Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
Saturday, September 26th. Two of Combat Sports Most Dangerous Treaty is to lie. Fair Knuckles. Liverpool's own power of the cooler still goes to war. It's on the line. With the range, death days the redneck Mundell defense against undefeated British challengers. Jack to beat Twitter Cold, BKS T94, Phil versus Romero. Watch it live only on the zone. Sign up now at the zone.com.
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Contrary to popular belief, I have not been abducted by our the new alien overlords, run away to become an octopus ventriloquist, or become a hatchery for an undiscovered race of baby giant spiders. My absence was for much more mundane reasons, but before we get into any of that and the main topic for today, let me just say welcome back to Southern Demonology Season three, episode one. As always, I'm your host JJ. So why have I been absent? There are a few reasons.
The first is that I spent all of my considerable saved vacation time, went back to Tennessee for a week to see my mom, and then flew to Japan for a month to see my wife's family and just be exist. I think I spent more time in my favorite on son or hot spring of photo no Osama, which translates to the Bath of the King than should be legally allowed. The second reason is that I was rapidly becoming burnt out. I love getting to do this podcast. I truly do. I love the community that has become my Discord server family.
But I got to the point where the thought of putting pen to paper to write out a script for an episode well really type words into Google Docs was just too much. For those who don't know, I am in the tech industry and have been for almost 24 years now. And while I love it as I get to solve complex problems, I have also worked jobs that forced me to burn the candle at both ends. I am more than familiar with the signs of burnout. And my number one indicator is a mental aversion to doing things that I really like doing.
Rather than trying to push through it and make myself even more miserable, I forced myself to take a break. Unfortunately, that break simply kept growing in size and scope, for which I humbly apologized. I would mean to write an episode, I would get caught up in work, and before I know it, it was already the weekend, and then I would think, hmm, I could spend all day long writing, or I'll just put it off to next weekend. That's fine, that's no problem. And I just kept repeating. I went hard at the podcast last year.
I promised myself that I would release weekly episodes on time, and I actually surprised myself by sticking to that. I really enjoyed that a great deal. But with my hectic work schedule, I know it's not sustainable. I am going to be doing a modified schedule for this year. I will keep releasing episodes on Monday at the regular time of two PM Eastern, but one week will be a full episode, and the next week will be a mini episode just to give myself a bit of a break. As always, if you have any thoughts on that, please let me know. You can contact me through the website, southerndemonology.
com or on Discord. Or on the other many other social media platforms that I happen to be on, and you can find a list of all of those with relevant links on the website. If you have missed the sound of my voice, and if you have, you may have a concussion. I suggest getting checked by a medical professional at the very least. I have made three guest appearances in the time I was away. I had two appearances on my friend Vic's trailer Trash Terrors Podcast, which, if you have not heard it, is a work of intellectualism and whimsy that I wish I could approach, and I highly recommend.
One of those appearances was while I was in Japan, and the other after I had gotten home. And the other, the third, is an appearance on the Undercover Witch podcast, in which we covered some of the more paranormal experiences that I have had in my life. I will have links to all three of those in the show description. But before moving on, I do want to give a small year in review of how the podcast is doing. From March to December of 2022, March is when I actually switched from my old podcast provider, SoundCloud, to ACAST. The podcast received over 33,000 downloads, which just blew my mind.
And somehow or other, I released 41 total episodes. Considering that I had only released 39 episodes from April of 2017 until March of 2022, I somehow more than managed to double my catalog. I also expanded the number of followers on various social media platforms from Instagram to YouTube to TikTok. And none of that would have been possible without you all being willing to listen to a guy with a speech impediment speaking into the void for fun. From the very bottom of my black heart, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough. It does me good more than I could say.
