Manga Is Beating American Comics… And We Didn’t See It Coming | Original Geek | S1E28

Two Gen X geeks finally sit down with One Piece — and realize they've been anime fans since childhood without knowing it. Steve and Jeff review Netflix's One Piece Season 1 (no spoilers for season 2!), flashback to Star Blazers and Voltron, and go head-to-head in Geek Court over whether manga has officially surpassed the American comic book.

In this episode:

• One Piece random review — dice rolls, devil fruit powers, and Easter eggs
• Flashback: Star Blazers (1979), the serialized anime that snuck into American living rooms
• Geek Court: Manga's single-artist vision vs. the multiverse-rebooting American comic
• Hits & Fails: What Hollywood keeps getting wrong — and what One Piece got right
• Basement Treasures and a shout-out to our friend Dave, who was ahead of the curve in 1986

New to anime? Old-school geek? Just manga-curious? Pull up a chair. The basement is open.

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Hosted by Steve Scarfo and Jeff Shaw.

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Transcript

Jeff (00:00)
the topic today is manga the superior art form? Or are they still trailing behind those American comics? I'm going to take the point of view that manga is beating American comics at their own game. And Steve is going to defend the American comics. So.

Steve Scarfo (00:22)
Yes.

Jeff (00:23)
Shall I kick us off?

Steve Scarfo (00:24)
Kick it off.

All right, welcome to Original Geek, the all-fandom podcast for sci-fi, fantasy, comics, and every pop culture obsession that built us. Gen X, millennial, or just geek curious? Welcome to the basement. Hi, I'm Steve Scarfo.

Jeff (00:44)
and I'm Jeff Shaw and it will be your Grand Line Map for today's journey to the world's greatest treasure, because we are diving into One Piece and the manga, anime influence in Hollywood today.

Steve Scarfo (01:02)
Yeah, this is admittedly an area we don't know a ton about, or we actually maybe know more than we thought. But ⁓ this is gonna be us coming at this as 250 something year old guys. So buckle up and bear with us because we are going to dive right in.

Jeff (01:10)
Yes.

a, we're ready to do a random review of One Piece.

Steve Scarfo (01:31)
All right, welcome to Original Geek. We set the topic, the Tice set the direction. We know what we're viewing, we're just not knowing how.

Jeff (01:39)
Primarily season one, we know season two's out. But we're just starting it, maybe like many of you.

Steve Scarfo (01:43)
Yes.

Yes, this is exciting. I believe the first episode of, well, actually the whole season, this is one of those whole season drops just happened. All right. ⁓ I rolled for you first last time or you rolled for me first? All right, so I'm gonna roll for you. Got my 20 sided dice. Here we go. A two, a failed fortitude. The Netflix house style lighting.

Jeff (02:00)
I don't think so. think. Yeah.

Ready?

Steve Scarfo (02:15)
So the muddy, dim cinematography in the night scenes. A visual class, critics have noted that while the costumes are vibrant, the lighting often feels dull and gray. Netflix looks sometimes washed out by the bright candy colored world of Ichiro Oda, making some scenes feel very visually flat. What do you think?

Jeff (02:37)
I actually quite disagree. However, remember we already prefaced this by saying we are new to this world. So I did not watch any of the anime of One Piece. So I have not seen that. But I will say the manga was black and white. So not that vibrant. Come on. So ⁓ at least that's my understanding.

Hey, maybe I'll be doing a canon correction for those who are experts. But ⁓ as far as I know, the manga is black and white and the anime is color. I thought that ⁓ the cinematography here was very bright. And I thought in general, this show is really bright and positive. And I think when you have a nighttime scene or a dark interior, that's okay.

Steve Scarfo (03:07)
Bye.

Jeff (03:31)
⁓ I don't think it has to consistently look like it's daylight. And ⁓ but overall, this was a very visually appealing show. It did have a lot of bright colors. The pirate scenes, ⁓ the the circus ⁓ that they were there were ⁓ the circus clowns. There is a lot of brightness, I thought, to this end. think just in general, this show is incredibly

Steve Scarfo (03:54)
Yeah.

Jeff (04:01)
positive, you know, the monkey, ⁓ my God, ⁓ Monkey D. Loopy. He's just such a joy as a character. So I disagree with this being too dim.

Steve Scarfo (04:07)
Monkey D Luffy.

Yeah.

I'll say I agree with your disagreement because I just watched season two, episode one, and there's a lot of night segments that were very well lit. Now they were in the city at that point in time. ⁓ So I won't spoil it because I know it's brand new for folks, but ⁓ yeah, I don't.

