Dub Talk 256: Shadows House

0:00 all right class i'm mr roots and due to the unfortunate circumstances of your previous teacher this lord grandfather guy asked me to sub i got three rules for my class so sit down and listen up rule number one shut your yeah disclaimer this episode may contain language and adult situations that aren't appropriate for all audiences listening discretion is advised rule number two shut your yeah this episode also contains spoilers for the series shadow's house and possibly other anime and films keep this in mind as you listen and rule number three oh yeah you better [ __ ] your ass it's gonna be stretcher yeah finally opinions expresser those are the individual participants it may not reflect those of the dub talk podcast as

0:45 a whole all right so mr roots tied one too many on last night and i'm gonna sneak some hair of the dog into my coffee cup while you kids watch a video enjoy the show [Music] hello and welcome to the dub talk house i'm the living doll called stephanie and i'm currently here with our newest dolls megan amman and patrick mommy is this how youtubers are made sweet child i'm only a year older than you i'm not your mother mommy i want to go home i'm still not your mother and you're not going home may i have milkies no okay

1:32 today i guess that's the bit we're going with today is our first day of class on how to be the perfect living doll in order to serve our masters and what better way to learn than by seeing it in action with our sister home shadow's house the spring 2021 series based on the ongoing manga by somato and produced by cloverworks and director kazuki ohashi if you are unfamiliar with the series let me give you a quick summary and i'm gonna just drop the bit at this point so you're telling me this is how youtubers are made well when uh when a twitch streamer and a 3d rig artist love each other very much [Laughter] the twitch streamer gives the artist a

2:17 lot of money and in return you see where i'm going with this and that's how things are born so shadows house the spring 2020 2021 series cloverworks manga all this fun stuff here's your summary in a grandiose and dark mansion the denizens of the shadows house live attended by their living doll partners who endlessly clean the soot their masters emit emiliko a young and cheerful living doll is delighted to start serving her mistress kate as the two grow closer and are slowly exposed to various events within the house they start to discover a number of dark secrets [Music] it has a vibe and a tone of like gothic horror to an extent that's very

3:04 unsettling and i love it but what if we took your gothic horror and placed one child of insurmountable joy who could never be defeated and could take out goku with her positivity well to be honest usually you do that to then crush the child later so we'll see she's already been through enough she had to drink coffee at a young age i've i've read these kind of books that's what you think oh coffee is a child she is ruined already i i'm so glad that they made an evil prequel to encanto anyways as always we're going to be discussing the series from top to bottom including the casting performances and our overall thoughts on the english dub uh i hope you have your cleaning kits ready kids because it's

3:50 time to get to work what's cleaning oh god i the squad of mine they have a lot to learn oh no [ __ ] you i sleep all the time and my master can [ __ ] off for the time being the broncos are on all right we need to get you more sick coffee and stat then um anyway let's kick things off with our adr staff we have our adr director two assistant directors two script writers and we do have some song adaptation happening in here so we're also gonna talk about our adr song director and lyric adaptation for this show so in terms of who our staff for this show is first of all this is a funimation dub

4:36 even though the show is produced by anyplex i believe no funimation got it directly outright for mediplex in japan this is not shared with aoa it's not shared with any flex it's not any flex period that's millionaire detective i'm thinking of no this is produced by anaplex and cloverworks they're just not sharing the license like they were with something like millionaire detective no that's what i was trying to say it's an indieplex produced series is what i was trying to say i'm very confused megan needs caffeine but not coffee because coffee is the devil in this show well we're well we're all screwed because i'm drinking coffee so here we go if steph starts acting weird within the next hour uh andrew will need to be called in to flush your mouth out with water oh so much water so basically if i'm drunk off of coffee what you're telling

5:23 me as i need to drink copious amounts of water yes just flush it all out that's how that works yeah exactly anyway our adr staff um starting with our adr director that would be the one and only caitlyn glass who has directed other series such as apparent man fruits basket 2019 and radiant our two assistant adr directors we have sean gann who is also assisted on april ranman horimia and sakura quest and as a fun little side note because this is this was made public by him congrats on being a full-time director now at funimation yay excited to see what you do as for our other assistant er director that would be emmy low i believe this was her first go at adr directing

6:09 because the stuff following this includes things such as saints magic powers omnipotent uh ranking of kings and season two of restaurant to another world script writers so our two script writers our main script writer for the series is jessica kavanaugh who's written for other series such as golden community rumble ketone game of law place and smile down the runway and as for the scriptwriter for episode 1 specifically that would be emily neves who is also written for series such as cop craft cockario been breakfast for spirits and snow white with red hair and as for our adr song director and lyric adaptation it's actually the same person we have don m bennett who is also served doing music director and also layer adaptation for series such as actor's song connection astra lost in space and sadan

6:56 zanmai so what are our thoughts on the directing the writing um one of the things that i was worried about was in this show every other shadow and their doll is played by the same actor yes so i wondered if they would do the same thing because sometimes it doesn't work when actors play two characters that are deeply connected it sometimes can blend all together if proper direction isn't given to make sure that they sound as if they have their own personalities and that's actually a huge plot point of the show so the extra time and care that was put into caitlyn shawn and emily's direction

7:42 i think they did a good job getting actors who could do that or at least directing actors who could differentiate themselves in that way and while normally i would be bothered by the same actor playing multiple characters it really worked here because of the way that the show worked and that they took the care to do like a big example of me not liking this and actually preferring like one language track over another is in blood blockade battlefront black white and the king of despair are all played by the same actress oh yeah and to me that didn't really ever work because black and white were two different characters and then black and the king of despair were two different characters but those characters were sharing a body so that's why it worked in english to have two different people

8:29 perform those three characters with obviously the actor for black taking care of the double duty for himself and the king of despair so here this works because i think caitlyn and the directing team played into that so well i think that dawn did a good job adapting the song it's the one little song it's the cleaning song it's so cute and i also want to appreciate that like everybody sung it competently but it did still sound like maybe the dolls weren't all good singers in the first place so like i think that that sounded pretty cool in the writing i really compliment because this is obviously clearly taking place during some sort of time period and there was never something that made this show feel like it was

