Click Here to send in your random question to have a chance to win!
Embark on a comedic yet insightful journey through a universe where pizza franchises and Canadian geese collide with anime critiques and workplace shenanigans. This week's episode is a rollercoaster ride of laughter, from the outlandish Karlverse conspiracy to the meticulous dissection of My Hero Academia's storytelling mechanics. We traverse a landscape peppered with Magic: The Gathering references, role-playing game quandaries, and the eternal debate over sky-falling tacos versus embodying waffle fries.
Unpack the complexities of real-world issues like discrimination in the workplace and the role of uniforms in branding and sanitation, balanced with lighter musings on the My Hero Academia universe. Witness our passionate debates over character development, plot consistency, and the myriad ways anime can both delight and perplex its viewers. We're not afraid to call out the absurdity of villainous schemes or question the logic behind a hero's revival method. It's a candid discussion that anime enthusiasts and critics alike won't want to miss.
As we navigate content planning and share unexpected insights, this episode promises a mix of humor, heated debate, and the occasional whimsical tangent. So buckle up for a thought-provoking session where we question the legs we walk on, both figuratively and literally, in the ever-entertaining realm of our weekly podcast.
Follow all things Richard and Karl, and check out "The Minuet of Sorcery"
https://linktr.ee/rajkevis
Click Here to send in your random question to have a chance to win!
Embark on a comedic yet insightful journey through a universe where pizza franchises and Canadian geese collide with anime critiques and workplace shenanigans. This week's episode is a rollercoaster ride of laughter, from the outlandish Karlverse conspiracy to the meticulous dissection of My Hero Academia's storytelling mechanics. We traverse a landscape peppered with Magic: The Gathering references, role-playing game quandaries, and the eternal debate over sky-falling tacos versus embodying waffle fries.
Unpack the complexities of real-world issues like discrimination in the workplace and the role of uniforms in branding and sanitation, balanced with lighter musings on the My Hero Academia universe. Witness our passionate debates over character development, plot consistency, and the myriad ways anime can both delight and perplex its viewers. We're not afraid to call out the absurdity of villainous schemes or question the logic behind a hero's revival method. It's a candid discussion that anime enthusiasts and critics alike won't want to miss.
As we navigate content planning and share unexpected insights, this episode promises a mix of humor, heated debate, and the occasional whimsical tangent. So buckle up for a thought-provoking session where we question the legs we walk on, both figuratively and literally, in the ever-entertaining realm of our weekly podcast.
Follow all things Richard and Karl, and check out "The Minuet of Sorcery"
https://linktr.ee/rajkevis
with a k I'm richard and I am, Karl the, the sole sponsor of this, this podcast, I guess I mean I got a tim hortons gift card the other day. I don't know if that counts as a sponsorship, but I appreciate it okay, actually I am I the only uh patron of this, of this podcast I've never not.
Karl:oh well, then I don't know who the other ones are, but it's not just you. Yeah, okay, okay, that's good. But with that, as we head into various topics, possibly nerdy, sometimes barbecue, for some reason.
Karl:But before that let's go into what is new in the Karlverse?
Richard:Okay, I got to preface that this is only a theory. Do not take what I say as fact.
Karl:Feels correct. Disclaimer the views held by Karl on Richard and Karl present are his own and Richard is not liable for any views held by Karl, nor is Karl liable for any views held by. Richard, nor are any views held by us considered valid in any deep, meaningful way. If you believe that our views are important, get yourself checked.
Richard:Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Karl:Exactly. Like I got like a full essay back about the white cards you missed for reanimator decks. But please continue.
Richard:Okay, anyways, actually as a side note, I know I said I wasn't going to talk about magic cards, but uh, sun titan that was.
Karl:that's actually a really good one that I did miss so we're at one minute and 45 seconds, and that's how long it took you to break that oath, but please continue. Actually no, I need a pause. That would not have been enough time to correctly heat a pizza pocket.
Richard:No, it would not have, that's true. So anyone heating pizza pockets has probably missed the oath breaking of this paladin.
Karl:Although, for the record, if anyone's first reaction when putting on our podcast is oh, they ramble for a bit at the start, so I'm going to make some pizza pockets. Good job.
Richard:Okay, so the theory goes like this my bosses T and J.
Karl:Wait, is that actually true?
Richard:That my boss's name start with T and J. Yes, and J's wife wife also starts. Her name also starts with j so just like this out there also names start with j is that why it's called this? No, no, it that's uh.
Karl:The father of t is also a tj, because the t is a tj that's less fun than t and j creating tJ's pizza because, like I don't know, somehow that feels like that extra layer of mystique that is completely unnecessary, like if McDonald's was forged by a guy named. Mick and a guy named Donald.
Richard:I was trying to not so subtly redact some information, but you know, I guess I've already already doxed myself on this podcast.
Karl:A lot of pizza names have T and J as letters in them, so I hope, like people assume you work at like a Taringeros or something Tangeros.
Richard:Anyways, oh, tangeros pizza, right, where you can get a hole in one, sounds like a market pizza, anyways. So the theory is that T andnj? Uh were contract killers, right, and uh, they opened the, the pizza franchise, to uh launder their, uh, their contract killer money. Uh, don't, I don't support embezzlement and I don't know that this would actually work in a modern era, because, because the franchise has been around for like 35 years.
Karl:But so you know, when we talked a couple weeks, it wasn't last week's episode. We were talking about the hidden assassin trope. That is all. Please continue anyways.
Richard:Um, so they they opened a pizza place to to launder their contract killer money and then also, besides laundering the money, it gives like income security if anything happens to them on the job. Uh and uh. Then they uh to help the business seem more legitimate. They got some franchisees to make it seem like it was actually a bigger business. But, as I've mentioned before, our franchise fees are 2% of your net sales. So it's like, aside from franchises that have zero franchise fees, like apparently Red Swan Pizza, spit on their grave, I mean pause for the spit on their grave.
Karl:So picture in your mind's eye something for me. So picture a Canadian goose made of slices of pizza, where the wing feathers are pizzas. Now tell me, canadian goose pizza isn't a majestic logo.
Richard:That is what I pictured when you said Red.
Karl:Swan Pizza.
Richard:No, Red Swan Pizza is like an origami swan Boo. Boo your paper would be all greasy.
Karl:For pizza grease, you could origami it.
Richard:I was going to say it's appropriate because their pizza tastes like paper, but that's probably not true. I'm probably just being mean for no reason.
Karl:I mean, could you imagine if you became mean, then I'd have to be nice to balance it out. So to any pizzerias listening we believe in yourselves and we're sure you're doing the best you can.
Richard:Well, I mean this isn't related, but Red Swan Pizza is. Apparently they cut corners on production or on construction. When they get their franchisees in, they're going to get sued and they don't have very high quality pizza. And, most importantly, if you don't open a Red Swan in a market with lots of East Indian people, they don't succeed.
Karl:What is with the scandalous Like dude, we're going to get sued by Red Swan Pizza because they're going to disregard our disclaimer that we don't have opinions and you shouldn't listen to us Maybe. There's so much layered implication, it's factual. We do this live. I don't edit these.
Richard:I'm just saying.
Karl:We're going to get assassinated and all that's going to be left next to our graves is a greasy folded origami swan. Our viewers, our five live viewers right now, who tuned in for the first six minutes of this, are the only people who are going to have any clue as to why we're dead.
Richard:But our franchises are easy to open. Definitely, in the first few franchises the licensing corporation would finance people to get in and we have really low franchise fees.
Karl:And assassins. I believe the assassin part was the interesting part, not the just shitting on a different pizzeria.
Richard:It's all part of covering up the fact that they're contract killers. Yes.
Karl:But as time went on, the side hustle pizza slowly overtook the main hustle um and uh they decided yeah, and they decided to go straight well uh, hmm, I was gonna make a joke about a straight man walks into the bar and then, after a bunch of fruity cocktails, he comes out that's funny.
Richard:I shouldn't laugh, it's, you know, but it is the pun that was.
Karl:That was a good pun, yes anyways just yes and then the episode just goes to silent. That was a good pun, yes, like we don't have someone to jump cut to credits for us or jump cut to the episode title Always Sunny in Philadelphia style, because then the episode would have been like Richard and Karl make a terrible pun.
Richard:But now, like I said, the franchise has been around for 35 years.
Karl:Like I said, the franchise has been around for 35 years and it seems, as of late, that my boss in particular has decided to double down on ensuring that the franchise is actually more sustainable. I really thought you were about to say assassinations and I'd have to give another disclaimer that we're basically fiction.
Richard:No, no, no, no. Actually further evidence to my theory. Um, my boss has uh been to japan, he's been to italy, he's been to hawaii, so what?
Karl:if arizona. I need to pause for a second. I have a counter conspiracy theory and we'll get back to yours. So you know what we're always asking like oh, I can't believe who is the one guy listening to our podcast in this obscure place. What if it's been your boss this whole time On his assassination missions.
Richard:Yeah, maybe I'm about to get assassinated, I don't know.
Karl:No, much better is like assassination targets are forced to listen to our podcast. As an interrogation tactic, please. An interrogation tactic, please. I'll tell you anything they missed. Sun Titan.
Richard:Please. Anyways, my boss is well-traveled all around the world and my assumption is that the so-called vacations were actually jobs. Yeah, but regardless. Now that the contract killer money is starting to dry up, he needs to focus on actually making the franchise sustainable, going forward.
Karl:What if the contract killing money is the same and it's actually just inflation in food prices? Killing money is the same and it's actually just inflation in food prices. Like it's just murders pay the same because it's been the same, like John Wick style. Three gold coins the entire time, and a gold coin just doesn't go as far anymore. Stupid and practical gold coins. Everyone uses digital. Now Stores don't even take an assassin's gold coin anymore. They're like what are you? You doing, grandpa? Do you not have tap and pay?
Karl:uh, oh man, that'd be fun anyways, um getting distracted with hypothetical practical jokes well, to be fair, though, I now have a head picture of people with their like red swan emblems, kung fu fighting a person on a rooftop who has like a shotgun cane, and then like they get caught and they all just put back on their pizza outfits to pretend that's what they were doing as a pizza deal, and then, as soon as people walk away, they go back to assassinating each other.
Richard:For a very long time my boss's slogan was peace, love and death to family pizza.
Karl:Which I mean. So I think we just made a better Sakamoto Days because, honestly, if it was about rival pizzerias and they all had highly trained assassin employees like we, didn't get that into Show and Jump. Oh crap, I just manifested it. It'll probably start airing next week.
Richard:Anyways. So they're on the straight and narrow, trying to keep up with inflation. Since the contract killing prices haven't met inflation, they've decided that we need to actually go out and maintain some level of standards so that all of our franchises are consistent and that then hopefully we can expand. I don't know if they really are intent on expanding to be a national food chain, but at the very least we want to expand out of Saskatchewan. More so Maybe maybe counterpoint.
