I actually didn't know about Mario 2 being a reskin, that made a lot of sense though considering how much of a departure it was from traditional Mario gameplay.
Does any Mario game ever show Mario actually putting mushrooms in his mouth? Because as far as I know, in the games Mario simply touches the mushroom to get a power-up.
The evolution of Brandon's enjoyment of food heists is a character arc for the ages. You can go back and see him barely being interested in them early on. Now, 100 episodes later, HE'S the one who gives Dan the food heist, as opposed to Dan always being the one to initially read/recite it to the audience in the previous 99 episodes (or however long they've been doing them).
@@warbrothers7745 only Dan and Brandon find them exciting. The rest of just pretend lol. It's a "we humor them, because we enjoy that they enjoy it so much". If there is genuinely someone who waits with baited breath every week for the latest food heist, I'm not sure they'd be a person I'd like to hang out with. Sort of like the pin collector from "Going Postal".
Just wanted to leave this here: there's a one-page food heist RPG called "Honey Heist." You play as a team of bears trying to steal honey from a convention called HoneyCon. My friends and I are thinking of doing a one-shot with it at some point, and I thought y'all might enjoy checking it out.
Critical Role has 3 one-shots of this game with Trinket and a bunch of other bears (some other animals). Those are great episodes if you haven't seen them yet!
Ascendance of a Bookworm would be my primary light novel recommendation for you two to try. Brandon has talked about his impression of the isekai genre being formed by reincarnated as a slime (among other) as 'salary man gets killed doing a good deed and wakes up in a fantasy land with ridiculously overpowered abilities and gets to live a really easy successful life'. Ascendance is about a book obsessed girl who gets killed by her own bookshelf during an earthquake and reincarnates (somehow) as an extremely sickly 5 year old pauper with no access to any kind of book. With no OP abilities to make things easy she constantly struggles to improve her circumstances in order to try and access or create _any_ kind of literature. Her utterly chaotic influence on the world around her is a constant joy to read as she veeery slowly ascends through through society while constantly being on the verge of death. Or for a very different subversion of the genre tropes try Re: Zero. Teen finds himself in a fantasy land (somehow) and has a 'cheat' ability with a very heavy price. Whenever he dies he resets to an earlier point in his timeline with all the terrible memories of his (usually) brutal death intact and losing any progress he has made with the people around him. Death cannot be an escape and is never something he can 'get used to'. The story embraces the cost such an ability would have on a person's mind.
Concerning Japanese light novels, I think Brandon will like Ascendence of a Bookworm. Great world building, and the writing style improves over each book. I also really enjoyed So I'm a Spider, So what. Also has great world building.
Light novel: Ascendance of a Bookworm My blurb: It is about a modern day 20 something year old japanese woman who dies and reincarnates into the body of a sickly 5 year old medieval peasant girl. She loves books to the point that it isn't wrong to call her insane. This new world doesn't have books. The plot is about the main character trying to get books in a seemingly bookless world by whatever means necessary (accelerating technology using her modern knowledge). Other: Around 24/31 ish of the novels have already been translated to english, the next book is always released ~3 months after the previous. The author, Miya Kazuki, seems to be as prolific a writer as Brandon Sanderson. Each book is about 100k words long, the total story is probably around 3 million words long (this is on par or longer to the first 5 Stormlight books). I HIGHLY recommend it. In case you are worried about fan service, this series doesn't have the fan service type things that many anime peripheral content from japan has, it is pretty safe to read. Technically it is a childrens book, but it is enjoyable for all ages.
I must once again recommend "Ascendance of a Bookworm" as the perfect Japanese light novel for Brandon. It's published in English by J-Novel Club, so easily available. I recommend because: 1) good clean story, nothing naughty that could offend BrandoSando's Mormon Sensibilities ;p 2) VERY good world building, loads of depth spent on the various aspects, it looks like a world actually lived in. Loads of time spent on the MC's early life, giving a lot of depth (Most isekai would jump from birth to school in a couple of chapters, here the MC goes to school in like the 4th book, so three books of worldbuilding where we are shown rather than told how people live, and every bit is interesting.) 3) Deals with the consequences of gods being real, magic being real, and the class system that ensues by having, or not having, access to that magic; plus magic has an interesting cost that keeps it on the side of soft magic but still has limits. 4) an actual clash between our world and their world "common sense". For example, to give vague spoilers, our MC's efforts to save orphans leads to a town being nuked(I will not explain further, RAFO ;p) and it's all her fault, and you are given a compelling reason why it makes sense, from that world's perspective. I recommend everyone who likes western fantasy to try Bookworm, it doesn't have the typical japanese isekai path (y'know, escapist portal fantasy) and reads very much like something a western author might write.
I can't help but imagine that the leader of the milk thieves, being down on his luck, was at the store to get milk for his kid's breakfast. All while trying to come up with an idea to get some extra cash. He grabs a carton of milk, checks the label to make sure it's 2% and not whole. In a simple bold font, the label reads, "skim milk". And all of a sudden his face lights up with an idea.
First he says Hades doesn’t have a story, then he says he doesn’t like Andor, now this, another in a long line of disappointments Dan! Just kidding, Dan’s a good guy, if a little perplexing sometimes, but that’s just part of the charm.