9:16 modern or super far back i do enjoy that they kept the way that a lot of the shadows addressed themselves in the third person um and made it sound like it flowed really well in natural dialogue because obviously megan thinks that megan is this can sound really awkward to people so overall i think it's a really good dub with a lot of i think fun performances that we're gonna talk about so overall i i genuinely enjoyed it i know this is really strong i i like the show because it doesn't allow gothic horror in it uh but it also feels very much like a fairy tale in the like like in the same way that like i'll watch stuff like ancient magus bride or uh the bits of like girl from the other side i've read where there's a very like kind of

10:02 fairy tale folk story aspect to it like i i feel like i am reading something that is from an old country it has it has that feel to it and i it helps with like the character depictions and the performances as well i think yeah i know and i i think i think the dove does a good job of capturing that aspect of it it feels very it feels very old world without feeling too specific like you know there's a vague britishness about some of the performances but i think that's just because you a lot of americans that's what that sounds like in english you know you know well well we're making a movie set in ancient rome in the 50s everyone's going to be played by british actors because that's what we think people from rome sound like now but i think i think it works in this case because it doesn't it doesn't feel like it never reads it's like oh this is set in specific country it's just this feels

10:47 old and otherworldly in a way that isn't too like removed but it's removed enough that like everything comes off as little like even even aside from the stuff that's obviously weird and off-putting it also feels like this is all a little strange i don't know if i appreciate these people being here can they be somewhere else where i don't feel like they're immortal peril perhaps maybe can we burn down the other side of the house mike's my experience is burning down one part of the house usually leads to the whole thing burning down so probably not control controlled fires are a thing you can do with forests not houses yeah i mean i i agree with what megan was saying i think this is a nice i think this is strongly directed and written i think it's well cast uh all further thoughts as you get to individual characters so yeah i think this is really strong on the whole i

11:32 liked it a lot yeah one thing i really appreciate is um oman was kind of going into it a little bit but um it's kind of accent work but not really more of a very regal manner of speech like it felt like kind of a cape cod kind of really sophisticated like new england-ish kind of that is a very specific yeah no it it's like um like herman munster if you think about it or the adam's family maybe a little yeah where he's clearly speaking in a very sophisticated tone but is not taking on any particular regional ass accent which considering we don't know where shadow's house actually takes place helps out quite a bit like one

12:19 other thing i really kind of appreciate is that um our main five the shadows and their living dolls they legit sound like kids and doubling them up as we'll get to throughout the course of the uh of the episode like they were distinct but also you could tell there was something going on that you later find out is like a not so savory thing that's going on and also particularly with the main characters sound like children the song actually sounds like it is sung by kids and particularly in the last episode they do a really good job giving it a um unsettling and menacing vibe like especially with amelico everything is framed in a way in that

13:05 last shot where you don't know where her true affiliations lie and i think that's gonna be a really interesting thing coming into season two later this year so yeah direction scriptwriting and the um the song which you know me i'm not particularly big on dubbed songs but it felt appropriate here but all the all of it was really solidly done so kudos and thumbs up hey what else can i add at this stage um i mean kaitlyn glass has become a really big staple in terms of her directing work so this is no exception to that um and with these of both sean and emmy they add a fun cohesion and just they have a lot of fun with the show especially with like all of the um the

13:51 shadows and the the masters and the living dolls who have one voice to them but have to play different personalities so they get to have fun playing with personalities especially with i would say shawn and john and lou and louise those are like drastically different personalities that are just so much fun to play with so kudos on the direction on that and the writing is really enjoyable too i am gonna give emily a lot of kudos though for her script work in episode one because episode one primarily is what establishes a little bit of the world but the main thing is that it establishes the relationship between emilico and kate and how that is written and how that's directed i think came off very very well and getting the viewer to kind of just like be curious about this world and be invested in this

14:38 relationship between these two little girls um and whatever weird-ass dark secrets come their way so i have to give emily neef some kudos for that one there's not really much more i can add that everybody hasn't said already so unless there's any additional little comments and stuff we want to move on to our first set of characters yeah so why don't we kick things off um with uh the quote-unquote cream of the crop uh the [ __ ] who think uh kidnapping kids is a good thing let's talk about the nobles on the third floor i mean you say this like that's a surprise but they have you know you describe them as nobles so like really are we shocked are we i mean this is like basically you know the whole like mythology of like the

15:23 fairy changeling thing like they would take kids and exchange them with fairy babies i've seen the ancient magus bride you all know who my favorite character is in that show so we have our four nobles plus we're gonna also talk about lord grandfather who is the patriarch of the entire shadows house he looks like a [ __ ] joker stand he kind of does he looks like he looks like the one that was of the big fat guy in the jail black sabbath dom popo stan given life again oh my god so we have lord grandfather who is the patriarch of shadow's house and everybody just wants to serve him and be loyal and all

16:08 this fun [ __ ] but we really don't know much about lord grandfather really we do know potentially a little bit more about our four nobles who are also on the third floor with him we have dorothy ryan joseph and sophie which i could be which i could probably describe as dorothy the prim proper princess ryan the cocky sack of [ __ ] joseph the regal uncle he's the big smoking guy the big smokey guy and sophie who is an eldritch abomination it's a butterfly she's an eldritch abomination she literally has a proboscis she's a butterfly anyway the individuals voicing these characters as sophie our

16:55 wonderful little butterfly uh is alex moore who's voice character such as susan okamizuki in the devil is a part-timer lolette and maria the virgin witch and mitsuba sangju in seraph of the end my girl yo girl as joseph we have brent mukhai who is still relatively new the only other really really major named character he's voiced at the stage is genji and full dive but he's als uh he's also dorshay in ranking of kings and show minamoto in the world ends with you uh as ryan our sack of [ __ ] you have jason lebrecht whose voice characters such as lilium in akka 13 territory inspection department haruitsuki abano in the morose mononokian and mutsuno kami yoshiyuka in token rambo