Karl:So every person I've ever met since leaving saskatchewan I've said never go there whenever I've just messed your business growth up by just telling people physically not to go to saskatchewan so frequently oh, I mean I don't.
Richard:I don't think you're gonna mess up our business growth strategy, because there isn't really one.
Karl:Oh, it's exactly Boruto's. Why they can't mess up the plot of Boruto.
Richard:So all of that rambling is to say I'm currently staying in a fairly nice hotel at a small town where there was a TJ's Pizza that failed to meet our standards, which are pretty low.
Karl:I mean so. We joked a few times about sponsorship, but could you imagine if they sponsored us Literally? One of our quotes was TJ's Pizza. They failed their standards and those are pretty low.
Richard:Well, I, I, before I came to the Yorkton is where I am Yep, we went and did a franchise compliance check in one of the other locations in our city. Basically, he was just laughing and smiling the whole time and he just passed them on everything except the doe guy wasn't wearing TJ's shirt and the owner got personally offended because he's like oh, that guy doesn't even speak English. He never comes up to the front. I'm not spending $45 to give him a shirt. What?
Karl:That got racist for no reason.
Richard:No he, he, I'm assuming he's from Jordan, yeah, uh, which is across the river from, uh, the Gaza Strip.
Karl:Oh, that seems like a lovely place to be, so, uh, Karl, going forward for the rest of this episode, we are not to discuss anything about or around the Gaza Strip ever on our podcast.
Richard:Please continue carefully, I'll make sure never to mention this owner that happens to be from a country remotely close to that area. Thank you, well, you can finish your story.
Karl:You just can't like get into politics because neither of us are educated or qualified enough to talk to length to that topic. And could you imagine, like what's new in my Hero Academia, and you get a concise breakdown of Middle East politics?
Richard:All I'm saying is that you say that sounded racist, but he probably actually is just helping people immigrate.
Karl:Counterpoint the reason it sounded racist I'm not saying it was, but I feel the need to justify this a bit is typically and I've worked in kitchens and things as well if you say I didn't get this guy X because he doesn't even speak English, that doesn't bode well for the person who said the sentence because he doesn't even speak English. That has a lot of weighted implications yeah that's true, especially like kitchens have a lot of temporary or permanent foreign labor.
Karl:I've met a lot of lovely people from the Philippines this way, but to say like, oh, we're not going to have them interact with customers and that's the first reason why.
Richard:They didn't give them a uniform.
Karl:Is not great, because that's still. It's like joyous discrimination, like no one wants really to wear a uniform, but it is still like it's a slippery slope, is all I'm saying? Like that's a red flag sentence, like I'd put like one check mark on it and when it gets to three I'd have to, like actually investigate. That's all I'm saying well anyway.
Richard:um, that was pretty much the only thing he failed on his compliance check and my boss was like well, you know, I had to fail you on something.
Karl:So I have professors like that. I had a professor once say, and I quote I gave you 89% because I really want to see what you do for the extra 1%, but I also believe just pointing this out there for uniforms. So uniforms are interesting and I'm going to go on like a kitchen deep dive because you prompted me and to our listeners we'll get to a nerdy topic I promise so uniforms.
Karl:The idea is that if your uniforms are fresh and laundry dirt out of place, they're clean, they're sanitary and a well-designed uniform will show up any stains and things easily, so you know to clean it. I firmly believe it should be provincial law that all food service establishes have on-site washers and dryers so you can just take your uniform off at the end of your shift, throw it in the washer and the opening person just throws it all in the dryer because then it's clean. But when people wear their uniform to work, you've defeated the point of the uniform for food safety reasons. So if you're wearing it just because of branding and public image, then I think it's justifiable to have the employees that people don't see not wear the uniform because you're doing it for aesthetics. If you're doing it for sanitation, it should be laundered by the store because that will ensure it, not because people shouldn't have to do their own laundry. But people won't do their own laundry, that's true.
Karl:The only way you could assure a clean uniform every day is if you have a nice stocked rotation of them, and one place I worked had dry cleaners do this for like aprons and linens and things and suspiciously not uniforms. It's like we used to do it for uniforms, but now it's your problem but your food's getting potentially contaminated because of this. It's just the state of affairs. So, in conclusion, if you tell people you need a uniform and you need to keep it clean, just hook up a washer and dryer, if you can especially when building new stores Either provide it and if your argument is well, they'll bring it from home then you kind of undercut your argument that they should have to wear a uniform. Hmm.
Karl:Anywho, that was an unrelated TED Talk. I am sure was worth the three, four minutes I used on that. I have to TLDR it. Tldr Richard believes in uniforms. Richard believes if you're told to keep your uniform clean, you should be given the tools and equipment to do so. Fair enough Because, quite frankly, people wear Crocs in kitchens which cause Croc-shaped holes in your foot from hot water. Yeah, I mean of holes to be above boiling grease and I'm like but you'll die. I'm not being mean about it, you'll legitimately die.
Richard:Anyway, the whole point of the story is that what's new with me? I'm currently away from home helping some new franchise owners try and break into the market, because the first two owners of this store just had a hard time of it and started doing weird non-franchise approved things.
Karl:Very fair, Although I do find it fascinating to be like that. You're like the national exploration guy, which is actually like it's interesting career growth. You got that. You get to go on work trips because you just don't think about pizzeria work trips and I'm just happy for you for that. That sounds lovely.
Richard:I mean it is lovely, especially an opportunity like this, where my store is I believe it is the busiest pizza store in Saskatchewan um, like the whole, the whole province, I mean that's that might be a low bar because you know, we only have a million people and we have so much free like, yeah, but earth's pretty infinite right.
Karl:So being the best at anything is an achievement.
Richard:Like if someone rolled up to me and they're like I'm the best dual masters player in alberta, I'd be like good job, dude uh, and but so then I come to this, this location, um and uh, they, in a month they have the sales that we have in a weekend. Um, it's like, yeah, I'm here to work and I'm being genuinely helpful. It's like I'm cleaning up their POS system.
Karl:For the record, POS means point of sales, not piece of shit. So you did not say I went there to clean up their pieces of shit.
Richard:Their piece of shit system, yeah, which is so savage.
Karl:You're like but it is a piece of shit system. Yeah, which is so savage? You're like but it is a piece of shit system and you know it. Unless they want to sponsor us.
Richard:I don't know where the other franchisees get these menu files from and maybe it's just like a personal, like pet peeve. But, like you can, like the individual franchisees can make sure that their buttons are all the same size and they can make sure that they're lined up neatly in a grid. Uh, when I get here, the buttons are just all over the place, they're random sizes, they're overlapping. Uh, they have like a ticket display on one one page and then the next page is like oh yeah, you don't need a ticket display on the sides and past this page, that's just for for pizzas. It's like, well, why? Every other store I've been to has a ticket display on every single page that you can go through the menu like what so just putting?
Richard:this out there I fully relate.
Karl:I'm an editor. The things I see that break my soul. From highly trained people that I'm like okay, why would you? So? It was a slide, right? And it was a display with different numbers and how they represent GPs, right, they use dashes to separate instead of dots. You don't think that's a big deal? Did you know minus five and five are very different numbers? So if you put a dash, separating all your numbers, they turn into negative numbers and look terrible.
Karl:Not as bad as the thing I saw where it was a sentence that managed to have three em dashes in it. Anywho, I'm just saying I relate. I also do web page layouts and displays, so I can fully be like why would you do this? I don't understand. It'll be like we have a quick reading guide for students and it'll clock in at 3,000 words. I'm like can you make it 30? I've literally told people make this announcement the size of a tweet or they will not read it.
Karl:I literally launched the same announcement on two different pages, one original and one tweet size, to see the engagement rate. And it was what? 50 to nearly 100 times more engagement for the shorter one because they didn't click the expand text button because that's another button to click. No one's got time for that. If you go to read a website and you have to click the see more button, you're gone GG.
Richard:Game over. But so I mean, at the end of the day, I am here, I am doing work, but the level of intensity is so much lower it's almost like a vacation and the the franchise development guy.
Karl:He knows I need a hotel with a swimming pool that's great, the idea that your contract can have demands, and it just fills me with joy, like this continental breakfast only has brand muffins. You are aware that Karl is coming right like do you really want to anger the Karl heads with their Karl face tramp stamps?
Richard:uh, um, I do have some bad news for the, the person with the Karl tattoo. You found them. They're real, no, no, I mean, if they are real, I have bad news, and that is I have a small problem where, if I have too much neck hair, beard hair, my chin gets like super itchy.
Karl:Where are you going with this, because I really thought you were about to like surprise an engagement announcement and there's a hyphen in your name now, or something. I have a bad news for the Karl heads out there Are you dying?
Richard:No, when I'm at home it doesn't get itchy. When I go to work it gets itchy, and sometimes I forget to shave. So one day it was really itchy and so I had to go home and shave and I was in a hurry and I screwed up my mustache and I had to shave off my mustache so I might not match their Karl tattoo at the moment.
Karl:So, first off, there's several implications that happen here that are beautiful Implication, the first, that you took a shaving break in the middle of your shift. Implication the second, that you took a shaving break in the middle of your shift. Implication. The second that at some point since I've seen you last, you developed an iconic mustache.
Karl:Implication the third whoever got this Karl tattoo was able to find you mustache ready and get the Karl tattoo with a mustache so that like it's not even abstract, like it is your face face on, or like if it's not even abstract, like it is your face face on, or like if it's a side profile, it's not like a mario mustache, like you're not using it to divide the pixels. And then the fourth thing is and then this mustache will never return. So their tattoo is now forever inaccurate because you did enough damage shaving it. The mustache is gone forever. These are the implications of what you have told me just now, and it is delightful.
Karl:Also the implication that if you didn't shave, you would look like a tattoo indefinitely, because your image is that consistent.
Richard:Well, you're right, I'm really worried about whoever got the Karl tattoo. I mean, if it's just my name, I guess that's fine.
Karl:No, it's not. It is definitely your head on a dragon body. If it's just my name, I guess that's fine. No, it's not. It is definitely your head on a dragon body.
Richard:Then it's just they might meet me and realize that I don't match their tattoo, and maybe they won't even recognize, because they're looking for the dragon body.
Karl:So that's another implication that there's two of them and they're using their tattoo like prison break style as a roadmap to find you. Their tattoo like prison break style as a roadmap to find you.
Richard:It's just full of hints from our podcast for them to piece together to try and dox you, done up as a series of elaborate tattoos like one of the tattoos is just kirby in smash mode because they think that might be relevant to the hunt well, one one last uh thing before, because I mean, really what's new with me is I'm on a work trip. But one last thing.
Karl:I have to give a mini tangent first. Okay, so I was in one of my second year classes and it was professional writing and the unit was a chapter in a book on the seven C's of conciseness and it was about 6,000 words about writing concisely.