I do have some upcoming plans for 2023, but I will save that for another episode. And rather than keep you in suspense, let's get to today's main topic. The next episode will cover my month at Japan and the thoughts I have on how it and I have changed, but I wanted to ease myself back into producing episodes by covering something a little easier to tackle, but no less fun. Honestly, I have had this episode about Japan stuck in my throat for about three weeks now, so that's why I wanted to make sure I got something out this week. The main reason why.
But it's also has been percolating in the back of my head in tandem with the Japan episode. I think it's gonna be a good listen. I know I have mentioned it before, but I love anime. It and other Japanese dramas or live action are all I watch TV-wise, with horror movies making up the last percentage of the entertainment that I consume. And I thought it would be fun to marry my interests together for this episode. For today, I wanted to cover three anime that are extremely well done that also touch upon either horror, yokai, or monsters, or you day, spirits. Heck.
The last one on the list was a complete surprise even to myself. And now that I think about it, no, that was not meant to be the podcast version of wait for it that you see on poorly done videos. I promise. I'm not that much into clickbait, I swear to goodness. The first is the oldest anime on the list as it was released in 2006, Ghost of Honta, or Ghost Hunt. Clocking in at 25 episodes, the show is split between various story arts that take place between three and four episodes to complete.
The show centers around Tani Maya My Sun, an ordinary high school girl who gets sucked into helping the Shibuya psychic research team, a paranormal group that attempts to solve all manner of strange happenings. The thing that I love about this show is that while unbelievable, just one of the cases this group takes on would be a paranormal group's wet dream. It incorporates a lot of different faiths into the investigations. You have a Shinto priestess, a Buddhist monk, a Catholic priest, a yin yang master, and a psychic medium, amongst others.
And Ghost Hunt actually does a fair job of introducing a lot of Eastern concepts when it comes to the paranormal.
Saturday, September 26th. Two of Combat Sports Most Dangerous Trikers to lie. Fair Knuckles. Liverpool's own power of the cooler still goes to war with super powerhouse kill house gold joke. The fair knuckle, middleware championship of the world is on the line. When the rain champ gave the redneck Mundell defense against undefeated British challenger, Jack the Meat Cleaver Colonel, BKST 94, Phil vs. Ramiro. Watch it live only on the zone. Sign up now at the zone.com.
Of course, none of them are explored in great detail, but the ideas presented can be a great jumping off point to learn more about them. The story arcs also move rather briskly and are presented as true mysteries that need to be solved. And unlike Scooby-Doo, the culprits are always of the supernatural ilk. If you like the paranormal or mysteries, I think you would really enjoy Ghost Hunt.
The second anime on the list today is Murakotan, a show about Yotsuya Murakosan, another high school girl who is living an ordinary life until one day while at a bus stop on a rainy night, she sees a horrible apparition appear in front of her asking Can you see me? Over and over. The show never explains how she was suddenly cursed with such an ability. One of many reasons I hope that there's a second season in the works. But she chooses to deal with it by simply pretending that she cannot see anything.
See, the title itself is a bit of an obvious wordplay as miru means appear, be visible, can see. And Ko, of course, is woman or girl. So it directly translates to the girl who can see. And the way the show depicts these Uday or ghosts is very much on the creepy side. Plus there is some very pervasive mysteries that keep coming up time and time again that just leaves you wanting more. In fact, the show ended on such a cliffhanger that I'm dying to see how it is resolved.
Before we hit the last, I do want to throw in a bonus show that can be found on Netflix Junji Ito's Maniac, which is in reality the second season of the anime. While the first season was I think a generous term would be okay, or as you would say in Japanese Mama, as it focused entirely too much on one comedic character that liked to curse others. The second only has two arts with him that make it more bearable. Overall it's still a little mediocre, but there's one episode about floating heads. For those who know, you definitely know. And dear lord that one send chills down my spine.
It's worth it just to see that one episode. Just like season one's episode about the fashion model. For those who don't know, Junji Ito is the master of horror manga with iconic words like spiral and the enigma of Amigata Fault. He's the modern day HP Lovecraft without the negative connotations. And finally we come to the third. The second season is currently airing now, and for some reason I somehow missed the first season entirely. And after going back and reading the description, I almost passed on it as it sound supremely uninteresting.
