Tag Archives: Japan

Supplemental Reading: Godzilla Minus One (2023)



Every so often, a movie comes up from the depths and stands 30 stories high without much fanfare or marketing and completely levels your expectations. This is one such movie. Godzilla Minus One is a love letter to the storied franchise and so much more. Listen to some of our deepest dives yet as we try to surface what makes this movie so good.


Banner Image for Episode 283: david/matilda

Episode 283: david/matilda



We’ve got another World Cupdate for you this week and something very special. While John tries to convey a new development in the AI Chat Bot/Stack Overflow world, Henry stumbles on something new. Something powerful. You’ll just have to see for yourself by listening, and we’re sorry in advance! It happens all right here, on Zero Credit(s).


Banner Image for Episode 282: It's Giving Slow Talk

Episode 282: It’s Giving Slow Talk



We’re back from the holidays and both are our stomachs tired on this episode of Zero Credit(s). Crazy things are happening, but we’re going to step away from the chaos a bit to celebrate the absolute glow-up of one of the patron saints of Zero Credit(s), Edgar Dworsky, the man behind Mouseprint.org. We’ve got that, plus the president’s actions have made us upset?! Really?! Because the office of the president for some reason is backing corporations instead of workers?! We are shocked?! AND a World Cup Update (Cupdate, if you will), all right here on Zero Credit(s).


Episode 253: A Red Panda and a Nine Tailed Fox Spirit Walk into a Bar



This week, we’ve got some bad news out of Japan that could very well spell trouble for the entire world and some very, very bad takes from some movie critics. Also of note is an update on the cultural dog piling on Russia. I’m sure there’s more but I’m on a phone trying to post this episode, so.


Banner image for Supplemental Reading: Shin Godzilla (2016)

Supplemental Reading: Shin Godzilla (2016)



In 2016, manga and anime creator Hideaki Anno had a vision to bring Godzilla into the modern age with a brand new movie. This is that movie. But at the end of the long hot days of Hot Godzilla Summer, how does this Japanese revival stack up to the American versions we’ve been talking about for the past 10 weeks? It all finally comes to end, right here on a Zero Credit(s) Supplemental Reading.


Supplemental Reading: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift



In the gone-by year of 2006, famed director Justin Lin was a virtually unknown, untested director with nothing but a name and a dream. A dream to unite the passion of American and German film while exploring the third, unrelated culture of Japan through the eyes of a piece of wood masquerading as a person. Justin Lin set out to see this dream become a reality and to answer a question. What happens when the stakes are raised so high, you have to leave the country? To answer this question, he made a movie. He cast a piece of wood as the lead and taught that piece of wood to turn, wait for it, in a car. Whereas America is known for its wide open roads with no turns whatsoever, Japan has to practice a discipline known as the economy of space by inventing the turn. And the Japanese people have been turning for centuries, if not eons. So what happens when we take an American piece of wood, stick it behind a tricked out super car, and put it on the world famous Japanese turning roads?

Art.

 


Episode 107: Men Prefer Debt-Free Apes Without Tattoos Who Blew It Up, Goddamn You All to Hell



It’s African dust season here in Texas, and it has laid low 50% of the podcast, but you know that won’t break their stride. In the final install of their much-beloved and mucho-belated World Kup Korner, Henry and John reveal the ultimate winner and infinite loser of the Game of Foot Champions. John then poses one of the greatest philosophical hypothetics of our time: “why won’t a Japanese person finish a cigarette?” And the answer, it may surprise you, is ASTONISHINGLY BANAL. Henry then destroys all of our traditional notions of what men truly prefer with the help of The Transformed Wife, and your views on debt, promiscuity, and tattooedness will never be the same. Get ready to blow it all up, this week on Zero Credit(s)!


Episode 104: Zero Burgers aka “Let’s Get Our Gambling Freak On”



It’s an unusually sports-centric episode of the show, as the boys are whisked into Footie Heaven by a terminal case of the World Cup Flu. Even their discussion of the sacred sweetness (anime) is tainted by the presence of competive gambling, which I believe some would consider a sport. And I think this is the first time they say “orgasm” on the show, so you know. Go nuts. After that, the foot-gloves come off as the boys sink their teeth right into the turf, diving into Henry’s family’s perverse tradition of forcing chickens to gamble on soccer matches. John recognizes a failing in his favorite team (they’re good) and must subsequently pick a new team to root for, and the delay between recording and posting this episode makes it real dumb. John then drops some devastating World Wrestling Entertainment news, which rocks the sporting world to its very core. They also cover, for a time, the most vicious sport of all: poetry. Field your soccer-playing, Olive Garden-studying robots, because it’s time to BALL ON! Zero Credit(s)!

 


Episode 88: Foot Ball Sunday Special



The great Foot Ball Sunday Day is an event that happens but once every year, Dear Listener, and the ZC Boys could not be more excited to cover all the great events surrounding the Big Game. Not the game itself, mind, just the events surrounding it. We’re talking the commercials, the advertisements, the …third word for commercials. It’s a commercial heavy episode of Zero Credit(s), but the only thing we’re selling is a quick look into the cultural pulse of the nation. Also, Europe’s being overrun by a mutant crawfish. That’s not a joke or anything, it’s just something that is currently happening and Henry’s got all the details to enlighten us before it all ends in a river, where no one can here you blub. Strap yourself down for some edification, Zero Credit(s) starts as soon as you hit the play button yourself, we can’t do that for you. Oh man, if we could though. Boom, everywhere. Everywhere you look, people would be listening to Zero Credit(s), whether they like it or not, endlessly, forever. Enjoy!