#anncast

While you’re waiting for the Year in Review podcast episode, I was recently on ANNCast to talk about Sailor Moon: Sailor Stars! You can listen to it here.

I can hardly believe myself as I type this, but Zac Bertschy, Senior Editor of Anime News Network and main host of ANNCast, the premiere anime podcast in the English speaking world, has died.  He passed sometime on Thursday and I first learned of it logging on to Twitter as I got ready for work Friday morning and seeing one of Mike Toole’s tweets.  I checked ANN for confirmation and found it, then I started seeking out the friends & loves of Zac’s life...Justin Sevakis, Jacob Chapman, et. al.  Although I never met Zac in person, through ANNCast I felt I knew Zac better than many folks I have met in person, even people who live here around me. I’ve been an avid listener to ANNCast since at least 2010 and in 2010, I had started my current library job but also back then I had a borderline psychopath as a manager and she was a workplace bully and emotional abuser who took pleasure in inflicting pain & distress on her subordinates.  There was no overcoming her, just outlasting her while she ultimately destroyed herself through her own hubris & ego....which she ultimately and gratifyingly did.  Zac & Justin’s original ANNCast was a a mental refuge for me in those dark times, laying wisdom on me week after week about our shared preferred Art Form from Japan (anime).  Co-Hosts came & went, but Zac was a constant.  He was funny, humane, insightful.  He was very acerbic in the early years and our opinions often clashed, but he mellowed out over time and seemed to make peace with certain aspects widely varied anime shows.  Zac was most recently genuinely delighted with Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! and wrote about it with verve and passion...for him it rivaled and maybe even surpassed Neon Genesis Evangelion as his favorite anime of all time.  I’m glad he got that tiny bit of joy before the end.  And it is going to feel very odd and disconcerting not hearing Zac’s voice when Evangelion 3.0 + 1 finally releases.  I would’ve loved to hear his take on the film whether it emerges as a masterpiece or is a flop.  But now we western Otaku will never get to hear that and that’s devastating. Yesterday was a very sad day for me...I was numb from disbelief through much of it.  I took my evening walk listening to catchy J-Pop tunes including the greatest hits from the Evangelion soundtrack but for sure also a banging cover of Easy Breezy from Eizouken! as well.  I watched more of the old-ass anime Blue Seed on Crunchyroll with the old ADV Films dub which featured many of the future cast of Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Zac was actually primarily a sub fan but he wasn’t elitist or shitty about it, didn’t rub dub fans noses in it.  He (and Jacob and Justin) was sometimes dismissive of shows that I really thought were meritorious (Violet Evergarden being the most recent glaring oversight)...but like I said, he mellowed out as he got older and seemed less angry. I was chronologically older than Zac Bertschy by a few years, but his anime fandom was much older than mine...He went to film school, he understood film aesthetics and art on a much more profound level than I do or probably ever will.  The man KNEW HIS SHIT when it came to anime (& manga).  I always respected Zac, even when I disagreed with him.  He was also a passionate progressive lefty and made no apology for it.  He described himself proudly as “queer”.  He called out and detested the uglier sections of anime & general nerd fandom frequently, with righteous indignation.  He called people to do better and he appreciated art and its ability to give such poetic expression to our highest human aspirations.  His criticism itself had an almost lyrical quality to it.  The scene in Ratatouille about the role of the critic really spoke to Zac, as well it should, as he was precisely the embodiment of that ethic.  If “Anime Journalist” had its own entry in the OED, the photo above would be at the head of that entry.  He was THE Anime Journalist par excellence, the walking synonym of the term itself. I will miss this man terribly.

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Special Appearance – ANNCast – Brains In A Jar was originally published on Fast Karate for the Gentleman

ANNCast FRANXXly my Darling, I Don’t Give A Damn was originally published on Fast Karate for the Gentleman