We’re skipping this week, since Robin’s at Biggest Little Fur Con in Reno, and she and Will had way too much con-prep to finish editing episode 3. However, we’ll be back with our usually scheduled episode next week! And in the meantime, we wanted to take a minute and enthuse about this journey we’re on.

Already, this has been such an amazing experience! We’ve recorded…about seven episodes so far? So right now, Robin and I are reading our way through Tokyo Babylon. It’s Robin’s baby, but it’s my first time reading it beyond the first volume or so. And folks…I was not emotionally prepared for these later volumes! But more on that in the podcast.

So many bookmarks…

Even with so few episodes, I can already really see how much we’ve learned in such a short time. Our first season, we recorded three episodes in a row; both of the RG Veda manga episodes, plus our intro episode. It was a lot. We record in Robin’s office, and I arrived at her place around 11:30am…and left around 11:30pm. On a Sunday, of all days, with work at 8am the next morning. So yeah, if I seem a little loopy by the end of episode 2…that’s why.

We, uh, don’t do that anymore.

Since RG Veda, we’ve started breaking series up into chunks. To be clear, this was always the plan, and we did consciously decide not to do that with RG Veda, because it’s such an epic. It’s hard to talk about the beginning of it without being able to talk about the end. And most importantly, we needed to start somewhere. Would we do it that way again? Possibly. Will we handle any of the other long series like that? God, I hope not.

It was easy to tackle both volumes of Man of Many Faces in one episode (look forward to that next month!), but with Tokyo Babylon we’ve been enjoying taking a step back and discussing a couple volumes at a time. It also helps that TB is fairly episodic in nature, so the discussion can be easily contained.

Jury is still out on how we’ll handle more epic series like X (or the chaos that is going to be Tsubasa and xXxHolic), but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

So, what’s coming up for the pod? If you’re reading along, you can start tracking down Man of Many Faces. Once we finish the RG Veda OVA episode, that will be our next series. And after that, it’s Tokyo Babylon time! Both should be pretty easy to find through wherever you buy books (I recommend a local used bookstore, like Powell’s here in Portland, but I’ve definitely had to take to Amazon or even eBay for some of these).

Speaking of which, if anyone knows where I can find Duklyon volume 2 for less than $30, hit me up. I really don’t want to pay more than $10…

Anyway, we hope you’ve been enjoying the podcast so far! You deserve a medal for surviving the RG Veda summary episode (I think we all do), but it should be much smoother sailing from here.

Remember, everything will be alright! (And try not to lose an eye)

-Lucy