I think it's a super vibrant show. It's one of the things that drew me to it initially was how like bright and poppy it was. So, all right. Let me have it.

Jeff (04:46)
Yeah.

Right, right. Okay, are you ready?

We got a seven successful stealth check. The Easter egg hunt, bounty posters and background references. Master for world building. Receiving Kaville and Bellamy's posters and the subtle mentions of Baroque works the show felt lived in and rewarded long time fans without confusing the normies. We can probably speak to the second half of that. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (05:20)
I love this. I love

that I got this. Now again, if you guys don't remember, we don't know these beforehand. We get them generated, but we try not to look at them. So I had no clue this was coming, but I love it because we just said, I'm the normie.

in this case, right? I am the one who didn't catch these. I will say I understand the references, the Baroque works, like the actual works of art in the background. I've noticed them just because I'm old and I've seen pictures of this stuff in the past. ⁓ But like the I do think the artwork and the posters, I do think the background work, it's we talked about it in, ⁓ was it Star Trek and the cross for ⁓

Starfleet Academy, all the Easter eggs that we noticed in that show are the same number of Easter eggs I'm sure I have missed in this show. ⁓ Just because I came at this show without knowing anything about it. I'm sure there are fans of One Piece, both the anime and the manga, who are like, were waiting with bated breath for season one, right? ⁓

I'm reading a new book series right now, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and I know that's coming out. Now I'm excited for it, but I had no idea what this was a month ago. And now I'm into it. So I feel the pain and I apologize to anyone who's listening going, you idiot, how did you not know? ⁓ So I didn't, I didn't have any clue, but I love the details and the sets. It does feel like a fully realized world, right? It doesn't feel like.

the old Star Trek where they're on a set that you can tell it's a painted wall. ⁓ They have, we've talked a lot about TV shows and how they put money into the budgets. They've obviously spent some money on the special effects. ⁓ Everybody's costumes are bright, the hair is bright, but the special effects are really cool because of the devil fruit powers that so many of them have. ⁓ And that was pretty cool ⁓ to see. So I do think they've done a really nice job of putting, I'm sorry if I missed all the.

callbacks, other stuff. So, I've did...

Jeff (07:29)
Yeah,

yeah, I agree. And I we we enjoyed this show without knowing anything going in. We I've since found out that this is like the most successful anime manga series ever. And it just goes to show that, yeah, that's not generally in the realm of entertainment we operate in. ⁓ But we could enjoy this. So what?

Steve Scarfo (07:56)
Yeah.

Jeff (07:58)
I think what we're saying is give this a try. you do not need to know the source material at all. But apparently if you do know it, there's lots of Easter eggs and you're going to love it. So of course, if you do know it, you've already seen it.

Steve Scarfo (08:02)
Yes.

Yeah. So probably.

So, like and subscribe. Thanks for for joining us on this little journey. If you're a regular listener, you'll know this is part of the show and also a small segment. If you're just listening to the small segment, join us on the larger show. But we're going to jump over now to our flashback.

Jeff (08:41)
love this flashback. I do, I'm ready. one of my favorite cartoons when I was, I thought I was younger when I saw this, but apparently its American debut was 1979. Star Blazers came out in 79 in the US, but it was originally a Japanese anime, which we did not know that.

Steve and I, we thought we were watching an American show. Although the clues were there. We just missed them. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (09:16)
You

This whole episode is hindsight is 2020. That is the theme of this episode. We did

not see it then, but we see it now.

Jeff (09:27)
So what a great show this was though. And so original for a sign. So it came out in 74 in Japan was the most successful one of the most successful movies because it was a serialized show that they also, you know, packaged into, I think, a two and a half hour movie that went into the theaters. It was a huge hit, huge sci fi animated hit.

before Star Wars, but as big as Star Wars in Star Trek, like bigger than Star Trek actually, ⁓ in Japan and other areas of the world that was paying attention. We finally got it. And another thing I did not pick up, because I didn't know it was Japanese, is ⁓ the battleship that they, so the concept is, for those who don't know it, and you can watch these.

episodes are free on YouTube. An alien race has bombarded the earth and it's not safe to live outside and everyone lives underground. But the bombardment which is irradiated is has the planet earth even underground only has a year left to survive. And ⁓ there's a lot of references here to the Japanese surviving a couple of nuclear bombs and their battleship Yamada which was sent

which was during World War II, it survived on the bottom of the ocean and they need that as their last spaceship, their battleship spaceship. And an alien race helps them, give them the technology to make that into this battleship that can survive the long journey to this alien world where they can.

learn how to fight and survive against the alien invaders. So yeah, it's called the spaceship Yamato in ⁓ Japan and it's still to this day, still running, still having like action figures and manga and anime and it's still going, yeah.

