Secrets of Ludwig's Chessboxing Event | Trash Taste #133
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- Welcome to Trash Taste 2023. That feels really weird to say. - Yeah, I know, right? - I still in my head, you know, every time when the new year would happen in the school, you'd write the new thing. I'm still in like 2017 in my head. No, it's 23. I gotta fix that. - I'm still in 2013, dude. - What? - I haven't changed since then. - Honestly, I'm kind of the same. You know what's...

- Like what did they say about like after you reach like 23 or something, then you never feel like you've like aged up anymore. After that point, it's like, yeah, you're probably just like 23, 24, I feel in my head.

- I think it's until your body starts like giving up. - This is just 30s copium. I'm like, I'm still 23, right? - They say that, right? They say you're still 20, right? You're 30, right? - Am I right, fellow kids? - I guess I should start the year off with a take. - All right, what's your take, Connor? - All right, so my take. So I was at Dydus and Emily's house and he asked if I wanted anything to drink. I was like, yeah, sure, I'll just, I'll have some water. So I pour myself some water. He's like, what are you?

"No ice, really?" I was like, "Yeah, I like it less when it's cold." So my take is that I don't like cold water. I think that the room temperature water is tastier. - Is that? - It's easier to drink. That's my take for the year. - Welcome to Trash Taste 2023, where we're starting off with a banger. - I've been holding this back 'cause we saw each other two days ago and I really wanted to be like, "Is this weird?" I'm like, "This is not weird, right?" - We're gonna be like in Trash Taste 2024 and we're gonna be like, "You know what, smiling,

- Overrated kind of. I kind of like- - I just had this conversation and he made me feel like I was weird for liking water that was straight from the fucking tap. Just room-ass temperature. I just want to be able to drink it right then. If it's too cold, my mouth gets too cold and then my esophagus feels like it's freezing. I just want to have the drink right away. - Sounds like a skill issue to me.

- Maybe it is a skill issue. - Is there a reason you just, okay. Since we're declaring war against cold water. - I'm not against cold water. Do I hate it when I'm in America and they give me a cup of water and it is 99% ice and one drop of water? Yeah, I hate that shit.

- Are you just like a no ice person no matter what? - I'm like a one, two cube guy max. Like I want it to like lightly cool the water. Like I don't want that shit to be ice cold. - Lightly cool. - I just want it. I want the illusion that I'm cooling it without cooling it. - Is it possible that I just have a take that's the same as you? 'Cause I'm like, no, give me all the fucking ice.

- That's so dog shit. - If you're gonna put ice cube- - This feels like an AI generated conversation, like a trash taste. - If you're gonna put ice cube in it, just fucking fill that shit up. I don't want one or two. I want the entire glass or nothing, man. - And on brand, I'm just in a position where I'm kind of just like- - Listen, listen. - Give me both, bro. - This is not that I don't- - Both is fine. - I'm not like, I'm dying on this. It's like, I just did it and I felt attacked. The didist was like, "How dare you not have ice?"

To be fair, I don't care that much. It's just my Southeast Asian blood. Like it's when I, 'cause when we have ice there, we need to fill that shit up to the brim because the ice melts so quickly. So I've just got on your customs. - The moment you grab it, the hands go. - Basically, right? Basically. Okay, here's something even more outrageous that Thailand does. - Outrageous?

- Outreges. - Do you mean egregious? - Egregious. - Sorry. - I just fuck up the words all the time. We have like 900 clips in the air. - Outreges. - Okay, you talk about putting ice cubes in water, right? So here's what they do in Thailand. - I know you're gonna tell me. I already hate it. - They serve you the beer. - I know, I know. - Oh, with ice? - With ice in it. And they give you ice and some places have the ice already in the cup.

where you pour the beer and it's- - Why? - Because of the weather. - Okay, question. 'Cause I wanna get to the bottom of this. Is Thai beer made or I guess like brewed in a way where it's better cold? Or is it just like any other beer where if you put it with some fucking ice cubes and it's like, what the fuck? - It's kind of like any other beer, honestly. - Yama.

- I'm gonna have to be like, no, that's not allowed. - I was gonna give it the benefit of the doubt if it was like brewed differently where it's like, oh, it's actually better served chilled, but like, no. - Okay, but here's the real question. Which of the two evils would you prefer? A warm beer or a beer with ice in it? Because you ain't getting a cold beer in Thailand that like maintains itself, okay? So you have two options. You have two options. Either you drink a warm beer

or you drink a beer with ice in it. And I'm gonna be honest, I choose the ice cube, man. To me having a refreshing feeling with a beer is the lesser of the two evils. - Hold up, hold up, hold up. Would you put ice cubes in a glass of wine?

- 'Cause this is the same kind of question, right? You're compromising the drink. Obviously with stuff like whiskey, there's arguments there and some people say water helps the flavor, but with beer that's flat out just no, no, no, no. You don't put water in beer. - To be fair, I've never had warm beer nor beer with ice cubes. - You've had a warm beer.

- You must have been when you were at college or something, right? Like you just forgot to put it in the fridge. You're like, "All right, well, I'll just take a warm beer." - I mean, is that warm? - It's like room temp. - Yeah, okay, room temp is a bit different to warm. - Well, I mean, how warm can it be? I mean, it's- - Yeah, room temperature in Thailand is very different from room temperature in other places.

- Sometimes you have a barbecue in the summer and the beer gets really warm 'cause you ran out of ice in the cooler and it's like, all right, well, you know, it's whatever. Warm beer is fine, but putting water in beer and ice, having it dilute all into the beer, that's fucking nasty. - Watered down beer is a little bit gross. - That's nasty. As if Coors Light wasn't drinkable, like it wasn't, like, fucking, what's the word? It's hard enough to drink some beers, why the fuck would you wanna put water in it?

- It's okay, yeah. I'm not gonna defend this obviously because both are awful in my mind, but my strat in Thailand is if you have, let's say a glass full of ice, for example, cools it down very quickly. So it doesn't get too hot

- And since there's like less volume, you can drink it more quickly as opposed to like letting it get watered down. I choose that evil over having warm beer 'cause there's just something about, I'm not like a fan of like warm water in general, unless it's kind of like I'm ill or something. - I love warm water. It reminds me of tea.

- Warm water is like watered down tea. - I have occasionally just drank in warm water. I'm just like, fuck it. I want the feeling of tea without having to make a tea. I don't know why. - I'm not too sure about that. - It's close enough. - Not sure about that one, Chief. - I have dog shit takes, all right? This is my dog shit take of the year. - Why don't they just, okay, what I don't understand, right, is that, okay, obviously it's hot outside, right?

and you want to keep the beer as cold as you possibly can. So why don't they just do that thing where they do in Japan, where they just shove the beer like glass in like a freezer or something so that it's like chilled out. - Yeah, I thought about this as well. - And then immediately pour the beer. And then if it starts to get warm, just fucking neck it.

- Problem solved. In Australia, we don't have to fucking worry about it's hot as shit in Australia. - Yeah, I wonder why the glass strut isn't the go-to. - Yeah, just use the glass strut. - That's just like a lot of like fridge space though, you know? - So is storing all those ice cubes. - I'm wondering how like Japan is like so optimized with space because in most places, like having like a fridge full of glasses, that's just like, that's just a fridge that you're basically like not using for food or other drinks. - Well, I guess, I mean, let's just,

- Let's break down the logistics here, right? Okay. Let's say you're cooling the drinks. Obviously they stay cooler for longer. That's the benefit. You probably can't store all of your drinks in a cooler though, right? Like you probably don't have a big enough thing to put all the drinks if you're a business selling drinks all day. But maybe the glass is cool quick enough where you could just

shove them in 'cause it's, you know, they fill up with ice. So they don't take up that much room. So this maybe it can work. I don't know. You can stack drinks right outside for like ages. I feel like, I don't know. This is like a weird complex. Maybe I feel like the bigger problem is that

if you're giving glasses out to everyone, right? Like if you give a bottle, you sell it, it's done. You don't have to worry about getting it back, right? If you give a drink with a glass, you have to get rid of the glass that you poured the beer out of. And then now you have to try and get the beer glass back.

- Yeah, and also every, that also means every time you- - This is so complicated in my head. - Every time you order a new beer, you need a new cool glass with it, right? - I imagine most of it's cans as well. - Most of it's bottles actually. - Oh, bottles? - Yeah, glass bottles. So there's, it's, especially if you go to like the local kind of, you know, bars and restaurants, they don't really have like beer on tap, like singer beer. Singer beer isn't good enough that it like deserves to be on tap. I'm gonna say that out loud, okay? Noice Chang beer. It's kind of like,

it's mostly just in like glass bottles. So, I mean, if they were- - Why don't they just shove the glass bottles in the freezer and then you can just drink straight out of that. - The freezer? - Well, you know, in a cool environment so that it's frozen down so that you can just drink directly rather than pouring it into a glass, just drink it straight out of the bottle. - I think the problem is, is that ice cubes are really fucking easy to make.

- Yeah, but they also take up space. - Yeah, but I think you can make them pretty quickly. And I think maybe keeping glasses in a fridge will take a while. I think the solution is that making a shit ton of ice cubes is easy. And that keeping glasses cooled and stuff is complicated. - It just doesn't seem like intuitive in any way. - Yeah, I agree. I mean, I feel like it's probably something that started and then they just kept doing. Maybe they haven't thought, I don't know. I also, I don't know, fucking refrigers are expensive.

- Tyler, come on man, what the fuck? Come on. - I don't know, I don't know. - To me this is just like the equivalent of being like, oh, I'm gonna make some ice cubes. So I'm gonna take some cold water and then boil it, wait till it cools down and then turn it into ice cubes. It's like two steps in one, when you can just go straight to the one step.

- Yeah. - I guess. - Come on Thailand, get your shit together. - Either way, I'm not excited for beer in Thailand, that's for sure. I'm gonna be like, "No ice please, no ice." - Will they say anything if you say no ice? - How do I say no ice?

- Sorry? - How do I say no ice? - Most places in Thailand speak English. - Oh, okay. - Especially if you're in Bangkok, just ask for no ice. It's pretty- - Well, they give you a weird look if you say no ice. - No, I think most tourists go through this conundrum when they go to Thailand. They're like, why are they serving ice cubes? - Bro, German would fucking drop dead, dude.

- It'd be like that gif of Walter White falling to the ground when he's like with his mouth open. It'd be that. Germans when they go to Thailand and get offered a beer with ice. - Fucking heart attack. - I think they would. I think they would. - They probably would. - I think a war would be declared. Germany would re-militarize again. They'd be like, all right, we found a reason.

- But does Didis need ice with every glass of water? - I think so, yeah. I think he refuses to drink like water or is very picky at least. We're gonna get him on, we'll get him on. - Yeah, we'll get him on next time. - And I can grill him more about this 'cause I felt like, I felt attacked, you know? - Is that an American thing you think?

- Dude, yeah, they fucking love it. - 'Cause they love ice with everything. - Remember every single like restaurant or diner or anything you go to, you always get the giant fucking like two liter cup, like plastic cup with a straw and a ton of ice. - It's not the ice, it's not the big ice cubes either. It's like the shaved ice. - The shitty slushed ice. God, that ice sucks.

- I kind of like it. - No, one of the saddest looking thing is with the shaved ice, I'm an advocate of if it's like the shave, like really small cubes, it needs to be up to like the brim. Otherwise, like when you have a glass and it's just like one small layer of shaved ice. - That's me.

- It just looks so sad for me. 'Cause I'm like that ice is doing nothing. That ice is literally doing nothing. - I just don't use that ice. 'Cause a lot of the time you go to the soda machine and you do it and it's always that shitty ice and you're like,

- You know, I kind of wanted to like not have my drink be immediately watered down. So I'm just not gonna put it in. - But I like crunching on it when you're finished with the drink. - Fuck's sake. - It's kind of like. - It's nice. - I feel that. - I think it's too less of an enjoyment. - You guys are the monkey brains on this one. I feel like I'm giga brain. Like I'm like third eyeing this shit. Like no ice for me, please.

- I don't know, man. - How about tea? How do you feel about lukewarm? - What, do I chew the tea bag? - Okay, there's like iced tea and there's hot tea. How do you feel about lukewarm tea? Just like room temperature tea. - You know, I mean, obviously it's a lukewarm tea is a tea that has been left out. - Yeah, same with coffee, you know? - You know, it depends on my mood. I'd say 80% of the time I'll just down it.

- It's running out of the time, I'll just throw it away. - Just down it. - 'Cause I'm like, I'm not excited about it 'cause it's not even warm anymore. It's kind of room temp. I'm like, all right, all right, make another one. - That's someone who's addicted to coffee. - That's tea, tea. - It's like, I will swallow my pride because I need this in my body. - Waste tea? That's what the British people conquered the world about. That's what they struggled for. - It's our identity.

- I can't throw away what they worked so hard for and ruined the world for. - Do you ever like reheat coffee or reheat tea if it's like going to hold? - No, no, no, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. - I'm not allowed to do that. - I sometimes do it. Sometimes. I sometimes just like 20 seconds in the microwave. - That hurts to hear. That hurts to hear.

- It's weird because sometimes I'm okay with doing that with coffee, but I just refuse to with my tea. I don't know why, weird mental thing. - Yeah, coffee, it doesn't work. - Coffee doesn't work? - No, tea it works, coffee doesn't. I don't like doing it with tea, it's like the forbidden technique. - I think it works with coffee, fine. - Oh no, no. - I'm not wrong with it. - No, no, no.

I mean, I don't let it get to that point. - The Italians are like, "Mama mia, I'm microwaving my coffee over here." What the fuck? - I mean, look, it's like, I don't- - No! I literally took me five minutes to process what you said. I was like, "There's no way he said that." That's why it took me so long. What the fuck? - To be fair, 99 times out of a hundred, I don't let it get to that point. I'm drinking that shit while it's hot.

But sometimes you get a little bit busy, you might have to go out for a little bit. - You commit to the iced coffee. You put some fucking ice cubes in it. You don't fucking try and turn it back. It's like climate change. We've gone too far. We should just fucking commit. We should just go full hellscape. - No, I look at it, I pick it up and I feel it's lukewarm and I'm like, I can fix you. Just shove you in the microwave. - No, no.

- I just realized I was like, oh my God, I did the whole, I went to America and back. - Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. - I totally forgot I did this. - I was gonna ask about that, which was, how was the Ludwig chess boxing event behind the scenes? - Good, yeah. So I went to America for about a week.

I say America, it's LA. It's like barely America. It's like a different America. - We can now say that now that we've been across America. - I know, I've been to a lot of states, guys. I tried all the local foods and it's all the same for the most part. But yeah, no, so we went to LA, went for a week.