To the newly-processed inmates of Food Heist Prison, they’re told by Milk Mafia to call the other gang the Gator Goons. No no no. Them boys will be quick to show you their name is Gator Gourmand. Taking after their Cajun roots, it’s a double entendres for both being exceptional foodies and Cajun slang for being viciously greedy.
A light novel turned Netflix anime is the unfortunately-named "Legend of the Legendary Heroes", and it's a nice story. Lots of magic, swords, monsters.
I remember when I was a a child, one Saturday Morning I ran down to the arcade to be there when it opened. When I arrived, they were wheeling in brand new cabinet with the dumbest name ever, I couldn't imagine anyone playing a game called "Donkey Kong".
"Re:Zero," "Ascendance of a Bookworm" and "Mushoku Tensei" (I think the English title is "Jobless Reincarnation") are my favorite light novels. All 3 are still ongoing but they are all well written and are on my bookshelf next to my fantasy novels. "Konosuba" is also delightful but it is more comedic in nature. Tthe first couple are a little rough to read though, due to the author struggling a little with pacing and flow. The author makes definite progress as the series continues.
Mushoku Tensei is bad as a recommendation for them though. Way too much perversion and sex. Re:Zero on the other hand is very well written and keeps it's quality all the way through, it makes my list of favorites even outside of just light novels.
In my experience, the only thing that makes their "Bad Story Ideas" 'bad' is that they're ideas for settings, not stories. For example, for the setting where leaving the influence of earth's sun grants humans super powers, one could conceivably write a story where traveling to earth to try and survive a week without super powers has become a rite of passage, or a buddy cop story where the protagonists have to stop a villain who has developed a weapon that mimics the sun's radiation signature.
Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka? (Sukasuka) and Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria (Hakomari) are the only two light novels I'd recommend in this context. Sukasuka for a story of familial love in a post-apocalyptic world where has to live on floating islands due to the surface being dangerous, all steeped in a nice layer of mystery. And Hakomari for a time-looping, horror/thriller with tons of drama and mind-bending plot twists. I'd recommend these because they: 1) are good, 2) are relatively short, 3) have official English translations, and 4) tell distinctly light novel-esque stories without being too reliant on the tropes of the medium. Other light novels like Overlord and Mushoku Tensei are good. In fact, I personally like them better than Sukasuka and Hakomari. But they are far riskier choices for those not already familiar with the medium as they are much more geared towards people already fans of light novels/related mediums.
I never comment on your podcast, but you asked specifically for light novel recommendations for some reason and now I have to recommend some of my favorites. Your call to actions was too effective: 1. The Faraway Paladin for Isekai/Portal fantasy done in an incredibly compelling way. 2. Tearmoon Empire (There's a genre based around villainesses that I adore. Normally someone is portal fantasied into a Villain of a light novel or game and then has to figure out how not to get killed at the end of it. Tearmoon empire is more "Imagine if Marie Antoinette could go back in time and try not to die") 3. The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt (Hey, How about Treason!). A fantasy series that has a small nation (almost city state) that is in the middle of a giant empire and Holy Roman Empire type that is fighting and succeeding for survival. All of these are officially available and I think there's something novel about each you would enjoy.
Some pedantic game history things! 9:00 The name is Doki Doki Panic. 9:36 Mario was only known as Jumpman on the Donkey Kong cabinet. In promotional items, he was Mario, so "Jumpman" was never an "official" name. 11:14 Super Mario Bros was developed entirely after Mario Bros, specifically after the Famicom port (and after Excitebike too but that's tangential). 16:05 This is Ice Hockey for the NES. 20:10 Dune 2 and C&C were Westwood Studios.
Seeing everyone is recommending LNs, I think I'll follow suit and reccomend Kino's Journey. It's a fun series about a young girl travelling a strange world with her talking motorcycle and trusty revolver. Kino (the girl) has a rule that she only stays in one place for 3 days at most, and each place she stays at presents a vastly different setting. For example: A city where everyone hears each other's thoughts, a city where no one has to work anymore, a city where democracy decides EVERYTHING, etc etc. The series is full of interesting settings that dont overstay their welcome and leave you thinking.
If we're suddenly reccomending Light Novels then I wish to put forth Mushoku Tensei. It's more of a travelogue for the first several books. Unfortunately the MC is not a good guy in the start by most metrics. The story is more about his development as a person. Unfortunately the story suffers from the usual anime tropes throughout the series. The first book is also the slowest book in the series. Despite all that it's one of my favorite series of all time. It's also really well animated and I've watched it like five times.
About the "Earthlings don't have super powers", I remember reading a story online about a decade ago which was something similar. The idea was that all humans were supposed to have incredible magic powers, but as mankind grew in numbers, the council of wizards decided it'd be too powerful, and it was sealed away. And thus, humanity used material technology instead to grow. And then in the space age, humanity found out that when they get away from Earth, humans start developing incredible magic talents.
Shirt/poster definitely needs a team lineup stare-off between the milk mafia and the gator ranchers, with other food heist characters ether in the background or on a side. Ah, in the cafeteria of course. ... And if you ever write a story about food heist prison, it needs to be a "great escape" type, as that would take full advantage of the heist strengths, as both gangs try to out-do each other.
I haven't read many light novels, but one I did enjoy and would recommend is Secrets of the Silent Witch. It's basically about an extremely talented witch who is so shy that she managed to break the rules of the world's magic system just to avoid speaking in public as the magic in the world usually involves chanting to cast spells.
