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Content Warning: Physical Abuse This week we start a new show! But first, Sarah and Joe catch up on what’s been happening. Joe has gone to the opera and Sarah considers her reality tv watching diet. Then we start Revolutionary Girl Utena with episode 1 and 2. Our hero Utena is a simple middle school girl. She goes to class, hangs out with her friend, gets involved in duels, climbs a million stairs, gets engaged. Normal stuff!

This week we say goodbye to Miyo and the gang until the season 3 specials. In real life Joe is cat sitting for his GF and learns the dangers of letting a cat physically sit on you. Meanwhile, Sarah has been hanging out and watching some horror movies. Then we talk about American animation studios for a solid ten minutes, as one does. Then we finish off My Happy Marriage, we wrap up the Naoshi arc rather easily as Arata remembers that he’s a good guy actually and Miyo and Naoshi try to change each other’s minds. Then in the finale, Kiyoka and Miyo set their affairs in order so they can retire to a nice quiet life with each other. Next time, we watch Revolutionary Girl Utena, which you can watch here.

As we approach the end of my happy marriage we ask ourselves, are they ever going to get married?? IRL Joe is prescribed to be a Corolla driver forever and Sarah is dangerously close to finishing all of Survivor. In my happy marriage we learn some Naoshi backstory which really changes Joe’s mind about a few things. Fortunately, Miyo has decided to be a woman of action and hatches a plan to save kiyoko, with the help of…some kind of little boy version of him. It’s weird.

We begin to close in on the end of season 2. But first, Joe recounts his ski trips and Sarah updates us on her survivor re-watch progress. Then we talk about anime a little bit and how meaningful genre distinctions are in reality. Then in My Happy Marriage, Miyo gets put in the witness protection program and she must stay at the Royal Palace?? What?? That’s right, it’s two episodes of hanging out and talking. Exactly what we’ve been waiting for. We meet the ministers of the government and as expected they suck. We also get some ominous rumblings about a traitor in the government and someone needing to be sacrificed cough cough Arata… We’ll see how it goes!

We hit the halfway point this week! And speaking of hits, Joe tells us about his new car problems and Sarah remembers her car trauma. Boo cars, we don’t like. In my happy marriage, we speedrun our way through the plot. We learn some troubling news about Miyo’s new bestie that caps off in some pretty cool fighting. The illusion guy does some illusions. As one does.

Happy new year everyone! IRL we go over our holiday events and plans as we round out 2025. Here’s to another year with the ShouJoe pod! In my happy marriage, we’ve got more parents. The B plot becomes the A plot and we get a new bi-specticaled baddy. Then Milo gets a new friend and we learn that being a woman in the army isn’t so great.

This week we prep for the holidays. We go over our Christmas prep plans and dicuss a bunch of other stuff that isn’t related to that. Also video games. In My Happy Marriage, we meet the parents! It’s season 2 and Miyo has a new problematic parent to deal with, while Kiyoka has a new forest adventure. The vibes are better and we’re ready to dig in.

Happy holidays everyone! Sarah and Joe decided to celebrate by watching the Star Wars Holiday Special. Days later, it’s still unclear to me why we did this to ourselves. Why did we watch Chewbacca’s dad imagine a sexy lady singing to him? Why did Princess Leia sing a song to the main theme tune? Why was GM running the equivalent of campaign ads in 1978? Absolutely nothing makes sense in this special and neither of us think you should watch it. So instead, enjoy Life Day by just listening to us talk about it!

This week we finish My Happy Marriage Season 1. In our real lives, we adjust to getting back to weekly recordings by talking about what really matters, video games. We talk about some of the latest and somewhat off-putting game trailers from the video game awards and then we talk about what we’re currently watching and playing. We even talk a bit about anime. Imagine that! In My Happy Marriage, we finish off season 1 with two really good episodes according to one of us. This is the most split we’ve been on a show so far. Miyo gets her magical powers and confronts herself in the dream world as she tries to save Kiyoka. Then we get an OVA that we both TOTALLY watched, so don’t even worry about it. We are rolling straight into season 2, so we’ll see you next time with S2 episodes 1 and 2!

We near the end of season one this week. But first, Joe is back and talks about his time in Japan. Joe and Sarah gab about that and many more things. Lots to catch up on! In my happy marriage, we meet the other half of Miyo’s family and they are…uh…not much better! Kiyoka gets baited into a gentleman’s duel, but as we learned from the Rose of Versailles, never do those. Next time it’s the end of season 1 + the OVA

We pass the halfway point of season one. IRL Joe preps to leave on his trip to Japan (which he'll already be on when you're listening). In My Happy Marriage, we close the book on Miyo's family and open it on Kyouka's. Miyo gets some formal lady training from Kyoula's sister Hazuki and tries to move on with her live. Also evil ghosts get loose and start harassing the country side, what fun!

Since Joe is in Japan this week, here is a bonus ep for the very odd, but well costumed, live action 1979 movie Lady Oscar.

Content Warning for My Happy Marriage: Abuse, Violence We’re back for another helping of misery. But first, we get back into the swing of things and find out that actually our lives might be boring week to week. This was way easier where we had like three weeks of things to talk about. Oh well. We do the usual talking about games and stuff. In My Happy Marrage, we finish up the family arc with the worst kidnapping scheme I’ve ever seen. Honestly, it’s like none of them have ever done this before! Miyo gets to do some arts and crafts which is fun and Kiyoka gets to have an x-men battle with a guy. So these episodes are pretty good!

Content Warning for My Happy Marriage: Abuse We begin a new show! We catch up after a long break that we had IRL and go over the big events like weddings and going to Houston! Hurray. Then we start a brand new show, My Happy Marriage, hurray! We met Miyo and her terrible awful no-good very bad family. Miyo has basically the worst life ever. Then she suddenly gets married to a mysterious, but kinda sexy man. Who is this mystery man? Could he even be a little magical? Find out with us as we start our new show!

This week we finish Chihayafuru! Not much has happened since last recording in the real world. Joe finds out that he doesn’t need to upgrade his computer to windows 10 and Sarah stubs her toe real bad (and sends Joe a picture of it mid recording, look forward to that). In Chihayafuru, we end with two solid episodes and one out of place one. It’s character drama time and we take the last few moments of the series to work out our feelings for each other over the course of Valentine’s day. Then, we end with Arata doing some truly season 1 style stuff like starting his own karuta club. He’s finally catching up. This show ends in kind of a weird place, but we have a good time talking through it. Next time we watch My Happy Marriage episodes 1-3!