Speaker 1: Monster House presents.
Speaker 2: This formal as I think I know what you're into.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: There's only one reason someone like you would talk to me,
Speaker 1: and that's the reason you talk to me. This is
Speaker 1: the reason. Look Project Pegasus. The US President went to Mors.
Speaker 4: And met with aliens.
Speaker 1: What you're into be a cult, aren't you?
Speaker 3: Nah?
Speaker 1: I don't believe in UFOs and aliens and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. They're not US both, they're u a PS
Speaker 1: unidentified aerial phenomena.
Speaker 3: I didn't ask, don't care.
Speaker 4: The US military admitted u aps exists and reform. There's
Speaker 4: space forces now.
Speaker 3: Japan has an aerospace defense Force.
Speaker 1: Don't just see everyone's caring a core in space Oka.
Speaker 2: The lie.
Speaker 1: I want to say.
Speaker 4: There's this new picture of Nessy talk.
Speaker 1: There's also stuff about Lieutenant.
Speaker 3: Colonel Jim Trennon. Let's gon walk around. I don't care.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant, hairy creature party part in Luckness, a twenty
Speaker 3: four a mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 3: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster monster t.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 1: Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. This is a fan
Speaker 1: request episode. As I'll say, hearing the interview, quite a
Speaker 1: few listeners reached out to us about the content overlap
Speaker 1: between the topics that we discuss on Monster Talk and
Speaker 1: the topics covered in the anime series Dan. To Dan,
Speaker 1: it's not a show for everyone, and it's definitely not
Speaker 1: a show for little kids, But you guys were right
Speaker 1: about the stuff that the show covers being of interest
Speaker 1: to Munster Talk listeners and to me now, this episode
Speaker 1: will not be a deep dive into critical thinking or science.
Speaker 1: It's more of a fun side quest into contextualizing how
Speaker 1: a show like Dana Dan has fictionalized and incorporated story
Speaker 1: elements from folklore, legend, custom Fortiana myth, and conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: and to a darned amusing and engaging teen comedy drama series.
Speaker 1: It's probably possible to watch the show without ever realizing
Speaker 1: that the stream of trivia about these topics is so
Speaker 1: relentlessly evocative of familiar elements to those of us who
Speaker 1: immerse ourselves in the weird and the spooky. But if
Speaker 1: you watch it and you are immersed in this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of astonishing. Maybe the only other pop
Speaker 1: culture consumption similar to me would be how people my
Speaker 1: age tended to respond to the book Ready Player One.
Speaker 1: There's so many references in there that if you're in
Speaker 1: clients in nostalgia, it was easy to sort of ignore
Speaker 1: other weaknesses in the plot when you first read it.
Speaker 1: But unlike Ready Player One, this show seems to have
Speaker 1: a lot more depth and definitely more surprises. Now if
Speaker 1: you want to check the series out after listening, you
Speaker 1: can find it on streamer channels that our guest Justin
Speaker 1: Mullis will mention, including Netflix. Speaking of we're happy to
Speaker 1: welcome back doctor Justin Mullis, who most recently joined us
Speaker 1: to talk about the relationships of cryptozoology with kaiju in Japan,
Speaker 1: and today he's going to help us contextualize the weird
Speaker 1: shitology elements in season one of Dan to Dan. We'll
Speaker 1: try to make this a no spoiler show, but due
Speaker 1: to the fact that the main plot of the first
Speaker 1: few episodes deals with a witch stealing a boy's penis,
Speaker 1: this episode gets the explicit tag more instrutle. Anyway, thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Justin. We're really excited tonight' to be
Speaker 1: talking about the very peculiar show Dan to Dan. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I sometimes see it listed as Dan
Speaker 1: to Dan one word, and I sometimes see it listened
Speaker 1: as Dan Dan separately. Any idea. I mean I realized this.
Speaker 1: It's an English version of a Japanese title. Do you know?
Speaker 1: Is it three words? Is it one word?
Speaker 5: You want to the title explained? So I'm so blake.
Speaker 5: I imagine you've probably seen the very famous Academy Award
Speaker 5: winning Japanese movie Qui Don. Yes, yeah, so the famous
Speaker 5: based on the Lafacadio Hearn's collection of Japanese ghost stories.
Speaker 4: Right, so three.
Speaker 1: Hours of color and experiment. Wow, yeah, exactly three hours,
Speaker 1: four four stories, three hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there you go. Amazing movie.
Speaker 5: But so that word, yeah, Qui don, right, so to
Speaker 5: cut the Qui off don the don so Qui don
Speaker 5: means ghost story. So this is Tatsu the creator, having
Speaker 5: some fun with the title. So it's kind of like
Speaker 5: stories story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's funny, Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, when I hear Dan to Dan, I think
Speaker 2: of the the of Blue Moon, the original version, the mussels,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: Dang and Dang Dang. But Dan and dangloom.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna sing it either, but that that's uh
Speaker 1: my wife, that's one of her favorite movies is an
Speaker 1: American Werewolf from London and that comes in a critical scene.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: It all comes together.
Speaker 1: It really does well. Anyway, justin we're having you on
Speaker 1: tonight to talk about this anime series. Dan to Dan
Speaker 1: and I. We get a lot of emails from listeners
Speaker 1: suggesting we try out certain pop culture things, but I
Speaker 1: had never gotten as many random, feeling out of the blue,
Speaker 1: people who've never written saying, hey, have you guys seen this?
Speaker 1: Because it is and I, you know, I Kieren and
Speaker 1: I are both really busy doing lots and lots of
Speaker 1: consumption of stuff to prepare us for the show. But
Speaker 1: I made the time, and holy cow, they weren't joking.
Speaker 1: The first episode of this has when they all through
Speaker 1: the whole series that exists so far, there are so
Speaker 1: many references to cryptids and folklore and magic and monsters
Speaker 1: that are not entirely made up for the show that
Speaker 1: they were like pulled from like I don't want to
Speaker 1: say real, but like contemporary sources in our culture, Like so, uh.
Speaker 5: The folklore, Yeah, and folklore exactly.
