Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to Realm Jumpers. I'm Andrew and this is my co-host, jordan hey everyone.

Speaker 2: 0:12

We're here to dive into the worlds of fantasy and anime, bringing you epic stories and unforgettable adventures.

Speaker 1: 0:18

We'll be talking world building unforgettable villains and everything that makes these genres legendary.

Speaker 2: 0:24

So let's jump into the Realm.

Speaker 1: 0:32

How you been, jordan, I'm good buddy. How you doing, I'm doing good. It's been another week. Let's dive into Realm Rumors Current events for everybody. That's what we're calling our current events. Slash news section is realm rumors, just a quick little hit.

Speaker 2: 0:51

I see there's something about no game, no life, which I love that anime, but I don't think there was a second season.

Speaker 1: 0:57

I feel like yeah, there wasn't a second season, but apparently somebody jumped on twitter. Uh, and I'm grabbing this from anime hunch um, but apparently somebody jumped on Twitter, and I'm grabbing this from Anime Hunch. But apparently somebody jumped on Twitter and started throwing out some fake news that there was going to be a season two. And then the old fake news yeah, the creator, the creator, he, he got on there and he goes. I've seen this enough times to know what it says and I can't even read English Clickbait.

Speaker 2: 1:28

He's like you know what.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Enough. Yeah, that's basically yeah, the TLDR is. He said no, I'd love to do it but that's not happening.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Is there a manga or light novel of this? Or was it anime only I don't really remember because I feel like it was like 15 years ago.

Speaker 1: 1:48

I don't know how long it was, but so there's 10. There is a light novel and I'm a little conflicted about this story, to be honest, because they go to the weird place with the brother, sister, love and it just yeah, I felt like that a little bit watching it, although I do remember liking it I do remember being like I don't like that part of the story.

Speaker 1: 2:02

But so I read a couple of the books because you know the game part of it, like when he's, when they're playing their games and he's, you know, going through all his logic um, that part of it was super interesting. Um, but the the brother sister love like I, I couldn't deal with it and they push it yeah, like, yeah, they kind of push it and on top of that, amazon just totally zoinked them.

Speaker 1: 2:29

I mean, they just Amazon pulled it off of Kindle, pulled it off of the Amazon shop, and so, yeah, I think several of the books I had even got deleted off my phone, which isn't supposed to happen, that's kind of serious.

Speaker 2: 2:47

So there might be. You have to look into that. Maybe something happened with the creator.

Speaker 1: 2:51

If you look into the Amazon terms of service, they can actually do that. So just because, buyer beware. Just because you pay for something on Amazon does not mean it's yours forever as far as digital content. That includes movies, by the way.

Speaker 2: 3:09

That's why you want to be physical, right? Yeah, right, exactly. Get the physical copies. They can't kick your door in yet, at least and steal your your books. But I see the other thing is something about a naruto remake of the original series.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Yeah, yes, um, I don't think it's a remake. So in 2023 they were supposed to release some anniversary episodes of naruto new drawn yeah, drawn like new stuff and that didn't happen, for whatever reason, it got shelved. So and I and again, I don't know how credible these rumors are, but there's talk that at anime japan again, we talked about this last week with um, with the other one um, they think in May at Anime Japan that they might be announcing a new series, not a reboot, a new, new Naruto series.

Speaker 2: 3:55

I mean, look, there's so many places they could go, but for the love of God, can you give me just one season of Naruto's dad just being a ninja?

Speaker 1: 4:04

Yeah, that would be great.

Speaker 2: 4:06

Even just 13 episodes. There's so much lore in the story you could literally do anything. I just it'd be really cool to. Yeah, I thought mr beast was involved with this somehow. I feel like I remember him saying pay for it or something weird.

Speaker 1: 4:17

I don't remember I honestly don't know. Uh, I honestly don't know. It was a pretty slow anime news week, uh, so most of what I saw was updates about what could be coming and episode reviews, which I don't typically like to jump into. I'm not going to read an episode review. I might read a season review, but I'm not reading an episode by episode review.