17:41 hanamaru aka the guy with gun and as for dorothy we have a name that we actually don't hear really that often vanessa de silvio who's only other major named character to date is makoto hiroshima in want to be the strongest in the world but she has done background and smaller roles in other series such as fairy tale and norigami as for lord grandfather thank you first of all emmy low for confirming this for me he is voiced in fact by our bruce elliot who has played other characters such as grey and angels of death hannibal barca in drifters and the narrator in space dandy where should we start do we want to start with the [ __ ] awful nobles or well lord grandfather doesn't really do much he's kind of there and he doesn't talk

18:26 that much does lord grandfather speak outside of more than one scene i honestly can't remember healy speaks twice when he talks to edward and his squad and then he makes like small comments here and there in other scenes but he doesn't do a lot but i feel like as a commanding authoritative voice i think arbor zelly is perfect honestly i mean look i've heard arboricus elliott and things i look at lord grandfather's like character design and what his role is it's like yeah it's good yeah i'll be fine yeah same this will whenever he gets more lines it'll be more than better so cool great hopefully in season two yeah exactly i think garber zelia did a good job making him sound creepy and like oh god oh god oh god this man does terrible terrible things unfortunately

19:13 like at this juncture until like probably july there's not much we can say right because obviously he's gonna have a larger role in the actual lore of the shadows house and what the shadows family even is so right now we don't have enough information but it's our bruce elliott oh he's great he's fun our four nobles though are very weird i have i have a note about this uh a plus out of ten where all uh posh sociopaths would punt into the sun especially ryan right i'll be i'll be honest i didn't get far enough in that i remembered what each one was like specifically but like all i remember is when they showed up again it was like ah these [ __ ]

20:00 these people sophie's the butterfly which is the easiest one to remember i'm sorry i shouldn't remember other other anime bloopers now just imagining johnny bosch's uh blue like justice's blooper of i'm a beautiful butterfly coming out of her mouth so alex if you're listening please sophie gets to be a little bit creepy during the debut arc where she's like watching john emit his soot powers and she's just like all of a sudden she feels like all hot and bothered she's literally using her proboscis to snort soot like it's cocaine in the 80s bunch of bunch of bunch of [ __ ] marie antoinette people and was i correct in seeing that um during that scene in the debut there was one of those little

20:46 shadow kids the little mimics the soot mimics oh yeah she just like crushes up one of them benito okay so that wasn't just forgot sophie sophie sweetie sophie's a little weird sophie is that aunt at the party who you're like oh i just want to pinch your cheeks i hope she meets the one on my face god these are characters where if this show was a little less serious one of them would absolutely have an unusually long like pinky nail and it wouldn't be commented on but it'd be there and we'd all know why oh that would be that would be dorothy's aesthetic i think no sophie's the cocad no i'm saying with a long pinky nail no no no no no uh steph that's the thing you used to inhale cocaine more efficiently that's the only you don't do that for aesthetics you do that to get high

21:35 you can tell who's never done drugs before which is i've never done drugs before i don't do drugs i just like rock bands from the 70s thank you i've seen enough martin scorsese to know i have a degree in film history i've seen [ __ ] i don't need to do anything i just own a copy of rumors thank you i know nothing [Laughter] i'm sorry for potentially calling you drug addicts are you though anyway anyway i'll continue on um i love alex moore sophie i again please put alex more and more things i and i know it's because i love the show so much sophie reminds me of the duchess from [ __ ] centaur world season two but like toned down joseph uh brett murakai did a good job

22:20 there too he was kind of the one that talked the least in my opinion he was kind of big and grumbly and he had his big his big doobie vanessa's dorothy had that right level of wicked charm because i think out of all of them she and ryan were kind of the most nefarious yes they had between dorothy and ryan they were the ones who like talkative and i think the scene that really sold me on vanessa's performance is dorothy is when they go to the town and they pick the kids she gives the coffee and she's like we need to get more boys girls than boys this time like as if she's window shopping at the macy's but i think jason really steals the show as ryan ryan chewed the scenery ryan was a very

23:07 emotive character very much his heart on his sleeve i think that he he really played up the arrogant [ __ ] the best in the show there's another character a couple of other characters that we're going to talk about who are huge arrogant [ __ ] but jason was on another level of eating ham with that but it wasn't so over the top as to distract from the rest of the performances brian is just a big personality person and being and personalities are a huge plot device in this show so i think that jason really played it well and that's all i've got to really say what else can we add about the uh these uh quote unquote wonderful nobles i don't know how many of you have actually seen what i'm about to

23:53 reference i know oman has the scenes in the debut with the nobles watching and being absolutely horrible to one another and to the contestants it reminds me of the sketchy's banquet in the dark crystal [Laughter] you see it too don't you oman yeah you're you're not wrong you're correct even i've never seen the dark crystal and i know i'm letting my boyfriend down by saying that i haven't we'll get to that i mean to be fair i'm surprised you weren't mailing me a copy of the dark crystal seeing as last year i i literally mailed you a copy of big fish because you had never seen it i didn't even think of that anyway oh well i have to write that down later taking my notes i'm also just saying

24:39 that tim burton's big fish aka the best movie tim burton has ever made is now on netflix so it is a pretty killer uh pearl jam track is the credit song too what i'm sorry there's no reality where the juxtaposition of tim burton and pearl jam isn't funny i don't those care those are two aesthetics that i don't that don't occupy the same part of my brain that's all and yet they yet they are two great tastes that work together big fish excellent movie highly recommend it just i think i forgot that detail or didn't realize it was pearl jam in the first place anyways yeah um particularly i want to um i want to bring up the series for a sec in that it was a bunch of like broadway and