Speaker 1: It's it's it is extraordinary. Uh, it's so it's so
Speaker 1: dense with references. Uh, but they work. I mean it
Speaker 1: does it. At first, the first episode, I actually thought
Speaker 1: they were over the top with how many specific so
Speaker 1: many specific references to UAPs, to the Ministry goes, the
Speaker 1: Flatwoods Monster shows up. Yeah, I mean just so much.
Speaker 1: But it actually works. I mean, like it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's not artifice smacked on top of something shallow. It's
Speaker 1: like it actually it seems to really all be integrated
Speaker 1: with the central idea.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I forgot until Reese. I
Speaker 5: just rewatched the first arc of the show in preparation
Speaker 5: for this. But yeah, I mean in the first episode, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: they name drop Skinwalker Ranch even so yeah, so I'm curious,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe this is relevant contexts. So, you know, Blake,
Speaker 5: I know you're an anime fan, and obviously I am
Speaker 5: as well. But so, Karen, was this your first experience
Speaker 5: with this medium?
Speaker 2: Oh oh yes, yes, so I you guys suggested. I
Speaker 2: watched not one episode to judge it on the basis
Speaker 2: of one, but to watch a couple of episodes, and
Speaker 2: so I only got it around to watching two, and
Speaker 2: I have to say I did struggle through it a bit,
Speaker 2: and the first episode was very full on as Blake described.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were a lot of things that I
Speaker 2: liked about it. I liked I thought the Japanese music
Speaker 2: was cool. I thought the elements of girl Pow are
Speaker 2: really cool as well. Characters were quirky. It's a very
Speaker 2: action packed, but I think in general, it's just not
Speaker 2: my cup of tea. It's not my kind of I
Speaker 2: didn't get into that genre. And I've spoken with anime
Speaker 2: fans because I wasn't receiving the plethora of emails from
Speaker 2: listeners who asked, have you seen this? And I think
Speaker 2: it definitely sounds that the kind of thing that Blake
Speaker 2: would see, But no one's approached me about it, so
Speaker 2: I didn't know what the hell I was in for,
Speaker 2: and again approaching anime fans, I didn't come across anyone
Speaker 2: who liked it. But then when I did a lot
Speaker 2: of looking up of forums and things online, so many
Speaker 2: people were raving out raving about it. Ten out of
Speaker 2: ten they seem to absolutely love it. So it just
Speaker 2: seems like you either I don't want to say I
Speaker 2: hate it, but it seems like people love it or
Speaker 2: hate it, and there's not too much in between. But
Speaker 2: it was again, it really should be right up my
Speaker 2: alley because of all the paranormal themes that they investigate.
Speaker 2: But it was just very different to anything of ever experienced.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Well, I think for me, Like, so you said, I'm
Speaker 1: an anime fan, and that's not wrong, but it also
Speaker 1: I think I should constrain that just a little bit
Speaker 1: because I've been, like I've been in fandom forever because
Speaker 1: I'm old and grew up in the eighties and so
Speaker 1: I still remember before the Internet, when all the anime
Speaker 1: content was bootleg vhs, and like even even when I
Speaker 1: was in boot camp in the Navy, when we first
Speaker 1: got out of boot camp and in a school, I
Speaker 1: was able to leave base and go. I think the
Speaker 1: comic book store was NCC one seven and one. I
Speaker 1: think it was actually named after the Enterprise, but they
Speaker 1: had a back room where you could do role playing
Speaker 1: games or whatever, and on Saturdays, people would bring bootleg
Speaker 1: vhs from Japan and I remember watching some of that
Speaker 1: and basically there was no subtitles, there were no dubs.
Speaker 1: There would be somebody there explaining what was going on.
Speaker 1: It's like like aids for the deaf or something. But
Speaker 1: I remember someone trying to explain Ronmo one half to
Speaker 1: me as I watched a bootleg of that. It was
Speaker 1: very peculiar. But I do like this stuff. But a
Speaker 1: lot of it is there's there's parts of it that
Speaker 1: are super focused on very sexy teenagers, and that's never
Speaker 1: been something I was Basically by the time I got
Speaker 1: into it, I was too old to feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: that that that sort of thing. But this show grabs
Speaker 1: me in a decidedly non sexual way with its plot
Speaker 1: and content, so it manages to get.
Speaker 2: Past the fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does. But I guess we should start
Speaker 1: with actually, because I'm rambling and I and you're here
Speaker 1: as a as an expert to talk about this. What's
Speaker 1: this show about? What is Dan to Dan about?
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure, So for for anybody who doesn't know what
Speaker 5: we're talking about and hasn't been completely alienated yet.
Speaker 4: So is a.
Speaker 5: Anime series that premiered last year in the fall of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four. It was twelve episodes. It was produced
Speaker 5: by Science Saru, which is the anime Studio branch of
Speaker 5: Toho Studios, to the same.
Speaker 4: People who do the Godzilla movies.
Speaker 5: And it's based on a manga of the same name
Speaker 5: that is written and illustrated by Yuki Nobutatsu, and the
Speaker 5: manga is a couple.
Speaker 4: Of years old now.
Speaker 5: It debuted in April of twenty twenty one, and as
Speaker 5: of January of this year, it has been collected into
Speaker 5: eighteen volumes, eleven of which have been translated into English
Speaker 5: so far as of the start of this month February.
Speaker 5: And in Japan, Dandaddan is serialized in Shonen Jump Plus,
Speaker 5: which is a comic magazine that's intended for mature audiences.