Light Novel Suggestion: 1. Tora Dora - Romance, Slice of Life 2. A certain magical index - sci-fi, fantasy, underdog hero 3. Bakemonogatari - Mystery, Meta narrative about anime tropes, male gaze
The light novel series I've read with the most Brandon-like magic system was The Irregular at Magic High School. I went into it with low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The food heist prison is turning into a literal, legitimate, literary work that these 2 could write and release. I would be quite entertained to read a story containing a prison with characters from each of these heists
"Every financially successful artist is a sell-out." If that's true in its entirety, it spells a dark future for those who would seek to become artists.
Fun fact, the girl lead in The Wizard is Jenny Lewis, who went on to a successful music career with her band Rilo Kiley, vocals in The Postal Service and many of her own albums. People used to yell out Wizard quotes during concerts. 😅
@cbpd89 I just looked it up to make sure, but she has a music video on TH-cam called "she's not me" where she dresses up in some of her more famous child actor roles including golden girls and Troop Beverly Hills that features Fred Armison portraying Fred Savage from The Wizard. Complete with power glove.
Dan's Bad Story idea could be allegory for european colonization of the Americas since European civilization had cultivated a people with immunities that where not present amongst the natives... in a sense they had a superpower that allowed them to overwhelm the native populace more easily than it would have been by way of conquest..
For light novels you might like Spice and Wolf, it´s about a merchant and a wolf goddess, so Brandon Sanderson might like the economy part from the merchant and Dan Wells the cool anime wolf girl.
i like that you guys switched with the food heist/bad story idea. really made the episode special :D i also now want to go to these book festivals, need to import that idea. go to a pumpkin fest one week than a book fest the next
I want a T-shirt of Dan showing his lower back tattoo that says "intentionally left blank". I was laughing about that episode for weeks 😂🤣🤣 I'm still laughing about it!
Ascendence if a bookworm is an amazing light novel. It has amazing world building, and it made me put myself in the shoes of the protagonist thinking what I could do in her stead. Also it celebrates books so much.
A light novel that you will definitely like is Ascendance of a Bookworm or the long title "Ascendance of a Bookworm: I'll Stop at Nothing to Become a Librarian". A classic one from the early 2000s that is still ongoing is "Spice and Wolf".
Spice and Wolf is a weird case. It ended in 2011, the author took a few years off, then did a sequel series Wolf and Parchment starring their kid... and then decided to do more Spice and Wolf and a bunch of short story collections. Like it is in fact still going but it kind of ended a decade ago. It's weird.
My favorite heist/theft was the one about the specialty alcohol that is taken down by divers and left to age in special containers on the bottom of a lake.
Ever notice that there are two types of "Super Heroes". There are "Exceptional Super Heroes" and "Impossible Super Heroes." "Exceptional Super Heroes" can only do what other people can do, but to an "Exceptional" degree. You can run fast, they can run faster, you are strong, they are stronger. You can aim a projectile, They can aim it better. You can take a punch or heal from a wound, they can do that better. "Impossible Super Heroes" can do things that are impossible for other people to do. You cannot fly un-aided, they can. You cannot shoot deadly levels of radiation from your eye sockets, they can. You cannot become invisible/pure-fire/stone/sand/shapeshift, they can. I call these Male-archtype super heroes, and Female-archtype super heroes (the gender of the actual heroes aren't a factor). Males are generally better at most things than females (females can do all the same things, just to a less extreme degree), but females can do some things that are impossible for males to do, it doesn't matter how much a male trains, nor how much natural talent they are born with, Males cannot gestate a living being inside their body, nor can a male produce a complete healthy meal for an infant for the early stages of the infant's life by drawing from their own internal stores of nutrition. It is almost like a choice were made, to one I will give exceptional speed, strength, durability, they will exceed in all tasks possible, and to the other I will grant them the ability to do what is impossible for the other. We have carried that dichotomy over into our Super Heroes.
25:40 One light novel I think you might like, or at least find interesting, is called the Saga of Tanya the Evil. It's about (not really spoilers cause it happens in the first chapter) a Japanese salaryman who gets pushed in front of a train, and upon meeting God, proceeds to explain to God that God doesn’t exist and he is just some entity he calls Being X. God does not take kindly to this and proceeds to reincarnate him as a girl in what amounts to imperial Germany with magical powers he gets from praying to God, which he (now Tanya) eventually uses as a child soldier in the imperial corps of mages.
I am not Italian, but I have had two Italians ask me to call them Gumba/Gumah. It is a slang name for godfather/godmother, but outside of the Mafia, those titles have religious significance. Your godparent is the person who witnessed your baptism in the Catholic Church and your compadre is someone with the same godparent. Although I am not Italian or Catholic, the first person who asked me to call him Gumba was an old Italian widower living in the Bronx. We would visit him and listen to his stories about his wife, their service to the Catholic Church and his service in the Pacific theatre during the second world war. The second person who asked me to call her Gumah was an old Italian widow who had moved from Queens to California. We would visit her and talk about growing up in New York, her family, and her grandchildren who were my age. Wikipedia says the terms are pejoratives, but they remind me of my Italian friends who saw them as signs of respect that meant, "I trust and honor you so much I'd ask you to witness to God that I entered his covenant."
I was raised in dairy country, so the idea of a Dairy Don tickles me to no end. (What's the Portuguese version of a Don? Most of the dairy families I knew of growing up came from the Azores.)