Karl:I'm sorry but if you're using seven C's of conciseness, you've missed the point. The point is be concise. How does the book on conciseness have seven bullet points on it? So it's like to be concise. I'm in a hotel, perfect. That is a beautifully concise four word sentence. But if you wanted the seven C's of conciseness to explain be concise. I'm in a hotel, perfect, that is a beautifully concise four-word sentence. But if you wanted the seven C's of conciseness to explain why your story is more concise, you've missed the point. I'm permanently scarred by that chapter on conciseness being 6,000 words.
Richard:I mean okay. So firstly, the reason I'm in the hotel is one of those C's being contract killing, yeah, Wait. Yeah, I like how I wanted myself.
Karl:yes, I will always yes add. Karl. Wait, what did you just say? Nope Committing.
Karl:And also, as you said, that the light on my garden went out.
Richard:Oh, so you're like contract killing, and then just the lights went out in my room oh I'm good I turned the other light on, but it was very dramatic and but okay, so the one last thing before I'm going to ask what's new with you? Uh, and it's not actually anything new with me, it's just, it's a joke. Um that I believe I am the original creator.
Karl:Okay. Note the bodily joke about to be told by Karl may be offensive to some viewers. Fear of discretion is always advised for this show.
Richard:Okay, how many Prison Break characters does it take to screw in a light bulb? How many, all of them, because there's so many twists.
Karl:So I feel like you've told me this joke before. I probably have, but I still love it.
Richard:It's one of my favorites. I may have even told it on the podcast, because we did that episode where we were talking about blonde jokes. We did, didn't we.
Karl:It's like when I was talking last week where I got a loot box of mystery food Our podcast is a loot box of topics.
Richard:Well, another deep well of interesting topics is what's new with you there, Richard?
Karl:Nothing.
Richard:Okay, no, I actually have a story.
Karl:I just kind of wanted to do the bit there, so it was. I've started going to like more club and campus events because I can, so it was a the creative writing clubs wrap up reading session if you could read whatever you wanted, and they were using up their club budget because it's just like you go there to read like a, like a library no, it's like you go out.
Karl:So the over the term you would go and do like little reading sprints with prompts and chat with friends and whatever right, and then at the end of the year you pick a thing or two that you wrote either in the club or anywhere, and you read it to the room. Ooh, like a poetry slam exactly, I should have just said poetry night, but I like didn't want to dismiss nonfiction and creative fiction as genres Anywho. But yes, if you're picturing a poetry night in your brain, you're probably right. Okay.
Karl:So we have the table set up, chair set up. We go to this thing Club budgets reset between semesters and it's one of those government budget things where you have to spend it all because they reset you back up to the starting amount. It's not that they give you extra money, so there's no reason to save it, you know to stop clubs from hoarding money.
Karl:So they got some prizes for this thing and it was anyone who reads a piece gets entered into a raffle to win a prize. Okay, and there's some pretty sick prizes in this thing, so I'm like, all right. One of them was like a wireless sticker printer thing that, like your phone, just prints stickers. Cool, like I would use that just to make kobolds to put on a map. So I'm like ooh an e-reader.
Karl:Yeah, I'm down for this contest, also socialization. So I read a couple things. Some other classmates, one person who is in the club who wandered in from an accounting class, just read a paragraph from their accounting paper. Okay, so it's just accounting terms straight up being read to us and we're like looking around like.
Richard:I was going to say I understand why you were saying that we shouldn't be dismissive of nonfiction writing.
Karl:No, you should be on this one because we're looking around in this club being like creative nonfiction is a genre, like when I say something like my father died the way that he lived stupidly. It's a fact but it's fun. Yes, I calling that a fun fact. I'm a complex person with layers, like an onion, like a shrek same body type anywho. So we have this readings going, where I read my non-fiction piece about my father. Then I read the opening of chapter three of the Minuet of Sorcery, because I got really poetic with that, for no particular reason, because the character who can see colors is looking out and watching the color yellow, like anxiety spread through as people open news.
Karl:It was a good scene, I like my own work, anywho.
Karl:So everyone does their reading and we're watching the prize getting drawn and me and my friend Aaron at the table are like there's a 100% chance the guy who just read a chunk of nonfiction thing out of a textbook wins. Okay, because that's the only way this can happen. So, of course, when his name gets drawn for the nice new e-reader, no one's even like everyone wants to almost be upset, right, because this person very clearly saw a poster that said read something, get prize. We've never seen this man before in our lives Rolls up, reads literally something gets prize. But that is the only way it could have happened, because the most powerful force in the universe is irony and honestly.
Karl:I just set up my life in such a way that my success is the most ironic thing that can happen and that's how I make it big Right, and I've done a good job doing that. By being the doofy Richard people have come to know and love, because Richard being a millionaire would just be deeply ironic. Huh, you know, it's true. Like I'm the kind of person who'd like buy a private jet and there just would be nowhere to park it it, so it just runs out of fuel and falls in the ocean. Like deep irony is fine. Like I'd become a best-selling author for non-fiction because of a thing I submitted on a whim and no one would ever read my fantasy novel I beloved. I'd get brought on board to write the storyboard for a bleach sorry, a Boruto gachapon game. Ooh, that's what would happen to me is I'd have to write Boruto as directed by a focus group.
Richard:Ooh, I mean, that sounds like it could be fun.
Karl:That's the thing is because I'm so whimsical, ironic things still amuse me deeply. It's kind of like all right, let's ironically watch a bunch of bad anime. I'll be like I'll get the nachos. And then I'd load them up with cheese, because it's ironic, because I'm lactose intolerant.
Richard:So this person, you seriously had never met them before or never seen them before.
Karl:No, but they recognize me like everybody does, so you know I should probably stop putting myself on the posters. But yeah, it seems like a random person walked into our wrap-up party, read a piece of accounting terms, got an e-reader, left and we'll probably never see him again and keep in mind that the entire room sat there for a solid five minutes as he read accounting terms to a bunch of creative writing students and photography students and architect students and things. Oh no, you went completely silent. Either it's an audio problem, which is extremely likely, or my story was so shocking extremely likely.
Richard:Well, my story was so shocking. No, no, I asked if the guy made out with your e-reader like a bandit and then somehow I got kicked from the call, even though it said I was still in the call.
Karl:Well, the TLDR is yes, they have successfully acquired an e-reader like a bandit and we all thought it was really funny because that's the only way it could have went. If there's one thing a cackle of writers would understand, it's irony. So that was like. What was new with me is I went to a couple poetry nights, a couple of my friends got published in some things and I ate hella blocks of cheese.
Richard:You ate tons of cheese Using your lactaid.
Karl:Yeah, I was prepared, I had medication. So the thing is it's an hour and a half bus ride to get to my campus and it costs about $4 in bus fare, because big cities hate poor people.
Richard:Okay.
Karl:And I need to make sure, if I'm going to an event, I at least consume the $8 worth of transport cost.
Richard:Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
Karl:Because at these events there's always like oh, we need someone to finish this. I'm like finish these mini muffins and just throw the mini muffins in my mouth, because muffins the size of Timbits are the best thing ever but somehow weirdly rare, like they're the most obvious invention known to man that no one has.
Richard:Hmm, well, my girlfriend doesn't have like a mini muffin tray. Well, my girlfriend doesn't have a mini muffin tray, but maybe if I got her one she would make you some mini muffins.
Karl:Yes.
Richard:I mean, that would be so nice, thank you. Wait, do you have a mini muffin tray?
Karl:Of course I do Well, so provided your oven isn't full of pizza boxes, maybe we could convince her to bake you some for your birthday. You know the joke, there being that I'm still a trained chef and a decently trained baker, and you should be asking me to make you things.
Richard:I mean, I know it's like a month away, but like we're going to be there for your birthday.
Karl:So you know, aside from going to Marineland, oh yeah, I haven't sent you my school schedule yet. I should do that Long story short. I don't have class on Friday. I should do that Long story short. I don't have class on Friday, saturday, sundays or Mondays, and the classes I do have are like a three-hour block in a day. That can definitely be planned around, because it's like, oh, if I have an 8 to 11 class the day Karl shows up, Karl shows up at noon. Problem solved Problem solved Heck yeah, as I just like.
Richard:I'll just publicly post in the stream my school schedule. Sure. So, someone could kidnap me to figure out how to get a Karl tattoo.
Karl:Well, I mean, they're going to follow the map from their friend's Karl tattoo. So it was deeply ironic, right? The idea that our fans find me to get information about you, richard, right, yeah, Richard and Karl present deep space and dragons. Yeah, tell me about Karl. Do you want my autograph? No, I tuned out the Richard parts. Those are the bad parts of the show.
Richard:I have, I mean pictures and information to me on the internet at least I believe are surprisingly scarce. I think the most recent picture of me is from like 15 years ago, uh, where I I don't remember why, but I put on a purple, leopard print uh tank top and I was being carried around by uh, my large uh brother-in-law. Someone took it. Someone took a picture and posted it on Facebook.
Karl:See, the idea would be that someone would ask me about you and not recognize me, and I'd be standing under a poster of myself. They'd go up to everyone, like do you know who Karl is? Do you know who Karl is? I'm like do you know who I am? No, I'm Richard. I handed you my business card.
Richard:Why would they be wandering around Ontario looking for me?
Karl:Because they know you're visiting for Richard Fest, right right right and their plan is to try and intercept you specifically at my school Right.
Richard:On the off chance you stop there. Well, I mean, there's a pretty good chance that we'll be picking you up from your class that day.
Karl:Oh man, there's a pretty good chance that we'll be picking you up from your class that day. So, oh man, actually it'd be really funny if you and, like you, your girlfriend, like an acting troop, just showed up in suits and escorted me out.
Karl:The best jokes are the ones where I would just never explain it.
Richard:But I mean now that we've talked about our own travel agendas.
Karl:For a solid 38 minutes. Remember when we used to try to fit our entire topic in 38 minutes.
Richard:Well, I mean, you said that you were going to try and bring me up to speed on my Hero Academia, so I figured we would make it a speedrun challenge.
Karl:Excellent, okay, so Spoilers for my Hero Academia. So I figured we would make it a speed run challenge. Excellent, okay, so Spoilers for my Hero Academia, or Boku no Hero, if you're a weeb. So first off, the last chapter did three things to deeply damage me.
Richard:Okay, actually just one second here Boku no Hero Academia. Doesn't that roughly translate to oh boku no hero academia? Okay, because I'm pretty sure boku no hero, hero, hero just translates to like I am a hero yeah, I think it's like translates to my wait, my hero, academia, god damn it.
Karl:I was about to like use the words to translate to the thing I already knew all right, anyways, um. So I'm gonna literally start with the most recent chapter and then work our way backwards and forwards okay, okay so in the most recent chapter, three things happened that did immense amounts of spiritual damage to me. So first so actually, how far did you even get into my hero? Because I know, you know, the guy ain't here, in.
Richard:Huh, I just read the most recent chapter, perfect, because I was curious if he got his arms back.