Speaker 5: It's the same magazine that other popular series like Spy
Speaker 5: X Family and Kaiju Number eight, which are both very
Speaker 5: popular right now, appear in, and so kind of building
Speaker 5: off of something you are just alluding to, Blake, this
Speaker 5: is probably also a good place to bring up that,
Speaker 5: yes we're talking about a comic book, Yes we're talking
Speaker 5: about an animated series, but this is decidedly not a
Speaker 5: children's fair, right, and since there's like very young children,
Speaker 5: so the anime in particular, well, both the anime and
Speaker 5: the comic have plenty of like risk gay humor in it,
Speaker 5: there's partial nudity, and they also deal with really weighty
Speaker 5: issues at times, like sexual assault and domestic violence. So
Speaker 5: this is intended for at least like I think the
Speaker 5: rating on the streaming platforms because it's on Netflix and
Speaker 5: it's on Hulu, and it's on a Crunchy Role, which
Speaker 5: is an anime specific streaming service, which is I believe
Speaker 5: it's TVMA, so you know, it's for kind of an
Speaker 5: older and older teen audience. But as Karen was also saying,
Speaker 5: this was a series that when it debuted last year,
Speaker 5: proved extremely popular. It ended up being the most streamed
Speaker 5: anime for twenty twenty four on Netflix with over three
Speaker 5: million views, and it was ended up also being Netflix's
Speaker 5: most second most popular English language program for the platform.
Speaker 5: Netflix actually seems to be the platform that garnered the
Speaker 5: most attention with Dan to Dan, even though it was
Speaker 5: on multiple platforms, and interestingly enough, apparently, from what I've read,
Speaker 5: a Crunchy Role, even though they are an anime specific
Speaker 5: streaming service, didn't really heavily promote the release of Dan
Speaker 5: to Dan because they were concerned about the kind of
Speaker 5: riskue elements you know, alienating some viewers, so they kind
Speaker 5: of missed out on getting new subscribers because of that,
Speaker 5: because most people, it seems like, just turned into Netflix
Speaker 5: to watch this particular series since it was available there.
Speaker 5: And also, I mean, as far as as kind of
Speaker 5: anime and especially sort of mature anime standards, I mean,
Speaker 5: the show is also kind of frankly not that incredibly
Speaker 5: riskue either, right, So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's the It's there's the whole subgenre of
Speaker 1: sexy teen drama comedy type thing and h and some
Speaker 1: of those are way more, way more openly sexual in
Speaker 1: their content. And of course I grew up in the
Speaker 1: American South and the evangelical family, So even though I'm
Speaker 1: pretty liberated myself, I might, you know, I can't help
Speaker 1: what makes me cringe, you know, well.
Speaker 5: And it's worth mentioning. So also, I mean, as a
Speaker 5: point of comparison, so the creator of Dan to De
Speaker 5: Dan tatsu he actually started off his career in the
Speaker 5: industry as an assistant to Tatsuki Fujimoto, who is the
Speaker 5: creator of another very popular contemporary anime series, which is
Speaker 5: chainsaw Man, which is much more violent, much more risky,
Speaker 5: and its content, I mean, it is literally about a
Speaker 5: guy who makes a faustian compact with the demon just
Speaker 5: so that he can try and get laid. So that's
Speaker 5: that's the plot of that series. So you know, considering
Speaker 5: that that was sort of Tatsu's sort of mentor and template,
Speaker 5: you know, this is definitely kind of a step down.
Speaker 5: And I do like the fact that Karen earlier mentioned
Speaker 5: the sort of girl power aspect of Dan to de Dan,
Speaker 5: which I'll get to the plot here of the series
Speaker 5: in a second, but that's something that Tatsu has actually
Speaker 5: talked about in several interviews, which was that, you know,
Speaker 5: he really wanted to do a boy's comic, right, which
Speaker 5: is what shonan means in Japan, right, a comic that's
Speaker 5: aimed at an adolescent male audience. But he wanted to
Speaker 5: do one that had a female character who wasn't there
Speaker 5: essentially just to be, you know, a sex object for
Speaker 5: the male protagonist, right, who was actually the main character
Speaker 5: and who had a lot of autonomy and was actually
Speaker 5: the focus of the narrative. And and so, without spoiling anything,
Speaker 5: what Dana de Dan is about is it revolves around
Speaker 5: these two high schoolers, momo I Say and Ken Takakura,
Speaker 5: who meet each other and bond over a mutual obsession
Speaker 5: over paranormal phenomena. Ken is really into UFOs and and
Speaker 5: that kind of side of of Fortiana, and Momo her
Speaker 5: grandmother is a spirit medium, and so she's into ghosts
Speaker 5: and that kind of thing, and so they and they
Speaker 5: initially have a disagreement over the validity of that stuff,
Speaker 5: which we can get into, but they end up having
Speaker 5: kind of a mutual experiences with the supernatural that kind
Speaker 5: of bond them and and you know, sort of challenge
Speaker 5: their preconceived notions about this, and then basically the bulk
Speaker 5: of the series is the kind of teaming up to
Speaker 5: go and investigate different paranormal occurrences happening around their hometown,
Speaker 5: involving aliens, ghosts, cryptids, that kind of stuff. So that's
Speaker 5: the very sort of spoiler free version of the.
Speaker 4: Plot of Danda Didan.
Speaker 5: I should also mention so that Momo nicknames kN.
Speaker 4: Okoroun, which is a.
Speaker 5: Portmanteau of the Japanese version of the term a cult,
Speaker 5: which is oko ruto plus the Japanese prefixed kun, which
Speaker 5: is a term of endearment. So basically kind of like saying,
Speaker 5: you know, a culti pal or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my kids said it means something kind of like
Speaker 1: a cult, bro or a cult.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's a good one. Yeah I like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, now I'm curious, like, have your kids watched it?
Speaker 2: And what did they think?
Speaker 1: Oh? They they two thirds of them absolutely love it.
Speaker 1: But the other one has got one of those personalities
Speaker 1: that if you tell them there's something good, they'll hate
Speaker 1: it or they won't watch it. So whenever her friends
Speaker 1: suggest it instead of her dad, I'm sure she'll love it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Plus she has so much in common with Momo.
Speaker 1: I just they love it. I mean they the two
Speaker 1: watch it with me and we've had a really great conversation.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm sure they would like get better without
Speaker 1: me because I keep going, oh, that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Oh and that's a real thing, and that comes from
Speaker 1: here and that comes from there. But I mean it
Speaker 1: is like I mean, it is just chalk. It's chunk
Speaker 1: a with real stuff to reference, you know, I say
Speaker 1: real you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Momo is Japanese for peach.