- Mainly went out to watch Chris box, which Chris did very well. - Yeah. - We're gonna get him on sometime soon. - I'm proud of my boy for almost throwing the chest part of it. - No, no, no, no. He somehow threw more in the chest than boxing. - Yeah. - I think like literally, like the throwing of the punches didn't happen nearly as much as the throwing of the chest. - Yeah. He had like, what was it? Checkmate in two and then he ended up just like giving away his queen. I was like, what?

How do you do this? I was screaming at my fucking TV. - So obviously if you don't know, Chris did chess boxing, a lot of chess boxing event. We've talked about it a bunch. You all probably know, but if you didn't know, it was just, yeah, Chris was boxing someone. In between that he had chess and he'd been training about this for months and we were all very excited for it. And I said to Ludwig and Chris, I was like, "Hey, if I get front row tickets, I'll go out."

'Cause then in my mind I was like, all right, well I'll figure out, I'll find some other work stuff to do to make it worthwhile. And luckily I did. But yeah, so I did that. I did the "Thanksmas" as well. Jack's "Epoch Times Thankmas." That was so much fun. That was crazy. Had to go after Jack Black, which is nerve wracking. I keep saying this, I'm like, it is nerve wracking to see Jack Black kill it. And then you're like, all right, next up we got,

- Who, C-Dawg Connor, I guess? - This guy. - Yeah, so it was like kind of crazy. Just seeing him real, like it was like, what the fuck? - Oh, you're a real person. - He's so chill as well, of course. - Of course he is. - It's like finding out Keanu Reeves is a nice guy. It's like, all right, no one is surprised that Jack Black is super chill and nice. He was just like, dude, everyone in the studio was like doing their job, but you could tell everyone was trying to like get closer to watch. It was really cool. 'Cause it was funny enough, it was where we did our rehearsals.

for the Trash Taste tour. - Oh, was it? Oh, really? - It was in the exact same, obviously you guys won't know this, we did rehearsals before we did our Trash Taste tour and the exact building that we did it in was the same place where The Xmas was. - Oh, nice. - Which was crazy. That was cool. So I got to see a bunch of the tour staff that we did with. So that was nice. I was like, "Oh, hi." - Oh, fuck yeah. - So that was really cool again. We did that and that was a lot of fun. Jack's great. We had Jack on the pod. He's just, he's so fucking nice. He's so chill.

Good to hang out with him and that was great. See Aaron again. - Nice. - So that was so much fun. Did that, that was crazy. - It feels like a big family reunion. Everyone who we've met on traveling this past year. - Yeah, it was awesome. It was like the highlights, like seeing everyone like the final anime. It felt like when I said bye, the anime ending was about to play. So that was fun. And then yeah, I stayed at Ludwig's house as well. That was good. Although there was so many noises, his cats and dogs kept moving around and I'm not used to sleeping with them.

So they would keep like trying to scratch on the door or come in and it was really sweet. It was nice. It was nice, yeah. His cat is so goddamn cute. Have you seen Coots? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, the tiny white one, right? - Every time I see a pet, I'm like, that's so cute, but also fuck you 'cause I want a pet.

- So goddamn bad here, man. - I couldn't help myself. But anyway, it was, Chris came to LA and I was really excited to see what Chris thought about LA. And it was pretty much what I thought. I'll let Chris come and tell his thoughts about LA. I'm sure he'll go off on one. - What was it like behind the scenes of the chess boxing event? - Yeah, so it was interesting. 'Cause obviously I was staying at Ludwig's house. So a lot of the time I was kind of getting just, I was just tagging along to a lot of stuff whilst I was going to do other stuff. And so,

It seemed like it was kind of all working nicely and then Ludwig had to just go from A to B and whatever. And so I was kind of just like, hi, yeah, I'm here. I'll turn up.

And it didn't really start to get crazy until the weigh-in. And that was kind of intense 'cause you just turn up to this giant 5,000 person stadium and there's just insane amounts of staff. And you're like, God damn, like this is all being coordinated by, well, a streamer essentially, like on his team. His team's amazing.

But it was just absurd seeing all that equipment, all that gear. And it really felt like, oh shit, like I'm like kind of watching like a serious kind of broadcast almost. Like this is, I can't imagine it would look that different. And the weigh-in was fun.

and before that as well, they had the interviews where they, I don't know, you saw the videos they played. - Oh yeah, I saw the videos, yeah. - So they had two hotel rooms adjacent to each other and they were both really fucking tiny. And so they did the interviews in the hallway of a hotel room. And I was sitting in the room next door, just talking to like Ludwig or whoever was there, just chatting away while they were getting interviewed. And then they would constantly go like,

- Can you go shut up in there? We can hear you really easily. So they did the interviews. I saw Chris, said hi to him. Like, all right, you excited? Did the weigh-in, everyone kind of was, you could tell that a lot of the fighters were like not,

prepared to do like the whole, I don't know how to look serious or scary. So they're kind of like, oh. But it was really interesting. Some of them you could tell they were like, yeah, I'm gonna put on a show. I'm gonna do it. But dude, the air was so kind of like,

it was like kind of faux tense. Like everyone was kind of like, we're all friends, right? We're gonna punch you the next day. It was just kind of interesting seeing everyone kind of like slowly interact with their groups and kind of not talk. And then certain people were like not talking to other people 'cause they were gonna fight them. And like, I distinctly remember that Chris had said hi to his opponent and Chris's coach is insane. If you haven't seen any clips, he's like, there's a video of him

basically beating up a seven foot Korean man. And he's like 5'10". And he beats him in kickboxing. Like a giant seven foot man. It's an insane clip. I'm sure Mudan can play a clip right now. It's fucking insane. This man's a machine. And he's like full on like proper fighter kind of mindset. And Chris is Chris, right? So-

Chris is talking to his opponent and then I'm just standing there watching this and Nick goes up to Chris. He's like, all right, Chris, now, now's the fight. No talking to him now. You gotta focus. You're gonna punch that guy. Don't be friendly with him. You can see Chris went like, oh, oh, it was just weird seeing him like, he's like, you're gonna kill him. You can't talk to him.

But that was the first time we got to see like Chris's opponent really show up. - Yeah. - Chris's opponent was scary. - Oh, he was pretty terrifying. - He's big. You can tell. - He's huge. He's a big guy. - So he wasn't, he isn't like very well trained in boxing. He's done a lot of other martial arts and you can tell the guy's just been generally fit his whole life. 'Cause you look at a guy and you're like, that's the man, that's the body of a man who has been exercising for a long time.

- It's a shame you couldn't see like the Twitch chat as a- - I wish I could have seen the Twitch chat dude. - I was like dying laughing seeing like the Twitch chat. 'Cause like, you know, Chris has a lot of fans. Everyone was cheering for Chris and his opponent comes on and everyone was just like- - I still go rip, right? - It was just like-

- It was just like a collectively, yo, rip Chris, man. - Oh shit. - Well, 'cause you see this man's pecs and this man's back muscles, you're like, oh shit. And then you realize, you're like, oh, okay. Like when you see them both, we saw them both like stand up, you're like, oh. So Chris had been training six months

just to get like halfway to where this guy was before he even started. - We're about to witness some murder. - Right, so that's where it was like kind of having a lot of natural fitness helps so much with this thing. Chris was just trying to get rid of his like excess weight.

And the way it was like, oh, this guy beats Chris in length, in arm, arm, in height, in weight. Chris only beats him in age. So maybe that has something, I don't know. And so obviously, you know, Chris didn't really seem that nervous though. Chris seemed pretty confident about it. I think Chris felt like he had, maybe 'cause he'd seen the clip of his opponent getting knocked out like a week earlier. - Right. - His opponent got knocked out in one punch.

a week earlier. - Right. - And I'm sure Moody can play a bit of that clip. And so, you know, I think it was like a bit worried, but also everyone was kind of like, well, maybe Chris can do well. - How was he in the dressing room beforehand?

- Just kind of Chris just sitting there. I think he was trying to just focus. He wasn't really like talking much. He was just kind of like doing it. And then I went off to go and go to my seat and watch. - Was he doing the thing that Chris does when he's concentrating where he does the mouth thing? - Was he doing that? - No, he didn't. - He does that a lot. - He might be pissed that you said that.

I've said it in a video before. So, yeah, the day of. So I knew obviously all the stuff that was going to happen. I knew that the table was going to come up from the sky and I knew that Ludwig was going to slap, have a slap match with XQC at the end. So the day of, it's like 10 a.m. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case on your phone.

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And like months, months prior to this, I told Ludwig, I was like, "Hey, if you ever need anything, you want me to get slapped or whatever, I'll do it, back up." So that morning of the boxing, it's like 9:00 AM, we're going over to go and pick up XQC. And yeah, he's just not there.

just straight up nodded at his house. - Jeez. - And then Lottie's like, "All right, fine, I'll just call." Doesn't pick up his phone. And I'm like, "Is that normal?" He's like, "Yeah, that's normal, that's normal." I'm like, "Wow, okay." So then we just drive to the venue and just kind of, he's like, "Yeah, I'm sure he'll respond." 'Cause he's going on at like 7:00 PM. So he's got from like 10:00 till 7:00 PM to like- - All day. - Yeah, all day. And so we get to the venue,

I get there very early just kind of, 'cause I'm there from like 11, the event doesn't start till four. So I'm just looking around, just doing stuff, getting lunch, talking to people. And then yeah, around 3:00 PM is when it kind of starts to get like, all right, okay. - A bit nervous. - Yeah, everyone starts to get a little bit more tense 'cause everyone realized, all right, they're gonna have to actually like go on and put on a fight. And you know, Chris was just getting ready. Nick was doing up his like, the things that go on your arm, I can't remember what they're called. And then I'm like, all right, Chris, I'm gonna go get to my seat, good luck.

I'll come meet you before we do the walk-in. And so I'm sitting, I got like front row tickets. It's fucking awesome. The boxing's great. You can see everything. I can't see any of the chess though. I can't see it from where I'm sitting. And the screen is like up here, like directly up. And every time they went to play chess, initially it was broken. Like the board was broken, right? As you saw on the live stream. So it was kind of like, oh, all right. So I guess we were just kind of like just quiet for like two minutes and the boxing started. We were like, yeah!

It's so good. Front row tickets are amazing for boxing 'cause you see and hear all the punches really clearly. And dude, you can see their face when they're like struggling as well. It's a pretty fucking fun experience. As I say, from my sadistic standpoint. I think it's punch, so fun. - Look at these peasants fighting each other. - Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. And like the smash boxing was pretty fun. I think it all went pretty well. And then yeah, I went to go and do the walking thing for Chris. I basically...

I told Chris before, I was like, yeah, you should do something when you go out. You should do like some funny, like a funny bit or something. He was like, what, why? I was like, well, cause you know, it's like a show, like put on a show, why not? You know, cause it'll be clipped everywhere and there'll be a lot of people watching. And he was like, oh, okay. So he comes back a day later and he's like, all right, I've got an idea. We're gonna throw candy into the crowd. And I was like, why?

"What reason are we doing this?" So he was like, "Oh, it's Christmas in there." I was like, "All right, fine. It's your walk out, let's do it." So we go out, have these candy buckets and I'm just trying to hype him up and hype the crowd up, right? And whatever. We walk out and that was really fun. And I just immediately go to my seat and I'm watching him. And man, it was intense. It was intense watching Chris. I'm sure you guys watching from home as well. - Oh yeah, I was watching from home, yeah. - Yeah, it was, the boxing started and it looked like Chris was not doing great.

I think it was like, "Uh-oh, oh no, oh no." And then the chess happened and then Chris started winning and we're like, "Oh my God, yes, Chris is crushing it. "Chris is literally about to win." And then the boxing happened again. We were like, "All right, Chris, just survive." And Chris wasn't really getting in many punches, right? Chris was kind of like dodging and just moving around. - It felt like watching like, you know, someone take on a "Dark Souls" boss. - Yeah, for sure. - He was just like dodging. Like he was just like- - He was like, "I'm frames, I'm frames."

- Literally, he was just like, "How many iframes can I get out of this?" I'm seeing him like try to win at the chess. - I mean, it's definitely like, it seemed like he's way more experienced at least in some form of combat sports, right? Like you can tell 'cause he's constantly going in, he knows his reach and he's playing with it. Whereas Chris is a bit more defensive, kind of just trying to survive. He's spamming the roll button in the arms. And then yeah, he threw massively.

- Yeah. - And chess. And it was like, oh, okay, well I guess he's lost 'cause he's not gonna beat him in boxing. - Yeah. - And he's not gonna beat him in chess now. But somehow his opponent was even shitter at chess. So it all worked out and Chris won in the end. But it was intense. It was like 40 minutes long. I was like on the edge of my seat the entire time. - Oh no, same here. - It was crazy. - Watching that shit live, I was just,

- I'm seeing like Chris kind of like clutch at the end with the chest. I was fucking screaming. - It was hype, it was hype. I think Chris was a bit disappointed that he didn't do better in boxing. I'm sure again, he'll talk about all this stuff when he comes on. - Congratulations on getting like a big W and not throwing yourself by the way. - So yeah, so during the Andrea fights about the third to last fight, Ludwig comes up to me, he's like, "Yeah, so X hasn't replied to me at all." And it's like five something PM. And I'm like, "Oh, okay."

All right, well, I guess, yeah, I'm down, let's do it. And so he was like, all right, cool. I was like, by the way, please don't try and slap me too hard. I have a blood thing, so just don't try and kill me. And so he was like, oh, okay, just slap me as hard as you want and I'll reciprocate. And I was like, okay, cool, cool, that works, that works nicely. And then I'm sitting there and I'm realizing I'm like,

- Wait, how the fuck am I going up? Like, how is any of this working? Like, I don't understand how any of this is gonna happen. Like, I'm sitting here, like the tech guys don't know I'm going up. So like, there's no way, like there's no graphics or anything. Like, I'm just sitting there thinking like,

"What the fuck, how does this gonna work? "Like, what do I do? "What do I even like, do I do a bit? "Do I, what do I do?" And again, it's two hours and I've been drinking a bunch of beers before this was free. And I was like, "Fuck yeah, I wanna drink beer and watch boxing." And so I was like, "Oh shit, I guess I should stop drinking beer." So I stopped drinking the beer, but then I found out that later on after the fight that Ludwig started drinking shots before 'cause he wanted to get ready for it. I was like, "Shit, I should have kept drinking."

