Toonami Absolution

One episode: the trio fish a bag of gold out of a river and are immediately pursued by people who want it back. The next: the group splits up and nothing goes well for anyone.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover "Bogus Booty" and "Lullabies of the Lost (Verse 1)" — Episodes 15 and 16 of Samurai Champloo."Bogus Booty" is one of the show's looser, more comedic outings: a bag of gold retrieved from a river turns out to belong to increasingly dangerous people, leading to Mugen and Jin getting entangled in a massive conspiracy, all because they wanted some female companionship. Then "Lullabies of the Lost (Verse 1)" takes a heavy turn: after an argument, the group genuinely separates. Fuu meets a wanderer who is carrying heavy burden, Mugen meets some soldiers who want to track down a murderer, and Jin meets another figure from his past. All three stories are sad in their own way.We cover what "Bogus Booty" is actually doing despite its lightweight premise and what the Lullabies two-parter sets up for the series' endgame.

A man named Commander Andy wants to read a list of demands. Space Ghost has an evil twin with a beard. These are separate episodes but they have very similar energy.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover "Freak Show" and "Switcheroo,” Episodes 7 and 8 of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast Season 3."Freak Show" introduces Commander Andy, a twentysomething Cartoon Network superfan who still lives with his parents. He has hijacked the broadcast to read a list of demands at Space Ghost. Space Ghost tries to conduct his interview with yodeller Wylie Gustafson and Green Jelly's Bill Manspeaker but no matter what he does Commander Andy persists.Then "Switcheroo" reveals that Space Ghost has an identical twin brother named Chad Ghostal, differentiated only by a beard, who keeps appearing on set while Space Ghost is called away on increasingly flimsy pretexts to flirt with guests Susan Olsen and Elvira. When Space Ghost returns and confronts Chad, their mother calls and tells them to stop. Then a third Space Ghost appears, removes its mask, and is revealed to be Lokar in disguise. It’s that kind of episode.We discuss Commander Andy as a recurring piece of lore, why the Chad Ghostal framing device works, and if the show finally knows how to use framing devices.📌 This episode covers: – Space Ghost: Coast to Coast S3E7 "Freak Show" (feat. Wylie Gustafson & Bill Manspeaker) – Space Ghost: Coast to Coast S3E8 "Switcheroo" (feat. Susan Olsen & Elvira)

Before Dragon Ball. Before Goku. There was Bardock, and he could see the future, and it did not help him at all.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Dragon Ball Z: Bardock – The Father of Goku (1990), the first DBZ TV special and the prequel that fills in the origin of the entire franchise.Bardock is a low-class Saiyan soldier, scrappy, ruthless, not particularly sentimental about anything, including the newborn son he dismisses as weak before shipping him off to Earth. After his squad destroys the last survivors of a planet called Kanassa, one surviving alien ambushes Bardock and gifts him the power of foresight as a curse. Bardock starts seeing Planet Vegeta explode. He sees Frieza. He sees his own death. He tries to warn the other Saiyans, who laugh at him. He charges Frieza's fleet alone. Frieza uses his Supernova. Everyone already knows how this ends, and the special earns its tragedy entirely from watching Bardock catch up with the audience and accept his place in the Dragon Ball Z timeline, in some of anime’s most impactful dramatic irony as he sees his son as a grown man, facing Frieza on Namek.We get into why Bardock works so well as a protagonist despite being the opposite of Goku in almost every way, what the special adds to the franchise's mythology, and how the various dubs hold up.

Mugen has a history. His history has found him. It brought friends.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover "Misguided Miscreants (Part 1)" and "Misguided Miscreants (Part 2)," Episodes 13 and 14 of Samurai Champloo, and the first two-parter that digs seriously into Mugen's backstory.The group reaches the sea, and Mugen encounters Koza. a woman from his childhood on the Ryukyu Islands, and her associate Mukuro, a pirate who was once Mugen's closest ally and is now running a gang of sea raiders. Mukuro has a job for Mugen: help rob a government ship. Mugen agrees. The job goes wrong in ways that feel personal and deliberate, because they are. "Part 2" reveals the full shape of Mukuro's betrayal, sends Mugen closer to death than almost any episode has managed, and ends with Mugen catching a glimpse of his own past, the island, the violence, what he survived, before deciding to keep walking leading to a moment with Jin that suggests they’re slowly starting to like eeach other.We discuss what these episodes add to Mugen as a character, how his dynamic with Koza differs from Jin's with Shino, and what this episode does right.📌 This episode covers: – Samurai Champloo Eps. 13 - Misguided Miscreants (Part 1) – Samurai Champloo Eps. 14 - Misguided Miscreants (Part 2)