Karl:So the first thing is, when Eraserhead said he's 31 years old, that deeply hurt me. Okay.
Karl:Me and you are older than Eraserhead and President Mike and have their exact personalities. Not really Okay, exact personalities not really like. Ironically, personality wise, you'd probably be closer to the bright outgoing one, but I'm also a bright outgoing one, so it doesn't really work doesn't really work that well at all no, I think panda would be closer to an eraser head anywho it's like him looking ragged, missing an eye, missing a leg, missing an arm, somehow able to move. Be like I'm 31 years old. I'm like, yeah, that sounds about right.
Karl:Second they ended last week with a cliffhanger that he lost both his arms. To immediately resolve it.
Richard:I kind of noticed. I was like, hmm, why, why did they bother then?
Karl:thank you, why did they bother? Indeed. And then, lastly, they're like they want to do, like the Marvel Endgame portal scene for some reason, but like none of these characters matter yeah, I didn't. Actually, I don't think I recognized any of the characters that came through the portal on the last page and the thing is, this is gonna sound really dumb, but you know how, in the breaker, a really good manga, manhwa anywho manhwa where like the rooftop sniper just shoots the super martial artist because he let his guard down. Well, let let her guard down Question.
Karl:If they're fighting a world-ending nuclear bomb threat, right. And he just emerged in his new form and the guy who cancels the bill just showed up, why is no one on a rooftop to just shoot him? Why has no one shot anybody with a gun? They have guns. There's a person like my quirk is my arms a sniper rifle, my cool, you know what sniper rifles are. And there's like one scene where they like deployed planes of weird laser guns. I'm like just shoot him, take away his superpowers and shoot him. I don't normally yell that in animes, but it's like his final forms gone. He's weak and frail, his powers are limited. What do we do? And I'm like you shoot him hmm, they're not trying to take him alive.
Richard:Clearly that ship sailed a while ago so I mean, you're, you're definitely in um, just let the series end mode, as as you've said on previous chapters or previous podcasts, I mean, but Just Shoot Him. That would be like. I think that would be a terribly anticlimactic ending.
Karl:Let me like subtract a bit from the Just Shoot Him. What I mean by that. So I don't actually mean literally, although it would be really funny. What I mean by that is so they had a bunch of characters fight him in a sky arena. Then they had him split into two villains where Robo all might fought Slowly until he turned into a baby all for one. Then we had Deku throw his superpower at Shigaraki to hit him with a plot twist that wasn't shocking at all, that we all figured out already.
Karl:To then hit him with another plot twist To lose his powers in his arms, to get his arms back up, to then fight the ghost of the original person who possessed them in the body. And I'm like guys, this put Frieza to bed a while ago for time wasting, like they've went full Sukuna here. And it's less that I want someone just to shoot him. It's that you already did every possible dramatic end-of-the-fight thing you could think of, like I'm going to heroically give up my superpowers to throw it at him, to weaken him. What could happen? That's left, that's cool. When he already blew off, punched him so hard, he blew off both his arms and just got his arms back. Is he going to do it again.
Richard:Wait, deku gave up his superpowers, because I literally only just read the last chapter.
Karl:So let's rewind to the start of my Hero before we deep dive into the ending. So my Hero starts with I want to be a hero. No, you can't.
Richard:Because, he has no quirk.
Karl:Weirdly fine with that. So my immediate thought, being a fan of the genre, was oh nice, he's going to become Batman. I'm just going to give you my broken-ass superpower. I'm like, well, that's lame but sure. And then they got a bit of my faith back when they're like you have rock relief problem. You have so much superpower, you explode when you use it.
Karl:And I'm like okay, okay. So it's literally you gave him too much power and now he's breaking his body and he actually gets to stay scarred because you don't have MacGuffin healing yet.
Richard:Right, yet Put a pin in that Operative work.
Karl:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm like okay, he's learning his classmates who have weird powers and they're doing different hero things along with their school things. Okay, I'm liking this mix. This is pretty good. You put academia in the title. There's some academia in here. Deku tries to fight with intelligence to make up for him not being able to use his power. Well, all right, so far so good.
Karl:They get jumped at a theme park and all Mike gets to be awesome and there's villains. And I'm like, okay, sure, and what is this weird genetic mutant thing? I'm like that's a good question, joe. Okay. And then they're like, all right, now we're going to speed runner along and have them get jumped at a different outdoor theme park. I'm like, wow, do they just not have security and love their children? Like they just got jumped at a theme park? Why did you guys go out into the woods unannounced when you got jumped by terrorists two weeks ago? Yeah, also, why is everyone so incompetent in this show? You have cell phones.
Richard:What do?
Karl:you mean, you just can't find each other Cell phones exist.
Richard:Okay, okay.
Karl:So sure. It's like and we captured Bakugou, all right. And it's like oh yeah, there's a big score. It's a festival in the middle there where they did their tuning exam stuff, which actually made sense in this contest.
Richard:Okay, but Bakugou, that's Sparky, Sparky, boom Boom man Exploding guy. Okay, I was thinking it was either Exploding man or Fire and Ice guy.
Karl:All right, so we'll go with Defective Zuko and Sparky Sparky Boom Boom man for the rest of this catch-up. Yeah, okay, so at this point in the show we have Sparky Sparky Boom Boom man, a literal bully. They took the trope too far. Honestly should be in jail for domestic abuse.
Karl:Deku who kind of sucks because you have a protagonist that reacts instead of acts. So kind of had a go-on problem, weirdly, where it's like they want him to be a pacifist but not really and his goal of being the best was vague and he's a dweeby nerd character who never does things intelligently. It's like I don't like that. I don't like when you tell me a character's smart and make them not be smart Anywho. So we have the Chunin exam about Zuko's angst and trying to win his honor back from his father or whatever the fuck. His plot arc was Best part of the show Because we hit that restrictions of like yeah, deku, if you use your explodey punches, your arms break and you have like three sport events to get to, so you have to actually like run a marathon and like rocket sled to victory and stuff right, right, and then he like concentrated his power into, like his fingers, so he could not break each finger one at a time.
Karl:Objectively sick, clever use of a power, honestly so instead of using it twice, he could use it 10 times because he had more limbs. Genius right, no notes right right so then we get to explodey. Boom, boom. Man wins the tuning exams. Is super pissed because Zuko took a dive okay cool, whatever.
Karl:So then we get Zuko gets kidnapped. Like, okay, this is gonna be cool because this is Zuko's reddit. Sorry, sparky, boom, boom is redemption arc right of. Hey, you're a dick, you've been a dick the whole time you've been captured. The villains are like you should join us because you're a dick. You've been a dick the whole time You've been captured by the villains. They're like you should join us because you're a dick. He's like, nah, fuck you. Okay, let's give him some characterization. You introduce 30 characters. You might as well flesh out two or three of them, it's fine. Right, right right.
Karl:So that's a fine plot arc. They're like all right, now we're just going to have gonna have all might, fight evil, all might in their big epic battle and then all might's gonna lose all the superpowers and it's gonna be jotaro versus dio. The worlding roll rolling. It's gonna be awesome. And I'm like seems like a little premature to just take all might out of the show, because the premise was he can change less and less training a disciple. And deku's been in school for two months now.
Karl:But sure, it was a sick scene, but it came too early, right, we'll get back to that later. And like Eraserhead had already been injured from his like literal first fight. So it's like, yeah, his power to negate some powers, but not all powers got limited because MacGuffin reasons, because if a character could just negate powers, then why would? And then like, okay, we'll do a little bit of school shenanigans and we'll have Deku fight the mob. I'm like, okay, I'll watch Deku fight the mob, sure. And then the people that for some reason are loyal to the serial killer kid who turns people to dust, who's just a dick to everybody, are like we're going to be found family and it's like that should be literally be impossible. But sure you know, because you know when people serve the clearly insane villain who'll just kill you and I'm like why would you do that?
Karl:right it is a weird trope, this guy. I hate everybody, my face itches and I'm incompetent and I'm like I have a squad now like why would you okay? Okay, so they kidnapped bakugo, they saved bakugo, didn't go anywhere kind of disappointed, really thought they'd go somewhere with that.
Richard:And he's fighting the mafia okay, so bakugou didn't get kidnapped again.
Karl:It's not bakugou's good everyone does their internships in their first year, which actually bugged me. There's another tuning exam in there, but we'll just ignore that one. Nothing interesting happened to the second tuning exam, okay okay, okay, because the first one's like this is our school tuning exam. The second one is this is so we can get college internships tuning exam, which leads to my recurring anime rant that every character should be five years older for any of these shows to make sense.
Karl:No one should ever give a provisional crime-fighting license to a 15-year-old.
Richard:Yeah.
Karl:Ever, for any reason Ever. Okay. I don't know if you should give a provisional crime fighting license to a guy whose hands are grenades, to a 21 year old with a criminology degree Like if they were in college I'd be allowing this, but they're in high school. Every person in this world is incompetent. Right.
Karl:The idea that you would let a high schooler tackle thugs on the street. And remember knives and guns exist in this universe, right, someone could just, at any point in any of this, shot Deku in the face. None of them have like bullet, resistant powers. Fair.
Karl:It just doesn't bug me as much, except when you're having a teenager tackle criminals in the street who could just stab him with a regular knife, and many villains do just use regular knives. One of the most dangerous villains has syringes and knives and that's it and they shapeshift, but that doesn't really do anything until it has to, and at this point my hero's actually been pretty solid. Deku fights the mob. They find the person with the MacGuffin healing power. I roll my eyes because I'm like wait, why would you not immediately use that on All Might and solve all of the show's problems immediately? Because it's inconsistently written how this power works.
Richard:Makes sense.
Karl:I rewind you until you explode, so I get to damage myself faster than you heal me, so I don't explode. I'm like your own logic made no sense. It's like you weren't quite going with a Deadpool thing of her giving you cancer from overhealing you. But it's kind of like that. But also time goes backwards. So Deku fights evil Edward Elric at 100% of his power. And that's where the writer realized he made a mistake. He gave Deku a cool fight scene at 100% of his power.
Karl:Now what does he do with Deku, with the rest of the show.
Karl:So they pull the thing from Rekua of the Flame of. You actually have seven other lame powers to unlock. We've never talked about Right and I'm like is this a retconcon, is this an ichigo? Is a quincy all along situation? Or are you really bad at foreshadowing? Because if you're going to give someone seven powers you have all might also have the seven powers?
Richard:yeah, all might's power.
Karl:That did just seem to be the whole patriotic super strength right and like and like if All Might because they made a quip earlier. It's like no one really knows what All Might's power is. If they showed that All Might had a bunch of different powers, this wouldn't have been an ass pull. But I legitimately think he used up his 100% Deku too early and had no idea what to do with Deku for the rest of the show.
Richard:Even though Deku's the main character.