Steve Scarfo (11:45)
Really?

as Star Blazers or just with that, the I...

Jeff (11:50)
as Spaceship Yamato, was only Star

Blazers here. And the Japanese term for their, ⁓ they were going to be Star Force. But even though they came out before Star Wars, they were afraid they'd get sued because Star Force sounds too much like Star Wars. So they were still Star Force, like the military called themselves that, but they... ⁓

Steve Scarfo (11:54)
⁓

So they changed it.

Jeff (12:17)
It was Star Blazers is what they landed on because they didn't want to sound anything and get sued by Star Wars.

Steve Scarfo (12:22)
I will say Star

Force is better than Space Force, ⁓ which we unfortunately chose as a real thing. That's awesome. When we talked about this, when we were prepping the show, you mentioned Star Blazers and I had forgotten all about it. do, I have like vivid memories of watching that ship fly through the air. I had actually looked it up when you said it.

Jeff (12:26)
you

That's so awesome.

Steve Scarfo (12:44)
And I'm like, my God, I remember this show. Because I was like 10 when it hit us. So I was in the prime time for watching this stuff. You know what mean? It was probably on Saturday morning cartoons for us. Because when we were kids, it was Saturday morning. That's all you got.

Jeff (12:54)
Yeah, it was, Well,

you know what though? ⁓ I take that back. That was ⁓ some of those other Japanese shows like Voltron and, ⁓ you know, like, I know this wasn't a Japanese show, but it's kind of that same idea like Space Ghost. were ⁓ afternoon, in the afternoon, we got those, we got ⁓ cartoons.

Steve Scarfo (13:07)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jeff (13:22)
Just so know, the younger generation. We didn't get to watch cartoons because we didn't have any time we wanted. We had them on afternoons and on Saturday morning and that's it.

Steve Scarfo (13:24)
Wow. So here's the...

Here's the best way to explain the difference between those. Saturday morning cartoons were like prime time TV or like Netflix when they drop something at Friday at eight o'clock. It was the time, that's when the kids were watching. The afternoon shows were that, you know, after the Tonight Show is over, after 1130. ⁓

Now I'm still only talking to people in their 30s and 40s with young kids. I have no clue because everything is just streamed whenever you want it. But yeah, there were times when you had to do it. And these shows were not in the prime time, I guess I'm trying to say. So I do love those shows. Voltron was actually going to be the one I was going to talk about for mine because that's the one I remember the most because I love I think it was pre-Transformers even. But it was that whole idea that they would combine to this one big armored

Jeff (13:56)
Hahaha

Right.

⁓ take it.

Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (14:22)
I don't have the history for it like you did for Star Blazers, but that's that's when I remember the most. I do remember Speed Racer. ⁓ I remember Astro Boy. Those were but those were like sort of older ones then for us. Yeah. So I remember seeing it, but I think it was one of those like when we were kids, it was a rerun or people talked about it. I don't remember watching Astro Boy. I do remember Speed Racer. ⁓ And then I remember ⁓

Jeff (14:35)
I sure as well it was the first one,

No, that was before our time.

Steve Scarfo (14:52)
Voltron the most. was, for me, my entry and we've said it a couple times. I didn't know. No clue that that was originally a Japanese anime style or a manga. I did know. No idea. By the way, I just found out tonight the difference that there's really no difference that anime is just the animated version and manga is just the book version. So for those of you who might be new to this like us, ⁓ manga is like the comic book and anime is just the cartoon.

could be the same topic. No clue. This is how new we are. Or me, anyway. Jeff had to tell me. ⁓ I did not study quite as much. I did go obviously very deep into timelines, but that was it.

Jeff (15:22)
we go.

Well, because I studied for this episode. That's the only reason I knew.

Yeah. And the, and one more thing I just want to say about Star Blazers that I didn't recognize at the time was groundbreaking was that it was, and I know I just said it, that it was serialized and they could make it one, basically splitting up into a movie. And I remember we were kind of talking about how people, some people are critical of like the new Marvel shows for just being like essentially a broken down two hour movie or.