One episode is a tribute. The other is Bill Nye asking Space Ghost to prove he exists. This week has a lot of mood whiplash.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover "Sharrock" and "Boo!" Episodes 5 and 6 of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast Season 3."Sharrock" is the show breaking its own norms, dialling it back to present a genuinely touching tribute to a fallen friend. Sonny Sharrock, the avant-garde jazz guitarist who composed the Coast to Coast theme, died in May 1994. The episode aired nearly two years later and takes the form of an extended tribute, the opening theme runs long, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth appears in character as a musician named Fred Cracklin, and the whole thing is structured less like a talk show and more like a music video. Then "Boo!" pivots to comedy: Michael Norman, a ghost expert and author, hopes to use Space Ghost as a subject for scientific study. Space Ghost is not cooperative. Bill Nye the Science Guy also appears, expressing concern that he may never be able to determine what exactly Space Ghost is, a reasonable concern, scientifically.We discuss what "Sharrock" accomplishes as a piece of television that is mostly vibes, what Bill Nye does with a role that gives him almost nothing to work with, and Sonny Sharrock's legacy.📌 This episode covers: – Space Ghost: Coast to Coast S3E5 "Sharrock" (feat. Thurston Moore as Fred Cracklin) – Space Ghost: Coast to Coast S3E6 "Boo!" (feat. Michael Norman & Bill Nye)

Before the Nolan trilogy. Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe changed the landscape entirely. There was Tim Burton, Michael Keaton in a rubber suit, Jack Nicholson in clown makeup, and a film that genuinely changed the entire game.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Batman (1989) this week, Tim Burton's gothic blockbuster, the first instalment of the initial Warner Bros. Batman film series, and one of the most culturally consequential superhero films ever made.Crime boss Carl Grissom sends henchman Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson, clearly having the time of his life) to a chemical plant, where a confrontation with Batman goes wrong and Napier falls into a vat of chemicals. He emerges with bleached white skin, a permanent grin, and a personality that has resolved all of its internal conflicts into pure chaos.Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne is a genuinely unusual piece of casting that turned out to be inspired: he plays Wayne as a distracted, slightly alien figure who seems most comfortable when nobody is looking at him, and most himself when he's underground. The Joker takes a romantic interest in photojournalist Vicki Vale and uses her as leverage against Batman, leading to one of the most epic showdowns in movie history.Danny Elfman's score does approximately forty percent of the emotional work in any given scene. Prince wrote the soundtrack, which exists in a different genre from the film it accompanies and is amazing, because its Prince, and that man could do literally anything.We dig into the film’s wild production history, discuss what Burton's interpretation gets definitively right about Batman, how Keaton's performance compares to every Caped Crusader that followed, what the film meant in 1989 and where it sits in our personal Batman rankings.🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of the DC Animated Universe, the Batman live-action legacy, and everything in the Toonami lineage!

"Gamblers and Gallantry" is the episode where Jin falls in love and Mugen trains a rhinoceros beetle for competitive fighting. These two boys couldn’t be more different.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Episodes 11 and 12 of Samurai Champloo this week: "Gamblers and Gallantry" and "The Disorder Diaries.""Gamblers and Gallantry" starts when Jin, wandering aimlessly, encounters a woman on a bridge named Shino who is about to begin working at a local brothel to cover her husband Hanjiro's gambling debts.Jin quickly falls in love with Shino, and uses Jin winnings to pay for Shino's company. In the morning, he arranges her passage out and the whole group fights off the brothel staff so she can get on a boat, leading to one of most tear-jerking episodes of the show.Then "The Disorder Diaries" arrives as a both a breather episode and a way to save money: Mugen steals Fuu's travel diary, triggering an episode-length recap of the journey so far as filtered through Fuu's opinions of both Mugen (rude, terrifying, useful) and Jin (quiet, capable, annoyingly handsome, she admits this in writing) and the food they’ve eaten on the way. 🔔 Subscribe for our episode-by-episode watch-through of Samurai Champloo from the beginning!

"Lovesick" and "Transcript." One episode about Space Ghost losing the love of his life. One episode that is almost entirely a Jonathan Richman concert.Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Space Ghost: Coast to Coast Season 3, Episodes 3 and 4 this week, and it's worth noting upfront that "Lovesick" exists because the show's creator Mike Lazzo went through a breakup."Lovesick" aired on Valentine's Day, 1996, which tells you everything about the intent. Space Ghost has been dumped and refuses to engage with the show in any meaningful way. Carrot Top appears to do Carrot Top things. None of us here understand how Carrot Top was able to sustain a career in comedy, so if you understand Carrot Top, please send an email to the usual address. Then "Transcript" is its own strange thing: Jonathan Richman, founder of The Modern Lovers appears on the show and plays songs and has very weird conversations with Space Ghost. The episode is called "Transcript" because it essentially is one, a fairly faithful record of whatever happened between George Lowe and Jonathan Richman on the day of recording. It’s one of the oddest episodes of the show, especially if you’re not familiar with Jonathan Richman.We discuss what Coast to Coast is doing right in season 3, why "Transcript" is one of the show's most interesting episodes, and debate if Carrot Top is a way of punishing us.📌 This episode covers: – Space Ghost: Coast to Coast S3E3 "Lovesick" (feat. Carrot Top) – Space Ghost: Coast to Coast S3E4 "Transcript" (feat. Jonathan Richman)