Like 30 minutes before I'm about to go up. 'Cause the fights could either be five minutes or 30, right? So I was like shitting myself. I'm like, fuck, I don't know when I'm going up. 'Cause the toast versus point crow match started and it looked like toast was about to lose immediately. And so I was like, shit, I'm about to go out. So I started getting really fucking nervous. And one of Ludwig's team comes to me and I'm like, yeah, so like, how is this working? Like, what the fuck do I do? And they were like, well, we'll figure it out in a sec. So the fight ends.

And just before the fight ends, Lotto comes over and he's like, "Okay, this is what we're gonna do. "We're gonna throw it to you and you're gonna come in "and do whatever you want." I was like, "Do whatever I want? "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Give me a role. "Am I the bad guy, the good guy? "Give me something, like I need to know." And he was like, "Oh, well, just whatever feels right." I'm like, "Oh my God, okay, fine."

So then yeah, I'm sitting there and then watching it and I didn't know when they were gonna cue. So I'm just kind of like, all right, waiting, waiting. And they go, is there anyone in the audience who wants to slap Ludwig? And I'm like, oh shit, I guess I'll put my hand up. - There's this great shot on screen of you just like casually like, yes, my time, finally, my time has come.

- So yeah, I thought to myself, I was like, I want to make it look as like suave and casual as possible. So that when I go off, it looks really like fucking extra and over the top. So I'm just sat there like, yeah, okay.

- I guess I was slapping, 'cause I can. And then yeah, really surreal hearing fucking Jerm go, "Was that C-Dog?" Jerm is so fucking cool, man. Jerm is such a nice guy. - Yeah, he seems like such a cool dude. - And yeah, then going up and I was like, "All right, whatever, it's just all autopilot. I'll just figure it out. We'll just do it." And I hope I did a good job. I don't know, maybe the audience, I saw a lot of nice comments, so I'm hoping that I did. - You did a great job. - It went really well. And it was a good match. - It was. - We slapped each other. Everyone, everyone.

- Everyone kept saying that we were faking our slaps. To be fair, the last two slaps were pretty hard. The first two were like, yeah, we were holding back. 'Cause we also didn't, I was at the mindset of like, I'm not actually trying to injure him. I don't actually want to hurt him. I just wanna make it look hard without actually injuring him. I did give him a little bit of a bruise on the last slap that I got him pretty good with. He did ask me to go a lot harder, so I did. But I still didn't do like fully 100%, but also,

- I don't know. I feel like that you don't need that. - That's a bit excessive. - I feel like, is that really gonna add to anything if I give him a concussion? I feel like, I don't think he needs that. - People wanna see death, Connor. - I know they do, but I'm like- - They wanna see a knockout. - I don't think we need it. I don't think it needed to happen, but I think it all worked out and I got my belt. I didn't choke. I think it was, you know, he definitely wanted to get the time, the clock closer. - Yeah.

at some point, so he wanted to get it like, I think very close. He's a master at stalling for content. - Yeah. - But I think he accidentally- - He stalled a bit too long, I think. - I think he actually tried to win. He might say he threw for content. I think he actually tried to win, 'cause if you watch back, you can see him trying to press the clock again. He just didn't press it in time. But we also broke so many rules. Like I totally forgot, you're not allowed to move a chess piece and then press the clock with the other hand.

But then also half of these matches, no one fucking played the chess correctly anyway. So why do people care? - Some people just like moved a piece and didn't even press the clock. - Yeah, Chris's opponent did it a few times. So I was like, yeah, got it, got my dub, got the belt. I was a happy boy. Dude, man, I don't know if you've had this before, but whenever you have like a massive serotonin rush, like the next day you're like, fuck, this is, I'm so sad.

I was just sad the next day. I was like, shit. Even though I was having like a fun time, I was just hanging out with my friends. I was just like, damn, I'm just sad. I think the serotonin come down was like really high. - Yeah, I get that. - And that was like, oh man, this sucks. And then the next day we flew to San Francisco.

We did a sushi stream where we did learn sushi with a sushi master. - Yeah, Michelin chef, right? - A Michelin star sushi chef. And he was very funny. He was great. It was a really fun stream. Check it out if you haven't. We basically just tried to prepare sushi and I was not good. - I mean, we knew you weren't good at cooking anyway. - Dude, sushi's hard, man. I know it looks easy. They're just kind of like boom, boom, boom, boom, fish. There you go. Dude, that shit's hard.

- This man was cutting up cucumbers like it was like arts and crafts, insane, insane. - Yeah, it's almost like sushi chefs have to go through years of training to get really, really good at sushi. - Yeah, it's crazy, dude. It's crazy, dude. This man turned a cucumber into a Christmas tree.

- Isn't that insane? - I'm trying to imagine how. - Yeah, I know, right? Exactly. I didn't know that too until he showed me. - Did he do it in like the one fell swoop? - He probably killed him. He was like, and then he did like an accordion with the cucumber. And then I tried, I copied exactly what he did and it just didn't work. It just didn't even do anything. And I was like, what the fuck? How did he do that? So I copied him.

- There's like some magic, especially like with some of the cutting techniques I've seen where you just see like chefs literally like real life Shokugeki where it's just like. - Yeah, it's what he did. I copied that and it didn't work.

So I realized I'm just not meant to be a chef. But then flew back- - I copied that, now I have three less fingers. - I copied that and I just have half a cucumber. And then yeah, I flew back. We flew to San Francisco, flew back the same day. And then the next day I flew back to Japan. - You had a tight schedule, man. - Yeah, it was literally like one week of just back to back stuff. And it was pretty fun. I mean, I got so much work done. It was great. I like it when I can,

and do a trip like that where I just go away for a week, get so much work done, come back and done. Like I did a stream as well where I reviewed cereal with Chris and Ludwig. And that was a lot of fun. But yeah, it was just great. I mean, getting, it's really satisfying.

planning out a trip like that and just getting back. And then you're like, oh, nice. That was like productive. - Did you help Chris like practice at chess at all? - Yeah, I did. - I'm wondering like how much he did practice at chess beforehand. - I helped him practice a tiny bit mainly because we never really ended up, we just didn't do it. - He knew how to play before I ended up, right? - Yeah, he knew how to play. He was okay. I think,

- Yeah, he said he was 800. I think that's cap. He wouldn't tell me his rating. - I think he said he was 800 'cause that's like the default rating you get when you check chess.com. - I think so. - Where it's like, yeah. - It's like, yeah, 800, I didn't play once. - Signs up to chess.com guys, I'm 800 Elo, no worries. - I think he's like 650, 600 maybe. 'Cause he was like, I'm gonna do the Queen's Gambit.

- He wanted to do the Queen's Gambit, which is a chess opening. And before I was kind of like, I was like, well, I mean, I guess it's fine. Like I told him, I was like, I would have just done the classic, the E4. Just the fucking move and like, it's easy, you're white. He was playing white as well. So I was like, you could just play that. But I was like, honestly, you've been playing this entire time with Queen's Gambit. Me telling you to swap it now is not gonna do you any favors. Just do it. Just don't blunder your queen.

And he's like, and then he kept saying, he kept saying the days leading before, he was like, "As long as I just don't blend with the queen, I'm happy."

- That's what he kept saying. He kept saying, "As long as I don't blunder the queen." - I could literally see how tilted he was after he blundered that queen. - Yeah, there was a thing that wasn't picked up on the cameras, but after he did that, the round, like when the ding ding went and he was next to boxing, he stood up, looked at me and did this. And I was like this. - Damn.

- Yeah, I mean- - It made it more dramatic, man. - Did it for content. - It's all for content. - I knew that his opponent was terrible at chess. So I was like, honestly, don't worry about it. Just play. How bad could it go? And then it nearly went extremely badly. And then he nearly let his opponent promote to a queen, but apparently he didn't even know that was a thing.

- What? - Yeah, I remember that. - So he was one move away. So in chess, if you move the pawn all the way to the end of the board, you can get a queen. And somehow Chris had thrown his queen and then allowed him to get his pawn one move away from promoting with nothing defending it. - I think they both missed that. - And they both missed it. And he was one move away. At any point, he could just got another queen and it probably would have just ended the game. He just didn't do it. And then later someone had said that apparently he just didn't know that was a thing. - Oh my God.

So Chris was fighting a man who is like a pro in boxing and a toddler in chess. So luckily it worked out for him. - Jeez. - Yeah. It was like a really, really impressive- - The event was insane. The event was insane. - Props to you, lad. It's like...

considering how many moving parts like have to like go down for that kind of event to happen. And he was like talking about it for like ages as well. - Dude, just seeing all the staff there, I was like, my God, this is so stressful. But he has like a team of I think 15 employees. So you've got a really good amount of people working on this stuff. And you know, he's not always there like on the floor being like, you do this. It's like, it's just like, you know, he works with his team and his team's great. And they're so fucking cool. All of them are so nice.

Yeah, just like going to seeing like live events like that, going to shit like Mogamoni live and also doing our tour as well. I'm like, fuck live things, a lot of fucking fun. - Yeah, that's why I really wanna start doing some as well and do some more fun live stuff. Maybe this year, hopefully, things post.

- There's just something about having that audience energy in front of you that especially after the pandemic, I've just like sorely sorely missed as well. - Yeah, I think after the tour as well, it made me think like, damn, I really wanna figure out a way to do some live audience stuff. Even if that means me going to America for like a week to do something. - Bro, that's serotonin rush, man.

- It's so good. - It's something different, man. - It's just like, it's like, you know, I love streaming a lot, but I love the idea of having these big things that you work towards. And yeah, I'm really excited. I really wanna do some stuff. Keep your eyes peeled, might be some stuff coming, who knows? - Next year? - Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. It should be pretty fun. - Do you mean this year? - Yeah, this year, sorry, this year.

- Of course, we are filming this in 2022. - We are filming this in 2023, yes. - Yeah, 2023. - And it's just great. Like every time I go out to LA, you know, I think LA is an interesting city.

That's the nicest way I could say it. It's terrible. It's a terrible city, but every time I go there, I always get so inspired seeing how like the creative scene is over there. How hard and crazy people are working out there. Obviously there's some characters that sucks and a lot of people are not nice. - Did you ever find out where XQC was? - No, I have no idea. He just didn't show up. I think he replied actually to Ludwig at like 8:00 or 9:00 PM being like, "Sorry, I just woke up."

I think, I think, I don't know, something like that. So that was- - That man is on his own time zone. - Yeah, it's what it is, man. When you're the biggest, you can just not turn up to stuff. I guess, no one cares.

- Yeah, every time I go there I get so inspired. And seeing like seeing Ludwig just do his thing, man, he's such a, so professional. And the stuff that they're doing and pushing live streaming forward is like, oh my God, that's just badass. And then like, how can you see that stuff and not be like inspired to wanna better your own stuff and push it further? - Yeah, it's kind of like every time I do go to LA for Anime Expo or whatever, and like you get to talk to a lot of these other creators, it does like light a fire under your ass.

- For sure. - Yeah, and then you come back to Japan, you're like, what can I do here? - Yeah, we can't do anything. Which is why I'm like, man, we should just make our own. We should just do it. - Yeah, 'cause like just seeing some of like the ideas and some of the shit they can get away with over there, just kind of like, oh, I wish I could do this in Japan as well, right? - Yeah, yeah. - 'Cause it's just like the infrastructure is there and it's just a lot,

just to be able to get a camera out and just be able to do exciting things. I have a lot of problems with LA as we've all mentioned before. - Yeah, of course. - We've all had our qualms with it, but they have like,

all of the instructor there just to make shit done and get shit done. - Yeah, I mean like, you know, if you wanna hire out three guys and someone who knows how to do a live broadcast and an audio guy who knows how to get it all done, it's like boom in LA, that's easy. But in Japan, it's like impossible. You know, there are Japanese people who do it, but it's like, they won't be nearly as flexible enough

to do what we would need them to do. And also they would charge so goddamn much money where if, you know, it's just makes more sense at that point to just, if you're gonna be doing it consistently, just make your own team. - Yeah, exactly. - And get all this stuff. Like when we did that sushi stream, there was three red cameras they were using to stream. Three cinema cameras to stream that, insane. - For those of you who don't know, each one is like 20 grand. - No, no, no, it's more. - More than that? - More.

- They're like 30 to 40, I think. But just the camera, and then you need to buy all the other shit, which adds up a lot. It's a lot. - The SSD is also red SSD. - Yeah, you can't use other SSDs. They have their own proprietary stuff, which is kind of a, it's a whole thing. - So patrons, we know why

- Oh, we want Christmas for 2023. - I did a poker stream recently as well, where I got invited to play poker with a bunch of Japanese people who I just only kind of briefly spoke to once. And I kind of thought, yeah, this sounds intimidating. Just turning up to a, it was a shogi building that they rented out to play poker. - Cool.

And it was just, they kind of brokenly messaged me in English being like, "Poker, yes. Alcohol, yes." And then as I'm like going over there, they messaged me being like, "Poker, no." I'm like, "What?"

- What are you, what? But then I get there and they're like, oh yeah, all good, all good. I'm like, what the fuck? Just message me in Japanese and I'll Google translate it. - Damn, we thought we could Japan him. - I met these people on a stream and one of them is like a professional poker player in Japan. He travels a lot. - Is that a thing in Japan? - So recreational poker is really big here.

- Oh. - If you wanna play just- - You gotta pay in. - Yeah. - And then, yeah, you can't like win money necessarily, but like, yeah. - A lot of people like practice here and then they go to foreign countries to compete. So a lot of them will go across Europe, will go across America, just playing poker tournaments. But they practice a lot here. There's a really big scene for it here. They were telling me that there was a YouTuber who's in Japan. He's a poker YouTuber with 1 million subscribers.

- I think I know, yeah. - He has his own brand of poker chips as well. - That's fucking massive in Japan. - Oh, he recommended it. - Like one million in Japan is fucking insane. - Poker's pretty big in Japan. If you look on the map, like you go to like Tokyo and type in like poker, there's a lot of poker places that pop up. Obviously you can't gamble any real money. It's like all recreational and you can buy drinks and stuff. And sometimes they have like fun tournaments and stuff. It's just for fun. And 'cause a lot of people like playing poker.

And yeah, so he was a poker pro and they just messaged me being like, "Hey, do you wanna come play poker with us three and five other people you've never met who don't speak English?" And I was like, "All right, fuck it, sure, let's do it, why not?" It went really well, they were already chill, they were already fun. And it made me really wanna do like, "Oh man, we should just..." I was like, "Man, I should just buy a poker table

just cut out some holes for the cards, put some plexiglass and then hook up cameras underneath and then have like three cameras going around. I'm like, man, we could do this. It'd be expensive, but I'm wondering like, I'm like, damn, I should do this. - Yeah, if you do hit me up because I fucking love it.