Brandon, I am so sorry to hear for your loss. No man should know a childhood without the Gamecube or N64. I'll boot up my copy of SA2B and hold a mourning ceremony with my chao for you.
21:03 This sun idea does sound like something pretty doable in the Cosmere. Add it to the Dark Side of the moon or being in darkness/shielded from radiation to gain superpowers or something and you've got yourself a sinister atmosphere and BOOM a Cosmere horror book Dan could write
Mario and Donkey Kong were originally going to be a Popeye game but they couldn’t get the IP rights for it in time so made it its own franchise. Nintendo did release a Popeye game the next year once they got the right but it didn’t do well since it was seen as derivative of the previous game.
So, for light novel recs, I've got one series though they kinda straddle the line between light novel and just novel, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The author is a *huge* history nut and he takes inspiration from the first and second World Wars, the Napoleonic Wars and other major European conflicts, Chinese history, and others, all to tell the story of a handsome blonde man becoming a galactic emperor and an alcoholic doing his best to navigate his own government's incompetence to stop him. Also another planet that basically provides the role of Switzerland does shady stuff in the background. It's fantastic.
A great Light novel to check out would be Re:Zero. Interesting time shenanigans and a bit of a darker but not too dark take on the Isekai or Other-world genre.
I highly recommend The Empty Box and Zeroth Maria by Eiji Mikage. It's one of the best light novels and mystery series in general that I have ever read, and it's only 7 books long, which is VERY reasonable for a LN series, plus the first volume works very well as a standalone. In volume 1 the main characters are trapped in a groundhog day style time loop in a Japanese high school and have to figure out who is causing the loop so they can get out all while their fellow students slowly disappear one by one. If you're going to try any light novel definitely check that one out.
22:35 I'd say the eyes make the most sense as a laser-shooting body part; they have a built-in lens and all. Make the retina glow brightly enough and you have laser eyes. I think.
Why make heists and story ideas compete? How about a giant mash up with Time Travel Tourism and a heist. Going back to steal the high end food off of the Titanic, for example...
When talking about the physics of laser beams coming out of his ears, I immediately thought about “Larry Boy” and his suction cup ears from Veggie Tales 🤣
Full Metal Panic is a legitimately good read, Shoji Gatoh is a cut above most LN authors. Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions that fit the more modern trend of isekai with ridiculously long titles.
When it comes to light novels, I’d definitely recommend reading Re:zero. It is one of the best fantasy light novels that I have read, with a tight plot, amazing world building, and great character growth, which is kind of rare for the genre!
Brandon’s exasperation at Dan not knowing Mario eats mushrooms 😂 8:39
I have never played the game and even I know that!
More like 7:00
Complete gold. Brandon's run down of the Mario lore is content for the ages
Power Mushrooms AND 1-Up Mushrooms
I actually didn't know about Mario 2 being a reskin, that made a lot of sense though considering how much of a departure it was from traditional Mario gameplay.
Does any Mario game ever show Mario actually putting mushrooms in his mouth? Because as far as I know, in the games Mario simply touches the mushroom to get a power-up.
The evolution of Brandon's enjoyment of food heists is a character arc for the ages. You can go back and see him barely being interested in them early on. Now, 100 episodes later, HE'S the one who gives Dan the food heist, as opposed to Dan always being the one to initially read/recite it to the audience in the previous 99 episodes (or however long they've been doing them).
Ohhh. I get it. Bad story idea. Food heist. You guys switched lol. Nice
@@warbrothers7745 only Dan and Brandon find them exciting. The rest of just pretend lol. It's a "we humor them, because we enjoy that they enjoy it so much". If there is genuinely someone who waits with baited breath every week for the latest food heist, I'm not sure they'd be a person I'd like to hang out with. Sort of like the pin collector from "Going Postal".
I would 100% buy a shirt that says "This shirt has been left intentionally blank".
Intentionally Blank --The Shirt
Just wanted to leave this here: there's a one-page food heist RPG called "Honey Heist." You play as a team of bears trying to steal honey from a convention called HoneyCon. My friends and I are thinking of doing a one-shot with it at some point, and I thought y'all might enjoy checking it out.
Critical Role has 3 one-shots of this game with Trinket and a bunch of other bears (some other animals). Those are great episodes if you haven't seen them yet!
Ascendance of a Bookworm would be my primary light novel recommendation for you two to try. Brandon has talked about his impression of the isekai genre being formed by reincarnated as a slime (among other) as 'salary man gets killed doing a good deed and wakes up in a fantasy land with ridiculously overpowered abilities and gets to live a really easy successful life'. Ascendance is about a book obsessed girl who gets killed by her own bookshelf during an earthquake and reincarnates (somehow) as an extremely sickly 5 year old pauper with no access to any kind of book. With no OP abilities to make things easy she constantly struggles to improve her circumstances in order to try and access or create _any_ kind of literature. Her utterly chaotic influence on the world around her is a constant joy to read as she veeery slowly ascends through through society while constantly being on the verge of death.
Or for a very different subversion of the genre tropes try Re: Zero. Teen finds himself in a fantasy land (somehow) and has a 'cheat' ability with a very heavy price. Whenever he dies he resets to an earlier point in his timeline with all the terrible memories of his (usually) brutal death intact and losing any progress he has made with the people around him. Death cannot be an escape and is never something he can 'get used to'. The story embraces the cost such an ability would have on a person's mind.