Steve Scarfo (15:41)
⁓

Jeff (16:09)
three hour movie in the same thing with ⁓ some people don't like that Star Trek discovery is a serialized like you can't like skip a bunch of episodes and then just come in and watch it and you get it like with Next Generation you could miss a few episodes it was episodic and it was a that you could do that ⁓ but this and and I don't know if obviously I must have seen it from the beginning or they had enough reruns

Steve Scarfo (16:23)
Alright.

Jeff (16:37)
I never felt lost in the story. I must either just watched it from the beginning, but you do have to watch it from the beginning to really, really get it. because otherwise you'd ⁓ just fill in the blanks, I guess. Star Blazers. Like, yeah, so Star Blazers, like, because it was the ship had a year to get to that other planet and back to save the earth. And there was

Steve Scarfo (16:50)
for.

No, no, no for which which show? for Star Wars.

And so that was

always, it was one long story.

Jeff (17:09)
Yeah, exactly. was, they divided, you know, a two and a half, three hour movie and that was, and 15, 20 minute episodes, which then they threw in like 15 minutes worth of commercials and we didn't care, I guess.

Steve Scarfo (17:26)
No, but that's the way TV used to be for everything though. A 30 minute show was really a 22, 20 or 22 minute show because there was eight to 10 minutes of commercials. yeah.

Jeff (17:33)
They're selling us all the action figures

Steve Scarfo (17:47)
I don't know, Jeff, let's talk a little bit about whether or not ⁓ manga and anime are better than the American comic books.

Jeff (17:58)
All right, so the topic today is, is manga the superior art form? Or are they still trailing behind those American comics? I'm going to take the point of view that manga is beating American comics at their own game. And Steve is going to defend the American comics. So.

Steve Scarfo (18:26)
Yes.

Jeff (18:27)
Shall I kick us off?

Steve Scarfo (18:28)
Kick it off.

Jeff (18:29)
All right. So ⁓ as I admitted, I'm new to the manga game, but I'm fully converted because when I realized that Star Blazers was anime and that it was telling a story from beginning to end, and then I found out that one of the things that sets manga aside

is that it's an artist's vision. And one thing that Steve mentioned in a previous episode is how much he loved Todd McFarlane's Spawn. And Todd McFarlane is an artist. Spider-Man. Well, I'm gonna, for my point, I need it to be Spawn, so it's gonna be Spawn. So Todd McFarlane took and other like Jim Lee, these are big artists from the 90s and created Image Comics.

Steve Scarfo (19:09)
No, Spider-Man. Spawn 2, Spawn 2. Okay, I did like Spawn 2.

Jeff (19:26)
where they owned their character and told their character story. it was them. And you couldn't imagine Spawn without Todd McFarlane. Now, that is what, for those of who are unfamiliar, reason I bring this up is if you know comics, and you're paying attention to us, you probably do. Those characters are constantly in a state of reboot. Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, always new writers.

always new visions and it's always being rebooted. These manga properties are owned by a single artist with a single artist vision and it's telling a story. you, you don't like, so if you catch Spider-Man in the nineties, you didn't have to go all the way back to the, the seventies, you know, or like trying to figure things out, what happened, what's going on or be confused. You just go to issue one and just keep going. Just read through.

Steve Scarfo (20:22)
to start.

Jeff (20:23)
It's

kind of like ⁓ reading Tolkien or reading any single artist. So that's why I think in a way it is the superior comic art form, the manga, because it's a single artist vision.

Steve Scarfo (20:40)
I don't disagree with the single artist vision. ⁓ I still think it's not a strong enough argument. always, well hold on. What are you, no, no, let you, you can go. I think ⁓ that one of the, I actually think the thing you're calling the reason it's not better ⁓ is one of the things that I like about the American comic, right?

Jeff (20:50)
Well, I've got one more.

You

Steve Scarfo (21:09)
We do have a couple of iterations like you said McFarland and a couple folks who were able to carry those things through and own their their iteration at least but the thing that was always comforting and my two favorites growing up I'm sure I've said this on the show before is Spider-man and Wolverine and the one thing that I love is you got different takes there were different Maybe multiversal is the best way to say it for today ⁓ iterations of each character

but it was always Spider-Man and Far From Home was probably the best iteration of that for me, like where it was three different takes, but it was all Spider-Man. They all had similar histories. And one of the best moments in that movie to me was they all talk about the Uncle Ben moment. ⁓ And that's one of the things I like because it's different takes on the same. We get to keep the classic storytelling of here's the origin. I did hate that they redid it in two or three of the movies. They redid the origin story.