- I fucking love playing Pokemon. - Connor, why don't you do all the work? Hit me up. - Connor, Connor, Connor, do the work. Do the thing. I just wanna play Pokemon. - Hit me up, hit me up. - I do, I really wanna do some shit like that where I'm like, all right, we can get a space that is built for like live stream content where you can like remake it into some stuff. We'll see, we'll see. I don't know, maybe I'm being ambitious. I don't know. - I mean, poker's just a lot of fun in general. - And then yeah, it's easy. Poker's fun, it's great. - Poker's the fun part, you know? Have you ever played poker, Joey?

- Yeah, I've played Pogo a few times. I played it in Hokkaido actually, like earlier this year. - Yeah. - When I was up there with a few of my friends. Yeah, like there's a, yeah, as Connor was saying, there's a ton of places, especially in like the biggest cities as well. - There's a bunch in Sapporo. - Yeah, in Sapporo there's so many.

And it's super fun. And again, it's like a whole buy-in thing. And then when you're finished with it, you get like kind of, I guess like a credit type of thing where you can use it again to buy yourself back in. Right. If you go back to that store, for example. But yeah, it's like, you just play with a bunch of like random Japanese people who are just like having drinks and just like,

hanging out and shit. - It's a good conversation game. - It is. - It's a lot of time to talk. - Perfect like boys night, just because it's like, it's the perfect mix between, okay, we're playing a game, but also enough time to just like chill out with the boys and just have a conversation. - For sure, yeah. - I remember like when we went to Vegas, we tried going to like the poker tables in Vegas and then we saw the buy-ins there and we're like- - It was like a minimum a hundred bucks a hand.

And so that's a minimum, right? So you need at least a few thousand to even sit down. And then when we walked past it, we just saw like, dude, people looked intense. And like people were like shouting and stuff. It was like a life or death situation. Well, I think a lot of those people are gambling with like their entire life. And so I was like, man, I don't think this is the vibe. I don't think this is the vibe. I think I wanted to have a little fun poker game with some friends maybe, but no, not a- So we just ended up at the roulette table, right?

- Yeah, we went to Vegas on the tour and me and Garnt had never been. So we were like, wow, we wanna see the casinos. 'Cause that's what you do in Vegas, have a look. So that was crazy. It was overwhelming. - Yeah. - It was insane. - Vegas was so much fun though. - It's a crazy city. - It is. I mean, you've been plenty of times, Joey. So you're definitely biased. - I've never seen an American city that made it so apparent that if you want to spend money, you can just like get way better treatment.

- Yeah. - Like we were lining up for a cab, right? To go back to our hotel. And as we were lining up, this line is long. It's like maybe like a 20, 30 minute wait. And this guy just shouts like, "If you want a private vehicle, it's $50."

And I was like, "Oh, so we can just skip the whole line "if we pay 50 bucks?" He's like, "Yeah." So we got like, "Oh, fuck it, let's do that." So we just did that. We just skipped the whole line for 50 bucks. And it's like, in my head, I'm like, why would everyone here is like probably wasting so much money on these tables. Just say 50 bucks so you could skip the line. - Bro, some people have like lost a lot of money. - Oh, I know, I know. - I ain't spending any more money on taxes, man.

- Yeah, I'd rather lose money on a cab ride and tip the guy than give a casino more money. - I am sad that me and Connor weren't able to go to like the Caesar's Palace buffet though. That was a wonderful- - You went to the buffet, right? - Yeah, we took them. My friend did this who lives in Vegas is also a YouTuber.

- You got digital necks. He did this, I've never seen this baller move before, but it was a huge line at the Caesar's Palace buffet, right? It's like one of, it's in my opinion, one of the best buffets like ever, especially in Vegas. So we were like, all right, we got a lot of staff here who have never been to, you know, Caesar's Palace buffet. We got to take them to Caesar's Palace buffet. And he was like, yeah, the line might be really long though, especially since we haven't reserved it. And we show up and sure enough, there's like, you know, 50 to a hundred people waiting in line, right?

It's like a two hour wait. And I'm just like, and we're just standing around being like, fuck, what are we gonna do? And then my friend Digital was just like, I got this. And he walks into the queue and like calls over just like a staff member. And he goes, yeah, so I've got a bunch of famous people here with me right now. And they really wanna sit down and they wanna grab a seat where they can't really be seen because they might be bombarded by fans. And that might be a problem with you guys. - No way did this work. - And the guy was like,

"All right, give me a second." And he goes back and he like gets on a phone call for like 10 minutes. And he goes, "Okay, so we got a seat for you right down the back, come on through." And we just skipped the whole fucking line and went to the biggest, nicest seat in the back of the restaurant. I was like, "How the fuck did you do that?" - Even if I was fucking like,

- Leonardo DiCaprio. I wouldn't have the balls to do that. I need a back room. - The absolute confidence in this man. There's some famous people just like, that's such an alpha move. - That's like speech 100. - Americans are different, bro. They're just different. - I can't believe that worked either. - What the fuck? - That must happen quite often. I mean, this is Vegas we're talking about, right? So there's probably just fucking celebrities walking around all the time.

- But it's just like the fact that it was just like me and like a bunch of the tour staff were just standing around me like, "Hi." And the guy looking at us like, "Those are the famous people?" - Those are the famous people? - Those are the famous people? - Actually that's the anime man. - I don't know if you know. - I saw a claw machine in one of the casinos. - Really? - It was like a gambling claw machine.

- What was in it? - Money. - Oh, just like cash? - So you could bet however much you wanted to and then it would be like, hey, if you got one of the balls, you'd get this much back. So I tried it and I was like, nah, this shit ain't gonna, nah, this shit ain't working. This shit is not happening. At most I might get it once, but 'cause it's like a computer that decides how much money you get. Obviously the computer will probably decide that you get

when it's a very tiny amount, right? So it's like this shit is so dumb. It's not happening. - Going on tour has made me realize like just Connor has an unhealthy addiction to claw machines now.

- If I see one, I kind of have to play it. I don't know why it's kind of, you'd think I'd be sick of them, but I kind of just always want to play them. - The system's gone on man. - I know right? - It's like the jump King effect all over again. You've done it so much. - You've reprogrammed your brain. - You've tortured yourself with claw machines so much that you've convinced yourself that you like it.

- I've spent like, God, I've spent so much on Kleenex. - Yeah. - Probably close to 10 grand. - Yeah, I never told you the story, but like,

- The point I realized that Connor, oh, Connor's like actually addicted, addicted was, so we went to one of the league world's like quarterfinals or it was like kind of the group, no, it was a group stages in New York. - Yeah. - And we go in and of course we're going in to watch league. That's why we're going there. And so we go to take our seats and there's just like one single like claw machine

in this entire building, right? It's just like one thing that they've put there and no one's like playing in it and I just- - No, no, no, fuck off. People were playing in it. - No, no, not when we were walking in. - Okay, okay, we were walking in. It's free, it's free to play. - It was free to play and Connor just glances at it and just goes, "Oh."

there's a claw machine. And I was like, yeah, there's a claw machine. I don't know what you can win. Did you know what you could win there? - Yeah, so it was like a stress ball of like league things. There was like the, like Gragas barrel and a minion. - Yeah. So it was just something for like fans and viewers to do like in between games or something. So we watched like the first two games at this event that we're in. And then Connor's like, I'm gonna go to the toilet.

I'm like, "Okay, sure thing." - I did go to the toilet. - And he did go to the toilet. And so what proceeds to happen is I, so before the next game starts, I go out as well.

I had to go to the toilet before the next game starts. And I see Connor on this claw machine with like five people around him, right? And I just thought, I just thought, oh, it's because actually at that league event, we got recognized so much because of course, league fans and we go hand in hand. So I thought, you know, Connor is just like, Connor's playing up. You know, we have a few fans there. He's playing a few claw machines with some fans, go to the toilet, come back, watch the match. The entire match is like, I watched the entire match by myself.

thinking where the fuck did Connor go? Where did he go? He missed an entire match of league. - Okay, to be fair, it was a shit game, so I didn't care. - So I go out and what I see is a group of like 30 people making a semi-circle around Connor playing this fucking claw machine. He had been playing this claw machine

40 minutes, that was an entire league match. And I was like, "God, have you been here this entire time?" And he was like, "Yeah, haven't won yet. "I'm not leaving until I've won "like one of these fucking balls." - Oh my God. - Yeah, so I went to the toilet and then there was no line for it. And I'd seen a line earlier. So I was like, "Oh, I'll just have a go." And then I started getting recognized a lot by people there. And so people started lining up.

to like, some people were just waiting to take photos, some people just wanted to watch me play. And then some people were just gathered, 'cause they're like, "Oh, I've heard this guy's good at this." People would just watch. And so, yeah, like Garnt said, by the end of it, I had like a group of 30 people and it,

It was kind of like, where they were all interacting and we were like, everyone was like talking shit. Everyone was like bantering. I kind of felt like a Spartacus with my like audience. It's like, are you not entertained? Let's get it. And I kept getting like perfect grips, perfect claws, perfect like, every single time I nailed the grip on it. - The tech was there. - I had the perfect tech every single time. And for 40 minutes, I didn't win.

And then I was asking everyone like, has anybody seen anybody win this? And they were like, no, no. There's like three machines around the whole menu. And they're like, I haven't seen anyone win. I'm like, this is bullshit. We should riot. We should rub it. We should just tip this thing over and take its contents.

And so the woman came to fell over one of the other machines and we were like, why? And then the guy started asking like, why can't we win this? This guy's been playing for like 50 minutes and we can't win. And they're like, it's easy, it's free to play. A bunch of kids have won them. And we're like, no one's won anything. What are you talking about? - The government is lying to us.

- They literally watched me for 50 minutes, nail it, nail it, nail it. And I didn't win a single fucking time, a $2 stress toy. So yeah, I was just kind of sad about that. - Did you end up winning? - No, I didn't, I didn't, I had to gave up 'cause eventually it was like, I got to actually like,

I'd asked somebody, a good friend, well not good friend, I'd asked somebody I knew, "Hey, can I have tickets please?" 'Cause the tickets were all sold out. So I was like, "I should go watch the game." 'Cause after 40 minutes, I was like, "That's enough, that's enough." - Jesus. I like how it was a free claw machine. I was like, and you were like, "I want a refund, give me a refund." - I want a refund on my time. That was fucked up. League of Legends, if you ever watch this clip, please consider sending me a free stress toy 'cause I needed it afterwards. That was unfair.

I bought so many white claws at that venue and they were like $15 white claws. - Oh my God. - I needed to get through that claw, man. I was so sad. - We also had our very first Geeks Plus office Christmas party the other day, which was a lot of fun. You missed the beginning of that. - I did, I did. - Yeah. So I think the highlight of that night, 'cause I've been thinking about it ever since that night was we had like a secret Santa, right?

So we had a secret Santa, everyone got some nice gifts and everyone, but I forgot there was someone who bought, what was that like fucking, sorry? Kendama, yeah, yeah. Like a kendama, like Japanese toy.

- There was a revolution that happened that night. - That opened my mind to be like, I didn't realize something so simple could be so much fucking fun. Holy shit. - It was like, I forgot who actually got it. - Yeah, that's right. Didis got it for a present. - Who gave it to Didis? - I think Anna did, right? - Oh, Anna did, yeah. - Anna gave it to Didis for the present. And it was just like a small little kendama and Didis was like, "What is this?"

Someone had to show them how to do it. By the end of the night, there was like at all times, at least seven people just in a semi-circle surrounding them being like, "Me next."

- Me next, come on, I got that. I got it, I can nail it. Now give it to me, you shit. I can do it. - It got so competitive. - It just made me realize, damn, kids in the 1950s had it fucking good, man. Holy shit, who needs a fucking iPad? Who needs fucking Fortnite when we have like a fucking Ken Dunbar? - When you get cracked at it, then it's no longer fun 'cause you can do it every time. - No, 'cause then you start to learn like the special tricks and those take like years to perfect. - I'm good, I'm good. - Honestly, I've been thinking about getting one myself.

- A literal children's toy. - It's actually so fun. - Because like initially you look at it. - You don't know, you haven't tried it. - I know what it is, I've used it. - Yeah, initially you look at it and you're like, this is fucking stupid. I mean, you try one, you're like, try it again.

I'm gonna try it again. I'm gonna try it again. And it's got like that perfect, I'm gonna call it like a gameplay loop of just like, just one more time. One more time. I'll get it this time. I'll get it this time. Joey is fucking cracked today because he, Joey showed us the strat and I think that's what made it like so much fun 'cause we could see what we needed to do. So the strat is just like, you have to pull up.

You have to pull the string up at like the perfect amount of like strength. - Directly vertical as well. - Like directly vertical and you need to fucking just like perfectly land it on the kendama. And so there were like four stages of difficulty. So there's like, if you know, here's what it looks like on screen, right? So you've got like three appendages

And each appendage has like a cup that is a different kind of size. And Joey did it like, so the smaller the size, the harder it is to land it on that cup. And Joey like-

Joey tried to do it. Joey showed us to do it on like the hardest difficulty setting. And everyone's like, that looks easy. I'm just gonna go for the hardest difficulty setting right off the bat. - Difficulty setting in a kid's toy. - Yeah. And then we like, I think a group of like fucking seven of us wasted two hours just watching this ball go fucking up and down and up and down. - It was so hype. - It was the hypest thing to happen. - When anyone got it the first time, everyone was just like, oh, oh.

- Literally, you showed me how to like spin it and I actually got it on my first try. - I taught people how to do it on like the spike, like to get the ball on the spike, which is the hardest one. And I did it first go and even I was surprised. I was like, oh shit. And then everyone was like, yo, let me try that. And for like the next two hours, everyone's just trying to do it. - What gift did you guys both give and receive?

- So I didn't find out that we were doing a secret Santa until literally like two hours before I was supposed to show up. Meilyne was like, by the way, we're doing a secret Santa. - I wasn't here for this 'cause I was on a plane. - Yeah. Connor was on his way back from the US, right? So Meilyne texted me like two hours before I was supposed to show up being like, by the way, we're doing a secret Santa. No pressure though. And I was like,

Why are you telling me this now? - You'll end the loop if you don't. - Yeah, exactly. So I was just like, well, fuck, I don't have time to go out to shop for something, let alone wrap it up. So I just got to like grab something from home. And so I just was like,

- All right, I guess if everyone's kind of doing like joke gifts or whatever and like not serious gifts, then I'll just give a joke gift. So I just grabbed my copy of TSF Monogatari by Shindowel and just wrapped that shit up and placed it. And then of course, out of all of the people who had to grab my gift. - There were about 40, 40? - Yeah, there was like 30 or 40 people there. I had a one in 30 to 40 chance

that Sydney would grab my gift and she grabbed my gift. - No way. - And I was like, this is- - Was it all just like a free for all? You just grabbed a gift? You didn't have a person? - We had a system. I don't know what the system is. - Maylee did it in the most arbitrary system I've ever seen in my life. - Yeah, we used up like 20 to 30 minutes figuring out a system. - Don't you just normally just go online and type everyone's names in then it tells you who you're buying a gift for?