Speaker 1: Really, Okay, that's cute, do you know?
Speaker 5: Well, so do you know the Japanese folk tale of
Speaker 5: Momotaro No? So the characters' names in the show are
Speaker 5: all an illusion to the folk tale of Momotato, which
Speaker 5: is basically a story about a boy who the super
Speaker 5: short version, it's about a story about a boy who
Speaker 5: teams up with a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant
Speaker 5: to kill a bunch of oni or demons. It's probably
Speaker 5: one of the most famous folk tales in all of Japan,
Speaker 5: so much so that it was I mean, this doesn't
Speaker 5: sound great, but it's true. It was used for propaganda
Speaker 5: purposes during the Second World War. That's how like embedded
Speaker 5: in the culture it is. But so in Danada, Dan
Speaker 5: Momo right peach, and then ken Oko Run's real name.
Speaker 4: Ken is dog.
Speaker 5: And then later on they're joined by two other characters.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, Aira whose full name is Shira Tori, which
Speaker 5: is pheasant, and Jigi, which is short for in Joji,
Speaker 5: which is monkey.
Speaker 1: So they're all like, oh, that is really cool. Again,
Speaker 1: this thing's got so many layers, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, and they're they're going off to fight monsters together.
Speaker 4: So yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, as we've all been discussing, there's just such
Speaker 2: a phenomenal mashup of tropes that really all our listeners
Speaker 2: would be interested in. I'm still getting over the idea
Speaker 2: of the Sumo Alien. That was a new one for me.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if we could talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about these kind of mash ups and the different characters
Speaker 2: that are on the show. And I only watched a
Speaker 2: couple of episodes, but could you maybe tell us a
Speaker 2: bit about the stories of cryptids as aliens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, so you were you were alluding to the
Speaker 5: the Sumo Alien, which is within the context of the series.
Speaker 5: It is supposed to be the Flatwoods.
Speaker 4: Monster, right, which I know you guys, Yeah, I have
Speaker 4: covered before.
Speaker 5: So yeah, so the Flatwoods Monster is incredibly popular in Japan, really,
Speaker 5: like ridiculously popular.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's shown up in multiple video games, various Japanese manga, anime,
Speaker 5: superhero shows. You can buy vinyl figures of the Flatwoods Monster,
Speaker 5: and most recently it was in Minoru Kawasaki's twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Film a UFO Intruder.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, so the Flatwoods Monsters is very popular. It
Speaker 5: seems to have been introduced to Japanese culture when John
Speaker 5: Keel's book Strange Creatures from Time and Space was translated
Speaker 5: into Japanese. It was translated by Hiroshi Mina Miyama, who
Speaker 5: is a very famous and still living paranormal investigator in Japan.
Speaker 5: He translated it as the Mysterious Phenomena File. And to
Speaker 5: kind of tie back to the last time I was
Speaker 5: on the show, Mina Yama is also one of the
Speaker 5: two guys who came up with the acronym uma or
Speaker 5: Unidentified Mystery Animals, which is what cryptids are called in Japan.
Speaker 1: So oh yeah. And also Strange Creatures from Time and
Speaker 1: Space is the that is the same book that I
Speaker 1: contend is where John Keel injected blessed silver bullets into
Speaker 1: the Jevadan story and it's just from there's blown up everywhere.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Now, one of the things that's interesting is so in Japan,
Speaker 5: the Flatwoods Monster is not always referred to as the
Speaker 5: Flatwoods Monster because flatwoods doesn't necessarily have any kind of
Speaker 5: resonance or meaning for Japanese audiences. So and even in
Speaker 5: the English dub for Dan to to Dan, this kind
Speaker 5: of comes through because you'll notice that Okorun goes back
Speaker 5: and forth between calling it the Flatwoods Monster and emphasizing
Speaker 5: the fact that it's three meters tall, right, And that's
Speaker 5: because in Japan, The Flatwoods Monster is most commonly referred
Speaker 5: to as the three meter tall Alien, which also, fun fact,
Speaker 5: was apparently the nickname of director Shinji Haguchi in high school,
Speaker 5: with Haguchi being the guy who worked on like shin
Speaker 5: Godzilla and the nineties Gamma trilogy and stuff. But there
Speaker 5: was actually a recent interview with the head translator for
Speaker 5: the Dona de Don manga for its English language release,
Speaker 5: and he talked about how it's that kind of stuff
Speaker 5: in this manga that's like a real headache doing the translation,
Speaker 5: because he was like, I'm not into this kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: so I've got to you know, figure out, Okay, what
Speaker 5: is the three meter tall alien referencing, because I can't
Speaker 5: call it the three meter tall alien because somebody's gonna
Speaker 5: know what this actually is and something has to figure
Speaker 5: out the Flatwoods Monster and that kind of thing, so
Speaker 5: in order to get the translation to to come across.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so the Flatwoods Monster though, is one of
Speaker 5: like the first antagonists that that they come up against
Speaker 5: in the series, and so you could you already start
Speaker 5: seeing that kind of you know in intersection there of
Speaker 5: you know sort of like cryptids and aliens and other
Speaker 5: things and and then it just it keeps going through
Speaker 5: through the series as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't spoil anything, but they're definitely hinting even in
Speaker 1: season one, they're hinting that there's a unity to these
Speaker 1: things in some way. There's some interrelatedness which I find
Speaker 1: really interesting. But I don't spoil me, man, But well,
Speaker 1: I won't, I won't, I won't spoil.
