Manga Mavericks EP. 8: Meet the Fast Food Fanatics!

Felicitations! We're the Fast Food Fanatics! We run down all the latest news and gossip in the deliciously detrimental world of flash-fried quick eats! What's cooking this week? Well, your titular fanatics Colton and Sid are full of beans and keen as mustard to shoot the breeze on some rather fishy business, including McDonald's new chicken nuggets recipe, the consequences of California's controversial $15 dollar minimum wage, why you should never ever eat at a Burger King in Brooklyn, and Chik-fil-A's oh so exclusive "invitation only" loyalty program! (Seriously, did you know about that? I go to Chik-fil-A almost every frigging day, and I've never received no red carpet treatment! "A-list membership" my ass! Screw those chicken-shit frying elitists!) Also, should millennials invest in Chipotle stock? The answer might surprise you! We might have our fingers in a lot of pies this time around, but believe me buddy, we know our onions! So let's fry some fish, and dig in to the meat of thin- WAIT A MINUTE! Don't close that tab! We aren't here to jabber about junk food. We're the mother-freaking Manga Mavericks, and as per our usual m.o., we mean to madly mutter about manga matters! Which we do after talking 10 minutes about how bad fast-food is for you, especially if you live in New York City. ...No, seriously, we're still a manga podcast! We promise! Want me to prove it to you? Well, in this installment, we commend the winners of the Tezuka Cultural Prize, ponder the practicality of Nissan's new manga-inspired Nissan Leaf model, and get excited for the upcoming documentary about Fujio Akatsuka, Makoto Raiku's new manga, the Cardcaptor Sakura sequel series, and much more! Plus, Colton drops a bombshell you'll NEVER see coming! There's no way that can be right! Can it? Also, we briefly talk about them in the episode, but I wanted to provide links to two fantastic analytical pieces on the Dragon Ball franchise I've recently gotten into. The first is the video series Dragon Ball Dissection by a Youtuber named MistareFusion, who has been going through the Dragon Ball manga from beginning to end, thoroughly breaking down each story arc with a critical lens. I've seen many attempts at a "History of Power Rangers"-esque overview of Dragon Ball from many different Youtubers, but Dragon Ball Dissection is far and away the best, not only because it bases itself on the original manga instead of the anime adaption like most others do, but also because MistareFusion focuses on analysis over recap and pulls no punches on breaking down both the series' strengths and flaws in an acute and precise manner. The second Dragon Ball analytical series I'd like to highlight is Derek Padula's brilliant Dragon Ball Culture book series. To my knowledge, Padula is the first and only professional literary Dragon Ball scholar. His books are thoroughly well-researched and written in a formal but still highly accessible manner, providing fascinating insight on the culture, themes, and history that influenced the story and world of Dragon Ball. His books so far have encompassed the entirety of the pre-Z era of the series, with additional books including one exploring the "Over 9000!" phenomenon, and a soulful collection of personal reflections on the series from fans all over the world aptly titled "Dragon Soul." Both MistareFusion's videos and Mr. Padula's books are excellent pieces for for any Dragon Ball fan looking to dig deeper into the essence of the franchise, and I highly recommend them. Oh, and just an FYI, in the episode we discuss Yona of the Dawn going on hiatus, which was still indefinite at the time we recorded of the episode. Since then, however, it's come to light that the series will resume this month in the 12th issue of Hana to Yume out on May 20th. Which kind of makes that whole talking point retroactively pointless, unfortunately, but that kind of thing's to be expected when you're running a bi-weekly podcast. The manga world