Speaker 2: 4:38

Yeah, I don't have time for sure, well, I mean hey, I'll watch a new Naruto or whatever, just because it's a great series, you know.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Sure, well, I mean hey I'll watch a new naruto, whatever, just because it's a great series. You know why not? Um, so let's jump into the main topic of the night, which you know our topic for tonight is and it's a little bit wordy, but it's, it's an interesting concept um anime that could work as a western fantasy novel. And you know a lot, a lot of these animes. They either come from a manga adaption or you know a light novel adaptation. But you know what is a Western fantasy, right? Think, like Wheel of Time, mistborn, anything, brandon Sanderson.

Speaker 1: 5:20

So you know the criteria that I'm going to talk about as far as the anime that that I'm going to bring up tonight. You know what makes a good, uh, western fantasy. So you know the key elements. The key elements for what I think makes a good Western fantasy is world building, character development, um, conflict, uh, you know themes and morality, and then the pacing, pacing structure. It's kind of the same thing. So the one I wanted to spotlight tonight is a record of grand crest war Dope show. Yeah, I really enjoyed it and, honestly, that was one of those ones that I kind of sat down in Netflix one night and there was nothing else to watch and I looked at it and I said this looks interesting, let me watch an episode or two and see what happens. And then you know, at the end of the first episode I'm like, oh no, I got to watch this, this is good.

Speaker 2: 6:18

It's the best when you run into it that way and you can binge it.

Speaker 1: 6:31

It sucks when you do that on the first episode and then it's weekly, right, right? I, I agree, I absolutely agree. But if an overview for you know, those of our listeners that have never heard of record of grand crest war, um, it's set in a high fantasy world where, you know, chaos basically ruins everything. Um, darkness, right, yeah, they call it chaos, and it's not just one thing, it's natural disasters, monsters, basically all the destructive forces that you can think of. That's what they call chaos, and the premise of the show is, in order to fight chaos, the nobles they wield these, these magical crests on their hands which look kind of cool.

Speaker 2: 7:10

Hey, it's a tattoo I'm in, I love, right, yeah, exactly yeah, let's go the crests, grant them power.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Um, so for me this, this was kind of like what really drew me in, because I had just recently come off of watching fate zero and fate stay night and I was like the crest looks similar. This is, this is going to be cool, the mark or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:30

So the nobles? You know, they wield the magical crests and that's what grants them power. They're supposed to help maintain order and push back against chaos. But you know, people are people and instead of working together, they, you know, as humans do, they pick different factions and then they spend more time fighting each other than they do. The chaos.

Speaker 2: 7:51

Well, there's a king, there's got to be a kingdom, right I mean?

Speaker 1: 7:53

you got to take over.

Speaker 2: 7:54

Right, that's how that works, I get it.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So yeah, the main story follows Theo Cornaro. I'm probably butchering that name, theo Cornaro. I'm probably butchering that name, theo Cornaro. I know they pronounced it in the show and I just I wasn't going back to watch it again to figure out the exact pronunciation.

Speaker 2: 8:13

You're good, I think we'll be all right, that's the green haired kid. Right, I remember this one.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Yeah, and you know, yeah right, he's just a young knight with big dreams. You know he wants to. He wants to bring word of the world, order to the world, and that's just his dream. And I, I love a show like that. You know where they. You got an underdog and don't get me wrong, the overpowered main character shows, those can be amazing as well, but when you, when you have an underdog, that's not, you know, the top dog, that's not the most powerful dude out there, like from Jump Street, those shows just kind of they tend to all for me, you know, they always make a big impact.

Speaker 2: 8:52

Yeah, it's like a shonen. You know the classic story. He's not that strong, but he does have some power. He can grow. He needs allies, you know we've seen this type of thing before, but it's different yeah takes.