25:24 senior puppeteer hams just absolutely hamming it up and here in in shadows house with with the debut like it was just a similar vibe where they were just absolutely disgusting repulsive creatures played by actors who absolutely know that they are playing just absolute scumbags and are absolutely hamming it the hell up that's when it's the most fun like i think voice act they've been voice actors who've said it before where it's like the hero that's fine we get to play a villain though well i mean and it's not just that they're they're villains it's that they're these incredibly monstrous aristocratic figures who are just being absolutely terrible it's basically the um with the thing i

26:11 mentioned before with eating the little soot kid uranus eating his own child kronos is that you i i really i really dug it and then like at the very end with another character we'll be getting into probably in the next section or two receiving his final judgment over the [ __ ] he pulled in the final arc where they're just sitting around dunking on the guy we should totally [ __ ] banish him he's gone edward we know you want to get a better table but sir this is a denny's the good table we reserve for parties of 10 or more edward you've been banished to the waffle house during a hurricane this waffle house is closed oh no no no no

26:58 no a bad enough hurricane where the waffle house is still open but they only have like one or two items in coffee that's it yeah you can sit down that's no good coffee on enemy's stomach is the worst i don't want to drag this on for too long but they were just absolutely delicious in every scene they are in every ounce of scenery around them is just this pulp because they've chewed it so much i i really love it brent and alex don't have as much to do they're kind of more quieter so alex gets to have a creepy [ __ ] moment where she's licking the damn window just wanting [ __ ] john's ass like what the [ __ ] lady this is a child um but they both are really fun and i enjoy him a lot vanessa and jason are

27:44 the two that stand out obviously primarily jason because it's [ __ ] jason lebrecht being a hammy dick wad like ryan is the most egotistical arrogant piece of [ __ ] and he doesn't care he knows it and he doesn't care and especially because during those aforementioned scenes where they're passing judgment on edward uh for the [ __ ] he's pulled or before that when the debut concludes and they're meeting and they're going over how it went ryan's the first one to get into the violence mode and almost beat the [ __ ] out of edward because he's like you fool how dare you how dare you do this to me how dare you

28:29 not entertain us or some horseshit so jason playing that fun egotistical arrogant role is always a pleasure it's so much fun um the character in terms of vocal tone that kind of comes close to that could actually be lilium from akka except he's not as like hammy lilian's not as hammy and lilium is more like calm cool collected stoic but he's also very much the arrogant narcissistic [ __ ] and it's great and then vanessa's dorothy this is the first time i've ever really heard or pay attention to dorothy and i have seen want to be the strongest in the world many moons ago but i like the regal noble tone and air that she has for dorothy like i think megan was saying there's like this subtle undertone of unsettling

29:17 of an unsettling nature with dorothy all of them have that but i think it's mostly pronounced with dorothy and it just stands out so nicely and i really enjoy that all of these [ __ ] these bastards uh anything else to add i'm on [ __ ] these people they suck the the characters the actors are all very good at playing these awful awful people but the character is just terrible awful people i hate you so much that i want to punch you in the sun i feel like there's the effect the show is going for these people are loathsome so you know intended reaction very good all around yeah get a dainty little golf clap all right so why don't we move on we're gonna be getting into more characters

30:02 obviously that have more [ __ ] to do you know like cleaning the house and being a [ __ ] exactly so our next trio of characters they are um living dolls and shadow masters that end up either befriending milico or antagonizing emiliko in a bit um and this is also going to be the first section where we're going to be talking about an actor or actress playing two characters at once so we have mia and her shadow master sarah we have rosemary and her shadow master mary rose and we have barbie and her shadow master barbara mia and rosemary they meet emiliko rather early on when emilia's introduced

30:47 to like the rest of the house and we meet mia's shadow master sarah rather early on as well when emilico falls from a window kate goes to try and help her when she's technically not supposed to leave her room before the debut and they run into me and sarah and that's when they kind of start where really they kind of start learning more of the intent of the shadow masters and their living dolls a little bit um also sarah's a [ __ ] and mia is way too devoted to her shadow shadowmaster yeah like to an uncomfortable level um she gets her ass beat by choice by choice i'm not kidding i can't stress that enough mia asks sarah to punish her by choice with a cane

31:33 right uh rosemary and mary rose in the aforementioned introduction that emilia has the rest of the house and the cleaning and everything like that she's part of a four-person team that includes mia includes lou who we'll talk about in a while and also includes their team leader rosemary rosemary out of the four of them in that team is presumably the oldest she's very sweet very big sisterly very wonderful uh and then her shadowmaster mary rose who we don't really actually meet until after the debut her rose master is lady oscar basically that's the best way to describe mary rose and mary rose is great as for barbie barbie is what is called a star bearer and star bears essentially are the cream of the crop among the kids

32:19 in the children's wing barbie she's seen as the essentially the leader of the star bearers for the children's wing and she's also very [ __ ] and she like jumps the gun and tries to blame things on people and it's like get your [ __ ] together guys barbie is very very personality-wise kind of grouchy barbara is a bit more regal and refined but also has still kind of has that tone to her typical middle manager you give an inch of power and just goes right to their head disc disc but at the end of the show too it's because of barbie and barbara sass that uh things work out so uh in regards to who's voicing these characters like i mentioned before these six characters are voiced by three

33:05 different actresses so for mia and sarah we have emily fajardo who is voice character such as bananya and bananya and the curious bunch manana nonomora in shio school road and natsume in kona hanakitan as rosemary and mary rose we have michelle lee who has voiced characters such as sumire hara in assassination classroom origami toibichi in data live and kurona yasuhisa in tokyo ghoul root a as for barbie and barbara we have elizabeth maxwell who's voice characters such as yamir in attack on titan cordelia gallo in gosick and alberto in overlord lord almighty [Laughter] which one do we want to start with because these three have oh these three