Karl:Yeah, so Evil character. Yeah so evil. Edward elric is punched to death by deku for mutilating a child. Fair, then the obviously evil league of villains betray evil edward elric also fair. Why would you think the sociopath gang would help out your crime gang when they're just a bunch of sociopaths who've never accomplished anything? I don't know, but sure, at this point I'm actually on board, because then they do a culture festival where they put on a song and dance number to help the traumatized little girl be less traumatized, and then they fight a blogger, a blogger, the villain, gentleman Thief. The Gentleman Thief and his blogging assistant, hacker Girl, were literally planning to break into the UA thing and livestream it for clicks.
Richard:Wait, that was their villainous plan.
Karl:That's amazing. Don't pretend that that's not the most interesting motivation a character in the show has had.
Richard:I mean, it is an interesting motivation, but like that's hardly even evil.
Karl:But that's the thing. The problem is terrorists and things have been breaking in and they're worried that if he breaks in they'd have to shut down the event. So they literally had to fight this guy to stop him from getting to the school to the can, get stopped by the school security, because then they'd have to shut down the school festival for a security concern right see when your characters are 15.
Karl:Interesting motivation that's actually good stakes, right? A character who's in their first year of high school fighting a guy with rubber powers who's a blogger year of high school fighting a guy with rubber powers who's a blogger trying to whose biggest concerns they might ruin their dance number is actually good stakes for that level of a show. I mean, at this point he's already fought the mafia serial killers. A guy who licks swords, creepily people have been stabbed in the spine and apparently there's just clone mutant things. They never quite bother to explain.
Karl:But like this is like. I like. Like this better, I'm gonna be real. I enjoy their tuning exam stuff and their blogger wants to break into school stuff more. Then they go Great Ninja War, slash Quincy Invasioning on me for no reason, so they're like 12 villains. Then meet the actual villain army that has 50,000 villains for some reason and instead of doing what America would do and just bombing the villain complex with 50,000 villains in it, they like send in a bunch of heroes and the high school students With their provisional licenses because they needed extra manpower.
Richard:Don't send in a tank or something.
Karl:No, send in the guy who throws sticky purple balls at people. That's the strategy they're like. Well, we have them in the back line, so it's not that dangerous. I'm like all of you should be fired.
Richard:Yeah.
Karl:Also, until we reiterate the bad guys get guns. Guns still exist, Tanks and planes still exist.
Richard:But people just don't use them.
Karl:So why would you send the 12-year-old who slides around on acid, who's pink, when actual police exist, who at least have riot shields, objectively more useful.
Richard:I mean they just wanted a self-insert character for being on acid.
Karl:That'd be more interesting If the acid person shot lsd at people. That'd be a far more interesting character and probably in one piece like one piece as a character who can slap the gender out of you, right? That's just amazing. That sentence being a canon thing in a series gives me life. So we do our first ninja war where they do like the my villain academia arc they even changed the title card for a little while where the league of villains find the evil scientist who's been making the mutant things they never explain these evil scientists or why he's making mutant things.
Karl:But apparently he just can't right and they decide shit, rocky needs a power up, so everything he touches disintegrates. Also. We'll give him all for one's power of having all the powers. Also, we'll give him a genetically engineered super body and we'll put them in a capsule to do it.
Karl:Then the villains will take over the other villains to make the super villain league, and then the heroes will fight the kaiju villain and then it just broke into an endless series of fights for like a year. Then they took a break so Deku could be sad and edgy because he didn't defeat the villain. That lasts about four chapters. And then they do the exact same thing again. Also, at some point Shiraki fought some star and stripe person who has America powers, who had like a really busted power that any three things they say become true. Oh, and then like stole their power. But then they set their power to rebel against his power. So he had to get rid of their power. Chekhov's power never really came back. Not yet.
Karl:And then they did Dark Deku, where he ran around for like five minutes and then the school decided to try and take down Shiraki with ridiculous things like a flying school to trap him so his power doesn't work as well, and teleporting heroes to different locations to split up enemies, and then that's just been the series for like the entire run time of oh fuck um the entire run time of Sakamoto days.
Richard:Nice use of our one f-bomb.
Karl:I stand by it. So now we're caught up, and that's the point is the first five arcs took me about three minutes each. To explain the most recent two arcs I explained in one sentence giant battle with all the named characters for some reason. Hmm, and they're like arcs I explained in one sentence.
Karl:Giant battle with all the named characters. For some reason, Hmm.
Karl:And they're like.
Richard:And it's just two in a row.
Karl:Yeah, they took a break for Deku to run around and be edgy, but not really because he wasn't an edgy character, but he had to go learn his superpowers off screen so he could pull them out in dramatic fashion during his fight.
Karl:Hmm, and remember, none of these characters have finished their first year of high school yet, and that is my problem with my Hero Academia. It has the opposite problem of world trigger. It went too fast, so none of the climactic things matter. So there's a scene where Bakugou's heart stops because he fought All for One. After All for One beat up Robo All Might, who was in a mech suit made from a car. Okay, so they just pulled in some side characters from the first movie and made them canon in the middle of that chapter, specifically to give him a mech suit. Oh, All right.
Karl:So All Might loses to All for One in their dramatic rematch because he has no superpowers and also, ironically, undercuts the entire point of the show. So if All Might could just build a mech suit to be as strong as a superhero, why did Deku need superpowers in this show? If All Might personally knew a guy who built superhero accessories good enough that he himself could fight the main villain using said accessories, why would he tell this kid you need powers to be good in this world.
Richard:Yeah, that is kind of weird.
Karl:And, for the record, the main character, literally just the one character without superpowers, is tropey, but would have been better Instead of just giving him, like smoke and whip powers for some reason, because he ran out of things for him to do Also why, would you ever need whip? Powers when whips exist.
Richard:Um. Have they gone through all the seven powers yet?
Karl:Yeah, and then he lost them one at a time in his battle of Shiraki, because Shiraki stole the power, so the ghost attached to the power could punch shiuraki in the soul. Uh, okay. So yes, they took him off screen to give him seven new superpowers to then have him lose them one at a time against the villain. For the villain to take those powers one at a time, because by taking those powers it damaged his soul to the point where the villain got the dramatic reveal that, all for one, the evil villain is who gave him the power that murdered his family. I told this plot twist to my brother, who's about three years behind my hero.
Karl:And he's like wait. Wasn't that already told to us? His series long plot twist was so not twisty that he should have just watched Prison Break no, prison Break actually had twists.
Karl:They were willing to be so stupid that it was twisty, but no like when you built your theory around, like, haha, the reason you're a villain was because I gave you the power that killed your family. I'm like, did you not occur to you that the guy who gives people powers, who showed up at your door after your parents died, after your power mysteriously awakened, and then recruited and groomed you had nothing to do with? Did this not occur to you, Karl? If I show up to your house and say, sup, Karl, and then everyone dies of rat poisoning, wouldn't you think I poisoned them?
Richard:So one for all. That's the evil version, right.
Karl:No, all for one's the evil version right. No, all for one's the evil version, One for all is a good version, all for one.
Richard:Okay, so all for one is the evil version. Is that a ghost?
Karl:So here was his plan. I will explain his plan. This is some Aizen bullshit, Like the only thing missing is holes poked in a condom to make Ichigo be born.
Richard:Which is canon in my head by the way Anywho.
Karl:So all for one is like okay, my younger brother, one for all, will not give me his power. And then I keep being attacked by his descendants. So I found one of his descendants' one of their bearer's grandchildren. I went and met his parents and made them hate superheroes. So the kid would want to be a superhero. So his dad would beat him.
Karl:Then, when he was sad, after his dad beat him, I gave him a power I specifically changed to turn people to dust when you're upset. But remove the other part of the power that could make them not turn to dust. So he'd kill his family. So I could show up. So I could train him to be my successor. So you'd have enough hatred to steal one for all, because apparently you need enough hatred to do it. Then I cloned my own power, gave him the original version of my power, gave myself the cloned version of my power. Right. Then I fought All Might, lost to All Might, but I trained him as my successor, genetically engineered his body into a super body, showed up as myself to lose deliberately, so I could transfer my consciousness into a super body. So when he learned that he was the one who killed his parents. I could then jack his body and use it as my own body okay yes, that was the villain's canon plan.
Richard:And so basically now he's basically taken over Disintegration, guy's body Correct and but he's been punched in the soul too much and Doesn't have access to all his powers because he got punched in his souls by the powers he was trying to steal.
Karl:And then Deku's like. I need to save Shigaraki from this. So I'm not going to try, try and kill, even though I've been punching him so hard that it makes nuclear fission, which is less cool than nuclear fusion right right so that is the villains canon plan in the series about a kid going to school of superpowers.
Karl:He did one of those bad xenotose gambits where it's like wait, there's so many parts of your plan that just don't work. So part of his plan involved Shigaraki reaching his ultimate form to fire a blast to then bust himself out of prison. He could have just got the death penalty, like if the heroes had just put him in a different prison, flew him overseas to America or shot him. And I keep saying they shot him because no one has a bulletproof quirk somehow. Right, he'd just be dead. And the thing is they used a gun to shoot anti-quirk bullets and they didn't have a gun to shoot bullets. Also, there's a gun that shoots anti-quirk bullets at the villain's head. That also would have just completely defeated his plan.
Karl:Or if Shigaraki didn't get into a test tube by a strange doctor to genetically modify his body into a super body so he could have a clone version of the main villain's power? His evil plan wouldn't work. What if the person you deliberately trained to be full of hate decided to hate you? He just had to like, and also to find the doctor, he had to show up to where the evil villains were and then fight mechagodzilla to then get warped into the laboratory that then got raided by the heroes at the same day. So the heroes were eight minutes sooner. This massive plan that was completely based on coincidence wouldn't have worked. Like could you imagine if part of Orochimaru's plan to seal Sasuke's body was to make sure that Naruto made Sasuke sad enough? Oh also, bakugou's heart stopped and then he used an explosion to restart it.
Richard:Sounds reasonable.
Karl:No, my brother pointed this out and it was actually kind of beautiful. So nitroglycerin is heart medicine uh, huh. Bakugou's power is to create nitroglycerin beads that he then flicks to explode. Okay, bakugou has the only scientifically valid power to restart his own heart and yet he used it improperly he used an explosion instead of the nitroglycerin he produces to start his heart back up, the thing they give to people who need to start their heart back up. That is correct. That shouldn't bug me, but it's like it's weird.
Karl:It's like if you gave someone a healing power and then they Mustang, seared their wound shut, it's like, yeah, but you have a healing power. Yeah, the wound that they seared shut will shut.
Richard:It's like, yeah, but you have a healing power. Yeah, the wound that they seared shut will heal faster.
Karl:It's stupid, it's so stupid. It'd be like if you were like Natsu eats fire. And they're like, cool, he's fighting a fire guy, what's he gonna do? And he's like pull out a water gun.
Richard:It's like, but he that's the thing he does's, his thing, that's true, it is this thing.