We don't need to see the origin story every time, but knowing that it was the same origin story was great. The most recent version ⁓ with Tom Holland, they skipped right over it. He was already Spider-Man. Great, perfect, I love it. Now we can see another story. But because we know who Spider-Man is, we could do it, right? We didn't have to learn about another character. ⁓ So I think one of the things I like about it,

the American version more is we can branch from a common ground because they don't always change it. And then you can tell different stories. And they, think I don't remember specific comic book episodes, episodes, issues that you probably, might. Like when they would say, this is Earth 616 and this is 828. And you know what I mean? They would tell you right off the bat. Like the first, the first plate would be, this is this earth. And then you'd tell a different story. Sorry, I had my mic.

So I really think that that's sort of what, you know, is what's making it work for me. So I think the American comic is still pretty damn strong.

Jeff (23:18)
All right, for you decide listeners, tell us, was it Steve, is the American comic book, the idea that it's keep getting reborn, recreated and reinterpreted, the stronger version or is it having one vision? Tell us.

Steve Scarfo (23:38)
Yes, like, subscribe, email, comment, all that stuff. All right, we're going to drop into the basement for a minute.

Jeff (23:55)
All right, and I actually did literally dig my treasure out from the basement. Those who are watching, you can see that I'm holding a statue of a sea captain. Why do I have this? Well, ⁓ I fell in love with this little fella, ⁓ because my mother-in-law had this in Marco Island outside of her condo.

it didn't dawn on me till we were preparing for this episode. Why I love this so much reminds me of the Captain of the Argo or the spaceship Yabato from ⁓ Star Blazers. So this is my basement treasure. I love this guy and now I know why because it's Captain Avatar, I think is his name. So that is my favorite.

Steve Scarfo (24:48)
Yeah.

Alright, so I wasn't sure of his name and because I knew you were gonna bring him up, I was looking up what was the captain's name. And apparently, I gotta dig while we're talking, apparently Gordon Ramsay was the voice. Different Gordon Ramsay, okay, I'm like, holy shit, the guy from Hell's Kitchen was the captain voice? That's an interesting crossover.

Jeff (25:09)
Different Gordon Ramsay, but yes.

Yeah, know I saw that too.

Like not the same Gordon.

Steve Scarfo (25:21)
Like, wait, what?

⁓

Jeff (25:26)
And actually it was a non-union ⁓ gig, so no one got credit ⁓ for it. And it was only later they were trying to dig up like, did that voice? And then the third season was a union gig and all the voice actors were different because they couldn't find the old ones. And ⁓ I guess it wasn't as successful.

Steve Scarfo (25:33)
no.

they couldn't find the originals.

So for union versus non-union, I assume everybody has at least a sense of what that means. ⁓ When someone does union work for movies, TV, or voiceover, they're able to get paid every time it shows. So someone can actually make a living off of a performance. ⁓

And if you're non-union, you get paid one time and that's it. So if it's a dud and you're getting 500 bucks, you get your 500 bucks and it goes on. But if you get paid 500 bucks and it goes on to make billions of dollars, you get $500. Where?

Jeff (26:22)
So

maybe why seasons one and two, which are non-union are easy to find on YouTube.

Steve Scarfo (26:27)
Probably why.

So, awesome. I do not have a basement treasure for this week. So I'm glad you had found something. was, we talked about it before the show. like, I don't have anything for today. So we're gonna, you dug it up, literally. ⁓ But I am gonna go back in time a little.

Jeff (26:40)
Yuck it up.

Steve Scarfo (26:54)
All right. So we've said this before several times. This is we say it's new territory for us, but it turns out only kinda, but only because we were unaware of how that timeline worked. So we talked about it before. Star Blazers in 79 Voltron in 84. These were shows.

We both watched, we talked about them, loved them. So I think part of this evolution for me that's interesting is it snuck up on me. Like I didn't even know it was evolving and I was enjoying it. ⁓ But not knowing that this was actually from another country, that it was someone else's art. You know, we were young, we were eight, nine, 10 years old when the stiff started. I will say the first ones I remember,

We're in the 90s like Sailor Moon and Pokemon were the ones that were the most obvious in the 90s, but

Yeah, so it's a weird evolution for this stuff for me. I didn't understand what I was watching when I was watching it.

Jeff (28:05)
Yeah, well, and I think, you know, for us, another challenge is, and I remembered our friend Dave, who we've talked about. I remember this is probably early 90s, might've been in the 80s, actually. Actually, it must have been the 80s. He had a bunch of manga and I didn't get it because first, like, because you have to read right to left and it was in Japanese. And remember, we're like, do you even understand?

any of this? Like,

Steve Scarfo (28:36)
I forgot about that.