33:51 have different personalities and at least three pairs i need to say pairs i need to keep that in mind these three pairs have different personalities but they also have a [ __ ] ton going on with each of them for men for different reasons where do we want to start do we want to start with uh i'll pick one if nobody has any ideas why don't we start with rosemary and mary rose and michelle lee there we go because out of the trio out of the of the three pairs in this section rosemary or mary rose doesn't really have as a lot compared to like mia and sarah or barbie and barbara um to which this is one of those stark contrasts and personality between the shadows and their living dolls and this is one of

34:37 the more fun ones because we have rosemary like i said before she's like the sweet kind big sister of the group and she's just like looking out for everyone and caring so much and then you have lady oscar aka mary rose which is the best way to describe mary rose because mary rose is very much more of like a tomboy in terms of like mannerism and personality mary rose is an idealized woman to me yeah but at the same time mary rose is just like this very noble very outstanding and honorable character so how do we feel about michelle lee with uh rosemary and mary rose cause i like it well no i like mil i like the

35:24 performance of michelle lee as mary and rosemary mary rose and rosemary god she just tweeted your name around [ __ ] okay kingdom hearts ass [ __ ] i'm gonna bring this up real quick now that you brought that up so it is custom in the shadows house for the shadow masters to name their living dolls as a um representation of themselves so typically they name their living dolls something close to them like barbie barbara mia sarah the only exception to this is emiliko but this [ __ ] did the kingdom hearts route all it's missing is an x hey it works i don't care it works rosex marie this this episode is cursed now i hope you're proud of

36:10 yourself oh oh i'm sorry the kingdom hearts joke is what made it curse so not to talk about cocaine nails and [ __ ] no that's no that's normal i meant no not even the kingdom of hearts thing the making up the name with the x's whatever the [ __ ] you call that that's what made it cursed but that's how nobody's worth they just stick an x in there i i i that doesn't make it any less cursed go yellow touchy and amora not me why he's having fun defeat tessie and namora you'll have to cut off all of his belts first to defeat tatiana you have to defeat my seventy flexes and all their belts in order to fight tetsuya nomura you have to fight the president of square enix at the end of mir automata yokotaro is not there yokotaro is just on the sideline waving

36:57 to you as he eats popcorn like literally one of the bosses of near automata in the dlc is the president of square enix as the president of square enix are you [ __ ] kidding me i've never played near automata so oh you're missing out god damn it yokotaro i have neurotomide i just haven't played it yet anyway anyway michelle lee is oscar i think that the thing i like about the performance so much is that you could tell they are two different personality people when they're apart and i think that's a sign for all of them is that very much when they are not in the presence of their of their shadows they are their own people and i love the connect the disconnect and design actually between rosemary being kind of the more demure girly type while mary rose is more

37:43 masculine and i think that michelle really played that well off in their voice uh barbie you [ __ ] barbie and her shark teeth i am pretty sure would in fact bite your ankle if you [ __ ] with her because she's also short oh she's tiny she's tiny but mighty i like this kind of younger aggressive elizabeth rexwell character because a lot of times i think a lot of people peg elizabeth maxwell as the more adult like mature characters with a more sexy voice and barbie sounds about as sexy as a angry chihuahua on christmas morning she she sounds like an angry little dog that thinks that they are bigger than they are because they have a smidge of power knowing that the owner will pick

38:28 them up and put them on their calm lap which that being barbara in this case barbara being a lot more calm and mature and very much more delicate with her words is i think the best way to describe the direction that elizabeth has for her and when they call out edward about sneaking into the children's world and you know kidnapping people it felt less like you're being yapped at by a small dog and more that a [ __ ] german shepherd has just showed up behind you and barked once and the small dog thinks that she's done something terrifying but in fact it is just the big dog and then i think to me though the stand of the section has to be emily as mia and sarah because they are so different and the way that emily plays sarah as

39:15 such a good kind of clumsy klutzy sister figure who at the same time harbor so much darkness that's mia actually sarah is the shadow master oh sorry mia my apologies yeah mia is the living doll sarah's the shadow i got it it's gonna get very confusing forgive us so i'm not gonna lie that they emily did such a great scene where they're getting beat with the cane and they put the tissue in their mouth it gave me a more sinister animal house please sir may i have another vibe i'm gonna disagree only because it reminded me of like the part in the gothic horror novel where it heavily implies that outright stages like no the siblings who are too close together are doing what you think they're doing because this is that kind of novel like it sounded like she's getting off on it

40:02 yeah it's like which should be fair they aren't actually sisters no no no it's just like it's just like this seems wrong getting off because your master is beating you just feels like it should be icky like intentionally so but icky yeah especially because they're probably like teenage age it's like i want to grow beat me with a stick they and they foreshadow it because emiliko sees in the bathroom that there are scars and then you have mia's room too that's always full of slit and like chaos because sarah goes in there right and sarah destroys anything that brings me a joy and and out of all of them out of all of the three of them i actually think it's mia who is the most in sync with sarah

40:47 yep compared to everybody else and i i like that that as portrayed through their voices in that i think out of all of them sarah and mia sound the most distant in tone but they are of course the most closely in sync with each other interesting okay i think they're more like closer in sync with their tones which makes sense to me compared to like rosemary and mary rose who are like way out there and then barbie and barbara are relatively close but not that close like mia and sarah so it's very interesting it's just very interesting how like some of the actors portray both the living doll and the shadow master because you can tell and i think that's kind of the point you can tell the relationship based on how these dolls and the masters like interact with each other

41:33 like with me and sarah that's a very very clear connection to the two of them um any more thoughts yeah um i i largely agree with megan unfortunately i watched the first half of this show like six months ago so i have like jagged little memories of a bunch of the characters that we're talking about in this section um i do remember barbara quite a bit though because she plays a pretty big role in the uh in the final arc of the season oh yes i have to thank you edward because you're the one who told us to do our jobs and to keep an eye out and be ever so diligent so i have to thank you for that did it come back to bite him in the ass did it seem like she kind of had it out for him oh she hates him yeah oh she