Karl:So I think I've summarized all of my hero is effectively, it's been all for one's improbable, ridiculous plan, which they're gonna probably had the final twist that the same doctor that gave Shiraraki his power it's probably the one that stole Deku's quirk when he was a kid. So Deku didn't have a quirk. I kind of hate everyone is connected storytelling. So there's three tropes in anime I've noticed recently that I very much dislike. Oh no, you're completely silent. You don't want to hear about the anime tropes I dislike. Is it because I went over the time limit? Or because you're in a random hotel? Possibly Wolf Ghost, possibly in California? Come on, Karl, reconnect to the episode, or I'll have to wrap it up. Hmm, well, I don't want people to sit in silence, so I'm still gonna give my monologue about three anime tropes I don't like, and hopefully my co-host reconnects in that time.
Karl:Trope the first when a character is revealed to be part of a secret lineage. It is a thing that's happened in Naruto, one Piece, bleach, and it's this big dramatic reveal that, oh, I'm special because my ancestors were special. Usually in a series where the theme is about working hard, getting better and hard work overcoming natural talent. It's just a frustrating trope. The second trope that is an annoying recurring trope is the classic. No matter what I do, I am connected by fate and every character specifically knows every other character because they were linked in some way, like the classic Final.
Richard:Fantasy.
Karl:VIII. They're all orphans together. And the third trope I dislike is when Karl has returned to the chat while I'm explaining tropes I dislike.
Richard:Okay, so sorry. Everyone is connected. No secret lineage.
Karl:Everyone is connected and I forgot the third one.
Richard:But yeah, you literally just said it.
Karl:Yeah, but the Everyone's Connected one where it's like, yeah, as children we all have shared amnesia and we're from the same orphanage or whatever nonsense. It's just so tacky. So if they're like, if they reveal A Deku's dad is all for one or something, or reveal that, hey, your quirk is the one that was given to Shigaraki to kill his parents, that's an unnecessary connection and a thing that live-action adaptations love to add to plot threads that weren't connected.
Richard:Okay, so do you honestly think that's something they're going to try to connect?
Karl:I think so, because they showed that same doctor when they showed a flashback and the doctor's like your son has no quirk doctor when they showed a flashback and the doctor's, like your son, has no quirk, so they set up checkoffs. Your son has no quirk because they use the same character model for the doctor who, specifically, was a doctor who stole quirks so if you set, up checkoffs quirk, there's no good way for it to pay off.
Karl:Right, because the obvious thing is, the doctor stole the disintegrate people quirk from Deku and then gave it to Shigaraki. Right, because if it's any other quirk then it has no narrative significance, but if it's that quirk, it's obvious. Now, a really good writer would do something twisty here, right? Like I don't know, deku's quirk that was stolen from him is somehow specifically like an ant I don't know. Something that'd be like yeah, if he had this quirk he would have just been a hero from the get-go. Or oh, no, if you had this quirk he would have been a villain. Like something twisty with it.
Richard:Okay, but so then, how does his plan involve All Might giving Deku the offer one? That's what's going to be revealed Somehow.
Karl:That is the all for one. That's what's going to be revealed somehow. That's the missing piece, because if the villain is going to pull an iraku and literally everything was part of my plan then he's going to have to explain how he somehow made All Might give Deku all for one.
Karl:He's going to be like. I told the ooze monster to attack his friend in the middle of the street so All Might would see Deku be a hero. So then he'd give it to this kid so I could take it. But I don't think they're going to do it. That's what I don't want them to do.
Karl:I'd be sad if they did that. Everything's connected in that way. Nonsense. Like the classic bleach I sent Rukia because she was angsty, so she'd get distracted, so Hall would attack her, so Urahura would put the hongu in her so I could execute her and take the hongu Right, right, Like that kind of Xanatos gambit has a couple too many steps to be believable, but like Right.
Karl:So either they're going to do a secret lineage thing or they're going to do a your power that was taken from it is somehow narratively significant thing, or they're just gonna not do that and it'll just have that. The doctor that saw Deku looks suspiciously like the mad scientist doctor and we'll just have to accept it and I don't know what would be the more satisfying answer there and Jujutsu Kaisen's really bad for that thing where apparently Yuji's mother was the main villain brain in the head.
Richard:Wait, did I miss something?
Karl:Yeah, yuji's mom was Kenjaku what?
Richard:When did that happen?
Karl:I don't remember, but it did. Yuji's mom had the little head-stitchy things, as was Kenjaku, and that's why Yuji has blood-shooty powers now.
Richard:Yeah, I was wondering about the blood shooty powers.
Karl:Yeah, his mom was the brain in the head.
Richard:Wow, Now I have to sign up for Shonen Jump again and actually start paying for it to be able to reread this. It's like what.
Karl:Yeah, that's part of what put me on this tangent where I'm like I really really hate the secret ancestor thing because while you're gone, I gave my rant that if you put on your series, hard work and effort overcomes natural talent or believe in yourself, but also your ancestors had to be stacked, really undercuts everything I believe in as a person, Because I don't believe a person should be determined by their DNA. But that's literally what's happened in a bunch of these series. Right, because if it's, the big reveal for Deku is that, oh, your dad or your quirk or part of what made you special would just be like boo Boo, this Like. If it's like Deku loses all his superpowers so it activates his superpowers that he had all along that never activated. That's the kind of bullshit I hate. Or Luffy's Well, luffy's lineage I weirdly get a pass to because Luffy doesn't seem to care about it.
Richard:What is Luffy's lineage? Now you got me curious about that.
Karl:Well, his dad is like dragon emperor, like revolutionary army badass, and then his grandfather is Garp, the Marine who fought Gold Roger. And then he has a D in his name, which is some sort of iconic thing that means something special. And then his brother, ace, was Gold Roger's son, but they're only. You see, that seems like stupid bullshit, but the reason they were brothers is three kids were raised together in a middle-of-nowhere town because all of them had wanted parents. So it wasn't like oh, my best friend happened to be this, have to be that. So I was like no, we literally raised these two kids together to keep them away from people, because we needed to observe them, because they were dangerous. And they got ninja out of there by Garp hmm, so it's like Garp.
Karl:Destiny doesn't bother me as much if a character made it happen For like legitimate reasons.
Richard:But, yeah, fair, that is my Hero Academia, a series which started like somewhat lighthearted learn your powers that ramped it up too fast to be sustainable, kept changing the rules partway through with a villain's plan so absurdly convoluted that Aizen would be like man, this is some bullshit. Okay, well, so just a random throw it out there. Mr Sweetengu's plan was pretty absurd.
Karl:I loved it, but his was a web-based plan. His plan was a good Xenatos gambit because there was no fail condition. So Mr Sweetengu's plan plan His plan was a good. Xenatos gambit, because there was no fail condition, mm. So Mr Swetangu's plan, and you explain it and I'll explain why his plan was better.
Richard:So Mr Swetangu gave government officials superpowers so that they would overinvest in his pharmaceutical company and then he would liquidate all of the pharmaceutical company's assets and use the physical cash to fill a tower and convince the US Army to blow the tower up and cause economic collapse in Japan to destroy a culture of greed so here's why Sweetengu's plan is good and I like Sweetengu's plan.
Karl:First off, his plan didn't involve anyone's descendants specifically in any weird way. It was literally oh, I have the superpower person and the superpower virus Right B. His plan would have worked if any individual component had failed him. So if the super giving superpowers to politicians to get them to fund in him let's say, instead of funding in him, they just want to rampage across Japan If all your politicians go and rampage across Japan, that still destroys the economy or shows its greed, because either they invest in him and that's corrupt and he blackmails them, or they don't invest in him that's corrupt and he blackmails them, because either they're on his side or he's the only person with superpowers.
Karl:So like, what are they going to do? Say no, I don't want your superpowers. Then he'll just send the superpowered people after you to kill you, like a guy says, hey, do you want superpowers, and you say no, and he has wings of blood, you're gone, yeah. So that's step one is there is no fail condition there. He gave people who are already corrupt like he could either blackmail them or they'd help him with their own free will. But they're screwed either way because he lured them in with superpowers to his sex club. Right once you're the Prime Minister of Japan at the sex club of superpowers, you're already done you, you're cooked. Second, his plan was to take already addictive products and add more additives to them.
Karl:So even if he didn't have a mystery chemical to make beauty products more addicting, he was still also just selling meth on the street and going around collecting protection money. He really had a diverse economic portfolio to funnel in money right like he's the first person I've seen in fiction to be like here's how you get people superpowers. What is the max way I can do a growth analysis projection for this? And as for the money tower part, once he switched out his assets to cash mmm getting America to blow up the tower was delightful.
Karl:The tower still had a self-destruct engine in it, so if America didn't blow up the money, then Japan blew up the money from the corrupt politicians that blew it all in superpowers. So America being pinned for it is great, but it still would have caused the economic collapse to get rid of the society of greed when he blew up a trillion dollars. And he had like four methods in play for the trillion dollars.
Karl:Also crazy guy with superpowers who ran Epstein Island blows up with money still would have achieved the job Whether he lived or died. It worked because all these people gave him this money that he blew up and then he leaked online the messed up experiments that made all this work in the first place.
Karl:so, like he even invited, a journalist so his plan was genius because if he got stopped at any point in his evil plan it would have sucked, but he still would have like achieved at least partial success, like it was really like. How much economic collapse did he crush at that point? Because his worst case was just a bunch of people with literally like addictive superpowers that make you get hyper fixated on things that give you superpowers, and OCD were just running around Japan, causing chaos, which would be fine for him. Cause that's still bad for the economy.
Richard:Yeah, yeah.
Karl:Also like he didn't really do anything himself either at the start. So he's like yeah, no, I got this on lock where specifically giving a hyper specific superpower to the descendant of one of your enemies to specifically make him murder his own family, so they'll become dependent on you, so you can groom them to be as psychotic as possible, so you can use them to steal the other superpower, so you can then steal their body with an experimental body swap surgery. It's just like five steps too convoluted.
Richard:Mmm, I see what you're saying.
Karl:Because he already knew this whole family thing and like the whole thing was, oh yeah, he wants to steal this power, but also the power he wanted to steal wasn't even that good oh well, all for one's punch.
Karl:you hard power be like yeah, we'll keep passing it along till someone eventually defeats him, wasn't so? The power doesn't reincarnate on its own right. You have to physically give it to someone, and this person personally killed all the users of the power and tried to take the power. He just had to throw a guy in a box.
Richard:Okay.
Karl:And it's not like the power did anything like make you live forever or good. It just wasn't worth this level of scheming to try and do like psychic damage stealing and his plan had so many unknowns that don't really make sense. And when your plan involves the emotional instability of a teenager, you've already done fucked up uh yeah, I mean raising someone to be psychotic.
Richard:Wouldn't you expect that to cause them to turn on you?
