try and spell check.

I also use AI art to complement stories, but only when I’ve not got commission material or the story does not come with a fair use image. The update clarifies that the site does not try and sell AI back to you.

I get flack on this, so I’ll keep a watch.

Let’s stick with ethics for a while and cover that newspapers and publishers have fired Scott Adams. I remember Dilbert fondly, the comic strip about a computer programmer surrounded by HR and corporate nonsense.

I’ve not touched it for years, ever since Adams took his political views loudly to the right of American politics. I’m a European; even American Democrats look right of centre to me, so you can imagine how weird the American right looks.

However, it took a whole rant on video just this week for the Adams to go too far. I picked up the story on Geek Native because one of the publishers to cut ties with him was Andrews McMeel.

Andrews McMeel publish Zweihander, although Daniel Fox left recently, and Neverland and Oz.

However, Andrews McMeel changed their minds on Mother Lands and won’t publish that. They’re clearly finding it hard to carve out market share from D&D, but that’s a challenge all RPG publishers have faced since day dot.

I wonder how Marvel will do. They tried before, but now they have Disney money.

That feels like a good point to plug an indie RPG, right? Lovecrafted Lifeguards is a game by Wage Mage, and there’s a free sneak peek on DriveThruRPG.

Yes, there are girls in swimsuits, but they’re armed with blades and fighting off water monsters to protect the surf competition. The art is incredible.

We can even square the circle and find an RPG that’s trying to become not an anime but a short film.

The game in question is Era: The Empowered, and the publisher Shades of Vengeance is trying to crowdfund Occupied. In the short, two supers disagree on how to deal with the return of an Old God. That’s what happens in the Era: The Empowered setting, when the Old Gods return to Earth they’re far more powerful than the supers.

The Kickstarter is very nearly there and part of a festival on the platform.

Now, let’s outro in the usual way and with two bundles. The two in question are on the Bundle of Holding and there’s a double feature for Advanced Fighting Fantasy and a flash sale, with days left, for the 5e adventure collection War of the Burning Sky.

Let’s finish there; if supers can’t save you from old gods, maybe lifeguards can, so keep safe.