Yet the Japanese subtitle caught my eye, and I have never been more glad. The main title is Supremely Boring In Spectre spelled IN slash Spectre which honestly does nothing for it. Yet the subtitle is Kyoko Suri, which translate to fictional reasoning and never has a subtitle captured the essence of a show before. It's about a woman who is missing an eye and a leg who falls in love with a boy a few years her senior. Yet all of that takes a back seat to what these two people are.
For example, for the woman, those body parts that are missing were a sacrifice to the supernatural realm so that she could be their goddess of wisdom. And in that role, she goes around to the various yokai and ghosts to help them in whatever is causing them issues or problems. Each story arc takes three or four episodes to complete, but they are as different from one another as can be, and they are fascinating. Usually a spirit is asking why a certain event happened, and it's up to this goddess to explain it. And she will craft a narrative out of thin air to explain it to that creature.
It's informed based on some research that was done, but otherwise she's simply drawing rational conclusions from what has been gleaned. Sometimes that solution is branded as the most likely while others mere possibility. But the show is extremely clever and highly entertaining. If you ever wanted to see the concerns of a giant snake that used to be worshipped, uh Yuki Ona or Snow Woman, who may be in love with a human, or the dangers of eating certain types of yokai flesh, then this show is absolutely written for you.
Before I go, I did want to leave you with a review for a horror movie our Discord server watched two weeks ago. And in case you weren't aware, we are still watching horror movies every Wednesday at ten PM Eastern over on our Discord server. It's absolutely free to participate, so feel free to join us. I had seen quite a few positive reviews over on TikTok for a movie called Mean Spirited that really caught my eye. Supposedly it was a found footage horror comedy that offered genuine scares. In fact it almost sounded too good to be true.
Now most of what I stream for Wednesday movie nights are previously vetted horror movies that are amazing. We've watched the original Exorcist, Hereditary, some exorcism related documentaries, Terrified, Tuckerandell vs. Evil. The list goes on. Heck, we watched Nodoy or The Curse last this past Wednesday. Yet there was one movie that I remembered being good and screened that wound up being pretty abysmal, and that was Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. I simply remembered the line I kick ass for the Lord more so than anything else, and that's entirely my fault.
But this movie Mean Spirited Dear Lord in heaven, it was horrible. A YouTube prankster goes with his his film buddies to visit his former best friend who is now famous in Hollywood. The prankster has a huge chip on his shoulder and really wants to know why his friend left the channel that they had started together. What follows is one of the most forgettable quote unquote horror movies I have seen since Terror in the High Desert. It wasn't funny. It wasn't scary. It had plot holes an invading army could have marched through, and the characters were by and far insufferable.
And worse, I paid money to rent this piece of crap. If you ever see a person on TikTok gushing about an unknown horror movie and think it may be good, ah, note do more research. I hopefully will never make that mistake again. Knowing me, I probably will, but I will do it without making others suffer through it with me, that I can promise you. I guess you can say that my review of the movie Mean Spirited was mean spirited and if you pictured me holding my pinky finger to my mouth like Dr. Evil was saying that, then you would be 100% accurate, my friends.
And that will do it for this slightly shorter episode of Southern Demonology. Thank you for tuning in yet again, even though it's my voice that's greeting you. Stay safe out there. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.
Saturday, September 26th. Two of Combat Sports most dangerous strikers collide. Bare knuckle. Liverpool's own down in the Guerrilla Till goes to war with Jupiter Powerhouse Joe L soldier of God Ramiro. Plus, the bare knuckle middleweight championship of the world is on the line when the Raiding Champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger, Jack the Meat Cleaver Cole, PKST 94, Till vs. Ramiro. Watch it live only on the zone. Sign up now at thisone.com.