Karl:like innately, by the very point of what you're trying to do and also like the weirdest thing is like he had this league of villains but it didn't conceptually make sense. It's like the anarchy association. Like you can't, like people will tell me they're anarchists. I'm just gonna throw some shaded anarchists out there. They're like no, you want to do like a communist commune when you describe anarchy. Actual anarchy is people with motorcycles mad-maxing you and exists around the world today. Actual anarchy is bad.
Karl:What is an anarchist without her association yeah but the thing is there's a lot to like in my Hero. It's just like I said. I want it to end because it's just been constantly trying to up itself and we already used up 200% Deku full power. All Might, all Might's heroic death twice. Bakugo's death twice. Deku's lost his arms so many times.
Richard:It's the number of times he's broken his arms in some way. He got his arms back from the MacGuffin healing lady.
Karl:Yeah, she used her magic unicorn horn to rewind his arms.
Richard:Okay, but he still has no powers.
Karl:In theory, no, he has his original power of Stockpile Power, but he lost his seven extra superpowers.
Richard:Wait, all Might's power was Stockpile Power.
Karl:All Might didn't have a power Right, so the original power was Stockpile Power and then, with that stockpile power, all the other users passed along a power which I really thought the twist was going to be. You could only give all for one to people without powers, because that would have made sense to give it to Deku in the first place.
Richard:Right right.
Karl:But no. So then he had his seven superpowers against a guy with five billion superpowers, and one was just make smoke. And another was Spidey sense, but worse okay like they weren't even like fun powers. The only one he really did anything fun was with the whip which eraser had just had a whip scarf that did the same thing functionally. You could just buy on Etsy. Really, his superpower whip wasn't any better than just using the existing whips.
Richard:Right right.
Karl:Also the premise that you can't be a superhero without quirks. When the guy's quirk is disabled quirk and he just fights people with whips, Just use the whips, then Obviously you can be a hero without a quirk.
Richard:Just use the gadgets, right. Right, because it's a series where you can build a mech.
Karl:Yeah, like literally they fought against mechs. And I'm like like episode two, the tests like to get in the school is fight these mechs. And I'm just like so there's nothing you could possibly build to offset sticky ball guy. Like I couldn't just throw tape at someone With the guy with literal tape rollers in his arms. I will never be at that man's level by just buying duct tape. I see there is nothing I can do, no amount of batarangs, research and gadgets that can offset literal forearm tape rollers.
Karl:I see it bugs me so much that heroes have gadgets Like anti-gravity person just has wire grapply hook arms and I'm like that's enough, that's better than some people's actual power. You're now effectively as good as frog person. Ugh, my hero. It just bugs me when I show and jump things like hard work, effort and then it's actually just nepotism.
Richard:Well, I mean, then it's actually just nepotism. Well, I mean it's. I don't want to belittle the intelligence and and creative spirit of the author, but it's hard to write a character that is genuinely smarter than you so the character intelligence thing's fine.
Karl:I think my issue with the series is it just kept trying to be epic, and I think it's in part because its contemporaries were also trying to be epic, but it wasn't an epic scope story.
Richard:Like.
Karl:Bleach was epic scope as soon as they went to Soul Society, like these are 13 captains. But Bleach did something weird. It made its protagonist broken from the start. So Ichigo from Chapter 1 is like this person's way stronger than he should be, and they're like every character up to that point is like no, as soon as this guy learns how to actually fight, we're doomed because he's stronger than he should be. So they didn't really train Ichigo in Bleach. They're just like alright, alright, let's just have our big, epic scale fights. But that doesn't work when your character's an awkward 15-year-old who socially angsts. Like Ichigo is the same age as, like a lot of Shounen Jump characters, but he comes off like he's 20. Where Naruto comes off like he's 6.
Karl:And the first half of Naruto wasn't epic, it was small-scale stories where it's like, yeah, you're still bad parents because it's like you sent your 12 year olds out as ninjas but at the very least in this world this world sucks comparably that you would need your 12 year olds to be ninjas and you're just supposed to be walking a guy through the woods till you get to this bridge and that's like a big, high-scale task. And then, my hero, they put these grade 10 students in the front line in a war against what was basically mutant ISIS. They had helicopters and funding and they said like 20,000 people and a kaiju and they're like, yeah, there's just no way we can do this without these kids. I'm like, are you sure?
Richard:How many kids did they actually send?
Karl:Like the entire 30-person class.
Richard:Were there any other?
Karl:Yeah, there's like 30 adults.
Richard:No, I'm wondering, like because, like, they're in grade 10 or something, something right. Are they the only class at this academia, like at this school?
Karl:See, this is like a weird plot hole. So they show the upper year Because they're the first year class and there's allegedly a second year and a third year class. They showed three characters from the third year class, like these are our top students and just forgot that the second year existed, or to make there be 28 other kids in the third year class and they're like I think at some point they're like yeah, this is just like our only class that went out and got their special licenses because this is a particularly good class. I'm like that doesn't make sense, to be perfectly honest with you.
Richard:Well yeah, Especially the thing is, you just said they introduced their top third-year students right you think that they would have shown up for the great ninja war?
Karl:and I think a couple of them did. But like, the structure is just weird because it's like he wrote his class and then contrived for reasons for them to be in big-scale things they wouldn't rationally be in.
Karl:One thing I give Naruto credit for for their great ninja war is that everyone was there, but also like 20,000 mooks. So you're like, yeah, no, literally every character is here over the age. They did leave the children at home in the Naruto ninja war because they're not sociopaths. It was people who had graduated to the rank of Junin that they sent to the actual war. They left Kono, amaru and pals at home, right, because, like ironically in part one of Naruto, if the Ninja War broke out, naruto would not have been there. But part two, naruto was there, which was fair. Well, part three.
Karl:Naruto really should have had a third part shift after the Pain arc.
Richard:Hmm, yeah.
Karl:But our episode's going long because I ranted so intently about my Hero. But what are your thoughts on my Hero?
Richard:Well, from the very beginning, I struggled with Bleach, because there's 13 captains plus the four main protagonists.
Karl:I'll always love the one gift that I sent you for Bleach. That gave all the captains a dumb nickname and I've used them to this day Like Captain Hippie Ninja Redacted Captain Eats your Face, kampachi.
Richard:Captain Freak Show. Captain, I'm Better Than you, captain Tuberculosis.
Karl:They were good. They nailed it 10 out of 10. They solved it.
Richard:It's kind of funny because when I talk to people who are actually watching the anime and they're like I can't even think of any of their actual names, but they use the actual name. I'm like, okay, is that like Captain Hippie? Captain, who? You know, the guy that dresses in a big, long flowery kimono and sits around and drinks tea Like Captain Hippie? And he's like, oh yeah, Captain Hippie. Yeah, it works, Although at some point Aizen's codename changed to Butterflyzen?
Richard:well, because he turned into a freaking butterfly, like his main body was actually just a chrysalis.
Karl:Butterflyzen, and then his butterfly legs turned into snakes. For some reason. Butterflyzen was awesome, alright, but I any last closing thoughts, because you started with Bleach, captains, and then.
Richard:Yeah, well, it's a lot of characters and my hero starts out all in on 30 characters that all have names, they all have quirks and they all have at least some small role to play in the story. And it's just like I gave up trying to keep track of it. Which character was important, what their quirks were, what their limitations were? And it does not surprise me that, with that many unique powers developed so quickly and early on in the story that it became an inconsistent mess see what's kind of funny too is.
Karl:Originally I was going to do this episode and talk a bunch about x-men with it, but it turns out I can use an hour on my hero alone in x-men they have like typically six or seven core characters, but each episode really only used three or four of them. Right.
Karl:And that was reasonable and it usually didn't follow the same character like more than like two episodes in a row. And the parts of my Hero I liked were the smaller scale parts, because it did just that. Their school festival worked because like, okay, single elimination matches, or we have three people doing a little cavalry battle, battle, or we have them doing a race. You can track it more easier. But when I started breaking into hyper-specific two-on-two, one-on-one fights I lost track. And then World Trigger me, and my friend made a spreadsheet.
Richard:Yeah, World Trigger.
Karl:To be fair. World Trigger, actually only followed four characters, though Like there's all these characters introduced and they did not matter.
Richard:They didn't matter until they put them in a capsule and suddenly they're like, oh yeah, this character, this character, this character. It's like who are they? Why do?
Karl:I care. No, no, remember World Trigger ended after they finished the Rank War and they learned about the World Triggers and it ended.
Richard:Uh, yeah, yeah, I forgot about the ending after we learned about the world triggers and that literally did nothing.
Karl:Yeah, just ended. They didn't go immediately into another series of tests. There's no way it just ended. There's no boat with Kurepeka on it. No, it ended when Gon climbed the tree. Uh yeah. All right. So we got some top tier random questions in this week to wrap this up. Okay, first question, and this is my favorite one I've seen so far If your legs were replaced with appropriately scaled animal legs what animal would you choose?
Richard:Appropriately scaled animal legs.
Karl:Yeah, and this isn't optional.
Richard:You have to pick an animal, what do you? What do you even mean appropriately scaled, like what? If I penguin am, I just gonna have like big long flamingo legs.
Karl:I think you get to choose in that space. Like I think you'd like, I think like you'd have the penguin feet and like I I don't know you gotta went like lower to the ground in this scenario.
Richard:Like I'm letting you like choose your optimal use of the animal leg so you don't just explode, okay okay, um yeah, penguin legs don't don't actually seem like a good option because my arms are too long, um, but uh, I mean, I, I I kind of like bird legs, just just in general. Flamingo legs, ostrich legs I don't know, ostrich was high on my list so I respect the ostrich legs.
Karl:So my first answer is cheating, so I'll have to do a different one, probably.
Richard:What you're copying my work.
Karl:No, I'm going to go with octopus legs, so I just have eight extra limbs.
Richard:Are you sure? Because those things are like semi-sentient.
Karl:No, I'm not being odd to Octavia. I'm not making robot ones. I'm not an idiot, I'm a Kraken-like creature in this scenario.
Richard:No, no, all I'm saying is that there's like neurons in Octopus's tentacles that can react to prey and other.
Karl:How dare you canonize Dr Ock?
Richard:They react to stimulus before the main brain does to capture prey more efficiently.
Karl:So I have motor dysgraphia. If I had limbs that automatically caught things for me and stopped me from falling and prevented me from walking into things, that would probably be for me and stop me from falling and preventing me from walking into things Like that would probably be, like those limbs would be smarter than my limbs.
Richard:Yeah, you just end up being like Stewie from the post-apocalyptic episode.
Karl:So, but I also don't know if they would count as animal legs, because I'm cheating to give myself like superpowers here. So I might just go with, like appropriately scaled honey badger legs, because them shit move fast and nearly indestructible.
Richard:Yeah, but I mean anything four-legged. Do you also get the rest of the four-legged body?
Karl:I have to say you get to be a centaur if you want to be.
Richard:I don't want to be a centaur. That's untrue. But I'm wondering how? No, I definitely don't want to be a centaur.