- No, no, no, 'cause it was all like randomized. - Yeah, that's random though. Like you put everyone's name into a website and it'll be like, Garnt is your secret center. And then they'll get the same thing. - How I always used to do it was just like, for me it was always just like, okay, there's, you know, all the presents are at the bottom of the tree, right? And then you just go up and grab them. - No, it's more fun to know who you're buying for and then you don't know who's buying. - But then it doesn't become a secret Santa.

- No, it's secret 'cause you don't know who's buying for you. You never know who's buying for you. - So this, well, I don't know if it's different because this was called like white elephant. So I don't know if the rules are different. I mean, the only thing I know is Secret Santa. - White elephant. - White elephant is basically the same thing, but you just, it's kind of like more of like you buy a random gift

that you put into the pool and then like all the gifts are randomized and you kind of like pick from the pool. - You don't know who you're buying for, you don't know who you're getting it from. - So we came up with like, Meilyne being the mom came up with this like fucking overly complicated system where she was like, "How many people bought gifts? Everyone put your hands up right now. Okay, we're all going to assign you a random number." And everything like that. And so we spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out the system and Joey just goes,

- Wouldn't it be, what's stopping us from just everyone taking a random gift and Minion's like, "No, no, no, we cannot do that. We need the numbers. We need the numbers." - And so we all had to wait for Minion to write on each individual note fucking pad, just be like, write a number and then put it in a bag and then everyone pick it out and then calling the number. Like I was at the fucking ward office. I was just waiting for my number. I was just like, "Number 21." I'm just like, "Fuck." - She's trying to Japanify it. - She's just trying to Japanify it.

And I'm just like, oh my God. It's like, welcome to the Dia Japan DMV. This is exactly what it's like. - So Sydney got your gift? - Sydney got my gift and I was like, no, all right, come on Sydney, replace it with someone's because like, that's just, that's a lame present for you, right? Like you probably already have a copy of that. So she gave it to Masa instead. You know, he enjoyed it. And then I got,

I forgot who bought it for me. I got Sekihan, which is like the red rice. - Oh. - So in Japan, there's this thing which is called Sekihan's red rice. And traditionally you cook it, like parents cook it for their daughters when they hit puberty. - Oh, that's nasty. - Yeah. - Wait, wait, wait, what? - Think about that. - Wait, why? - Because they got their period for the first time.

- They give them red rice. - They give them red rice. - 'Cause they hit their period. - I'm not joking. You can look that shit up. That is a tradition that's been going on. And someone was like,

- That's like me taking my first shit and you just give me like brown rice. - Just give you curry. - Brown, just like, oh great. Oh no, my first fecal excretion. I get to have some food that reminds me of it. - Yeah. So I got that. I got a steaming pile of that. - Great. - That'll be great. - Congratulations on getting your period, Joey. - That'll be good. I'm sure it tastes great. - I'm now a fully grown woman. - Maybe it'll last until you get a daughter.

I was just holding on to it being like, I got this 30 years ago from a Christmas. - But holding onto this. - Is there any other like Japanese traditions like that? 'Cause I know there's like the coming of age kind of like ceremony, right?

- You just drink. - You just drink. - You just drink, you just get shit faced. - You do drink. - You do drink. - There's also a Shichigotan, which is like, it's this ceremony that you do when your child turns either three, five or seven. - Oh yeah, I've heard this. - And I don't know exactly what happens in it because I never did it. - So both childs are boys?

- I think it can be either gender, right? - Yeah. - There's a boy thing, right, as well. There's like a boy celebration something. I can't fucking remember what it is. - The penis festival. - Not the penis festival. What's the thing where you put the little fish out? The fish-

- Oh, Kodomo no hi, Koi nobori. That's there, that's children's day. - Oh, maybe children's day. - Yeah, that's May the 5th. And we, for some reason, we put up these like huge koi, like the koi fish decorations and we put them on like a top of a flag pole and it's just kind of as like a mock up flag. I don't know what the resemblance of that is, but- - There's a lot of holidays in Japan. - There's a lot of weird holidays like that in Japan. There's also Hinamatsuri, which is like the little dolls.

as well that get displayed like children as well. Yeah, I don't know. Lots of celebrations for children. - Which is ironic because Japan has a child population. - It's 'cause they have none. - They have none so they're like, "Oh." - It's just like, "We don't know what to celebrate." - Children. - It's a momentous occasion when someone's like, "Oh, you decided to have kids in Japan?" - I experienced something truly Japanese the other day. - Go on. - Right. - Gotcha.

- What? - Gacha. - Like just experienced that? - Like Gacha poem machine? - In the weirdest way ever. - Oh, okay. - So I rented a car and there's an option on the website that was called Gacha Rent a Car, where you just rent a car and you have no fucking clue what car it is.

And you only find out when you turn up. - That sounds epic. - Yeah, so I always rent the smallest car anyway, just 'cause I never have much luggage. And when I'm doing video shoots, I just need something that can get three people to a weird place that a train doesn't go to. So I always just rent like a small car, like a Toyota Yaris or something, right? Like a tiny car, fits four people, has room for bags and stuff.

And that's normally like 6,000 yen just for the car for the day. So it's like 45 bucks. So pretty cheap. - Not bad. - And then on the website I saw it was like, oh, but for 4,000 yen, so for 30 bucks basically, like even less than I think now, you can get a random car for the day. And I thought, well,

it can't be worse than the Yaris. Like it can't be worse than the smallest car. And so I was like, all right, fuck it. Yeah, I'll do it. I'm down. So I turned up and I won the Gatcha dude. - Did you get the SSR? - No, I didn't get SSR. I got a pretty decent. I got a fucking Toyota Prius when I turned up. - Okay. - And I was like, I'll take a Prius.

- I'll take a Prius. - That's kind of like a win-win, right? 'Cause if you're always going for the three star anyway, then it's only gonna go up from there, right? - Yeah, literally. I'm literally pulling for the most dog shit thing normally. So I'm like, hey, if I get- - But what's to say the three star is the lowest, right? What if you show up and it's like, here's your bicycle? - It could be. - It could be. And then the SSR is like a Lambo, right? - Yeah, I think the way it works is whatever, 'cause obviously people bring cars,

I think it's whatever car is just kind of like awkwardly kind of at that rent a car where someone else doesn't need it yet. So they don't transfer it. You just kind of get it. So I got to try to Prius and I was like, oh, that's fucking awesome. - Yeah, for less price as well. - Yeah, the Prius is normally a hundred bucks a day. So I was like, fucking, let's fucking go. - Dude, you got it. - But I did have to Google how to, I was in the car, the Prius, I'd never driven a Prius before and I couldn't fucking find the handbrake.

I was like, how the fuck do I get this thing, the handbrake? So I'm sitting in the thing and the guy's asking me like, oh, you know how to drive this, right? And I was like, yeah, it's a fucking car. I don't know how to drive it. - It's a fucking Prius. - Puts it in a drive, it's not moving.

- What the fuck? - Is it the foot pedal one? - Yeah, and I've never seen them on these before. - Oh really? - I've literally never been in a car where it's a foot pedal hand brake. And so I'm in the car and the guy, the car host with me and my cameraman, he's like, "Do you know how to get it out of the hand brake?" I was like, "I have no fucking clue." So I'm like, "Hey Google,

"How do I get the Prius out of handbrake on and off?" And then a YouTube video guys, "This is really easy. "This is just a pedal at the bottom. "It's a tiny little pedal. "You just push it in and it's the handbrake." And I was like, "Holy shit, I've never seen that before." - Yeah, my mom had a Prius signed on. - Oh, yeah. Have you ever seen that before? - I've never seen that before. - I've never seen it. It's this tiny little hidden thing next to like where the brake is. - Yeah, right. - And it's just- - It's like a third pedal next to the brake. - Yeah, tiny, tiny, like the fucking size of this. - Fuck.

you just push it in and that's the handbrake. And I was like, oh, okay. But it was great. I mean, it was so cheap, like with all the gas and stuff. I think the gas was only like, 'cause it's a Prius, it was only like 20 bucks for gas. So the whole day, the rental car was like fucking just 30 full of bucks. - Paid for itself, right? Paid for itself. - It's crazy how like, 'cause you know, obviously the trains are great in Japan, but there are a lot of occasions where a car makes way more sense.

And so we were going to Fuji Q, which you can get a train or a bus to pretty easily, but I just want to be able to go there. - I wish they would do that with all public transport. It's like, okay, so you want to get to this station,

- Take the train, Gacha. - Honestly? - You won't know which train you're going on. - I feel like we need more Gacha in every aspect of our lives. - I hope you can get there safe and sound though. - If there was like, let's say like on a plane, right? There's 30 economy seats, two premium, one business. And you can just be like, fuck it, Gacha. - Call the Gacha. - But it's a slightly more than economy. Like it's slightly more, you're like, ah, fuck it, there's a chance.

- Play the fucking restaurant. - Hey, they should do it. - Go to the restaurant and they give you the menu and be like, you can pay for less, but it's Gatchify. - The bottle of wine Gatcha. - Wine Gatcha. - You could get the Dom Perignon or you could get a Capri Sun. - Yeah, because one of my favorite restaurants do actually have like a Gatcha machine. - Oh yeah, you took me to it. - Yeah, yeah. - This is Gatcha when you leave. - Oh really? - There's this Italian restaurant and if you spend,

you know, a certain amount of money, you get free pools on this gacha machine and you can buy, you can win either like a free drink or like a free meal or a lot of other stuff. So I don't know. - There's a lot of izakayas that I've been to in Japan where it's like, it's kind of gacha, but it's like, they use like the dice rolling game. - I fucking love that game. That's the Yakuza game, right? - Yeah, the chinchiro, it's called. It's like two dice in a bowl. - Yeah.

like the one that's near kind of my house is like you, if you buy a beer, you can do chinchiro for it, which is where like, depending on what's thrown, you can either get like a bigger price for the same price or you can get a bigger price for free. Or if you get like two ones, then you have to like do five shots or it's like, you know, it's just like, it's just this kind of like cool, fun little method to be like, all right, let's see. - Is that the game they, 'cause I learned how to play this game after I watched,

- Yeah. - Is it the same game they play in Kaiji season two? That's just Chinchiro? - Yeah. - Oh, okay, okay. I love fucking, it's a good game. - Yeah, really, really good game. - I played it in the bar. Pete taught me how to play. I went to a bar in Japan and the owner would play Chinchiro with you. - Yeah, yeah. - And yeah, if you lose- - Did you win? - I lost sometimes. So if you lose, you had to do a shot of Jaeger. - Yeah. - And so like the bar owner lost like three times and did like three shots of Jaeger.

It's pretty fun. It's a good game. - Yeah, it's super fun. - You should Google how to play it. I could explain, but it takes like a few minutes to explain. - There's lots of local rules as well where it changes. - Basically roll high. That's basically it. Like get doubles and triples. - I went to like a craft beer place the other day that had a pretty cool system as well. So you can obviously buy, just buy like normal glasses and normal pints and everything like that. But they also have this system, this special system where

it's like one price for like a certain amount of drink, right? And then it's kind of like a tier system. So this drink will always be this one price, but if you can finish this drink, you can order more of the same beer, but then the next beer you get is gonna be a bigger size and volume. - Oh, I've put you in a place like this. - And it gets to a point where it gets like a comically big size of volume, like a fucking bucket by the end. That's like the final tier.

I just, I remember me and Cindy Wentz there and we were just like,

- Let's try and do it. Let's try and complete the game. And it's, I wanna take someone that makes that sometime just to see like, what if we take a Brit there? What if we take a fucking- - Take a German there. - Like a German there, see how far we get. Because we got to like the second to last tier and we were like fucking sloshed. - What was the vessel? - What was the vessel? - Yeah, what was the vessel? - It was like- - Are we talking like a boot or? - Yeah, what was it?

- You know when you see like some of that, like, you know that comically big wine glass that's just like, oh, I'm only gonna have one glass of wine. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That was like the second to last stage. - Holy shit. - And then the final stage was just a straight, it was just like a fucking glass bucket almost. Like it was like kind of like a yard basically. - I think there's a few places that do that gimmick in Japan. - Yeah. - 'Cause it's like, I've been to one like that in Roppongi as well.

- We should do it to see out of the three of us who can complete it. - I did beer last time I went and I think that was a mistake. 'Cause like by the second one or third one, I was really full. - Yeah.

I can't drink this bucket. I can't drink out of this. It's not even fun to drink anything. It just becomes not fun. - It just becomes a chore. - I'd rather have a bunch of small glasses the way everyone has been doing for a very long time. But it is fun for a one-off. - Yeah, I mean, I like going to places where they kind of like, they kind of just gamify something, whether it's a fucking gacha or- - There's so much gacha shit here.

- So much gacha stuff in daily life. - Yeah. - Like even like you go to Akihabara, you can play those gacha machines that like 10, 20 bucks. - Yeah. - And you might get something, but normally you get something kind of. - Yeah. - Yeah. - One thing I've never understood is have you ever like, you know, gone to like an anime convention, right? And you know, they have like those special mystery boxes, right? - Yeah. - That's one thing I like,

- That's one thing I've never gotten and I don't understand why people would get them because do you think they actually put like good gifts in there? - So I think it originated, it's a new year's thing in Japan, right? It's how it started. And they're normally actually pretty generous. Like it's meant to be like a lot of the times you have to book these

and they're limited. - A lot of the times as well, like especially some of the more expensive ones, like the ones that you have to book, like some of the stuff in these lucky, they're called . But like in this , like there's a lot of stuff where you can only get it in the lucky bag. Like it's not sold anywhere else. It's like a special like package, but like you won't know what it is until you get it. - Like I got one last time from AmiAmi, it was 500 bucks and I definitely got,

more than $500 worth of figures in the box. - The Pokemon one, for example, that they do at the Pokemon Center every year, you have to book that shit like four months in advance. - Jesus. - I didn't realize you had to book this shit. - Of course you do, it's Japan. - All the good ones you have to book, but you also, generally it's more of like a celebratory thing than a let's make a lot of money. It's like, let's just- - It's like happy new year, it's a cool shit. - Yeah, happy new year. 'Cause you know, new year is one of the biggest things in Japan. And then I think,

When the American cons saw it, they were like, "Money!" - Is this a money making scheme? - 'Cause remember, in AX, there was always that one booth, I can't remember which one it was, there was that one where they would make the walls were the lucky boxes. Do you remember these? - Yeah. - At Anime Expo, they just have a booth that was made out of these lucky boxes. - Yeah, I remember that. - And dude, you just, they've never had anything good in there. Never, never. - They're good for content, that's about it.