Speaker 1: 9:04

It takes naruto. What 4 000 episodes to become, you know, the most, most powerful ninja pretty much, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:11

This one's what you got 24 episodes in this season, this show, I'm telling I thought it was like, honestly, I thought it was in the 50s. I thought it was like 56 or something that's a good run.

Speaker 1: 9:20

I mean, yeah, pretty good. No, it's a good run. Um, so, theo's, it's pretty good, no, it's a good run. So Theo's goal, you know it's bring order to the world, unite the nobles and get them to focus on, you know, the chaos instead of politics.

Speaker 2: 9:33

Yeah, but that's the fun part, right, right.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Yeah, so yeah, and it's got the things that it brings to the table. The things that it brings to the table. For me, that would make it a great fantasy. Right is, you've got the world building. Now it's not going to be as perfect as a light novel and I wish I could read the light novel for Record of Grand Crest War, but it was never translated into.

Speaker 1: 10:04

English. There are fan translations. Sacrilege, right, that's terrible. There are fan translations. Sacrilege right, that's terrible. There are fan translations. But the website that I went to was not awesome and I think I gave up after a few paragraphs yeah so you know the world building.

Speaker 1: 10:15

It has a decent amount of world building, right, you know they, they, they don't flesh out everything, but they do spend some time fleshing out how the world operates. Um, you know the different factions, how that works, like what people's motivations are. So you know that's a little bit of the world building and a little bit of the struggle that they're bringing forth there. Additionally, the character development. Again, you know I said Theo's not. You know he's not the OP MC. You know he didn't come in there and he's not, you know, the biggest badass on the scene from Jump Street. He didn't get isekai'd into this universe with some cheap power and he's also, you know, he's got a moral streak to him, right, it's not, it's not. And there are a lot of characters like that.

Speaker 1: 11:25

We do see a lot of anime where the characters you know where they refuse to kill or something like that Theo's thing. It's just he's trying to bring order. Let's unite the world. So I felt like it had good pacing. It had good overall themes, the things they struggle with. The conflict is obvious. Let's fight the chaos, but we also have to fight the politics. And you know, unite the people. Character development and not just theo saluka. Saluka, which is, you know, the, the main female character, saluka kind of becomes. She seems one-sided at first. I will say that it probably takes I don't know five or ten episodes before you start to feel like she's got any depth to her. But over the course of that series, you know, they flesh out her character as well. So there is some depth there, you know.

Speaker 2: 11:52

I do remember watching this and being totally drawn in to like the siege warfare part of it, where they're like attacking castles with armies and awesome magic powers and it's like it's. It was really different because it presents as the hero story which it is, but then as he gathers allies, there's always, like you said, political backstabbings and allies that they have to make and war that happens and they let let you see the big war to the big wars. It's not just like lost over. I do remember being like really drawn to that, yeah, in this show.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Yeah, and I. So, for me, with stuff like this, I just can't help but picture, you know, somebody like Robert Jordan, wheel of time having you know the idea of this and having written this as a uh, as a fantasy series and that just like man. That gets me because, like this, that could be an epic fantasy novel and that is one of the few. There are plenty of anime that I think could be a western fantasy novel, but that's one of the few that really is like. This could be a book series, not just a, not just a single novel. You know this, this could be, you know, a multi, multi-series thing. It's a completely separate world. So it is high fantasy, you know. It's just they've got all the markers, they've got a semi sort of fleshed out magic system. But I can you imagine, you know, if that, actually, if somebody actually took that to paper and was able to flesh out how that magic actually works with I?

Speaker 2: 13:23

remember it being really unique. Yeah, because they're using the darkness quote chaos, whatever, right, it's like, it exists, it's, it's almost like mana it's all around but it's it's bad kind of. But they can use it for good because they can harness it to use, you know, good magic to like help their allies. So I love that concept of that show that it's all around and it, like you said, natural disasters, monsters, all this other stuff feeds it or it feeds them, but then they can harness it to do like these amazing abilities and try to fix their world and stuff. It was a really fun series.