Karl:I remember when we were talking about your D&D characters, like, remember, if you're a centaur, it'll be awkward to do things, but I regret not letting you centaur. I shouldn't have talked you out of it. That was my bad.
Richard:It would have been excellent. People could have thrown Thedric into battle Like it was my bad.
Karl:I should not have discouraged this In my brain. This is impractical and I'm like wait, it's D&D. I've very much loosened up on my D&D restrictions I put on people. I've gotten better at ad-libbing with people's nonsense.
Richard:But yes, if you centaur, you centaur you centaur, okay, but no, no, I'm sticking with bird legs.
Karl:I think that'd be fun like cheetah legs, feel lame kangaroo. No, I'm going kangaroo oh yeah.
Richard:Well, no see, the kangaroo legs are less useful without the tail. Can I have the tail?
Karl:no, the, the kangaroo legs are less useful without the tail. Can I have the tail?
Richard:no, the question was about legs.
Karl:I guess I'll just wear a prosthetic tail to balance it. But like they're still pretty hardcore, like if I have a kangaroo leg and I kick someone, they're having a bad day. If I'm a millipede I'm an actual sociopath. I'm a centaur with a thousand legs. It's so nightmarish. Absolutely not. Alright, and the last question, because I mentioned, we had some good ones. That was a good one you gotta admit. This one If you were left on a deserted island with either your worst enemy or no one, who would you choose, and why?
Richard:We've definitely had this one before.
Karl:Your worst enemy, Really Well it's possible I re-read something someone put in twice. Oh yeah, because I think I said my worst enemy was you. Well, it's possible I re-read something someone put in twice, oh yeah because, I think I said my worst enemy was you and I'm good to go.
Richard:You said your worst enemy was me, and I said my worst enemy was myself.
Karl:Yeah, Alright, I got one other new one to replace that one. That one was good enough that I used it twice.
Richard:I mean it is a pretty good one. I just don't want to give the same answer.
Karl:If it was raining tacos, would you eat them?
Richard:Uh Ooh, I I probably would try. I just I don't. I don't Because you obviously you would get a sanitary bucket and go out there and catch some tacos in your bucket because you don't want to get pelted.
Karl:So I'm really hoping these tacos have little parachutes.
Richard:Desperately. They better have parachutes, because otherwise tacos at terminal velocity, that's well terminal.
Karl:Yeah, like I'm pretty sure I can't eat the tacos because I would just die. Like it's a cloudy, like, if we're in a cartoon setting like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, then I'm going for those tacos. I've eaten snow as a child.
Richard:I'm alive and snow is mostly just dust. I am thinking I would probably at least attempt to eat the tacos. I don't have the budget to not, I would probably make a taco salad Because it's going to be squished. I don't have the budget to not and make like a taco salad, right, because it's going to be squished.
Karl:However, the visual where you run out with a bowl of salad and the taco just explodes on it, you have your taco salad and you return inside.
Richard:Yeah, I'm not really sure I said taco salad, but I'm not really sure what I would actually use as a bed for said salad.
Karl:So it was you, so I assume nacho chips.
Richard:Yeah, okay.
Karl:I mean that sounds fair, like I'm pretty sure if you just catch a falling taco, you have nachos. And one last question and we'll wrap up this exceptionally long episode somehow. Somehow I ranted longer about my Hero Academia than we did all seven Star Wars movies. Oh man, if you could be any form of potato, potato, which form of potato would you be? You have to pick one, so which form of consumed, like form of potato good or service would you use to represent you effectively?
Richard:what kind of potato, what? What kind of like processed potato? I can't just be a potato in the ground.
Karl:I don't know. The question's vague, Ambiguous goes on. Us Sweet potato fries are one of the best use of potatoes, but if I have to be a potato then I'm Gladys from Portal 2.
Richard:Well, okay, but I mean, sweet potato fries are yams, aren't they not?
Karl:I will fight and die on this hill that if you call it a sweet potato, it is still a potato. And if someone can tell me right here, right now, what the actual difference is between a sweet potato and a yam, because they're allegedly different. I have seen no evidence of this. I have never seen a situation where I needed a yam instead of a sweet potato. I don't know if they're different. I think yams are fictional.
Richard:I don't know who told you they were different, because I've always been told they're the same. Like I just Googled it, no, because I've always been told they're the same.
Karl:Like I just googled it no, yams and sweet potatoes are not the same. And then there's a photo of the same-looking potato next to each other and I'm like, no, what is the? That's just the same potato. I call bullshit on this entire concept.
Richard:Anyway, I'm going with waffle fries. See, I want to with waffle fries.
Karl:Nice, see, I want to be like twice-baked potatoes and all pretentious. But man oh man, like if you get some cayenne pepper mix on a thing of sweet potato fries and some chipotle mayo. That's how I want to be remembered in this world. At least neither of us were the psychopaths that went. Potato pancakes, while good, are deeply confusing.
Richard:They are very confusing. But potato pancakes, they're all right, they're just basically shredded pancakes or shredded potatoes made into pancakes.
Karl:It's like potato pancakes need to be paired with a ham or something for the balance, but with that thank you everyone for tuning in to this hour and 40 minute episode where I just whined about a series I used to enjoy.
Richard:Yeah, and I gave you guys an intriguing theory about semi-retired contract killers.
Karl:You know if I was actually like, if I actually edited these videos, I would take that story and splice it into our secret villains trope Like that would have like paired together so good as the opening and splice it into our secret villains trope Like that would have like paired together so good as the opening, like. Could you imagine if we structured these? Like if we moved the Magic the Gathering skit to the start of the Magic the Gathering episode, where it would belong.
Richard:Yeah, well, I mean the stuff that's new with me.
Karl:I don't deliberately make it mismatch or unalign like that, but it it just happens and the stuff that's new with me will never quite match either, because it's like what did you do? Slam poetry night? Are we gonna talk about poetry? No, I didn't make Karl read robert frost to come to this episode. The odds that you read robert frost are your own or not zero. I just don't know how I get an hour and 40 minutes out of what you do, is you get us sponsored by Wendy's Frosties?
Karl:first off Critical Role nearly got cancelled over a Wendy's sponsorship. Oh really, their fans were so mad that they took corporate sellout money. Oh, because they literally did a one shot sponsored by Wendy's who put out their own Wendy's themed tabletop RPG, and their fans were like Wendy's who put out their own Wendy's-themed tabletop RPG and their fans were like Wendy's is a terrible corporation.
Karl:Yet I'm like you guys, don't cut people the slack they deserve, because I mean if someone were to offer me a burger right now, in the terms and conditions where I would say that burger was delicious, unless they somehow sent me the Karl chocolate pancakes and burgers that burger at 1115 is probably going to be delicious to me, yeah, which is why I'm probably going to end up married to a vegan oh, the irony. I've killed so many animals, not really just lobsters. I don't even know if they have souls. No, we know they do. You need those to garnish sandwiches?
Richard:The souls yeah.
Karl:The Jake sandwich is garnished with lobster soul.
Richard:Okay, I missed that deep cut, but you know I could probably rant for a long time about Adventure Time.
Karl:I mean, I'm surprised we haven't yet. That might be next week, who knows.
Richard:Yeah, maybe.
Karl:Actually, let's confirm to an episode and then not do it next week, because that'd be really funny when we just straight up say, next week we'll be talking about Adventure Time, and then we actually do. Oh the twist.
Richard:Well, I mean we're going to Rocky and Bullwinkle the shit out of this.
Karl:Oh, can we do Rocky and Bullwinkle instead?
Richard:what you never know, because at the end of every rocking bullwinkle episode they'd be like next time. And then you go and watch the next episode and they'd be like last time and it's like it's not even the same as the last episode which is such a good joke. It's never the same uh, so good.
Karl:Clone high was pretty good for that too. But with that yeah thank you everyone for tuning in. I don't know. I'm not even gonna try and sell you anything this week, and neither is Karl. Just have a good day.
Richard:Well, I mean, maybe I'm trying to sell them a franchise so that they can meet me and compare me to their Karl tattoo.
Karl:If someone sends us a thing that says anywhere that because of our podcast they got a pizza franchise, your boss is paying the rest of my tuition. You hear me Like? I better win the first and only TJ's Pizza Scholarship if I somehow sold someone a pizza franchise.
Richard:Probably someone in Germany.
Karl:Oh, that would be so cool though.
Richard:Oh man, I would love to. Maybe it's sacrilege, but a Frankfurter pizza sounds delicious.
Karl:Right, Although you know what would be really funny Is, instead of one of your franchises, they open Richard and Karl Presents Deep Dish and Dragons the pizzeria. The pizzas are literally the Richard and the Karl and they're all the pizzas we talked about on our pizza episode.
Richard:Oh well, they got to throw in a salami and banana pepper pizza, because that's surprisingly good.
Karl:Oh, that sounds delicious.
Richard:That's what I had for lunch, because we were calibrating the oven, so we had to bake product to test it and make sure it was good.
Karl:You know what's a good combo Barbecue base, cheddar ham, pineapple, banana, peppers.
Richard:Next layer of cheese was pretty good and thank you for tuning in to a preview of our upcoming cooking show we really need to actually commit to the bat that just straight up misleading.
Karl:Next time. It's next time, but deep face of dragons. Richard and Karl completely and accurately explain the solution to the Middle East crisis.
Richard:Definitely, I definitely don't know like splayed the solution to the Middle East crisis. I definitely don't know enough about that. The guy that did the compliance check. He was like, oh, you know about this, you know about that. And I was like mm-hmm, yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Karl:I was like I really don't know how to understand I could be in a room surrounded by university professors and be like I need to do more research guys. I'm going to run it by university professors and be like I need to do more research guys. I'm not even going to. But yes, everyone, have a lovely day, Stay hydrated, Maybe have a stretch or two. I'm not your boss. Stay up late, Go to bed early. It's not my choice.
Richard:Eat banana peppers. Don't eat banana peppers.
Karl:Oh, my period, peppers have almost grown in oh.
Karl:Miko tried to take a bite out of one and nothing funny happened and I was disappointed.
Richard:Anyway, self-care, blah, blah, blah, you know the drill. Bye, Bye.
Karl:Oh man, I think my hero makes me sad because it's like oh, is it anime X-Men? Oh, you forgot what X-Men was about? I see it's like when people say the new x-men series is too woke and I'm like do you not know what x-men is? Did you miss the metaphor? Morphs non-binary. It's like, yes, that is in fact how that would work. You are correct. But yes, I think that was a good episode. Ran a little long. I might literally not upload it this week and wait till next week.
Richard:So there's more upload time space how much upload space do we have per month now?
Karl:so we have five hours, but we were doing it bi-weekly, and now that we're doing it weekly again, we can actually theoretically get ahead right. And now that we're doing it weekly again, we can actually theoretically get ahead right, which would be very smart for both of us also. Did you appreciate my free rune abridged joke? I snuck in there that was pretty funny.