- Even then like Moody and I edited a video of, I think with a heart on unboxing one of them. And it's just the saddest thing ever. And it was like 50 bucks. Nothing good in it. He gave me like a squid game plush that wouldn't shut up. It was like a tiny one. Then you press it and it goes, whatever the fucking side. I was like, oh my God, this is so shit.

- It's funny. - Oh man. What's normal to do in Japan for like New Year's? What's like the tradition here? - The tradition is to- - You have to get to like a temple, right? - Yeah, temple. That's usually a New Year's day.

But like for me, like this year I'm going back to my grandma's place up North. 'Cause like, it's very much like, it's weird like Christmas and New Year's- - You mean you already went to your grandma's place? - Yeah, I did. - It's the new year, it's the new year, Joey. - Fantastic, I loved it. Yeah, so I think it's interesting 'cause like I thought about this is like Christmas and New Year's how it's celebrated in the West is like the complete opposite to how it's celebrated in Japan.

Because it's like in the West, it's like Christmas is for the family and then New Year's is where you get sloshed with your mates. But in Japan, it's the opposite. In Christmas is like a couple's thing or you get sloshed with your single friends. I've been there. And New Year's is when you go back home and you spend it

with your family. - Right. - Right? And so like, at least for me, like the tradition is like, usually I go back to my grandma's place like a few days before New Year's Eve. And then we do like a big, like final cleanup of the house to kind of like, you know, not to like physically clean up the house, but also just like to refresh ourselves, like, you know, for the upcoming year. - That's what they say. Yeah, you come in and clean my house. - Yeah. - It's just an excuse for my grandma to be my clean my house bitch. So I go there, I cleaned the house and then,

we have this thing called Toshikoshi Soba, which is you have this bowl of soba as your final meal.

And for the year, not in general. - You will be put down. - Yeah, it's a toshikoi soba. And I don't remember what the exact reasoning behind why you eat the soba is, but there's like some kind of like traditional reasoning behind why you would do it. So then you would eat that and then the New Year's happens and then you go to the temple first thing in the morning usually to do like your first prayers and stuff like that.

And then you eat osechi, which is like a type of traditional Japanese, like huge fucking platter of like, I think like 50 different things, like small little different things. Like imagine what you get. - I think I've seen this to be able to book it. I think I've seen it. - Yeah, usually you book it. I mean, people who are like pros just like make it themselves.

- But like, think of like, you know, like the breakfast at a deal con. Think of that by like four times the size. And you share it among your entire family. And it's really good, but it's like, it's definitely something you can't have. - Is it like the chocolate boxes where there's like, everyone likes a certain one chocolate and everyone's like, can I have, yo, can I have that? - Yeah, can I have like that, that, that, and then I'm good. - I don't want the fucking squid cum.

I'm good. And there's always like, there's always like two or three that are just like untouched. It's like, I'm a big fan. Looks nice. It's just there for variation. Help yourself.

- I feel like there are some free items that people just buy just for like, oh, it's just because everyone else bought it before. - Yeah, do you have like Quality Street in Australia? - What's that? - Okay, fuck, that's a British thing. - Quality, like quality street. Do you have a quality street? - Is it called right? - Yeah, it's called a quality street. - I've heard of it before. - It's like a kind of like a just a different type of chocolate. - Right. - It's a lot of different types of chocolates. - Is it the different colored ones? - Yes, there's like a triangle that's

- Yeah, I've seen it before, I think, yeah. - And I think there was, I saw an episode of QI that was like, everyone, the favorite pieces that everyone likes, they purposely put less in the box of.

which is fucking is cruel. It's cruel. - Is that true? - Yeah. - Motherfuckers. - Yeah. - Mom. - Yeah. - They swindled bamboozled lights. - I was like, that's fucked up. - Bro, that's just a waste of food, man. You could have more chocolate if people are eating them. - They don't wanna put the good stuff in. The good stuff's expensive. - Damn. - It's annoying. - They probably do that with,

- Yeah, they probably do that with like a bunch of different ones, right? I'm sure. - Yeah, I think so. Do you have celebrations? - Yeah. - Okay, you have those. - We have those, yeah. - I'm sure any American non-British people are like, "What the fuck?" - Celebrations, there's only like two of the best ones. - Okay, wait, wait, what is it? What is the best two in the celebrations?

- I actually like most of the celebrations. - I like most of them, but the Malteser one is the best. - Maltesers? - It's like a chocolate Malteser one. - What chocolates are in there again? - I gotta Google this. - This is so British now. - Yeah, we're going to British chocolates now. - Okay, but it might be different 'cause do you guys have cherry ripe?

- What the fuck is that? - Okay, that's Australian. - What the fuck is that? - That's the best one. - What? - Yeah, see Kai knows what's up. - What is it? Explain that to me. - Cherry Ripe is this chocolate bar that has like kind of, I don't even know what the hell it is. It's this cherry flavored something inside of it. It's like cherry chocolate.

I actually don't know what it is. I don't care what it is, it's delicious. - Yeah, okay, so in British celebrations, it's kind of like a box of different kind of famous chocolate bars, just like in very, very tiny candy form. So we have Maltesers, Mars bars, Twix, Snickers, Milky Way, Bounty, Galaxy and Galaxy Caramel. And I think Galaxy is the best.

- Yes. - Nah, dude, Maltesers teasers are the GOAT, dude. You gotta have one of these. If you come to the UK at some point, I'm sure we, 'cause we eat it outside, but it's a very, very festive thing as well. People buy them. - Okay. - They're so fucking good. - Is it festive? - Yeah.

They advertise hard for the holidays, dude. I don't know if this is a white people thing, but they're in like every white person's home. - They must be a white people thing, 'cause I didn't even know that. I didn't know that was a festive thing. - Yeah, after talking to Garnt so much, I'm like, "Ah, I have to reframe how I view the UK." I'm like, "No, no, it's not the UK. It's the white people." - It's the white UK. - It's the white people.

'Cause I only have experienced the UK through the lens of white people. 'Cause I'm obviously white. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of like me with Easter chocolates where I- - Ah, fuck that. Easter's overrated.

- I like the Easter chocolates. I don't know why. You could have like a Cadbury's milk bar, milk chocolate bar. And I'm like, I will buy the egg version. Eating it in egg form, I don't know, just makes it taste so much better. I don't know why. - There's something about like slowly breaking off the pieces. - It is, it is, right? - I get that. - I don't know why this is a thing, but this is so fucking British now I'm saying out loud. Often when you buy these Easter eggs in the UK, they would come in these boxes. And for some reason they always come with mugs.

You would get an Easter egg that would come with a mug that was branded like if it was Cadbury's, it would be a mug, a very cheap mug with the Cadbury's logo on it. And this was a thing. Did you have this in Australia? So this was like, you'd always get

- The chocolate bar and a mug. Do you remember this? - I remember this, yeah. - And then I realized I like, oh wait, I just remembered in university, everyone would bring mugs and stuff. And I swear half the fucking mugs were just Easter egg mugs. 'Cause they're the cheapest, shittest mugs that your parents wouldn't mind letting you take to university. - Right, right. - Do you remember seeing these now all the time in university? - Now they were money.

- Now that you remind me, I'm just having a lot of fucking- - Yeah, the wave. I remember I see the fucking Cadbury and Kit Kat logo on these fucking mugs all the time. Dude, it looks so shit. Let me pull it up. Muda, can you pull this up? It looks so pathetic. - I can imagine. - Easter eggs mugs. - Oh those? It's those ones. It's those ones.

- Oh, just saying that. - It would come like this. It would come like this, right? It's like, it would be the egg in the mug or like adjacent to it. And this was like everywhere. - I've never seen that. - Yeah, it was everywhere. Like every single fucking chocolate bar did this. It was insane. And now I think about it, I'm like, why the fuck do we want so many mugs? This is too many mugs. - For the tea. - Yeah, but I already have mugs.

- That's the thing about every like British home. There is always an overabundance of mugs. - Oh, so right. And there's the nice mugs and these are the shit is the shit. And if you ever go to like a government building or you ever go to a hospital and or any kind of thing and you get a cup of tea, guaranteeing it's coming out in a mug, the exact same quality as this one. - Thank God. - 'Cause they're like the replaceable mugs. - Yeah. - 'Cause like the actual good mugs, no one gets those. No one's allowed to drink them. - Once you're finished with that,

- Probably, they'd probably just throw it away. - Did you ever have like, did your household ever had like a soft tier list of like mugs in your home? You know, you have like the cheap ones, but when you like want to treat yourself, you have like your personal mug. - There was like two or three mugs where my dad was just like, those are my fucking mugs, don't touch it. - Because it was like some mugs were like China, like with some nicer quality, but they were still mugs. And whenever I used it, my mom wanted a cup of tea. She's like, why do you keep using the mug I like?

- It's my mug. I'm like, I thought you weren't gonna have a tea. So I took it. I just thought it was okay. 'Cause it was such a good mug. - I swear to God, every British person has like- - Everyone has a favorite mug. - Has that one mug where they become like Sheldon from "Big Bang Theory." It's just like, don't use this mug. This is my mug.

- Every British person is like this, 'cause everyone drinks so much fucking tea or coffee, you need a mug. You need the goat mug. And I like ones that are like, I've come to become very fond of like deep, very like cylindrical mugs, not the ones that like,

curve up just a fucking cylinder, chop it off, boom, big mug. I hate the ones that like curve up like those ones, they're shit. - Like teacup looking ones. - Yeah, I'm not a big fan of those. I just want this like literally a perfect cylinder, just chop it in half, boom, that's the mug, give it to me. - I like the kind of like,

- Yeah, they're pretty like that. - Yeah, like this one actually. - Like the kind of dumpy ones. - Literally like this one, maybe like a little bigger. Kind of feels like I'm drinking from the medieval ages or something. - No, no. - What are you talking about? That's not medieval.

- I mean, some of the designs I have in my house. Also my mom has so much fucking- - Yeah, your dude- - Your mom has a collection. - Your mom's house feels like a Looney Tunes accident waiting to happen. - It is. - You go, you walk in and you're like, "I can't touch anything." If I touch a wall, everything will break. - It's like a Foley artist nightmare. - And there's members doing VR in the living room.

- With this fucking China all over the wall. - Yeah, so to explain, my mom, like for my entire life has, let's say had this hobby of collecting kind of like antique, kind of like very, there's a word for it now because it's kind of become a trend. - It's come back in fashion now. - Yeah, it's kind of like very bougie kind of like tea cups and China and stuff like that. So my entire life,

I felt like I was surrounded by Jenga pieces. And if I would make the wrong move, then the entire house would come falling down. That's how I felt. And I kind of just got used to it until people started coming around my house and everything like that. - What's up with the mugs? - And people were like, "What's up with all this China, man? "What's up with that?" - Whenever you would come home drunk, you must be just fucking sweating.

- Because it's like a mission impossible, like dodge the lasers thing. I was just like, I need to get to my room, but there are mugs everywhere. - Thank God the earthquake, UK doesn't have earthquakes. - Exactly. - Oh, this would not work. - Every game over, dude. - This would not work in Japan at all. I don't think like, I don't know how I can properly verbalize just,

how many precious antiques and mugs. - It goes up the stairs as well. - She has literally filled up every wall with nice fine china, like plates. We don't have posters. I never grew up with having posters or paintings on my wall. My walls were filled with plates.

and china glasses okay that's that's what my walls for uh and yeah by complete by complete i don't know if it was coincidence or nice like luck they've come into fashion so she's uh ended up being like she's like selling she's able to like turn this hobby and uh turn it into like kind of like a hobby where she can make money out of because holy shit people people buy this for like

a fucking ridiculous price in Asia. - Oh yeah, yeah. - I'm hoping none of my mom's customers watch this because they buy it for like a very, very high price. I'm like, motherfucker, I saw you bought this for 50 pence at the car boot sale. - Spline demand, man, spline demand. - I'm just like.

- When there's demand, man. - It's like a lifetime's worth. I could see my lifetime's worth, my mom going to car boot sales, buying this shit for like 50p, a pound a piece. - It's like, that's not gonna come back. - And like selling it for like God knows the amount of profit margin on that, man. - Jesus Christ. - Good on you, mom. - Inflation. - Yeah, good on you, mom, but please keep selling them because I want my house back. I want to walk in my house and not feel like I'm going to break something. - Jesus. - But yeah.

- It was certainly weird growing up with that kind of environment. Okay, actually this is minding me about a totally different topic, okay? Decorating a room, right?

My house was always decorated with, as I said, like teacups and plates or something like that. So I never really got to like, let's say, I never really got to a point where I knew what to do with decorating my own room. I never had posters. I never had like different things in my room to like show my own personality. What like, I'm guessing you put a lot of like music posters in your room and stuff like that, right? - I don't even know how to get posters.

- What do you mean? - How do I get them? - What do you mean? Just go to stores. - I don't have money. Where are you getting this money from? - They were like three bucks at most. - No, the good post was like five pounds in the UK. - Oh, no, no, you don't get the good ones. You get the shit ones. - So I only ever put shitty posters up when it came like a magazine for free. And I think I also like- - Yeah, that's where you start off. - Yeah, I think I got a free,

a poster of Halo in like Halo Reach or something. And I put that shit on the wall. - Did you ever have trouble like decorating your room in university? - I didn't decorate my room. - You didn't at all? - No, it was like a serial killer's room. I had nothing on the walls, nothing. In my head I was like, why would I decorate? Like I'm leaving this room in a year.

- Oh, that's true, that's true. But I've seen some university rooms and they are like filled to the fucking brim with like different stuff. And I was like, how the fuck are you affording this? - I think I never decorated, ever. - I had like one poster and that was it. I think I bought one poster just so like if anyone came in here, they wouldn't think they were going into a serial killer's room. - What was the poster? - I think it was like a fucking Scarface poster. I was like,

I was just like, let me buy something from like the university fair. And I was like, what's something I can buy that's cheap that would also make me feel like a normal person. Scarface is that poster that's on the brink of like, I'm a normal person, but I'm a little bit quirky. - He was just waiting for the Wolf of Wall Street to come out. So he put a different poster up. - 'Cause I was like, well,

I can't put anime on my wall. That's out of the question. That just means I'm just gonna be shunned from every social group in university. This was back when anime wasn't accepted. So I was like, how do I, let me pretend to be a normal human.