Speaker 5: I won't spoil anything because I have read I have
Speaker 5: read the manga, so I know where where this story
Speaker 5: is going. But just sticking to like the first season,
Speaker 5: I mean, the other, the other one of the other
Speaker 5: really interesting examples of this and especially like you know,
Speaker 5: kind of HARKing back to the last time I was
Speaker 5: talking with you guys about my cryptidda kaiju essay, I mean,
Speaker 5: this show is such like a case study in that
Speaker 5: because you can see that Tatsu is somebody who's not
Speaker 5: only really you know, fascinated by Fortiana, but also is
Speaker 5: a big taiju fan, because the show is constantly like
Speaker 5: fusing those sort of references together all the way all
Speaker 5: the way down to the even like the the theme
Speaker 5: song for the anime or the opening credits, because the
Speaker 5: opening credits, uh, you know, I imagine Blake and and
Speaker 5: your son you probably would have caught this, but they're
Speaker 5: a deliberate kind of homage to the original Ultraman.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, my son hit that so hard in immediate
Speaker 1: he's like, I know that alien that's from ultramat and like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely, Yeah. Yeah, he's a little he's a little
Speaker 1: encyclopedia of Ultra Man. I guess, right, is that what?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the yeah, the open So the opening credits
Speaker 5: for this show do these these silhouettes, which is this
Speaker 5: traditional Japanese art form called uh kami kiri, right, and
Speaker 5: so they show all the different monsters in silhouettes, and
Speaker 5: that was something that was pioneered by the original Ultraman
Speaker 5: series from nineteen sixty six. And there's even a shot
Speaker 5: in the credits where Momo does like a flying kick
Speaker 5: in silhouette and her earrings swing up over her face
Speaker 5: that looked like Ultraman's eyes.
Speaker 1: No, it's an extraordinarily stylish animation style, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: the seems to be an interesting blend of real photography,
Speaker 1: computer generated and then traditional animation styles to the and
Speaker 1: it's very impressive, very colorful. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean I haven't seen anything quite like it, but who knows.
Speaker 1: So I hope season two comes along because season one,
Speaker 1: by the way, to let people know, it does not
Speaker 1: end with a story arc conclusion. It just abruptly stops,
Speaker 1: so you've kind of left hanging.
Speaker 5: Well, there's several small story arcs in the first there are,
Speaker 5: there are, and what they did was the last episode
Speaker 5: is actually the beginning of the next arc.
Speaker 4: So which is which is where it's.
Speaker 5: Leading leading into the story going And you know, whether
Speaker 5: you know it or not, in that episode, they've already
Speaker 5: kind of told you more about what's coming up than
Speaker 5: you might realize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they drop a lot of hints, but I actually
Speaker 1: have a question. So because while a ton of this
Speaker 1: material comes from what we usually call weird shadology these days,
Speaker 1: it's stuff that I'm familiar with. A lot of it
Speaker 1: is also dealing with Japanese folk magic, and that is
Speaker 1: not something I have a lot of understanding of. You know,
Speaker 1: I've seen it and occasionally in martial arts films, and
Speaker 1: I don't In those cases, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: is this is supposed to be reversly real folklore or
Speaker 1: this is make them up for the action movie you know,
Speaker 1: so I how much of the sort of magic, you know,
Speaker 1: the prayers being nailed up in this is, the the wards,
Speaker 1: the gestures, there's so many things happening there. You know
Speaker 1: what portion of that is is based on legit of practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, so, as I mentioned earlier, so Momo's grandmother who
Speaker 5: has this whole like Marisa Tomei from the MCU Spider
Speaker 5: Man movie.
Speaker 1: Totally six grandma.
Speaker 5: Yeah, her, her, her grandmother is is referred to and
Speaker 5: self identify as repeatedly throughout the series. So in Japanese
Speaker 5: it's ribashi, right, which is a term that basically can
Speaker 5: be translated as spirit medium or psychic, and so it's
Speaker 5: a pretty generic term. So for whatever reason, Tatsu does
Speaker 5: not want to seem to overtly identify her with any
Speaker 5: particular spiritual tradition, right, probably for creative reasons. But there's
Speaker 5: all kinds of stuff throughout the show, throughout the Mango
Speaker 5: where she's repeatedly kind of being coded in different ways
Speaker 5: or referencing different different practices. So the main one is
Speaker 5: that she's she's kind of repeatedly coded as a etaco,
Speaker 5: which are specifically mediums associated with the Japanese religion of Shinto,
Speaker 5: who are exclusively women sixty years or older. And a
Speaker 5: prerequisite to being in a taco is that you're also
Speaker 5: supposed to be blind or at least so severely you know,
Speaker 5: vision impaired, that you might as well be legally blind.
Speaker 4: Right, And so.
Speaker 5: Seiko Momo's grandmother is obviously not actually blind, but like
Speaker 5: in episode three, for example, you know, she's going around
Speaker 5: while awake wearing like a sleep mask, right, So, and
Speaker 5: she she advises Momo at one point because Momo discovers
Speaker 5: that she has you know, psychic powers as well, nindor
Speaker 5: yoku or telekinesis, right, and and you know, she's saying
Speaker 5: that she's having trouble, you know, using using her powers,
Speaker 5: and and so her grandmother says, well, one of your
Speaker 5: problems is like you're looking, you're using your eyes too much. Right,
Speaker 5: close your eyes, right, you know, you need to feel
Speaker 5: you know your powers rather than like relying on right
Speaker 5: exactly seen Star Wars. This should sound sound familiar in
Speaker 5: a way. So a lot of the stuff that that
Speaker 5: she's doing, in the fact that she lives at a
Speaker 5: house that's also at a shrine, right, seems to be
Speaker 5: coding her as in a taco, the idea that she's
Speaker 5: supposed to be a grandmother.
Speaker 4: Even though again Marissa Tome you know, is uh.
Speaker 5: It seems to all be pointing in that direction. But
Speaker 5: as you mentioned, Blake, and you see, especially in like
Speaker 5: episode uh, the third episode the series, she's also using
Speaker 5: things like o fuda talus, right, these paper talismans, and
Speaker 5: she's making protective magic circles, and she's using uh nails,
Speaker 5: which are important part in a lot of Japanese folk magic,
Speaker 5: right specifically, you know, like there's the infamous Ushino Toki
Speaker 5: mayri or ox hour shrine curse, which a version of
Speaker 5: which also shows up in Shainsaw Man by the way.