42:18 does barbara hates edward okay i don't think anyone in this house actually likes anyone else in this house no maybe the exception of like the some of the like mary rose likes people yeah like a few of them harry rose and rosemary like people like ignoring the debut kids very i think very few of these people actually like anybody else they all seem really angry and jaded because of the world in terms of shadow masters i think the only other nice shadow master that we've met so far is mary rose and who's to say that's even sincere let's be real here right right we know right now it is but it could turn bad later absolutely and i mean even then it feels like there's a clear difference between like these groups of shadow masters and their living dolls are just

43:06 in it for themselves and then uh these shadow masters and living dolls have it out for this other shadowmaster and living doll and it very clearly feels like barbara falls into the latter category with edward and barbie well not only that too we have a couple moments in the show where barbie antagonizes mia because sarah wants to be a star bearer and barbie keeps calling mia failure all the time and that's like the bone of contention with mia and sarah's relationship is they want to be a star bearer right barbie's like kind of out to get them because mia will sometimes stand up for herself and all the other kids on occasion and that can get her into trouble and sarah's not a fan so it's very interesting how the

43:51 relationships between between living dolls themselves between the shadow masters themselves and shadow masters and their living dolls kind of operate yeah like one thing i did want to touch on what which pair was the uh sadomasochistic one that's mia and sarah mia being the doll sarah being the master nia and sarah thank you like i do remember with them one scene i really liked is when um kate sneaks out she tries to save emilico and then she encounters them and then you get the sense of the real nature of shadowhouse when um mia basically puts on the metaphorical mask she was incredibly friendly to amelico while they were cleaning the house but the second sarah shows up and she has to play face like

44:36 she goes mean girls from 0 to 60. and i really like that that plot point is brought up the next day and me is like don't worry about that was sarah's thoughts not mine and she puts on that bright smiling face like we saw before which you know gets a little bit more dubious as the show goes on right for mia she's putting on a lot of different faces and masks to get through the day but deep down it's like i want to serve my master sarah to the fullest extent and do whatever she wants and she's and i'm willing to let her do whatever she wants to me to make that happen so it's there's a lot that mia and sarah deal with oh yeah and honestly i wish i had more to say about the other two but i really like i

45:22 don't want to be a buzz kill to the actors involved in those two roles but unfortunately it was just too long ago for me to remember okay uh i don't remember barbara very well because i i watched that part of the show like two months ago uh elizabeth's really good as barbie though what a oh [ __ ] i'm impressed by how much the early part of the show i feel like barbie is the antagonist even though the grand scheme of things she is extremely small potatoes so good on elizabeth for that i agree as we were saying about michelle for rosemary and mary rose kudos to emily for playing both sides of a horribly abusive relationship like that's probably very taxing yeah honestly like she she's good but like that that but me and sarah creep me out

46:08 just their their whole thing under like i don't don't like this i don't like it no sir not at all no i don't i don't care for any of this that's happening she does a really good job at it but it's like yeah not sure i'm okay with this but here we go oh it's i i think i think the show does a lot of smart interesting things with the whole like dynamic of here's a classic characters and here's another classic characters that just exist to be reflections of them but still have their own personalities and so on and i think you see that in something like me and sarah it's like this is inordinately [ __ ] up and just i guess kudos to them for not toning it down this show is the right level of violence yeah i know this is very much a show that it's like we are what we are if you can't take that

46:54 well stop watching then which i appreciate um yeah i know they're they're all really good yay i love michelle lee as rosemary and mary rose rosemary is the sweetest little thing can i just say the scene where um freaking amelico and mia um and they're talking because it's the day the dolls get like a deep cleaning aka they get a bath and i was gonna say are we gonna talk about adventures with head crabs adventures with head crafts yes so uh while they're getting their deep cleaning mia and emilico are chatting and they're just talking about rosemary and like is she gonna be okay amelia was worried and rose and mia's just like no i think she'll be fine and i wouldn't be surprised that if she comes back when she's all better she's like oh my goodness that was so embarrassing like

47:41 mimicking rosemary and then sure enough immediately after that rosemary comes back and she's like i'm sorry i made you too worried oh god goodness gracious that was so embarrassing like the almost the exact tone and mannerism emily's mia portrayed which was the funniest [ __ ] because it's like oh my god and then mia and amelico just started laughing their asses off of how accurate that was um i really like michelle lee one of the main things that michelle lee gets to do is head crabs and what i mean by head crabs so there's this thing that explained early on in the show called scorches and phantoms so scorches are what happen is little bits of soot um that kind of start piling up together and start

48:27 becoming their own living thing if there's a lot of soot piled up in one spot and all together it becomes a phantom and phantoms are big scary creatures that will attack you and they look like little spiders and i think it's like episode three um a emergency occurs and if because a phantom is roaming about and all of the kids have to try and basically kill it and um rosemary is not that lucky it almost hangs her it almost hangs her but um because of the quick thing of mia and emiliko they managed to save rosemary and not only that it also introduces us to what is called in this world sickness which becomes a very important thing after the debut arc has

49:14 concluded where basically a living if a living doll has ingested a lot of soot they contract what's called sickness and essentially become for lack of better phrasing mindless zombies and will lose their memories if you if they're fed soot coffee we'll get back to that part of it later but for the sake of rosemary that's what we'll go through right now can i make a bad joke please oh no go ahead amelica was so late that she had to run really fast a soot was hidden nearby so when amelica went by the soot wanted to give them trouble uh here amelica saw the first so the soot became a phantom i can't give you my broom emilika said why not said the phantom