Let me scientifically work this out. What is something I can put on my wall that's like, oh, I got a little bit of personality, but I'm a little bit quirky. - It's either Scarface or Pulp Fiction. - That was the two things. It was just like either Scarface or Pulp Fiction. And that was it. - I just always wanted to spend my money on food. So I thought I'm not gonna decorate my room, it's dumb. I'm also like, if I'm moving like every year, what's the point in decorating? I just put a PC in my room.

- Did you move every year? - Yeah, every single year of university I moved. - Oh shit. - Oh wow. - Well, 'cause the first year I was in student dorms and in the UK, I don't know if I was in your university, in mine, you only like to be in student dorms for one year and then you had to find your own accommodation. And then obviously 'cause like, you know, some roommates dropped out and some roommates, you know, whatever, like people changed. So I just always moved every year. I was only in university for three years.

- I was living at home, so I was just decorated my own room. - I had this weird conversation with Sydney the other day, 'cause Sydney was like, Sydney found this fucked up movie, "Iceberg" tier list kind of thing.

- I think I've watched that. - You've watched that? - I think I've watched it. - Is that like the two and a half hour one on YouTube? - No, she just found like the image of it, right? And I come home and she was like, "I'm thinking about like going through this iceberg." I was like, "Sydney, do not fucking do that." Because I don't really like horror movies and I'm not really like, I don't really have like, I have morbid curiosity, but I've never, I've been,

- But you also have a sense of reason. - I also have a sense of reason as well, but I ended up, I looked at the Iceberg tier list and I ended up realizing that I've seen a lot of these movies. And the reason because of that is because when I went to university, there was a phase where people like,

like your roommates, you always knew that fucking one guy that would try to like show you the most fucked up thing that they could find, whether it be something like a Serbian film or other like things they found on the internet. - Or something on like Reddit 50/50 or something. - Yeah, and Sydney had just like never experienced that. So I was like realizing, is this a me thing that happened in my face? - I have that fucked up friend too. - It's either in high school or in college. - It was in high school for me. - Yeah, it was in high school for me. It was like that one kid that was just like,

Do you know what Reddit 50/50 is? - They're trying to like meat spin everyone. - Yeah, meat spin everyone, lemon party everyone. - It made me wonder if it's still a phase, 'cause I think it became a phase because of shit like, you know, two girls, one cup and everything like that. So I'm like, dude- - The good old days. - It's like anyone in university now, anyone in college or high school, is this still a thing? - For sure. - Are you guys still showing each other two girls, one cup? - As long as there's the internet, someone wants to be a little edgelord.

and get else involved, right? That's how life is. - God, I saw some of the most traumatic shit in high school just 'cause of that one fucking friend. - Yeah, come on. - To that one friend who is not a friend anymore, fuck you. - He's like, you've literally scarred me for life with some of the shit that you've shown me. I do not want to like- - Oh no, oh no. - It's horrible. - Oh God. - Yeah. - I'm ready to like...

- Fucking fattened myself up for Christmas. - Yeah, I'm gonna gain a lot of weight on purpose. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna gain so much weight. I just eat and drink like a motherfucker on the holidays. I just don't stop. I become like no face in that one fucking film. I haven't even seen that movie, so I don't even know what happened in there. - Wait, you've never seen Spirited Away? - No. - What? - No. - What?

- Wait, are you actually serious? - Yeah, I've never seen it. - I like how you talked about that with such confidence and familiarity. I'm like- - Oh, I've seen that fucking- - I'm like fucking no face. - I've seen that gif like a billion fucking times. - Have you actually never seen it? - Never seen it. - That's shocking. - Yeah, for a long time I just lied and said I did. 'Cause I was just like- - I think I remember you saying you have told me. - Probably, probably, 'cause I was just kind of like, ugh. It's like saying you haven't watched Death Note. It's like, why the fuck haven't you watched Death Note? It's like, well, I just don't care to.

but I've watched Death Note. - I remember you saying you have watched Death Note. - I think I lied.

- I think one time we had a conversation where you were like, "Oh yeah, Princess Mononoke, it's so dark." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah." But I've never watched Princess Mononoke either. - Have you seen any Ghibli film? - I've never watched My Neighbor Totoro either. - Totoro is fine. - Why is that the one that I'm- - Because that's purely driven off nostalgia. - The only Ghibli film I've watched, and this is within the past five years I only watched as well, before that I hadn't even watched any, it was like Howl's Moving Castle. - Oh yeah, that's a good movie. - And Kiki's Delivery Service. - Okay. - That was kind of mad.

- It's all right. I like it. - So yeah, I never watched "Spirited Away." - Okay, if you like "Howl's Moving Castle," you'll like "Spirited Away." - Yeah? - Did you like "Howl's Moving Castle?" - Yeah, I liked "Howl." - Okay. - "Howl" was the goat. - Yeah, "Howl" was the goat. - Did you watch the dub of that? - "Howl" was the goat. Yeah, I watched the dub. - Yeah, Christian Bale, right? - That's Christian Bale? - Yeah, it's Christian Bale. - Yeah, it's Christian Bale. - Fuck off, that's Christian Bale. - What the fuck? He's the goat, man. What can't he do? What can't Christian Bale do?

- I swear to God, man, he does everything. - I love those moments where you're just like talking about a movie that you love and then someone says like, "Yeah, did you know he's voiced by that guy?" And it's just like,

- I had no idea that was Christian Bale. - Well, to be fair, it's really fucking hard to tell. - He's so fucking good at disappearing into the character. - Yeah. - He is. - Like he's a Welshman, right? And you can never tell that he's a Welshman. That's why he has like a different accent every- - I think he was born in Wales then immediately moved to London, I think, or America. I remember he spoke about it once. - Right. - Yeah, I think he was born in Wales. - It's funny though how so many people just like, "Yeah, he's American, right?" - Well, I mean, he's so fucking good at appearing American.

- Yeah, have you watched Chainsaw Man? - Yeah, I'm nine episodes in. I like it so far. It's something, man. I'm kind of glad that we finally got a show that was hyped and so far has been following through. Like every episode is a delight. It's fucking weird. - It's just insane, every episode is like a movie budget. - It's a lot. - It's crazy. - The fact that there's a different ending every time as well.

- It's kind of insane. I am blown away. - Anime 2023 is just fucking sweaty. - Yeah. - It's like, oh fuck, we gotta live up to that? - It's kind of crazy. Even if I wasn't a fan of the show, it's like you watching it, you're like, you just can't not be amazed by it. Like even if you don't enjoy it. - It's fucking insane. - Yeah. - The story is crude sometimes, but I like it. I think it's fun. - I mean, I like it.

- It's obviously a bit edgier than like a lot of other shows. - For sure, for sure. It feels like edgy on purpose. - Yeah, but I don't feel like it's like edgy for the sake of being like edgy, which we see with like some other shows, you know, where it's just like, oh, this is the show that's aimed towards 15 year olds that, you know, want to think they're watching something adult. - No, it's clearly just like Fujimoto just being like, I don't give a fuck if people like this or not. Like this is just how I'm gonna make my story and how I'm gonna make my characters. - Yeah. - Yeah, I was kind of,

at one point in episode nine, the episode before ends with the scene and then they reuse the scene in the next episode, but they reanimate it very slightly, entirely all over again. And I'm like, okay, now this is, that's too much. That's just a waste. Like this is insane, but this is like what? And it's all insane animation. Like it's like, I don't understand why

how much money or time power, can't say money again, I got in trouble. Like the amount of time, money and effort put into this must be another level. Like the amount of talent that must've gone into this is insane. - What blows my mind is when people like look at something and think good animation, they think, oh, the fight scene was like good. Or they think of the fight scene, like "Chainsaw Man" just looks good in like every single second. - The talking scenes. - Oh my God, it's so fucking, every shot is so like dynamic, right?

It's like, you know sometimes you watch an anime, it's just like always like, oh, basic shot for shot for shot. There's a way that always feels like there's some thought and to put some thought put into how this looks on film. - It's like what angle have we not put a camera at yet? Let's do it from there.

- I know you've read the manga, but you need to watch the anime. - I am watching it. - Oh, you are watching it? - Yeah, of course. - I kind of have to. I think I would actually be hung and quartered if I didn't watch it. - The anime is so good that I'm like, I really don't want to touch the manga. I'm like, this is insane.

- I know, I bet it is, but like watching the anime, I'm like, there's no way- - I think this first season is only gonna end halfway. - Probably, probably. - Yeah, I think the manga is as good as the anime. - I agree. - I've been doing something like a little quirky. I've been watching the anime then reading the manga.

- Shut the fuck up Garnt, don't fucking say that shit to me. Why the fuck would you do that? Why would you do that? Why? - Because why did that? Because anime is my medium of choice, if I have a choice and the anime is doing an amazing production. But I think Tatsuki Fujimoto, the mangaka is an absolute fucking genius. - I agree. - He uses manga in a way that no other manga artists I think has done. He has such a unique way of conveying

like his ideas and emotions. And it's a way that is impossible to replicate in any other medium. - He's able to draw it in a way that looks and feels cinematic, which I think is really hard to do in the medium of manga. Like, because, you know, again, it's like a lot, like with a lot of anime, it's like you have your bog standard, like flow of panels and like, you know, maybe every now and then there'll be an artist that will be like, Oh, I'm going to draw outside of the panel.

literally outside of the panel to kind of add like dynamic to it. But like Fujimoto just kind of draws it in a way where it's just like,

this flows in a really smooth way, but it's also a really strange feeling at the same time. - Like now that I've like read, like what's been adapted so far in the manga, I'm like, how the fuck does Tatsuki Fujimoto have better comedic timing in the manga, which has no comedic timing than in the anime, right? The job he's done with this, like the way he's like paneled and laid out his page,

- The scenes in the manga, there are like some funny scenes that are like way funnier I think in the manga than in the anime. And it's just because of the way that he's kind of like timed it really well with how like you turn the page and stuff like that. - Do you have any examples that you might be able to think of? - I can't think of off the top of my head. - I just wondered if you did. - Yeah, there's a few things that I think have like are impossible to translate to the anime. Like one thing I can think of is,

how can I say this without spoiling anything that happens? So there is a weapon that involves a nail, right? If you've, if you're like you've- - Nine, I'm on episode nine. - You're on episode nine, you should have seen it then. There's a weapon that involves a nail.

- Maybe. - It's like a demon kind of thing, right? - A nail as in this nail? - As in- - Doom, doom, doom. - Okay, all right. - What's this nail? - This nail. I've seen something that involves this. I've seen something that involves this. - No, you have. - Really? - If you're up to episode nine, you have. - Yeah, you definitely have. - Have I? - Yeah. - Maybe. - Did you think it was a sword?

- Maybe it was a sword. Maybe you could, I fucking, I don't know. All right, okay, we'll carry on. - Yeah, yeah, but there's a scene where he uses this weapon and obviously it's a weapon that's like infused with the demon, right? - Yeah. - So there's this like really cool panel where like to use this weapon, you have to have a contract with a devil. That's what every weapon is, right?

And so how he portrays that this weapon is controlled by this devil is that you have like the normal panels and that's how it is throughout the entire manga, every comic book. And then when he uses this, when he uses his weapon, a finger just appears from that, goes from like outside of like the box panels, right? And so it kind of like flicks from out of frame into frame. And you're like, oh.

"Oh, that's really fucking cool to be like, "Oh, there's something that's being like called out "from like outside this world and shit like that." And I'm like, "You can't really do that in anime 'cause it's, "you know, we don't have boxes and shit like that." But it's like small things like that where he really thinks about how do I like, how do I do something that is really cool that only manga can do? And he does this in not just like- - You've convinced me. - Not just Chainsaw Man, but pretty much

Everything I've read from him, he does something unique to manga that I've not seen anywhere else. And that's true especially if you've not read, I would highly recommend "Goodbye Eri" which is like a one-shot, you can read that within like an hour. - That is so genius. - Yeah, and I was like, I've never read something that is just like so, it's a masterpiece in my mind, so fucking genius. - I mean, "Chainsaw Man" I've loved it so far. - "Chainsaw Man" is great. - I think it,

- Yeah, it's crazy to see, 'cause again, we've had hyped up shows, but I don't think we've had a show that's been this hyped up in so long. - I don't think ever. - I don't think ever. - Yeah, and yeah, it's insane to see it kind of meeting it and kind of crushing it.

- 'Cause I was a bit worried 'cause I remember watching like the first six episodes. I'm like, this is cool, but it's kind of like your standard affair right now. - From episode like five, six onwards, it definitely got way more exciting. And it's been like so fun watching it. But also I'm sad that I have to wait every week. - I'm sad that we're gonna have to wait for a season two. - Yeah. - Hopefully. - Is the manga finished?

- Part one of the manga is finished. So he's currently writing. So he went on a little bit of a break after part one and now he's starting up part two again. - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - I did get a chuckle out of,

I guess it's not really a spoiler, but at one point they're like, the name of a demon means it's strength or something. And they're like, what's the scariest thing? A chainsaw and a gun. I was like, what? I was like, what? You have this like really intensely, like really edgy built up world and they're like, gun strong dude. - Gun strong, gun strong.

- I was like, all right. That stuff doesn't really spoil anything. It's just a funny bit of like, I was like, what?

- I thought things just get more and more intense in the manga as it goes on though. - I've never watched the show and actually said what the fuck out loud so many times. Like just shit happens, you're like, what the fuck? - God, and the second half of the manga is just like that on steroids. - I believe it, I believe it. - Like the last two or three volumes are just insane. I'm just like, I don't,

- I'm very happy. I'm very excited. Is it 12 episodes they're doing or? - 12 episodes. - Fuck man. - I know, I know. - Bring back the 24. - I know. Bring back the two core. - Oh, hey, I'll take the same ending. Let's just get a few more episodes in. Come on, that's like a whole episode of animation we can do. Come on, let's get more episodes. I don't need the ending every time. It's fine.

- Yeah, I really hope we don't have to wait too long for another season because it's- - I think we are. I think we are. - It's been a while since I've watched a show and I'm like, "12 episodes, that's it? That's it? 12 episodes?" - I've never been bricked up through the entire show like that before. Like from start to finish. Like the food, I'm rock solid when they show food in the show. The food looks so good. - That's the Mapper Effect right there. - I've never been more fucking bricked up watching a hand holding scene. - Dude, right? - Holy fuck.