Two of my favorites! It would be a dream come true if Brandon read either one!
That same time he talked about Isekai he literally talked about reading Ascendance of a Bookworm lol
Ascendance is so good
Yes, please let Brandon read it!
Great choiches!
"No body part is more likely than any other to emit--" I'm going to stop you right there, Brandon.
"Falling burrito world" is definitely the t-shirt design we all need.
This one! I was laughing so hard I was crying on that episode.
3:37 that look they give each other as they both think "Dairy Don" at the same time before it's said out loud 😂.
Congratulations on 100 episodes! And somehow... MORE than 100 tangents!
Concerning Japanese light novels, I think Brandon will like Ascendence of a Bookworm. Great world building, and the writing style improves over each book.
I also really enjoyed So I'm a Spider, So what. Also has great world building.
So I'm a spider so what is soo good, my only problem is that it's very short
@@egymano5447 16 volumes or 600 webnovel chapters is considered short? I would recommend 12 kingdoms for Brandon
I just started reading J light novels. Reading Overlord and loving it so far.
@@ShinseiX I only read the manga, does the webnovel carries on?
@@ShinseiX I love Twelve Kingdoms, but I think they are normal novels and not light novels.
Light novel: Ascendance of a Bookworm
My blurb: It is about a modern day 20 something year old japanese woman who dies and reincarnates into the body of a sickly 5 year old medieval peasant girl. She loves books to the point that it isn't wrong to call her insane. This new world doesn't have books. The plot is about the main character trying to get books in a seemingly bookless world by whatever means necessary (accelerating technology using her modern knowledge).
Other: Around 24/31 ish of the novels have already been translated to english, the next book is always released ~3 months after the previous. The author, Miya Kazuki, seems to be as prolific a writer as Brandon Sanderson. Each book is about 100k words long, the total story is probably around 3 million words long (this is on par or longer to the first 5 Stormlight books). I HIGHLY recommend it.
In case you are worried about fan service, this series doesn't have the fan service type things that many anime peripheral content from japan has, it is pretty safe to read. Technically it is a childrens book, but it is enjoyable for all ages.
I must once again recommend "Ascendance of a Bookworm" as the perfect Japanese light novel for Brandon. It's published in English by J-Novel Club, so easily available.
I recommend because:
1) good clean story, nothing naughty that could offend BrandoSando's Mormon Sensibilities ;p
2) VERY good world building, loads of depth spent on the various aspects, it looks like a world actually lived in.
Loads of time spent on the MC's early life, giving a lot of depth (Most isekai would jump from birth to school in a couple of chapters, here the MC goes to school in like the 4th book, so three books of worldbuilding where we are shown rather than told how people live, and every bit is interesting.)
3) Deals with the consequences of gods being real, magic being real, and the class system that ensues by having, or not having, access to that magic; plus magic has an interesting cost that keeps it on the side of soft magic but still has limits.
4) an actual clash between our world and their world "common sense".
For example, to give vague spoilers, our MC's efforts to save orphans leads to a town being nuked(I will not explain further, RAFO ;p) and it's all her fault, and you are given a compelling reason why it makes sense, from that world's perspective.
I recommend everyone who likes western fantasy to try Bookworm, it doesn't have the typical japanese isekai path (y'know, escapist portal fantasy) and reads very much like something a western author might write.
I can't help but imagine that the leader of the milk thieves, being down on his luck, was at the store to get milk for his kid's breakfast. All while trying to come up with an idea to get some extra cash. He grabs a carton of milk, checks the label to make sure it's 2% and not whole. In a simple bold font, the label reads, "skim milk". And all of a sudden his face lights up with an idea.
They are working to restore to power a shadowy group nobles called the Dairy Heirs.
Nice role reversal, Brandon gives us a food heist and Dan has the bad story idea that turns into a decent story idea 😊
“Mario doesn’t eat mushrooms”
Sometimes I wonder how this man has made it this far in life smh lmao 🤣
First he says Hades doesn’t have a story, then he says he doesn’t like Andor, now this, another in a long line of disappointments Dan!
Just kidding, Dan’s a good guy, if a little perplexing sometimes, but that’s just part of the charm.
To the newly-processed inmates of Food Heist Prison, they’re told by Milk Mafia to call the other gang the Gator Goons. No no no. Them boys will be quick to show you their name is Gator Gourmand. Taking after their Cajun roots, it’s a double entendres for both being exceptional foodies and Cajun slang for being viciously greedy.
A light novel turned Netflix anime is the unfortunately-named "Legend of the Legendary Heroes", and it's a nice story. Lots of magic, swords, monsters.
I remember when I was a a child, one Saturday Morning I ran down to the arcade to be there when it opened. When I arrived, they were wheeling in brand new cabinet with the dumbest name ever, I couldn't imagine anyone playing a game called "Donkey Kong".
"Re:Zero," "Ascendance of a Bookworm" and "Mushoku Tensei" (I think the English title is "Jobless Reincarnation") are my favorite light novels. All 3 are still ongoing but they are all well written and are on my bookshelf next to my fantasy novels.
"Konosuba" is also delightful but it is more comedic in nature. Tthe first couple are a little rough to read though, due to the author struggling a little with pacing and flow. The author makes definite progress as the series continues.