Speaker 1: 13:56

I do remember being drawn into those battles yeah, I, I really enjoyed it and I remember, uh, when I first sat down to watch that I honestly didn't think I was gonna enjoy it. Um, I, you know, I was just bored looking for something to watch, but it ended up being very good. Um, it's not as the anime stands. I wouldn't say it's like on my top 10 list of best anime ever produced, but that's fun. Yeah, yeah, it's fun and I can picture that being a novel form and that's something that I would really want to read, you know.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Yeah, I dude, I agree. I feel like and again I mean I guess you don't know because we didn't get to, you never got to read the light. Now maybe it's way more in depth and they just blitz through. You know, for the anime, maybe I don't know. Hopefully someone will, um, take that upon themselves, or can ai just translate at this point, like somebody do this uh, he needs to see it, he needs to read it. I love one day for us to do like a recap on it and be like actually it's expanded way more in the thing, you know, because that's usually how it goes. So I think you know, today you picked one, I picked one type thing. Um, yeah, what?

Speaker 2: 15:07

am I it's one of the uh, yeah, it's one of the re series creators and, um, yeah, there's a bunch of different ones of the re series.

Speaker 2: 15:14

I've seen a lot of them, but the creator one really stands out because the, the story itself is so unique and it's almost a reverse uh isekai or whatever kind of in a weird way. So with re creators it's it's modern day in our world and the heroes from the stories of manga, anime, movies and books show up in our world and have all their powers they had in their stories and there's a whole battle thing going on. So it's similar to like a Fate Stay thing in a weird way, that there's these superpowered beings coming, but the actual authors of the creations are in the story too. So it's really crazy because you know as a writer that would be amazing to find, to see your character in real life, but then all of the trauma that you put right, that's their real life. They don't know. That's the story to them. That's their real life and they're, like you, son of a bitch what you did to me, you know right.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Yeah, yeah, wait, hold on. This would be like uh luffy shows up in this world and then go comes through as well bro, this would be like I'm my.

Speaker 2: 16:28

My characters would kill me if they'd be like why did you do this to me? You piece of garbage, you know right?

Speaker 2: 16:33

so it's a really interesting. Now, interestingly enough, it's anime. Only there is a manga, but it was made after the anime, so this was the only anime story which is, you know, every now and then you find good ones of those, um, you know, but as a writer, I again that out of the box story that these, that that these creators make, is just crazy. Like you know, as a writer and you're, you're, I know you're gonna be a writer soon. So stop, imagine if your character all of a sudden showed up on your doorstep and that's what this is and the the background of it is. There's multiple different series.

Speaker 2: 17:09

So the one girl, um, the main, well, the hero is this kid, soda, who he's? He's got like passion for writing stories. He's at a convention and all of a sudden his favorite anime character is there and she's in her mech and she's fighting in real life in the middle of the city, this other thing, and he's like, holy shit, this is like this is really happening. So you know, it's cool for his perspective because it would be like, you know, that's your end to the story. But the main character, girl hero, she, you know, her author, her mangaka, is in the story too. So eventually she meets him and it's like, it's very like fate stay where. It's almost like they're bound together the creator and the creation in the story to, like you know, solve what's going on.

Speaker 2: 17:57

And she hates him because her whole life has been hell, trauma after trauma. It's like a war future type story with mechs and like all her family died. Like it's like terrible shit, man. And this girl meets the creator and she's like you think this is like a story to you, like it's a joke, you know, like my parents died in front of me, you know, like all that kind of stuff, and he has to confront this whole like oh, I was just writing a cool story and it's like to her, it's real. So it kind of what you're talking about in the beginning here, about world building and character development. It's like stakes. It's like I made you up and I ruined your life and you were real and I didn't really know that you, you know like I ruined your life to sell a story to sell a book like what do you mean?