- Fuck man, like talk about like awakening something in you. I'm like, I thought this was a meme. I thought hand holding hentai was a meme and they actually fucking made it a thing. - Every character has awoken something in everyone. - I'm impressed that they've managed to make a character who is that horny likable.

I figured anyone that horny in real life would, sorry, in any show, normally if a character is just super horny, it's like Meliodas. I fucking hate them. They fucking suck. - But that's the thing that, that's another thing with Fujimoto that I think is genius is that like, not just "Chainsaw Man," but everything he's written, every character is an absolute piece of shit. But he's somehow able to turn these absolute fucking detestable piece of shit characters

- Well, it's like in real life, right? Most people are gray. Like most people do bad things, so they do good things, right? So it's like, if you can kind of channel that and I feel like that's where it's doing that great. Like it so far changed the man. All the characters don't feel like they good, bad, hee hee tee hee. It's like, all right.

- You know, they're a good person, but maybe they got a lot of problems. Maybe they're a bad person, but they do some good things. - I've also seen a lot of anime where they just like, they try and make like a purposefully shitty character, right? To be like, oh, okay, you know, all the edgy people are gonna enjoy this one. And then it just ends up being extremely annoying. - Yeah, I mean, this could easily be like a Mirai Nikki situation where it's like, ha ha edge,

and good swords. - Haha, everyone is shitty, lol. - Everyone's horny and we're all gonna stab each other and it's like, all right, well. - It's kind of like, I think he strikes that perfect balance where he, pretty much every character in "Change the Man" is kind of like an asshole. - Yeah, absolutely. - But it's like an entertaining asshole.

- Well, 'cause they're all trying to survive, right? So it's like, how would you act if you had to survive in this world that is very fucked up. - Yeah, like just like, I remember the scene where they were all like trapped in the building together and it's just fucking chaos. And I was just like, it feels like watching a scene from "Always Sunny in Philadelphia." - The gang tries to escape. - The gang tried to escape from a certain- - That sounds like a really good edit. That sounds like a good edit.

'Cause it was just like, why am I having such a good time just seeing these guys try to survive? - And they're all bitching and complaining and whining. - Yeah, they're in like a life and death situation and they're just like, it's just fucking bands, man. - Just when Denji's like, "I'm going to sleep." He's just like, "I fucking love that scene." He's like, "Bro."

It was that scene where one of the girls like freaking out and then Powell just like starts like burst, like full on burst out laughing. And I was just like, what?

- It's a fucking riot, man. - So good. - Yeah, it's been a long time since I've been this excited for an anime. - I just hope they don't give me a reason to ever dislike the show. So far, I'm pretty happy. - To be honest, nah. I mean, even the second half, as chaotic as it gets, it's just so intense and insane where it's just like, of course this is how it ends. - And I think the complaints about CG that I've seen on Twitter are so fucking bad.

- Oh no, dude, there's like barely any CG. And then when it is, it's like, it's good. - I think the most awkward looking shots were like in episode one. And then like they still use CG in like other fights and it just, they've managed to blend it a lot better. But even in episode one, it was like, it looked a bit dodgy here and there, like a few shots, but it didn't look bad.

- I've seen bad CG. - I've seen Exxon. - I've seen Exxon, that's bad. - Just watching it, I was like, this would be such a different show if it was set in America. - Wait, what do you mean?

- Okay, very, very quick kind of, I guess, light spoiler, not really. There's like a whole scene where there's a bunch of guns involved. And I was like, they were like, "The superpower is gun." I was like, "Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense." And I was like, "This is an America. This would be really different by now. This would be a really different show."

- Every American would be like, my superpower is guns. - There was literally like a scene in the video, he's like, everything, gun beats everything. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of true. - Americans be like. - Americans be like, I love this show. It makes so much sense. - Finally they get it. - Just make me.

- I had to like pause and like laugh for a little bit. But it continued. - If it was in America, the story would be over in chapter two. It's like, oh, your superpower is gun? Same here. - 'Cause they're like, wait, I thought handguns were illegal in Japan. It's like, duh, duh, duh, duh. Mini guns are legal in Texas.

- This finna will be 12 episodes in America, dude. - Oh my God, no. - It was just fun. It was just a good time. It was just fun. It was fun. - Oh my God. - 'Cause so many shows in anime are,

are very much saved by the fact they're set in Japan 'cause there are no guns. - Yeah. - If they were in America, 'cause you mentioned if My Hero Academia was set in America, it's like, "Go save him Deku, oh shit he's got an AK." - Fortnite be like, "Oh no, Bakugan was shot by a Barrett 50 caliber, he can't recover." Like, yeah, Fortnite, yeah literally Fortnite. - Literally Fortnite. - Literally.

- I know. - I'm like, I'm here. - I just, it just made me realize how many shows are more believable in terms of realistic somewhat because they're not, because they're set in Japan. It's like, yeah, you get away with this because you're in Japan. - Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't need a superior organization if it was in America. - If it was in Death Note, if there was just guns as well, like if there was more guns, like Al just had a gun the entire time, I feel like it would have been way shorter, like no?

It's like, oh, you're Kira? Pop! - I feel like so many, it just made me realize how many shows could have been quicker if there was guns. - Basically, you've just erased every shonen from existence. - Kuroko no basket, but he has a gun.

- 'Cause it was very, I watched, I've actually read all of the parts of JoJo except for the last part. And I was rewatching "Stone Ocean" and I remember I was like, oh yeah, there is a whole part about lynching in it. - Yeah. - And I was like, that's,

And I was watching it like, this is weird watching this in Japanese with like an over the top narrator narrating about how somebody, you know, how about like racial tensions in Florida. I was like, this is really weird to watch. And I was like, I remember that scene. Yeah, right. There's a whole, there's a character's whole backstory where a character, you know, was lynched and it was talking about how racist and it was really odd because the narrator narrates about racism in Florida and it was very weird seeing them, how they handled narrating it.

- In Japanese. - Yeah, yeah, because it was, I can't remember how they did it, but I remember it was a bit odd. And I was like, "Yeah, I guess there's one way of mentioning how it all works." That is, yeah, that does, that is what happened. - Yeah, that is what happened. - It was just kind of like a normal anime thing, and then it goes,

- But did you forget that this is 1980s Florida and there's racial prejudice. It's like, whoa, Iraqi, where's this coming from? What the fuck? - Iraqi watched 12 Years a Slave and was like, "Oh, I'll have that." - It was just like funny plankton go hee hee punching and then it just goes straight into that and you're like, "What the fuck?" - It was like a documentary. - Yeah, it was just kind of like, "Whoa, Iraqi." And just seeing it animated just reminded me like, "Oh yeah, this."

Yeah, yeah, okay, this is set in America. They really wanted to use that setting here. That was, all right, okay. All right, a bit intense. Yeah, because every time I've seen portrayals of, say, racism in anime and manga, it's always tough. It's always tough, right? Yeah, it's always tough, especially seeing JoJo Part VI. We've seen stories portrayed

in Western media and something. And I feel like there's like a kind of like it's powerful, but it's also, if it's set in the modern day, it can be like subtle as well. But every time I see it in fucking anime and manga, it's always the most in your face, look at racism, this is racism. - I think it's like, if you go back and look at movies of like 2000s and 90s, that was kind of how,

you know, a lot of these big Hollywood productions are kind of portraying racism. It's like, look, we can solve it with a movie and a good speech. Like it's fixed, you know? And I think that that kind of whole way of looking at it was kind of, 'cause obviously the conversation isn't nearly as prevalent here in Japan. I think that kind of way of viewing it and talking about it was kind of taken into how anime does it. Or sometimes it's just flat out racist in anime, like Gantz.

- That shit was weird. - Yeah. - Like that, I mean, you know, that happens in anime sometimes. - My favorite is the last arc in "Night Shield 21." That one as a so poorly. - Yeah, it's not good. - It's very yikes. - It's very yikes.

- It's such a good arc if it wasn't for that. - Obviously like this stuff was written at a time when this was barely a conversation in the West. Like "Star and Ocean" was written I think early 2000s. - 2003. - Right? This conversation was like barely started in the Western world. And then now looking at it through our modern lens of how we view it and how we talk about these topics, it's like, oh,

- Yeah, that's a bit, oof. - It's a bit yikes. - By the way, it's not bad in JoJo, right? It's just like you're reading it or you're watching it and you're like, it is a bit weirdly shoved in. - It's a bit shoehorned in, yeah. - Yeah, it feels very in your face. - It comes out of nowhere. - It comes out of nowhere. - I remember watching the episode and I was just like,

- Wait, have you read the manga? - I haven't read the manga. - You didn't know that was coming? - No, no, no. - I knew it was coming and I was still like, oh my God, I got whiplash again. - Here I am watching JoJo part six, watching a fucking stand battle, getting into it and suddenly racism. I was like, what? JoJo, what the fuck? - It was narrated as well. And the narrator talks about it in a very weird way. I felt like it was very...

I don't even know how to describe it. It was just odd. It was odd. Yeah. I was watching it. I didn't even know it was happening and I was like...

- Yep, this is as weird as I remember it being. This is a bit odd. - It's really weird that the two big portrayals of racism in anime and manga that I remember, one is now like Jojo, the other one is like domestic girlfriend. - What? - Yeah, because there's an arc where one of the girls goes to America to go- - Oh, is it Mami or whatever her name was? - It's Rui.

- Oh, no, sorry, I'm thinking of Rent-A-Girlfriend. - Yeah, you're thinking of Rent.

- Yeah, so she goes to America to go learn how to be a chef and be a cook. And she goes to America to culinary school. And the best way I can describe it is she encounters racism and it's not subtle racism at all. It's very, very in your face. It's almost pretty much the same level of what I saw in JoJo. And it just put things into perspective of me. It's like, you know, it's really good that

there are these portrayals in anime and manga. - Yeah, I think it's good. - It's just also, it's very jarring. - It's very jarring considering what the stories I've seen told in like Western films. - Domestic girlfriend. - Yeah, in domestic girlfriend. - This is like, it'd be like watching a Thomas the Tank and then suddenly it's like hardcore racism. It's like, whoa, whoa. It's like, we don't talk to the cars, Thomas. We don't fuck with those.

It was so jarring and I just was not prepared for it. And I wouldn't even call it like subtle. But at least, you know, at least it's happening. At least it's happening. - Yeah, again, I don't think, I'm not trying to be like, no, no, these conversations can't happen in anime. It's just like, I think sometimes it needs to be implemented a little more.

- A little sad alone. - In a way where it doesn't feel like there was, 'cause there was nothing in JoJo even remotely about like racism at all or any of those things. And then boom, they just throw it in there. It's like, whoa. - And it only happens once. - Yeah, it just happens once. Never comes up again. It's like, that was it. But it was like, I mean, for the characters, it's a big thing. And I like the character and I like how that all worked into it. It just kind of came out of nowhere.

But it was cool. Again, I like JoJo a lot. - It's like, "Sitsumeishio, race is a gore." - I like it when anime tries to go into this stuff and tries to be more mature. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It was in "I-Shield" as well, wasn't it? - Well, "I-Shield" did it in a way that was very not cool. - No, that wasn't cool. I'm trying to think of like,

- Yeah. - It's just like, okay, come on, let's have more characters. I see a lot of people are like, "No, I don't want any diversity in my shows." I'm like, "Yeah, dude, fuck it, yeah. Let's have more diversity in the show. If it lends to the story well, let's fucking do it." - If it's not jarring to the story and you can implement it in a way that seems natural, then hell yeah, I'm all for it. - Because Eyeshield 21 was just like, "Dude, it is a black guy playing sports. He must be amazing at them." It's like, "What?"

That is not how you introduce a character. That is not how you introduce anyone, flat out. - I think it was just the fact that they basically gave him a superpower and his superpower was the fact that he was black. And I was just like, what?

- What? Eyeshield, what are you doing? - It's just like that meme of like the guy with his like smiling and then his mouth drops. It's like, yeah, more diversity in anime. Oh, I found out why there's diversity in anime. Oh no.

- I feel like you could make some pretty fucking cool stories with it. Just be better with it. Don't just do it. - Don't shove it in viewers faces. - In a racist way. - In a racist way. - I mean, it's cool if we see these kinds of portrayals because it means there is some kind of conversation happening in Japan. - It'd be cool to have that. - Yeah, yeah. You obviously see that the conversation is not as far flung as what we've had.

- No, because in Japan, it's not so much about like targeting a specific race. It's about targeting all races that are not Japanese. - A lot of time when people complain that there's not enough diversity on anime and stuff. I see a lot of people like, "Well, it's for Japanese people. "What do you mean? "What do you expect from them?"

- Yes, Japan is very homogenous, but it's not like there's no diversity. - No, of course not. - It's like pretending like other ethnicities don't exist here. It's just flat out wrong. Joey is a half-boon. You know what I mean? Like straight up, just not true. They always say like, it just doesn't exist in Japan. - Well, I think that's the problem. It's such a small minority even in Japan. And I think in the eyes of like the manga and anime industry, it's just like, oh, okay, yeah, we know they exist, but are they,

a market that reads manga watches anime, we don't know. So instead of just pertaining to the 1%, let's try and just make the 99% happy. And it's like, okay, yeah, you can do that if you want, but-

- Then you're gonna start running into problems like I shielded. - Yeah, I'm not saying just start shoving it in like crazy to meet quotas or anything like that 'cause that is clearly not been a solution anyway. It's like, if the story lends well to it, let's fucking do it. Like if it makes sense, right? - Just like a pattern I've seen in all of these things that we just mentioned is that does the anime or manga have an America arc?

- You don't need to put racism in it just because it's like, it has an America. - Manga artists need to understand racism exists outside of America as well. It's not exclusive to America. - It's an American exclusive product, dude.

- Chainsaw Man would be way more racist and have more guns. - Oh my God. - What a great way to end Trash Taste episode, eh? - What a great topic. - Laughing about racism. You gotta love it. - Hey, but look at all these patrons right here. They don't laugh at racism.

- What the fuck? What is that? - Right guys? I bet you don't. - Yeah. - Guys, racism bad. - Racism bad. - I just wanted to say racism. - Wow, what a hot take. - Racism is bad, guys. - If you'd like to support this show, go to our Patreon.com/TrashTaste. Also follow us on Twitter, send us your memes on the subreddit. And if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify. What a great start to 2023. - We'll see you guys in the coming year. - Yes. - All right. - Bye.