Speaker 5: But you know, and so these are all elements that
Speaker 5: call to mind the Japanese Taoist practice of omi yodo,
Speaker 5: which is a form of geomancy that you see all
Speaker 5: the time in anime and other works of popular culture,
Speaker 5: especially since the nineteen eighties. You know, there there's this
Speaker 5: popular kind of trope or or stock figure of what's
Speaker 5: been called the Taoist wizard, right, and and that's what
Speaker 5: the the omi yodo is. So a lot of that
Speaker 5: stuff seems to also be hearkening to those those kinds
Speaker 5: of those traditions as well. And it's also worth noting that,
Speaker 5: you know, so Psycho says that, you know, she gets
Speaker 5: her power from her patron uh kame uh, which are
Speaker 5: supernatural beings in in Shinto, they're often described as gods.
Speaker 5: But that's not really the best translation, and unfortunately there
Speaker 5: isn't really a better English word. I know, in religious studies,
Speaker 5: some scholars will use phrases like, you know, locusts of
Speaker 5: personified power, but that you know, sounds really overly technical.
Speaker 1: But it's a it's a kind of god.
Speaker 4: God is kind of the idea.
Speaker 1: Like an enhanced animism, where it's not just an it's
Speaker 1: not just aware, but it actually literally has some power
Speaker 1: behind it, right exactly.
Speaker 5: And and and in the case of Dona de don so, yeah,
Speaker 5: Psycho's patron kame is Suno Dashi, who is a really
Speaker 5: interesting kami because Suno Dashi is actually a version of
Speaker 5: a historical figure, which was the tenth century Buddhist monk Rheosian.
Speaker 5: And there's this legend that at one point there was
Speaker 5: a group of again hearkening back to the story of Momotaro,
Speaker 5: there was a group of rampaging Oni and in order
Speaker 5: to defeat them, Rhosian allowed himself to be turned into
Speaker 5: an one called Suno Dashi which means the Great Horned Master,
Speaker 5: so that he could defeat them. And and so then
Speaker 5: since then this has become like its own his own
Speaker 5: kame is this like ony.
Speaker 4: Form of this Buddhist monk.
Speaker 5: So and so that's who Psycho specifically patron deity is.
Speaker 5: But also an important plot point in the first you
Speaker 5: know arc of the show is that, you know, her
Speaker 5: powers are geographically bound, right, what we call the idea
Speaker 5: of a tertiary spirit, you know. So you know, that's
Speaker 5: why the initial antagonist, which is this figure called Turbo
Speaker 5: Granny that I guess we can talk about and a
Speaker 5: really big crab which we can also talk about. You know,
Speaker 5: they have to lure them out of their city into
Speaker 5: the city where Psycho's shrine is in order for them
Speaker 5: to defeat them, because, as she says, like, you know,
Speaker 5: we have to play a home game.
Speaker 4: We can't play an away game or we're gonna lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I just I know. Longtime listeners will
Speaker 1: recognize that the Great Horned Master is also the name
Speaker 1: of my Miles Davis cover band.
Speaker 4: So it's nice.
Speaker 2: Well, justin you mentioned Turbo Granny. Can we talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about the surprise that some people might have
Speaker 2: to learn that some of the weirder elements of the
Speaker 2: show aren't really woven from thin air, but they actually
Speaker 2: refer to real beliefs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, so so yeah. And the first the first
Speaker 5: arc of the series, the one of the principal antagonists
Speaker 5: is the Theokai called Turbo Granny, who's this uh like
Speaker 5: hag figure which is is in Japan, is associated with
Speaker 5: Hyogo Prefecture and even more specifically with the area around
Speaker 5: Mount Roku.
Speaker 4: But the the.
Speaker 5: Urban legend is that Turbo Granny is supposed to be
Speaker 5: this old woman that you will run into and you know,
Speaker 5: she she's really freaky, and if you try to run
Speaker 5: away from her and she catches you, then she'll put
Speaker 5: a curse on you, right, And and that's supposed to
Speaker 5: be part of the ideas. It's like she's she's so fat,
Speaker 5: like she's she's super fast, which you wouldn't expect from like,
Speaker 5: you know, an octogenarian, right And and what's interesting with
Speaker 5: with Turbo Granny is that she's obvious. You see a
Speaker 5: kind of modern variation of a really classic yokai, which
Speaker 5: is the yama Uba or mountain witch, right, which is
Speaker 5: very deeply embedded in Japanese folklore, And if people want
Speaker 5: to know more about that, I would strongly recommend Noriko
Speaker 5: Wrider's book Mountain Witches from Utah State University Press that
Speaker 5: came out a couple of years ago, which goes into
Speaker 5: the traditions of the yama Uba. But writer doesn't talk
Speaker 5: too much in there about these kind of more modern variations.
Speaker 5: But there wasn't an April twenty twenty three article in
Speaker 5: MoU magazine which we should probably talk about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that does.
Speaker 5: Talk about how in recent years on the Internet there
Speaker 5: have been all of these very hyper specific versions of
Speaker 5: the yama Uba, Turbo Granny being one of them. The
Speaker 5: other ones include these are fun the basketball Granny, the
Speaker 5: hopping Granny, the coffin Granny, and hood Granny, which is
Speaker 5: in this case a reference to the hood of your car,
Speaker 5: so she'll like jump on the hood of your car
Speaker 5: while you're driving. But but in the case of Donda
Speaker 5: de don So, yeah, ok, run runs into the turbo
Speaker 5: Granny and makes the mistake of running away from her
Speaker 5: and doesn't escape, and he is he's caught, and she
Speaker 5: places a curse on him. And in this case, you know,
Speaker 5: the curse is that his his manhood disappears.
Speaker 4: So and well.
Speaker 1: Can I can I just interject here that I was
Speaker 1: I was shocked when that happened, and then I was
Speaker 1: double shocked when I you reminded me that there was
Speaker 1: this whole idea of Coro which was a fads the
Speaker 1: wrong way. It was sort of a cultural panic type thing.