Jeff (28:38)
and he insisted that he could read it and understand it. Now, it is a visual medium, so maybe. But the fact that he couldn't also speak Japanese did make me suspicious that maybe he didn't know everything in it. But I will say this. He probably knows all of this stuff we've been talking about and just discovering. So.

Steve Scarfo (29:03)
goodness, yeah. I forgot

about the Dave saying he can read Japanese. And I don't know if Dave has actually been a guest on the show. did our DM ⁓ as a job show. But ⁓ I don't know how much he listens. But I remember him having those. I think we said this earlier. I was talking about it. ⁓ There was a part of me that used to sort of kind of look down on anime and ⁓

Jeff (29:07)
Yes, he can read it.

Steve Scarfo (29:31)
I do remember seeing Dave's books and of course, again, the Americanized versions, I don't think there were many of them, so he was getting them mail order. I don't even know how he got them. I'll be honest with you, because we're talking 85, 86, 87, it's before we graduated high school. It's not like there was online ordering, there was no way to see what was going on, so he had some very neat sources of information. And in hindsight, as this entire episode,

the entire show has been about, guess. ⁓ I gotta give Dave credit for getting a hold of a piece of media that was unknown to the rest of us. We gave him a hard time, but Dave really was, he was ahead of the curve. He was on the bleeding edge in the 80s. ⁓

Jeff (30:11)
Yeah, early adopter. I will say that.

Yeah.

Yeah,

and truly, because even though I didn't bring this up in Geek Court, one of my bits of evidence is manga's leading the publishing game. their market size is 19 billion. American comics, two billion.

Steve Scarfo (30:32)
yeah.

Yeah.

Jeff (30:42)
Not even close. Manga is crushing it.

Steve Scarfo (30:44)
No, it's crazy.

Jeff (30:47)
⁓ And so it does have a massive lead. Now that's just, that is just the print media, maybe ⁓ anime, but books and things like that. Whereas I would, now I'm conceding the geek court point, I do think that pop culture and it's hard to beat the Marvel and.

DC properties, because, know, at least in America.

Steve Scarfo (31:17)
Yeah, yeah, I was just looking I had some stats here too for the the the numbers they're expecting manga to hit 63 billion in worldwide sales by 2033 with with anime tie-ins and stuff like that, right so But 63 billion in 2018 western comics were 60 % manga were 40 and in 21 to 24 it flipped manga went 60 western comics won 40 so they there's definitely a spot where

Jeff (31:31)
Okay.

Steve Scarfo (31:47)
⁓ Maybe I'm starting to see some of your geek court point because maybe there's a reason why people are moving over because it's not the same old story over and over that we are getting new fresh stories. ⁓ And I think One Piece is a perfect example of that, right? It's not the same old kind of show that we're used to. It's got a whole history and storyline that's unknown to American audience. Well,

normies like us ⁓ the people who've read it and are still like For some reason still hanging with us going you guys just I think at this point if you're still listening it. Thank you, but ⁓ Have pity on some old men and and realize that we just need your help ⁓ on this because it really has Snuck up on us in a good way in the best way ⁓

Jeff (32:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

100%.

Steve Scarfo (32:46)
That's perfect actually, because it drops us right into our message.

I know you're laughing at me. have to search for everything. It's all in a different place.

Jeff (33:00)
No, I love that you kids don't know how good you got it. ⁓ We've often, like, this segment has gone out to different generations, sometimes to Hollywood producers or the studios. This one, I think, the kids do know how good they got it. We don't know. We didn't know how good they had it.

Steve Scarfo (33:04)
You

Ha ha

Wait, let

me redo it. We don't know how good we should have it. No.

Jeff (33:24)
Yeah,

I know because like I said, we are late to the manga game. didn't know we were missing. And I think also one thing we've covered before is we often, Steve and I don't watch a lot of the animated content, even from things we're excited about, know, Marvel properties and Star Trek and Star Wars. There's lots of animated content out there. We're just not consuming. so, you we, you know, in our flashback, we talked about some of those old

Americanized, anime, Star Blazers, Voltron, we loved it. And then, you know, the 90s hit, we weren't watching Pokemon or, you know, or whatever. That's probably very wrong. I'm sure it's 2000s for Pokemon. Whatever was then, Dragon Ball Z, Yogi-Go, I don't know. Like we weren't.