Mushoku Tensei is bad as a recommendation for them though. Way too much perversion and sex. Re:Zero on the other hand is very well written and keeps it's quality all the way through, it makes my list of favorites even outside of just light novels.
Brandon is going to find all of them weird 😂😭
holy weibo recommendations, there's gotta be something that's not scraping the bottom of the light novel sexuality barrel
As much as I love Mushoku Tensei, there’s no way that would be acceptable literature for a Mormon, lol.
In my experience, the only thing that makes their "Bad Story Ideas" 'bad' is that they're ideas for settings, not stories.
For example, for the setting where leaving the influence of earth's sun grants humans super powers, one could conceivably write a story where traveling to earth to try and survive a week without super powers has become a rite of passage, or a buddy cop story where the protagonists have to stop a villain who has developed a weapon that mimics the sun's radiation signature.
A "Jack the Carjacking Car" shirt would rule! 😂
The old switcheroo! Brandon telling Dan a food heist. I see what you did there.
Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka? (Sukasuka) and Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria (Hakomari) are the only two light novels I'd recommend in this context. Sukasuka for a story of familial love in a post-apocalyptic world where has to live on floating islands due to the surface being dangerous, all steeped in a nice layer of mystery. And Hakomari for a time-looping, horror/thriller with tons of drama and mind-bending plot twists.
I'd recommend these because they: 1) are good, 2) are relatively short, 3) have official English translations, and 4) tell distinctly light novel-esque stories without being too reliant on the tropes of the medium.
Other light novels like Overlord and Mushoku Tensei are good. In fact, I personally like them better than Sukasuka and Hakomari. But they are far riskier choices for those not already familiar with the medium as they are much more geared towards people already fans of light novels/related mediums.
I never comment on your podcast, but you asked specifically for light novel recommendations for some reason and now I have to recommend some of my favorites. Your call to actions was too effective:
1. The Faraway Paladin for Isekai/Portal fantasy done in an incredibly compelling way.
2. Tearmoon Empire (There's a genre based around villainesses that I adore. Normally someone is portal fantasied into a Villain of a light novel or game and then has to figure out how not to get killed at the end of it. Tearmoon empire is more "Imagine if Marie Antoinette could go back in time and try not to die")
3. The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt (Hey, How about Treason!). A fantasy series that has a small nation (almost city state) that is in the middle of a giant empire and Holy Roman Empire type that is fighting and succeeding for survival.
All of these are officially available and I think there's something novel about each you would enjoy.
Light novel recommendation. “Baccano!” Is about the mafia and immortals
Some pedantic game history things!
9:00 The name is Doki Doki Panic.
9:36 Mario was only known as Jumpman on the Donkey Kong cabinet. In promotional items, he was Mario, so "Jumpman" was never an "official" name.
11:14 Super Mario Bros was developed entirely after Mario Bros, specifically after the Famicom port (and after Excitebike too but that's tangential).
16:05 This is Ice Hockey for the NES.
20:10 Dune 2 and C&C were Westwood Studios.
I guess given your screen name we should expect nothing less!
Seeing everyone is recommending LNs, I think I'll follow suit and reccomend Kino's Journey. It's a fun series about a young girl travelling a strange world with her talking motorcycle and trusty revolver. Kino (the girl) has a rule that she only stays in one place for 3 days at most, and each place she stays at presents a vastly different setting. For example: A city where everyone hears each other's thoughts, a city where no one has to work anymore, a city where democracy decides EVERYTHING, etc etc. The series is full of interesting settings that dont overstay their welcome and leave you thinking.
If we're suddenly reccomending Light Novels then I wish to put forth Mushoku Tensei. It's more of a travelogue for the first several books.
Unfortunately the MC is not a good guy in the start by most metrics. The story is more about his development as a person. Unfortunately the story suffers from the usual anime tropes throughout the series. The first book is also the slowest book in the series.
Despite all that it's one of my favorite series of all time. It's also really well animated and I've watched it like five times.
About the "Earthlings don't have super powers", I remember reading a story online about a decade ago which was something similar.
The idea was that all humans were supposed to have incredible magic powers, but as mankind grew in numbers, the council of wizards decided it'd be too powerful, and it was sealed away.
And thus, humanity used material technology instead to grow. And then in the space age, humanity found out that when they get away from Earth, humans start developing incredible magic talents.
My favorite bad story idea (I think it was from the trunk novel episode) is the short story anthology of serial killer victims.
Shirt/poster definitely needs a team lineup stare-off between the milk mafia and the gator ranchers, with other food heist characters ether in the background or on a side. Ah, in the cafeteria of course.
...
And if you ever write a story about food heist prison, it needs to be a "great escape" type, as that would take full advantage of the heist strengths, as both gangs try to out-do each other.
There would be a vending machine in the back and someone sliding multiple cards through it to get all the snacks.
As a Hungarian, I am very happy to hear Dan speak so highly of our little country. Thank you! Come to Hungary Brandon!!
I haven't read many light novels, but one I did enjoy and would recommend is Secrets of the Silent Witch. It's basically about an extremely talented witch who is so shy that she managed to break the rules of the world's magic system just to avoid speaking in public as the magic in the world usually involves chanting to cast spells.
Light Novel Suggestion:
1. Tora Dora - Romance, Slice of Life
2. A certain magical index - sci-fi, fantasy, underdog hero
3. Bakemonogatari - Mystery, Meta narrative about anime tropes, male gaze
The fire flower is the more iconic Mario power up. And has been for a very long time
I'd recommend the light novel Overlord. It's very much D&D inspired.