49:59 because you are phantom so milico beat the phantom in the head and and run off thinking rosemary is in trouble in there and what faster you know it's a real testament that i can still recognize half-life full-length consequences just from like the rhythm of the bad writing i did not know what was happening i'll explain later there's a video oh god i want him surprised part of me was like i hope someone gets this but i didn't know if i you you reading it made me realize there's a very distinct style to the bad writing in that piece it's very recognizable god half my full life consequence it's a piece of [ __ ] art i'm sorry okay i will take your word for it anyway

50:44 anyway i really like with shelley is rosemary and mary rose um because i think like i said earlier the different personalities are very distinct between these two um and they're just such a delay rosemary with her big sisterly like innocent like now now don't you fret about trivial things it's not our job and then if mary rose is like aha i am here we will help you with everything like mario's a bit more boisterous and like more proud and open and it's just so fun there's not much more i can add with barbie and barbara and elizabeth maxwell barbie is gremlin child angry short little chihuahua gremlin child and barbara is just like a short less gremlin child i guess um it's very nice fun contrast between

51:31 the two especially considering we have barbie for most of the show and with her grouchy personality just yelling at everyone hey it's very fun and like you said megan you don't often hear elizabeth for a character that is considered like the drop dead gorgeous sexy one or the more mature character right that's usually the typecast instead we have gremlin child and it works really nicely but no the emily is definitely a standout for this section 100 because of all of the [ __ ] i'm gonna say mia specifically goes through oh sweet baby jesus we spend more time with mia than we do sarah but mia just like being this calm cool collected mature character who cares about her little koh hi's lou and emiliko but then like this dark inner

52:19 turmoil growing in mia when it comes to her master sarah to the point where sano masochism is a thing it's very chilling and very unsettling and i really commend emily for that uh any other thoughts on these characters before we move on to who are essentially our antagonist of the season i'm all set okay so antagonist time they are led by edward edward is a noble on the second floor uh who really wants to climb the social ladder get to the third floor and basically dethrone the four nobles on the third floor because he doesn't think that they are good or well suited to serve and help lord grandfather and he thinks he is uh he is assistant but

53:04 assisted by his two fellow shadows uh eileen and gerald um and they each have interesting set powers oh it's a it's a note that these character the the shadow masters have these things called slit powers and each of them are very different and unique depending on the character edwards can control sound eileen can create these messenger crows or bigger crows that are very loud very loud and gerald we only got to see it a glimpse of it at the end of the season but it looks like he can he can control soot in like this vine type form for like capture and restraint and things like that and edward's actually who we have to find out how actually the

53:50 shadows and the living dolls work edward brings in our introduction to that so in terms of who voices these characters as gerald we have corey phillips whose voice characters such as yonah in fire force and minor characters such as matsudaira in kokuchi and satoshi ashitaki in stars of line as for eileen we have anastasia munoz who has voice characters such as wendy oldbag and ace attorney emmy kino in concrete revolution and cranberry in magical girl raising project and here's a fun one for ya edward is voiced by christopher smith who has voiced characters such as the king of midland in the berserk golden age trilogy films lem in yormangund and mikaido in moribito guardian of the spirit so unfortunately i can't really talk a lot

54:36 about cory and anastasia's performance mostly because i think that they both kind of fit into the ensemble very well without uh having to stand out a lot i will say i was very much impressed by anastasia having to channel edward through her voice because edward was using her voice at one point no actually whose voice was that are you're referring to when amelico's kidnapped correct yeah that's edward using her voice no i'm gonna do this as a side note special props and a shout out to the female voice that edward takes on uh mellie grant okay i was wondering who that was because it was really good yeah i had the um i had the closed captions on it was basically credited as christopher vale doll so i think that's

55:22 the um the vale doll he took the disguise of okay cool because mellie was great no but anastasia does a good job playing this kind of like quieter more like the second in command to for all intensive purposes gerard cory and anastasia's characters are basically the henchmen of edward uh and i think they do a good job fitting into the background as to not overshadow edward's uh overshadow god damn it edward's performance to which man um christopher smith does a fantastic job as edward i think he's that right level of diabolical and over-the-top and spectacle without being something from outside the show and to me the biggest thing that

56:08 edward's performance reminded me of and i asked in the chat does anybody know if caitlyn glass emmy lowe or sean gann are they huge disney fans because to me i love going to disney world i don't like disney the company but like disney the parks i [ __ ] love and my second favorite ride at disney world is the haunted mansion i feel like that would be up my alley if i ever went to disney oh we're taking you yes we're gonna take you one day me you gigi and like i think we're just gonna take a giant dub talk field trip to disney one year [ __ ] yeah let's go save money uh after the plague's over but to me the biggest thing that edward kind of channeled was a lot of the ghost host from the haunted mansion who was played by paul freeze back when the ride opened and is now impersonated by joe lehey

56:56 but it felt like it was channeling that i don't know why that gave me that vibe other than the fact that to me in my mind the way the living dolls kind of work to me because they have no joints that you can see remind me of animatronics like really high-end animatronics oh okay and because you learn that something's up with edward because he is both shadow and dull and you finally get to the part where you learn that eventually the shadows and the dolls will merge effectively killing the human because the dolls are human yeah it's this huge thing where it's like in three different phases how it's explained phase one the shadows are born from the morphs of the dolls phase two is that the two interact with the intent of the shadow

57:43 of developing a personality phase three is they um they debut they debut they get their soot powers and they let those manifest and then like the fourth stage eventually is once they are like of age of age and single mind and singular like everything the shadow takes over the living doll like a weird parasite right it's very it's a very weird complicated thing and edward is the introduction to that yeah for me i think the reason why edward's performance works so much is because christopher is able to channel a character that is both trying to be loyal to this master while also realizing that he may have his own personality that is beyond what the master wishes and he's pushing it down

58:30 but there was something very like creepy ghost host narratory to me and i think that's why it works he he's just creepy but he's he's creepy in a sense though that unfortunately i never felt truly threatened by the character because i think he was so sure of himself he set himself up for defeat and i think that when chris realizes he when edward realizes oh i [ __ ] up during the debut it was a really good moment that's when i feel like that facade really broke but yeah overall i i genuinely really enjoyed chris's performance especially from an actor i'm not 100 familiar with actually which is weird because i own moribito i think he's mostly l.a i mean