Steve Scarfo (34:03)
No.

Heh.

Pokemon

was 99 so you were in there. You barely snuck in.

Jeff (34:17)
just barely made it. So,

yeah, so we're we're very late to this game. So you kids, you do know how good you got.

Steve Scarfo (34:28)
Yeah, and again, ⁓ work with us a little bit on this stuff because we love it. ⁓ You know, I guess we've always loved it without knowing that's what it was we were loving. But ⁓ you're right, because after we get out of high school, I was 87, you were 88. A lot of the stuff that hit hard was when we were going to college and first getting jobs and, you know,

time to watch cartoons was getting less and less and reading comic books became less and less. Even the stuff we loved we weren't doing and this was pre the movies. So it wasn't like there was an MCU to carry us along. you know, we... Yeah, I'm gonna stop and just say, ⁓ enjoy it. ⁓ If we're missing stuff, us, hey listen, here's the best thing we could ask you to do. If there's something that you know.

Hey, if you guys liked One Piece, if you guys liked ⁓ Star Blazers, you guys will love this. ⁓ Tell us about it, because I want to know. Alita Battle Angel, which I should have known was based on an anime, just from the way they did the ⁓ special effects, because they definitely, she looks very anime. ⁓ I loved it. It was a great movie. It was a lot of fun to watch. I hear they're making a sequel, which will be cool. Maybe we'll have to do a review of that when it pops up. ⁓

Yeah, tell us if there's something that we're missing, because I'm sure there's a lot.

All right.

Jeff (36:04)
All right.

So I think we both had the same critical hit. So go ahead, Steve. Let's hear from you.

Steve Scarfo (36:10)
Yeah, I don't think it's a surprise one piece, but I'll explain why it's one piece for me. And it is because of a few things I've already said about how this this entire I want to call it a medium snuck up on me. We're big consumers of content. I love a lot of these stylized shows. When I first saw one piece pop up on Netflix a couple of years ago, it was.

Wow, that looks really interesting. Like I could tell it was something different. I don't think I immediately identified it as anime or as a based on a manga. Like I could tell it had some, and I believe even in the logos, there's the Japanese writing inside the words, one piece, which I'm sure says one piece. ⁓ And that's sort of some stylized ⁓ text in there. So I think subtly I understood it, but it wasn't like, again, I wasn't waiting for the show. I was, I stumbled upon it.

during a Netflix search because sometimes, I think I've said this before too, my kids and my wife are asleep by nine, I stay up till midnight, I end up watching all sorts of stuff, I think I was on a search for something new, stumbled on it and burned through the entire season because it was just a great, great show. So to me, this has reintroduced this world to me, a world that I once kind of looked down on and said.

hey, you know, that's kinda cheesy or it's different. And I was being the old guy in the room who wasn't being not welcoming. And I regret that because I'm very happy that the show came around. And in fact, excited to keep watching season two. So that is my hit.

Jeff (37:50)
Yeah, so I'm going to double down on that. And I will admit though that one piece, I wasn't like episode one totally bought in because of, it is a bit silly. So if you're of older generation, when you're watching this,

This is like, I just had to be like, wait, this isn't written for me. 50 some odd year old me. This is for more of a teenage audience. And ⁓ you can enjoy it from that lens. Like there's plenty of great young adult material out there, ⁓ Divergent, The Hunger Games.

Steve Scarfo (38:26)
You

Jeff (38:42)
It's geared towards the younger audience and just enjoy it because it's a lot of fun. And if you watched Fantastic Four, the movie last year, I know some people didn't like that Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic powers weren't that fantastic. Monkey Luffy, D Luffy's power is elasticity and he's super strong. They got it right. Like if you like, I need that Mr. Fantastic power. You're going to see it.

Steve Scarfo (39:09)
Yeah.

Jeff (39:10)
and it's all its glory in one piece. ⁓ so, because this, and I don't think we really truly explained, like it looks like a pirate show. So that's what I thought we were getting into. And so maybe that's also like, what's going on? They have superpowers? What's going on? They have superpowers. It's silly. It's fun. It's incredibly positive. Monkey D. Luffy. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (39:29)
Yeah.

Jeff (39:37)
wants to be the king of the pirates and you're thinking well piracy kind of villain you know kind of yeah anti-hero not at all he is such a nice guy he's like what's your dreams I want to make your dreams come true to everybody like like

Steve Scarfo (39:44)
anti-hero almost.

He

Yes.