Brandon the dark side of the moon still gets sunlight, it just never faces earth. That's why the moon has phases!
Gator Goons is nice, but they should be called the Gator Raiders.
This is my favorite episode of the Intentionally Blank podcast
The light novel series I've read with the most Brandon-like magic system was The Irregular at Magic High School. I went into it with low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised.
I think we need a Poll-by-poll to select each Food Heist and Bad Story Idea so that we can get every permutation and combination 😀
Sorry you missed it by 42.7 seconds
Food heist headline: “Milk Mafia Skim Milk”
You guys can't fool me; this bracket thing is just a set up to have a clip show during the writers strike.
The food heist prison is turning into a literal, legitimate, literary work that these 2 could write and release.
I would be quite entertained to read a story containing a prison with characters from each of these heists
This food heist telling was a dairy-air
"Every financially successful artist is a sell-out."
If that's true in its entirety, it spells a dark future for those who would seek to become artists.
In my head, the groundskeeper saves all the coffee grounds from both prison gangs
A little part of my soul died when Dan couldn’t remember mushrooms as a power-up in Mario.
Fun fact, the girl lead in The Wizard is Jenny Lewis, who went on to a successful music career with her band Rilo Kiley, vocals in The Postal Service and many of her own albums. People used to yell out Wizard quotes during concerts. 😅
That's wild! I love her music. I officially want to see this terrible movie, it sounds awful in the best way.
@cbpd89 I just looked it up to make sure, but she has a music video on TH-cam called "she's not me" where she dresses up in some of her more famous child actor roles including golden girls and Troop Beverly Hills that features Fred Armison portraying Fred Savage from The Wizard. Complete with power glove.
Man, I hope the city falling through burrito layers wins the bad story ideas. I can't wait for the bracket!
Dan's Bad Story idea could be allegory for european colonization of the Americas since European civilization had cultivated a people with immunities that where not present amongst the natives... in a sense they had a superpower that allowed them to overwhelm the native populace more easily than it would have been by way of conquest..
I have to be a part of the centennial episode! I saw The Wizard in theater and then my mom took me to Toys R Us to get the game, it was phenomenal.
The yellow sun/earth suppressing human abilities is an alien prison for our species after we did some bad stuff
We made it to ep 100! Kelsier would be proud
Could we say that the Milk Mafia were skimming off the product?
Happy episode 100!!🎉
For light novels you might like Spice and Wolf, it´s about a merchant and a wolf goddess, so Brandon Sanderson might like the economy part from the merchant and Dan Wells the cool anime wolf girl.
@@APerson-ol1kj Haha, okay, glad you were able to.
i like that you guys switched with the food heist/bad story idea. really made the episode special :D
i also now want to go to these book festivals, need to import that idea. go to a pumpkin fest one week than a book fest the next
I’ve never read a light novel but everyone I’ve talk to who’s read the Monogatari novels seems to love them to death.
Light novel suggestion for Brandon and Dan: "from the new world" it's just weird enough to keep them in it long enough to finish it.
I want a T-shirt of Dan showing his lower back tattoo that says "intentionally left blank". I was laughing about that episode for weeks 😂🤣🤣 I'm still laughing about it!
Ascendence if a bookworm is an amazing light novel. It has amazing world building, and it made me put myself in the shoes of the protagonist thinking what I could do in her stead. Also it celebrates books so much.
What a wonderful episode that was! Looking forward to the next 100!
Congrats on100 episodes! I don't mind occasional tangents galore episodes)
Name for the alligator ranchers: "The Bayou Brotherhood"
The Dairy Don's gang is obviously called La Leche.
Happy 100th episode!! Been here sense ep.1!
Since Brandon is a known fan of video essays, I highly recommend Movies with Mikey’s video on the history of Mario!
A light novel that you will definitely like is Ascendance of a Bookworm or the long title "Ascendance of a Bookworm: I'll Stop at Nothing to Become a Librarian". A classic one from the early 2000s that is still ongoing is "Spice and Wolf".
Spice and Wolf is a weird case. It ended in 2011, the author took a few years off, then did a sequel series Wolf and Parchment starring their kid... and then decided to do more Spice and Wolf and a bunch of short story collections. Like it is in fact still going but it kind of ended a decade ago. It's weird.
My favorite heist/theft was the one about the specialty alcohol that is taken down by divers and left to age in special containers on the bottom of a lake.
Listened to this as a podcast during my run, and did 11 km. Now I'm all Blank on Intentionally Blank episodes.
I can't believe I've listened to 100 episodes of random tangents, lol!
Ever notice that there are two types of "Super Heroes". There are "Exceptional Super Heroes" and "Impossible Super Heroes."
"Exceptional Super Heroes" can only do what other people can do, but to an "Exceptional" degree. You can run fast, they can run faster, you are strong, they are stronger. You can aim a projectile, They can aim it better. You can take a punch or heal from a wound, they can do that better.
"Impossible Super Heroes" can do things that are impossible for other people to do. You cannot fly un-aided, they can. You cannot shoot deadly levels of radiation from your eye sockets, they can. You cannot become invisible/pure-fire/stone/sand/shapeshift, they can.
I call these Male-archtype super heroes, and Female-archtype super heroes (the gender of the actual heroes aren't a factor).
