Have you ever felt social anxiety? Have you ever wanted to join a band? Are you a Japanese teenage girl? If so, you'll love Bocchi the Rock! for many reasons, chief among them the honestly surrealist portrayal of main character Bocchi's internal monologues as she navigates high school and band life with extreme social anxiety. The animation feels almost Into the Spider-Verse levels of genre defying, putting a hilarious twist on a slice-of-life story about a group of girls trying to make it...

Did you know that the gang is ohana, and ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind? Maybe Michael's childhood memories got left behind due to brain damage, but those probably weren't important anyway. Still, Lilo & Stitch is an excellent movie that everyone agrees is better than we remember, with particular praise for its portrayal of Lilo, her family issues and genuinely rocky relationship with Nani, Stitch's character development, and Jumba's accent. You can't help...

There was definitely something magical about reading about this series in development in March 2023 and learning that the entire original cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had signed on to join a new anime series called Scott Pilgrim Takes Off coming to Netflix. The 2010 film is a fan favorite at the Couch, of course, but we were all pleasantly surprised with how much more this series developed the world of Scott Pilgrim; the Evil Exes become characters as opposed to video game bosses,...

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Couch! This week we're talking about Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, a classic early-2000's Cartoon Network smash hit that's received 5 Annies and 7 Emmys - making it even more baffling that Marcus had never seen a single episode until this recording. Foster's has a couple of really excellent episodes in a sea of quality television, tackling the common topics like dealing with annoying siblings or the fear of moving away from friends with a cast of...

The holidays are upon us and that means Alex brings back his other best friends for another edition of Best Seat on the Couch - ONE PIECE edition! Katy, Lony, and Owen return to the couch as they dive headfirst into the Egghead arc and discuss big lore implications, hypothetical pirate-vs-pirate 1v1 results, and validated called shots. We even get some deep Katy lore with the story of how her dad got into ONE PIECE thanks to the Netflix live-action series, which came out last year and made a...

Our final release of 2023 coincides with an Alex week, so of course we're sending the year out with a banger of an anime series, Mob Psycho 100. Alex had brought this to a couple of us after season 1's release in 2016, but we finally get to talk about the quiet-but-unbelievably-overpowered Mob, the homies within the Body Improvement Club, the super secret evil organization known as the Claw, and the 100% best character in this show, Reigen Arataka. The show combines the humor and...

Lots of great stuff to say about Disney's Wreck-It Ralph and this was a truly beloved movie to our younger selves - but does it hold up? For the most part, yes! We get a whole lot of video game nostalgia, funny side characters and animation, a really excellent villain reveal, and a banger of an ending, at the cost of some iffy pacing and gratuitous side character tangents. Pretty glad that they never decided to make a sequel that goes beyond the confines of an arcade, right? Content warning:...

The gang ventures into uncharted hip-hop head territory with Entergalactic, a Netflix special pseudo-movie that goes in tandem with a studio album of the same name from acclaimed artist Kid Cudi. Cudi, as well as a couple of other artists and actors, put together a fairly vanilla rom-com that's got a knack for emotional beats and accompanying visual spectacle but offers little else to engage the viewer outside of music + animation + vibe. Still, there's plenty of discussion to be had about...

Iris says that Michael has a "type" of movie he brings - 2000s to 2010s animated children's movies that maybe don't always hit. See Ice Age and Madagascar and Hoodwinked (the GOAT), to name a few. But Surf's Up is one of Michael's greatest triumphs, filmed in a mockumentary style that feels so convincing that you kind of wonder why they decided to use animated penguins at all. Throw in excellent voice acting, a satisfying story and message, and humor that isn't miserable, and you get a...

In one of the greatest multiversal crossovers of all time, Katy from the One Piece holiday episodes joins the gang to talk about Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma, an anime that rivals Kill La Kill in fan service while also providing some absolute gourmet perfection on screen. But do not be fooled - this show is not just gratuitous moaning and literal foodgasms, it's actually really good, with solid character arcs and excellent plot progression that caters to even Iris's finer tastes. And you...

The gang arrives at the end of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, high on the previous two movies' excellent worldbuilding, strong main cast and characters, and more serious tone for a kids movie, to experience The Hidden World for the first time. Overall...it's alright. If HTTYD 2 found a way to be a good movie but a great sequel, Hidden World comes out as an okay movie and a disappointing sequel with a weird ending, though bolstered by its even more impressive animation and satisfying...

Pixar once again begs the question: what if the Classical Elements had feelings? Elemental is the latest entry in a slowly growing line of just-ok-but-not-spectacular Pixar movies, and while it bombed in the box office it performed fairly well on streaming - so the gang decided to try it out! What we got was a pretty entertaining romantic comedy (which, credit to Pixar, isn't something we've really seen from them before) wrapped in a fairly flimsy plot and half-decent immigrant family...

While no longer the case as of a few months ago, legendary director Hayao Miyazaki's last film was to be 2013's The Wind Rises, a fictionalized biography of Japanese WWII engineer Jiro Horikoshi spliced with a wondrous Miyazaki manga, wrapped up in the classical Studio Ghibli bow with gorgeous animation and vibrant, memorable scenes. There's plenty of controversy surrounding the implications of celebrating the mind behind the most destructive Axis warplane in WWII - and the gang discusses...