Speaker 2: 18:43

so the really cool thing, though, is that the antagonist of the story, her creator, is like terminally ill and dying. So she's full of hate and just rage and just like pain, because she's young, she's like 20 or she's super young and she's dying of this. You know she's dying, so she's very mad at the world, right, because she's like this isn't fair. So her character is the one that is trying to destroy the story, the world, because she's like my creator hates the world, so I'm gonna destroy the world. So it's it's super interesting story where it kind of sets up in a way like a battle of of stories and in concepts and just like you know the hero characters. They live through all this terrible stuff in their stories and they can survive and they made it through, and some of them think they can do it in the real world. Versus this, this, you know, there's like a good and a bad side, or whatever, um, and they some of them die like they didn't pull, they don't have plot armor, so they die right, okay, and you're just like holy shit, like it's great. It's just a really cool concept and if, if you know anyone who's a creator anyway, I, especially a writer or an artist.

Speaker 2: 19:59

Imagine if your, your character was, like, showed up in real life and has all the abilities and all the flaws and all the hate and all the anger that you wrote them with for your story and they, you know, yeah, it would be insane. So as a writer, this is like a super I swear. It was like it punched me in the face because I'm like, wow, this is crazy. And then I actually felt bad about my own characters. That I've done and stories I've done, because I'm like man, I've put them through Sure, and I hope I never have to meet them.

Speaker 2: 20:29

But you know the morality and the theme thing. You know it's like our entertainment. But is that, you know? Is that out there, that reality, that person's living, and you're just writing it down as a story? You, out there, that reality, that person's living, and you're just writing it down as a story. You know all those weird little questions that pop up. But as a writer or a spying writer, anyone it'll be really cool if you check it out, because it it may, you know, maybe take it a little easier on some of your. Uh, yeah, it's fun. But if you haven't seen. Check it out, man. It's a. It's a really fun story.

Speaker 1: 20:59

No, honestly I, when you, when I first saw your notes for this, I I thought, I thought you know, I think I might have seen this and I just don't remember it. But now we're talking about it. I I don't think I've seen this and I'm gonna have to check it out yeah, dude, I mean you love fate stay.

Speaker 2: 21:15

So I think it's actually drawn by one of the studios that did one of them. So the art is really good. But um, so I just want to.

Speaker 1: 21:23

You know, basically it's the novel form of gladiator, and also the pin is mightier than the sword oh there you go, there we go. Yeah, I don't know, I think it is yeah, but it's.

Speaker 2: 21:38

What's so weird about it is like the hero characters think that they're right because they're hero characters, but the quote villain characters are like we're not wrong, you know, like in their mind they're doing what's right. So it's. It does set up that whole um group verse, group thing, you know, and then, if I remember correctly, which has been a while, I think the writer can like power them up or something. I think there's something like that where they can add to their story if they publish something about them and they'll get a new ability, like in the battle. So yeah, dude, it's, it's a dope story. It's a really weird, interesting take right into into stuff you know what you said there about?

Speaker 1: 22:21

uh, your characters would think you're just a bag of dicks they kill me, they shake me up, man yeah no, it makes me laugh because I I've written a couple of character sheets, obviously for this book. That's probably never going to get written. It's getting written. You will write it, we'll see. But you know the character sheets I've got. I've got one character that I would absolutely want to meet, even through the tragedy, and another character that I'm like I'm going to go. I'm going to go now, before he gets here. They find you.