Speaker 4: The social panic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also this idea of witches stealing your manhood
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to the witch's hammer. This
Speaker 1: is an old idea and I had just forgotten it.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, absolutely so and and yeah, this is again,
Speaker 5: this is one. This is one of those things. And
Speaker 5: I think this is one of the really fun elements
Speaker 5: of this show, right, which is that you know, people,
Speaker 5: people see this, and your initial reaction because of all
Speaker 5: the other kind of risque humor in the show is
Speaker 5: that this is just kind of like one more sort
Speaker 5: of like low brow joke. It's like, oh, this witch,
Speaker 5: you know, stole this, this teenage boy's uh you know,
Speaker 5: uh nitol. Yeah, yeah, and and you know, so so
Speaker 5: you know, so you know, he's he's literally been you know, emasculated,
Speaker 5: you know, when at the same time he's trying to
Speaker 5: you know, hook up with this girl who's kind of
Speaker 5: you know, momo, who's kind of out of his league.
Speaker 5: But in fact, yeah, I mean, you know, I am
Speaker 5: I am absolutely sure that Tatsu is making reference to
Speaker 5: the real life sort of forty in you know social
Speaker 5: panic phenomena of kuro which is has been has been
Speaker 5: very well documented. I would point people in the direction
Speaker 5: of scholar Frank Burr's book The Geography of Madness, which
Speaker 5: is all about this idea, and and Burr's talks about
Speaker 5: how you know, this is something that crops up all
Speaker 5: around the world. He says, you know, from Nigeria to Thailand,
Speaker 5: from Borneo to Hong Kong. You know, you have these
Speaker 5: these cases where there will be these social social panics
Speaker 5: where men will start claiming, you know, hey, yeah, I've
Speaker 5: been deprived of you know, of my genitals by a
Speaker 5: witch or by some kind of other uh you know,
Speaker 5: similar evil spirit. And and as you already said, Blake, yeah,
Speaker 5: this has very this has a long history to it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you this, if the wind steals, you're junk,
Speaker 1: You're in trouble.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to add too, I don't remember the
Speaker 2: names of all of these festivals. When I was writing
Speaker 2: my book Misconceptions on Infertility, I had read about a
Speaker 2: Japanese penis festival and all of these other fertility festivals
Speaker 2: and ones based on urban legends about steel vaginas and
Speaker 2: penises and all things, all kinds of things like this. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: they do seem to have a lot of kind of
Speaker 2: folklore around this topic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, absolutely.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're thinking of the Kanamara matt Suri, right, which
Speaker 5: is a traditional harvest festival in Kawasaki, Japan, which is
Speaker 5: also known ye as the Festival of the Steel fallis so,
Speaker 5: which yeah, is wild where you've got you know, they
Speaker 5: parade a giant a giant penis down the street as
Speaker 5: a float, and you know you can buy all kinds
Speaker 5: of penis shaped themed goods. So you know, we're we're
Speaker 5: earning your explicit rating for this, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: So but this is this is anthropology.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well it's it's panthropology, right. What you've said
Speaker 1: that in our chat, it's prepagant for this. You said
Speaker 1: that the whole series is a bit of a love
Speaker 1: letter to MOO magazine, can you I don't. I was
Speaker 1: not familiar with that, but it sounds really cool. First
Speaker 1: of all, can you tell us about it? And is
Speaker 1: there any kind of English translation of it?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 5: So, yeah, so I when the last time I was
Speaker 5: on the show, I mentioned that, Yeah, you have this
Speaker 5: publication in Japan which is called MoU in reference to
Speaker 5: the lost content.
Speaker 1: Not the cow sound exactly, Yeah, yeah right.
Speaker 4: Im you Im right?
Speaker 5: So from theosophical lore which is called MoU and the
Speaker 5: subtitle is the Super Mystery Magazine. And one of the
Speaker 5: protagonists from the nineteen ninety one got Zilla film Got Deliversus,
Speaker 5: King Gadora, is actually a journalist from Moo magazine. So
Speaker 5: but yeah, when when we first meet ok Run in Danada,
Speaker 5: dan he's reading a magazine that actually is is the.
Speaker 1: Is it PO? It's something? Oh yeah, yes, it's Po.
Speaker 5: But if you're familiar with MoU, it's obviously MoU like
Speaker 5: it is identical to MoU.
Speaker 4: And so MoU is the.
Speaker 5: Premiere paranormal periodical in Japan, and it was founded in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy nine during the Japanese occult boom. In the
Speaker 5: in the seventies, which we previously talked about, and it's
Speaker 5: been running ever since, and there's no there's no English
Speaker 5: language translation for it that I'm aware of. They do
Speaker 5: have certain articles like the one I mentioned before, that
Speaker 5: they have posted online, and Google Translate is getting better
Speaker 5: all the time, so if you use that, you can
Speaker 5: read some of these online articles as examples of it.
Speaker 5: And there's also been some interviews with the current editor
Speaker 5: in chief of MoU, which is this guy, Takeiharu Mkami,
Speaker 5: that have appeared in English in recent years. Because so
Speaker 5: the publication in the English language world that I would
Speaker 5: compare mood to is the forty in Times, which was
Speaker 5: even founded also in nineteen seventy three. It's very similar
Speaker 5: to forty in Times for people who are familiar with that,
Speaker 5: in that it's a monthly publication. It has a very bold,
Speaker 5: eye catching cover art and interior sort of layout, very
Speaker 5: like sort of sensational, almost kind of tabloid sounding titles
Speaker 5: for their articles. But then when you actually read the
Speaker 5: content of the articles, you know they lure you in
Speaker 5: with all of all of that sort of over the topness,
Speaker 5: But more often than not, when you read the articles,
Speaker 5: they actually take a very critical, if not often sort
Speaker 5: of skeptical approach to the material that they're covering. And
Speaker 5: there was a twenty twenty one interview that Makami did
Speaker 5: with Japan Today where he actually they were talking about
Speaker 5: QAnon reaching Japan, right, and Makami was saying, how you know,
Speaker 5: this was a topic that they had sort of avoided
Speaker 5: covering in the magazine for a while. They were aware
Speaker 5: of it, but now that it had reached Japan, they
Speaker 5: were basically forced to actually talk about it. But he
Speaker 5: was emphasizing the idea that the point of MU as
Speaker 5: a publication is not to encourage belief in the supernatural,
Speaker 5: but to actually grow readers, what he said, their conspiracy
Speaker 5: theory literacy, right, and he said, this is a quote
Speaker 5: from him. He said, the only way to discourage people
Speaker 5: from being drawn in by conspiracies is to boost their
Speaker 5: conspiracy theory literacy, right, which is what they try to
Speaker 5: regularly do in the magazine.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So give them like the facts and the information, but
Speaker 5: in like a sort of fun, accessible way to let
Speaker 5: them know about this material and know where it comes
Speaker 5: from and all of this kind of stuff. And MoU
Speaker 5: is evidently very very popular in Japan, right, which still
Speaker 5: has a very high sort of print media culture over there.