Do you remember Death Note, and how Light and L had a brutal battle of wits that existed entirely within their own respective subconsciouses? What if that was a romantic comedy? Enter Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, a hilarious portrayal of high school budding romance with everything from fourth-wall breaks to tear-jerking moments. Alex claims that it even revolutionized the genre in Japan, and with 3 seasons and a movie under its belt, we're still barely over halfway done with the series. Stick...

Back again for 2 Train 2 Dragons, we're time skipping 5 years to a more mature young adult Hiccup, the long-awaited reveal of Hiccup's mother, and an antagonist that's actually not a dragon...technically. The gang has discussed the concept of a good movie but great sequel, and this movie certainly fits that bill - excellent worldbuilding, heightened stakes, and characters growing and reacting to foundations laid in the first movie are all hallmarks of that, and there are certain small moments...

Not to be confused with 2008's Star Wars: The Clone Wars which we spoke about nearly 3 years ago, this series came out in 2003 and coincided almost perfectly with the actual release of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith way back in the day. It's animated in the same style as Samurai Jack, feels more experimental in its progression, and is tonally almost completely different from its successor - its strengths are its quick runtime and excellent fight scenes/"power levels," while its weaknesses...

The gang returns from a long hiatus to drop another childhood banger from 2002, Codename: Kids Next Door, which drops the absolute deepest lore on what it really means to have a childhood. Kids immediately latch on to their favorite of Numbuhs 1 through 5 and we were no different in our youth, and there's plenty of teenager/adult drama and bombastic (though sometimes disgusting) humor to keep our attentions now that we're a bit older. Plus, we talk about the movie! Content warning: SPOILERS,...

The gang puts the pedal to the metal this week, bringing relative newcomer Redline (2009) to the Couch after emerging from a months-long JoJo's Bizarre Adventure stint. This film was commercially unsuccessful, but has a vibe akin to your 8-year-old self playing Need For Speed in a dark arcade with your friends - the music is blaring, the cars are cool, each hand-drawn frame is artistically gorgeous and impressively detailed, and it's all turned up to a nitrous-fueled 11. Gorgeous visuals do...

From cartoonist ND Stevenson, the mind behind She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, we get Nimona, a gorgeously animated sci-fantasy film that's risen from its ashes after almost being axed by Disney a few years ago. Ballister and Nimona give excellent performances and together they tell a rich and genuine story centering around duty, purpose, and the struggles that real-life LGBTQ+ individuals face in today's world, in ways that a few of us have never seen before! That isn't to say that Marcus...

The gang punches their tickets back onto the Star Wars train with the second season of Star Wars: Visions, the non-canon anthology series showcasing animation studios from around the world. This time around we're not locked into Anime-only, and get to see cool stop-motion from Aardman (of Wallace and Gromit fame) and Triggerfish, anime from Studio Mir, and awesome visual stories from lesser-known studios like El Guiri and La Cachette. We discuss them all in this episode, talk about which ones...

Pretty incredible that we're nearing the end of the Miyazaki-Studio Ghibli pantheon, but My Neighbor Totoro (1988) is perhaps one of the most well-known entries in that catalogue, even if it's not as wondrous and fantastical as Princess Mononoke or Castle in the Sky. As Alex says, instead imagine that you could capture a sunny day with a picnic into a movie, and meeting an 8ft tall fluffy alien being who takes a cat to work while you're eating. But even if the stakes are lower, there's a...

In this Breaking News segment of Best Seat on the Couch, the gang is coming in hot off the heels of not one, but two in-theatre screenings of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, this year's smash hit animated blockbuster. We get more Gwen, more Spider-people, more multiverse, more top-notch artistry, more soundtrack bangers, and a thrilling third act - just go see the movie! Content warning: MAJOR SPOILERS, strong language.

This week on Best Seat on the Couch, the gang takes the wayback machine straight to Alex's childhood with The Land Before Time, a movie that existed really before our modern understanding of dinosaurs did. A movie voice acted by literal children makes for a very convincing kids' movie, and the journey itself is fun! There's action scenes, the Bambi scene before Bambi came out, a weirdly biblical quest for the Promised Land/Great Valley, and plenty of cute children dinosaurs doing their thing....

On this week's episode, according to Michael, we're talking about the movie Chicken Little tried (not very hard) to be, apparently. As he draws the connections on the whiteboard and makes the connections the other 3 of us failed to see, it is clear that Michael is actually correct. But where Chicken Little failed to justify its baseball subplot to create the father-son connection, How to Train Your Dragon allows Hiccup and Stoick's father-son relationship to blossom over the course of...

It's honestly pretty incredible that Chicken Little kickstarted the reverse of Disney's post-Renaissance slump as its very first 3D animated film, because this movie is frankly pretty bad. It does not look good (no offense to the hundreds of animators that learned Maya for this), its plot is weirdly disjointed between a feel-good baseball film and an alien invasion film, and pretty much every side character ranges from disappointing to absolute garbage - as Michael states, the first 20...