Males are generally better at most things than females (females can do all the same things, just to a less extreme degree), but females can do some things that are impossible for males to do, it doesn't matter how much a male trains, nor how much natural talent they are born with, Males cannot gestate a living being inside their body, nor can a male produce a complete healthy meal for an infant for the early stages of the infant's life by drawing from their own internal stores of nutrition.
It is almost like a choice were made, to one I will give exceptional speed, strength, durability, they will exceed in all tasks possible, and to the other I will grant them the ability to do what is impossible for the other.
We have carried that dichotomy over into our Super Heroes.
25:40
One light novel I think you might like, or at least find interesting, is called the Saga of Tanya the Evil. It's about (not really spoilers cause it happens in the first chapter) a Japanese salaryman who gets pushed in front of a train, and upon meeting God, proceeds to explain to God that God doesn’t exist and he is just some entity he calls Being X. God does not take kindly to this and proceeds to reincarnate him as a girl in what amounts to imperial Germany with magical powers he gets from praying to God, which he (now Tanya) eventually uses as a child soldier in the imperial corps of mages.
The Empty Box of Zeroth Maria is a great light novel series.
I am not Italian, but I have had two Italians ask me to call them Gumba/Gumah. It is a slang name for godfather/godmother, but outside of the Mafia, those titles have religious significance. Your godparent is the person who witnessed your baptism in the Catholic Church and your compadre is someone with the same godparent. Although I am not Italian or Catholic, the first person who asked me to call him Gumba was an old Italian widower living in the Bronx. We would visit him and listen to his stories about his wife, their service to the Catholic Church and his service in the Pacific theatre during the second world war. The second person who asked me to call her Gumah was an old Italian widow who had moved from Queens to California. We would visit her and talk about growing up in New York, her family, and her grandchildren who were my age. Wikipedia says the terms are pejoratives, but they remind me of my Italian friends who saw them as signs of respect that meant, "I trust and honor you so much I'd ask you to witness to God that I entered his covenant."
I was raised in dairy country, so the idea of a Dairy Don tickles me to no end. (What's the Portuguese version of a Don? Most of the dairy families I knew of growing up came from the Azores.)
Brandon, I am so sorry to hear for your loss. No man should know a childhood without the Gamecube or N64. I'll boot up my copy of SA2B and hold a mourning ceremony with my chao for you.
The milk thieves were skimming off the top? Brilliant!
(I'm sure somebody already said it but...)
Gratz on the 100!!!
21:03 This sun idea does sound like something pretty doable in the Cosmere. Add it to the Dark Side of the moon or being in darkness/shielded from radiation to gain superpowers or something and you've got yourself a sinister atmosphere and BOOM a Cosmere horror book Dan could write
I like the bracket idea, except you should combine the best food heist with the best bad story idea on a shirt.
There’s so many light novels and manga I could recommend, even the more pulpy types
Congrats on episode 100!
Mario and Donkey Kong were originally going to be a Popeye game but they couldn’t get the IP rights for it in time so made it its own franchise. Nintendo did release a Popeye game the next year once they got the right but it didn’t do well since it was seen as derivative of the previous game.
So, for light novel recs, I've got one series though they kinda straddle the line between light novel and just novel, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The author is a *huge* history nut and he takes inspiration from the first and second World Wars, the Napoleonic Wars and other major European conflicts, Chinese history, and others, all to tell the story of a handsome blonde man becoming a galactic emperor and an alcoholic doing his best to navigate his own government's incompetence to stop him. Also another planet that basically provides the role of Switzerland does shady stuff in the background. It's fantastic.
A great Light novel to check out would be Re:Zero. Interesting time shenanigans and a bit of a darker but not too dark take on the Isekai or Other-world genre.
I think Pac Man's power up is more iconic than Mario's.
The Gator-Raiders!
I highly recommend The Empty Box and Zeroth Maria by Eiji Mikage. It's one of the best light novels and mystery series in general that I have ever read, and it's only 7 books long, which is VERY reasonable for a LN series, plus the first volume works very well as a standalone. In volume 1 the main characters are trapped in a groundhog day style time loop in a Japanese high school and have to figure out who is causing the loop so they can get out all while their fellow students slowly disappear one by one. If you're going to try any light novel definitely check that one out.
So in The Wizard the girl yells out "use the whistle!" and that always bothered me! If it was a brand new game how would she know about the whistle???
I would buy an [Intentionally Blank] shirt in a heart beat!
22:35 I'd say the eyes make the most sense as a laser-shooting body part; they have a built-in lens and all. Make the retina glow brightly enough and you have laser eyes. I think.
I hope they do two brackets. One for story and one for food.
Me too!
a dairy daring-do!
Excited abut the t-shirt thing
Why make heists and story ideas compete? How about a giant mash up with Time Travel Tourism and a heist. Going back to steal the high end food off of the Titanic, for example...
When talking about the physics of laser beams coming out of his ears, I immediately thought about “Larry Boy” and his suction cup ears from Veggie Tales 🤣
Full Metal Panic is a legitimately good read, Shoji Gatoh is a cut above most LN authors. Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions that fit the more modern trend of isekai with ridiculously long titles.
When it comes to light novels, I’d definitely recommend reading Re:zero. It is one of the best fantasy light novels that I have read, with a tight plot, amazing world building, and great character growth, which is kind of rare for the genre!