And again,

I don't know the original stories, but the way the kid is playing it, and I wish I thought to look up the actor's name, it's absolute joy. 100 % I agree with that.

Jeff (40:10)
Yeah, yeah, so ⁓ incredibly well done. ⁓ The, of course, like Anakii Godoy. Hopefully I'm probably not pronouncing that correct with that. He's Monkey D Luffy. So he's so good.

Steve Scarfo (40:29)
Do you know that kid

was on a show, I think it that kid, very good actor, was on a show called The Irregulars. So I seen him in Imperfect, sorry. Thank you, yes. Thankfully no canning correction. Yeah, The Imperfects, where he played a guy who was affected by some drug that kind of turned him into a lycanthrope, but not a werewolf, he was almost like a jackal. But I liked him in that too.

Jeff (40:37)
The imperfects?

Steve Scarfo (40:58)
Kids get a lot of great energy. ⁓ You know what it is? The show reminds me of the ⁓ the old kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Like the Japanese style fighting movies, like the ninja movies or like a Jackie Chan movie where the stunts are over the top. Now those movies were physical stunts and the fighting was over the.

Jeff (41:18)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (41:23)
Crouching tiger hidden dragon where they were flying through the airs like that stylized fighting ⁓ So that's what

Jeff (41:30)
Yeah, there was some

old like Kung Fu karate movies that were kind of silly too, right? Didn't take itself too seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Scarfo (41:34)
Yeah, very stylized. And that's what, so I agree, I like those.

So I think my fail was me not giving this enough of a chance earlier on. So I said it was gonna change and I realized I'm my own failure. My own epic fail was not giving this the right attention earlier.

Jeff (41:51)
You're a failure. ⁓

So, I think, and my failure is Hollywood. So, I, cause I think one thing that I saw when I was doing this is like people were surprised. Hollywood was surprised that One Piece worked as a live action film. And I think a big part of it is it recognized it needs to stay true to the source material. My point earlier during Geek Court was that this is one artist's vision. And when, you know, with Marvel and all these other properties,

you can have your own take and spin on it. And people are gonna like, yeah, we're used to that. New writer, new spin. They're always doing this, always getting reborn and reinterpreted. And I think Hollywood, the reason it keeps failing at adapting this material is they try to put their own spin on it, do it a little bit differently. And the true fans, which are billion dollars worth of fans.

Steve Scarfo (42:56)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (42:57)
They don't want your spin. They don't want that. And so apparently they got it right with one piece. They're staying true to the source material.

Steve Scarfo (43:06)
I think it's historical because that was my exact rant from a few episodes ago. You know what I mean? No, and it's beautiful because it fits here too. Don't change it. Follow what do do what they did. It was it was successful for a reason. ⁓

Jeff (43:16)
Yeah.

so funny. Yeah. I

know. So often something gets screwed up because someone's got to do their own version of it. You're right. Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (43:30)
Well,

and I agree with you on the Hollywood part of it, because I think it's mostly the American film industry. And it's probably the biggest thing they get made fun of for, which is there's 17 layers of administration and executives, every one of them feeling like they have to put their mark on this movie so that they can get the promotion and do better and get another movie. And all they end up doing is making a big mess. You know, it's like when an artist creates a painting and they use

15 individual colors and it's vibrant. think of George Sherrod, Sunday in the Park with George, right? That very vibrant picture, it's all dots. And it's beautiful if you let each dot be what it's supposed to be. But if you try to smear that sucker, it's gonna be a big field of brown. And I think sometimes our movies and TV shows end up a big field of brown.

Jeff (44:17)
If it's brown, flush it down. That's what I say.

Steve Scarfo (44:19)
Flush it down. All

right, well, listen, we tried some new stuff tonight, a little bit shorter. ⁓ So thanks for joining us. We have ⁓ originalgeekpodcast at gmail.com, originalgeekpodcast.com. Check us out, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, like, subscribe, follow. And hey, if, I don't think this will come up before then, but we are heading down to Boxwell, Massachusetts, and we're gonna be...

I'm doing some fun stuff and we're going to be doing a random review of the classic sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest coming up. And hopefully we'll get a chance to talk to some of the actors that are going to be there. ⁓

00:00 Introduction to Original Geek Podcast
01:23 Random Review: One Piece
08:34 Geek Flashback: Star Blazers
17:38 Geek Court: US Comics VS Manga / Anime
23:48 Basement Treasure
26:47 Geek Flashback
32:51 Geek Rant
35:58 Critical Hits and Epic Fails