Speaker 5: And according to Tamakami, the numbers that he gave in
Speaker 5: that Pan Today interview was he said, they currently have
Speaker 5: a print circulation of over fifty seven thousand, wow, which
Speaker 5: like blows the forty times out of the water, which
Speaker 5: as of twenty eighteen, what I could find at a
Speaker 5: monthly print circulation of fourteen thousand. And then I reached
Speaker 5: out to the current editor of A Skeptical Inquirer and
Speaker 5: was told that their current monthly print circulation is eighteen thousand.
Speaker 5: So that's some comparison, right wo. But yeah, and but
Speaker 5: you know, what you know Okarun is reading is absolutely
Speaker 5: an issue of MoU. You see the magazine repeatedly brought
Speaker 5: up throughout the show. Tatsu the creator has said in
Speaker 5: various interviews that, you know, that's his main source for
Speaker 5: a lot of the information, a lot of the ideas
Speaker 5: is going back to move and in fact, you know,
Speaker 5: so in that first episode when Okarun and Momo meet,
Speaker 5: you know, Momo asks Oko Run what he's reading, and
Speaker 5: he starts going on about how he's reading an article
Speaker 5: about Project Pegasus, which is this bizarre conspiration theory from
Speaker 5: twenty twelve that alleged that like the CIA had a
Speaker 5: secret project in the nineteen eighties where they were sending
Speaker 5: people to Mars, and one of the people they're supposed
Speaker 5: to have sent was a teenage Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, we all know this story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a real conspiracy. I know, I know,
Speaker 4: and it was It was in.
Speaker 5: And it was really covered in Moo magazine. It was
Speaker 5: the cover story wow, for issue number three eighty one,
Speaker 5: which came out in August twenty twelve. And when Okarun
Speaker 5: holds up the magazine to Momo, that is the exact
Speaker 5: layout of that article.
Speaker 4: They just copied it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: There you go. I certainly didn't mean to or don't
Speaker 2: want to alienate people with what I think about the show,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that I would either, and three
Speaker 2: million people can't be wrong, surely, So I would urge
Speaker 2: people who are listening to give it a try. But
Speaker 2: I think we need to wind things up justin I
Speaker 2: just wanted to ask you about an article that you've
Speaker 2: written about the show. When's it coming out and where
Speaker 2: is it coming out?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I've written a short article talking about the show.
Speaker 5: It should be coming out on a I p T.
Speaker 5: Which is Adventures and Poor Taste, which is where I
Speaker 5: regularly do book reviews. So and it's it's just going
Speaker 5: to touch on a few a few different aspects of
Speaker 5: the show, a few things that we didn't necessarily get
Speaker 5: around to talking about.
Speaker 4: In this one.
Speaker 5: I spend some time talking about the idea of Kappa
Speaker 5: as aliens, which is something that comes up in the show,
Speaker 5: which again is a direct reference to a very famous
Speaker 5: article that ran in Move magazine back in the nineties.
Speaker 5: So so yeah, I have I've written I've written a
Speaker 5: short a short little piece about it as well. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, there's so much that's just like jammed pack
Speaker 5: into this this series, and even just like the first
Speaker 5: season of the anime, you know that we haven't even
Speaker 5: haven't even got into So yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, thank you so much for what has got
Speaker 1: to be one of the tidiest explainers for an anime
Speaker 1: I've ever been part of. So I'm really thankful for
Speaker 1: your time. I'm gonna wind up here, but I want
Speaker 1: to leave a bonus question for patrons. Yeah sure, okay,
Speaker 1: So here's my bonus patron question. You're ready, here, we
Speaker 1: go for Patreon listeners only. Okay, Ken Takakura is an
Speaker 1: important part of this story.
Speaker 4: Monster.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 1: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. You just heard
Speaker 1: doctor Justin mullis helping us make sense of some of
Speaker 1: the many cultural connections president in the Weird Shitology Dance
Speaker 1: anime series Dan to Dan. Thanks again Justin for taking
Speaker 1: the time to talk with us, and do keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for his upcoming article in the excellent website
Speaker 1: AIPT Adventures and Poor Taste. Speaking of listener suggestions, yes,
Speaker 1: I have been checking out on Kenny Japan. I'm only
Speaker 1: just getting started, but the episodes I've tried, including the
Speaker 1: one on Turbo Granny, have been excellent. So thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone who's been poking me with sticks saying check out
Speaker 1: on Kenny Japan over and over again, and also please
Speaker 1: stop poking me with sticks. Hey, Blake here, I'll be
Speaker 1: sitting sale this July with Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid
Speaker 1: Podcast as part of his Skeptoid Adventure series. If you
Speaker 1: want to join us, check the show notes or google
Speaker 1: Skeptoid Adventure. But you need to book Passage by April
Speaker 1: to be a part of it. You'll get lots of
Speaker 1: details about the Bermuda Triangle while traveling in the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 1: And I'll be doing a live reading of a spooky
Speaker 1: nautical ghost story at sea. And if you sign up
Speaker 1: for the day trip to Key West, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: all about Robert the Doll and then you can see
Speaker 1: him for yourself. I hope you can join us. Monster
Speaker 1: Talk theme music is by Pete Stealing Monkeys. We hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode. Please come back next week for more.
Speaker 5: This has been a Monster House presentation.
Speaker 1: This is a fan request episode and I and keep
Speaker 1: an eye out for his upcoming article and an excellent website.
Speaker 1: A yype Yeah