The name "Stand" is explained by Joseph as they discussed, but also clearly refers to "Stand by Me" (like the song) in the JP lines.
Their existence is mostly a storytelling tool by Araki, who wanted a "visual representation of supernatural powers." Roughly translating the Wikipedia page's quote, he basically wanted to have an in-universe thing that can be shown actually doing the actions that result in supernatural phenomenon - such as bending spoons, breaking things, etc. - instead of just showing the result of the actions.
It's later explained that people can basically awaken to Stand powers through mastery of a skill or craft, and Hamon was one such skill that can lead to such an awakening.
The "star-shaped birthmark" thing obviously was shoehorned in during this arc in the manga; but as a little nod to it in the anime, you can see it on Joseph during Battle Tendency :)
About the MHR:Sunbreak demo; The save files never carry over for MH demos, because they're always just a snapshot of purely the combat portion of the gameplay. (It'll take too long for a demo for you to gear up to the point where you're fighting the "main" monster of the entry, which they always try to show off in these demos)
Tam touched on it briefly, but here's some visual aid about Vaccineman!
He actually has nothing to do with Piccolo, and is a parody of Baikinman ("germs-man"), a villain from the kid's show called Anpanman. He looks like this:
The titular protagonist Anpanman ("red bean bread man") looks like this:
The influences are pretty visible, to say the least lol. The whole joke was that Anpanman, just like saitama, will often times defeat Baikinman with his signature "An-Punch", which just looks like a regular old punch... Anpanman -> An-Punch-Man -> Wan-Pun-Man -> One Punch Man... you get it. It's kind of wild that a one-off joke about a pun on red bean pastry and one-punching things became such a big series lol.
As a diehard Gundam fan; that news story was a MASSIVE word salad, in that exact way that Japanese companies spew bullshit when they don't have anything real to say but still need to fill out a business pitch lol. The "say random words until it feels like you said something meaningful" approach, if you will. We'll see if anything comes of it!
Also for those interested, there's a channel called GundamInfo on Youtube that sometimes posts full Gundam series shows for a limited time, along with a whole bunch of other side content. The best way to watch the original "Gundam" would probably be the 3-part movie version, so you don't have to sit through all the filler episodes.
Didn't realize y'all were doing a Jojo podcast. A quick note to fill in some blanks that might not have come through in translation:
- Jojo's dad was portrayed as unhelpful, but it's a pretty typical "protector being temporarily corrupted" sort of trope. That being said, he definitely wasn't just immediately giving up on Jojo and treating Dio as his "favorite". It really was that he felt responsible for spoiling Jojo, after realizing a kid the same age as him can act so much more refined (you know, Dio's "charisma"). In the end, George was just a super loving, if not naïve, father that believed his son can become a "true gentleman", and that he can give that same amount of love to his adopted son as well.
There's probably a lot of questions you guys have that never got answered, but I'll get a quick one out of the way. The brackets are the Japanese equivalent of the quotation marks in English, and them being there in this game is just an odd translation choice by the localization team.
Also @janman, I'll say that you probably shouldn't feel bad about thinking there's something lacking about the game in terms of it being a strategy game; aside from a few exceptions, this series really has been mostly about the "crossover fanservice" of the participating mecha animes, and the "strategy game" aspect of it is kinda secondary. They're usually balanced in such a way where if you know what you're doing (like focusing EXP on units you'll actually use, being efficient about earning money, etc), the game becomes kind of a cakewalk for the most part. That being said, if you like stomping through hoards of enemy units with cool looking mechs, it'll definitely satisfy that particular desire.
Man, to think there'd be a day where I'd hear talk about Super Robot Wars on a GB video.... Video games are weird nowadays.
@janman, If the English pronunciation is the same as in Japanese, Lelouch is probably "Lu Loosh". Also, yep the basic game system of tile-based strategy with resource management to upgrade your pilots and mechs has been pretty much constant for as long as I can remember this series. That being said, you don't really need to play the entire franchise, since most of them are standalone games, aside from a couple trilogies here and there... but those will make themselves pretty apparent (like Super Robot Wars Z ~ Super Robot Wars Z3). Unfortunately, there's hardly any of them that have been released in English, which makes it very hard for folks here to enjoy them. Of the more recent releases, I think SRW V, X, and T have technically seen English releases (even on PC!), but have been region locked to JP/Asia. I wonder if buying the cartridge version of these for Switch would allow you to play them on an English system?
@unreal999: Not going to speak of the quality of Arise itself (since I haven't played nor have I looked too closely at promotional material), but as a formerly very committed Tales fan... I don't think the co-op aspect was ever a selling point of the series? I mean sure it's fun, speaking from experience of playing Abyss with my brother, but those games are never really geared towards anything but single player, with co-op battles just thrown in as a cheeky bonus.
lol glad they've at least somewhat come around on the "monster hunter has terrible controls" thing... Unless that rant was referring to the original PS2 MH. Then yeah those are terrible.
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