Speaker 2: 22:53

Yeah, before this guy finds me, because he's gonna be pissed and even like, if I remember, like the main guy who wrote the, the main hero character like his, he was kind of getting like writer's block a little bit about the where the story's gonna go, and then this ignite, you know, meeting her and she's fully his character, like all the belief I can do it, you know everything, and it's just like, oh, wow, like, like it reignited his, his, his, his drive to create. So it was. It's a really cool story. I don't, I don't remember the ending. I don't. I'm sure it has a good, you know, whatever ending could ending, hopefully. But I just remember being so torn because you're like you can't really blame the quote bad guys Cause why wouldn't they be angry and want to destroy the world? That ruined their world in their mind, like to them, like your world made this as a joke. I'm going to destroy your world, so you like it, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1: 23:41

So you know, outside of, outside of the joker, you know those are the best bad guys. Uh, they believe they're right. You know it's. You know the moral authority, like heroes, aren't the only people with a moral authority. You know, the bad guy, the guy you're trying to kill, is always going to think that he's in the right and you're in the wrong, no matter what he's done. You know it's always justified. So, you know, outside of characters like the Joker, who just, you know, to quote Michael Caine, you, you know, just want to watch the world burn. Yeah, most villains believe that they're right, you know they. They believe that they have the high ground, that they're the moral authority. They just don't.

Speaker 1: 24:27

I was going to say they don't have qualms about killing, they just have a different viewpoint on how to get to their moral authority, or even they justify it too right. You know what? Yeah, it's, it's a different viewpoint so it to get to their moral authority, or even they justify it too, right, you know what? Yeah, it's, it's a different viewpoint, so it's justified. You know they justify that through through their actions, through their viewpoint. It's either going to be something like the you know the end, um, and justifies the means, or it's going to be something like you know, walk a mile in my shoes because you know. See it from my point of view.

Speaker 2: 24:53

Yeah, I'm very and that's, you know, a good um anti-hero rant too, actually, because their whole thing is they're heroes, but that they don't really want to be heroes and they're trying to do. You know, punishers a really good example spawns the other one, right, they're like, okay, you can call us a hero, but I don't really care about that, I'm doing what I want to do. You know way more about the comics than I do.

Speaker 1: 25:15

I could only. I could only think of joke.

Speaker 2: 25:18

Well, joker, yeah, he's just straight Wants to just burn the whole damn thing down and watch it.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Right. I seriously doubt the Joker ever thought about whether or not he's right. It's not about being right with the Joker.

Speaker 2: 25:29

It's fun.

Speaker 1: 25:36

That want to do. This is the fun thing that I want to do. Yeah, jerker's great. He's great for that, for sure. So, um, what platform is this series on? Because, honestly, I again, like I said, we're talking about it and now I want to watch it and I don't, right, I don't know where.

Speaker 2: 25:47

Um, let's see I know I think I watch it. I think I watched on crunchy. Hold on, I'll do a quick look, real quick Streaming, because it's not fair to leave our listeners here stranded if they want to see it. Amazon Prime people are saying, nice, we'll find it, let's Google it, we'll find it.

Speaker 1: 26:08

Yeah. So yeah, that's it for our topics tonight. I really hope that everybody, if you haven't already seen these two shows, you know, I know I'm definitely going to check out. You're just a fan of the genre or not? The genre, you know, the, the medium, you know it's a great show to watch. Yes, fun.

Speaker 2: 26:42

The the action is is brutal in that in grandcast I remember people getting cut in half. Yeah, I remember the Valkyrie. Sorry, she was awesome, the Valkyrie character. Oh God, what is her name? Purple hair, got the war marks on her face.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Where's the Thor helmet? Yeah, I know her name, aisha.

Speaker 2: 27:01

There you go. I knew if I put you on the spot you'd remember.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Yeah, I was going to say I don't know what I was going to say, but yeah, it's Aisha, which I thought it was Aisha until I was. You know, listen to the uh, the dub. Yeah, I listened to the dub and I'm like oh, no, it's Aisha. Okay, awesome, yeah. Well, that's it for tonight's episode. So you know, we just want to say thanks for jumping under the realm with us. Uh, be far. Be sure to follow realm jumpers wherever you get your podcasts and don't forget to share your thoughts, theories and favorite moments with us.

Speaker 2: 27:38

Until next time, stay, epic, and keep exploring the worlds you love. Leave us a review on your podcast platform and, if you can't think of anything to say, tell us about your favorite anime. See you in the next round. Thank you.