59:17 not even anime too too much either like he does a lot of prelay well hold on he has a lot of anime credits under his belt honestly um but no he's primarily la so that's how come we don't often see him in the dallas pool gotcha despite him having a lot of anime credits i think he's mostly pre-lay as well oh he's done stuff for funimation before he was in dxd he did dxd i saw him um listed for like full alchemist but it's not often all right gentlemen thoughts on our wonderful villains i really don't have too much to say about gerald honestly because he's probably going to be a bit more of a predominant player later but doesn't get to do too too much

1:00:03 kind of the same thing with eileen even though she eileen gets to do a little bit more because she's sort of the messenger between like the nobles and edward but even then like the two of them feel like they're going to be bigger players as the series progresses yeah especially because a point is made that the three of them pass their debut together so the three of them have known each other for a long time right so really this section is kind of about edward which yeah holy [ __ ] one thing that may or may not surprise you in several iterations of batman the lego video games he's the voice of the joker oh no okay i see it that is predominantly how

1:00:50 i know him but he's he's done the joker a couple of times and that's how i know he can really really ham it up um because he takes a very mark hamilesque approach to the character and like you can hear it here if you knew to look for it like it's there and also like huge props to melee grant for being able to um to match that sort of campy energy for like a scene or two melly is fantastic i love edward through the debut arc as he's just getting more and more frustrating because not enough of the um not enough of the shadow master and living doll candidates are going to fail because like all the nobles are expecting this big spectacle where a

1:01:36 bunch of the kids are gonna die and then they don't just one sad face and then in the very final episode where he is absolutely groveling to lord grandfather ugh he's just a smarmy little [ __ ] and i love him um but the three of them did their good did a good job and i'll let oman take it from here uh it's been long enough that uh eileen and gerald a little fuzzy to me i do remember liking their performances and i agree what everyone said um yeah christian is great he's just unsettling there's just so many questions like who is this guy who is his shadow person why aren't they around what is his deal a lot of it's kind of mystery but it's also just he's

1:02:21 just very he's very off-putting there's something up about him even when it becomes clear what exactly is up about him i actually thought megan put up an interesting point i never i never found edward threatening specifically but it always came off as kind of threatening just because he had power yes he's not gonna kill anybody but he can absolutely engineer a situation that will get someone killed and that was what was upsetting yes and it does get somebody killed yeah he does exactly he he tries to engineer [ __ ] so that way other people get in trouble and he doesn't i.e the last couple of episodes exactly that that's sort of what makes him unnerving is because he can he can pull that off and it's like who would lord grandfather actually believe me or a child yeah exactly the justice system [Music] [Laughter]

1:03:08 wow wow [Music] christopher is really good he just plays on the right level of kind of slime and arrogance but he's also like really edward clearly knows that if he [ __ ] up it's gonna be bad and i think christopher did a good job of keeping that in the performance that for all of his pretense of confidence he knows this could all go very very wrong and he's really desperate for that to not happen that's what's interesting about this show aside from maybe lord grandfather which i'm not even sure about i feel like no one is really confident about their position in the world they just know they want to be at his side but not for why just a sense of like the closer we are to grandfather the safer we are so that's the only thing we're gonna care about because otherwise like we could just be horribly [ __ ] out of the blue right

1:03:55 everybody who's not at lord grandfather's side is is virtually dispensable exactly and like everyone knows that like the only ones who don't are just like the new debut kids who are too new to know that and that everyone else is deeply aware of that fact it's a great show i love it there's so much fun lore and like story to this oh i live for this [ __ ] yeah anastasia and corey don't have a lot anastasia has a lot more to say than corey does gerald is the one out of the three who's very much relegated to the background very quiet more stoic of the three and i think corey does very well and i really hope corey gets to do more with gerald in the next season and anastasia both on both eileen and gerald are like

1:04:42 the moral and ethical backbone for edward because edward does some rather [ __ ] up [ __ ] to the point that sometimes eileen and gerald are just like okay i think you need to stop and i think anastasia who's the more vocal of between her and gerald i think anastasia's eileen comes off with that very well let's be real christopher smith is the star of the section oddly enough outside of our bruce elliott um as lord grandfather christopher smith and what he does with edward with the tone of voice in the performance is what my brain acquaints to as the typical like sounding gothic horror trope like it's it's a tone of voice that fits into this world and into this genre like seamlessly it can be very unsettling it could be very menacing

1:05:30 it's really good among the the minor characters or the secondary characters of the show like this is a really really one of my favorite performances of that because of how dark and menacing and just just so proud edward is as a character i think it just works so well and it the tone of voice really just fits that gothic horror style to me and i just love it so much it's a very good tone and a good mix of character for christopher smith to play dear sweet lord i love it uh is there anything else with our trio of villains or are we ready to talk about the kids i'm ready to talk about some kids all right we're gonna talk about some kids let's

1:06:16 talk about the other two girls uh of the show the other two female pairs of the show we have lou and louise and we have rum and shirley lou we meet early on because she's a part of a milicose team with mia and rosemary lou comes off as this quiet very indecisive she says early on that she can't really make decisions for herself and that is actually a relative plot point meaning she just doesn't know how to be a person half the time louise her shadow master on the other hand oh sweet baby jesus louise is just like energetic hopeful very prim proper lady but also likes to be the biggest

1:07:01 show-off in the world she's like look at me look what i can do ah she's also a little bit dense lou is very smart louise a little bit dense but they are very very fun little pair and louise is obsessed with lou to no end and i may as well go through some uh sub powers as well louise's set power we find out that louise can actually control a living doll's mind with her stood powers it came in handy uh then we have poor poor rum and shirley so sweet summer child rum is very timid she's very shy when we first interact with her she's not that confident in

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