Desu Des Brigade

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'We love all fans except one. (If you have to guess who, it's probably you.)' —One of their banner taglines

The Desu Des Brigade, abbreviated to the D2Brigade, or incorrectly as the DUD Brigade, was a team of reviewers with the following members:

• Professor Otaku, who produces the review series "Anime Dissection" and "OVA 101."
• Arkada, who produces the anime review called "Glass Reflection." He wears a lab coat during his reviews, which makes him vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Horrible.
• Jesu Otaku, who produces a review segment simply entitled "The Jesu Otaku Anime Review". She is much more analytical than the other reviewers, using a four-star rating system. She tries to be objective and may give high scores to shows that she doesn't personally like. She also produced her "summer project", an audio drama adaptation of Fruits Basket, every Wednesday throughout summer 2011.
• Vixen, who produces the "Kit-Suki" review series. Her review style is very informal, and quite opposite to her fellow reviewer Jesu Otaku. In addition to reviewing anime, she sometimes reviews Western films (most of them Disney) in her "Film Fox" review series.
• Malakye, who administers the DesuDes message board and produces the anime news segment called Pocky Spot. He has a cute, Vocaloid, evil assistant called Tsubake. Now has two of his own review series, "Mal's Monthly Manga" and "Sake Shots".
• Tsubake, Mal's Vocaloid assistant who wants to Kill All Humans, Vixen in particular. She kills people on a regular basis and hates everyone.

• In March 2011 they added three new members to the brigade, unfortunately real life forced all of them to leave.

• • Kagami, who produces K-Station, a series of AMVs. Not much else is known except she has an in universe fascination with knives and (also in-universe) most likely killed her own boyfriend to get on the site.
  • Rabbit, Vixen's closest friend who produces the show "To Read or Not To Read" where she reviews Manga. She has two other series called "Between the Lines" and "By the Quill". She also provided some of the website's artwork.
  • Hitch, who produces "AMR (Anime Movie Review)" where he reviews, well, anime movies. His second series is called "Season Impressions" where he showcases new animes of each season and gives them a score based on his first and last impressions. Currently writes the Fanservice Corner segments of Pocky Spot.

While each of the reviewers has his or her own individual video review series, they also collaborate on other productions together. This began with the "Desu Rattle" podcast, when Professor Otaku brought Arkada, JesuOtaku and Vixen together to create a weekly podcast about anime. They became known as the DesuDes Brigade when they created their personal website. Malakye helped in the creation of the site, so he became the fifth Brigade member. Their reviews are aimed at discerning anime viewers who want to find out anime worth watching.

The original site was hacked in late May 2011. Their new website is located at DesuDesBrigade.com.

As of April 20th, the D2 Brigade is ending, although all on good terms.

The Desu Des Brigade provides examples of the following tropes:

• Actor Allusion: Arkada's review of AIR starts off with a less subtle one for the same actor. "How would you like to go on a date with Phantom Dark?"
• Adorkable: Mal. Sure he's a little pervy, but he's quiet and shy, especially when compared to his more rambunctious peers (he makes JO look like Angry Joe).
• Alter Ego Acting: Pretty much all the brigadiers do the third kind of this, especially on Pocky Spot.
• Ambiguously Brown: Vixen, who's half-Filipino.
• Animal Motifs: Vixen themes herself after the fox. Aside from her name (A vixen is a female fox), her two series on the site are called Kit-suki (short for Kitsunetsuki, Japanese for being possessed by a fox) and the appropriately titled Film Fox. Her avatar also has fox ears and a tail.
• Art Evolution: Prof's avatar has changed twice.
  • And now the Pocky Spot (and other videos involving their avatars, as seen on the side of the site) avatars have undergone this now that Rabbit's drawing them.
• Artificial Human: Tsubake, somewhat.
• Awesome McCoolname: Tristan Gallant, Arkada's real name. He's named Badass Bravery!
• Berserk Buttons for the various Brigade members:
  • For Professor Otaku: MD Geist, bad girly shows and just about anything made by Kaishaku.
  • For Vixen: Constant Random Encounters in Video Games. On the Fanservice CoronerCorner segment of Pocky Spot, excessive T&A is also a Berserk Button for her, but that's not generally the case in her actual reviews.
    • Not to mention Twilight.
    • Pocky Spot 48 brings us an anime where a 10 year old succubus has to have males ejaculate into her mouth in order to survive. She's horrified and disgusted to say the least.
  • For Arkada: School Days
    • And flimsy spindle DVD cases, as indicated in almost any of his given reviews.
    • He still hasn't forgiven Kyoto Animation for "Endless Eight".
  • For Hitch: When he was reviewing the live-action Fist of the North Star movie, he was hoping that there would be lots of exploding heads like in the anime. When we finally got to our first exploding head, it was off screen. He... didn't take it well.
    • When he found out that the Badass Action Hero of Vampire Wars was named Cookie, well... he snapped.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Rabbit (don't let her cuteness fool you).
• Bilingual Bonus: Vixen did her review of Le Portrait De Petite Cossette entirely in French.
  • Prof did his review of Magic Knight Rayearth in French, Japanese, Fake German and Fake Italian, with a little English thrown in.
    • The German sounded suspiciously like an audio clip of Hitler, and the Italian sounded like someone reading off the Olive Garden menu. However, Prof did that as an experiment to see who was actually listening when subtitles are underneath.
• Brain Bleach:
  • Something Vixen desperately wanted after reviewing the OVAs Papa to Kiss In The Dark and Boku No Pico.
    • Vixen invoked this trope by name in her "Fanservice Corner" of Pocky Spot 15.
  • Professor Otaku would have liked it after reviewing Kekko Kamen.
• Brick Joke: In Prof's Princess Tutu review, he said "What next? Do I watch Prétear? How about Fushigi Yuugi? Why not just grow a nice pair of BOOBS while I'm at it?" Half a year later, he's reviewed the first, about to review the second and the third? Well...
• Breakup Breakout: Deconstructed. Rather than Jesu Otaku leaving the brigade after joining up with That Guy With the Glasses, she still tried to be a loyal brigadier, and her newfound popularity did in fact bring in more viewers to the Brigade's site; however, her indecisiveness coupled with her ADCD caused her to grow increasingly distant from the Brigade, unofficially breaking off from it about a year from its official disbandment.
• Butt Monkey: Rin, one of their fans and Vixen's close friend. They make lots of fat jokes about her, lots and lots of fat jokes.
• Caustic Critic: Professor Otaku, mainly, though Vixen gets like this sometimes, too.
• Canada, Eh?: Arkada, who really is Canadian.
• Catch Phrase:
  • At the end credits of their respective reviews, Arkada says "Stay Frosty". Similarly, Professor Otaku used to say "Until next week, this is Professor Otaku signing off", which he seems to be bringing back. Vixen makes a little squeaky sound that sounds like 'omo' but she claims her catchphrase is 'I'm going to kill you, Prof'.
  • During the Desu Rattle podcast, Arkada shouts "For Fanservice!" in a manner similar to how Dr. Insano from The Spoony Experiment shouts "For science!", which has trickled into Professor Otaku's vids on more than one occasion.
• Caramelldansen Vid: Complete with Vixen's Gainax Bounce, JO Baring Her Midriff, and Arkada singing. (Link?)
• Cat Fight: Between JO and Vix.
• The Chick: Vixen. Arguably a Dark Chick.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Hitch; sure he likes hentai but he genuinely respects women. No, really.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Several examples:
  • Vixen killing Malakye multiple times over on Pocky Spot.
  • Vixen killing an 'intern' on Pocky Spot.
  • In the first Desu Des Brigade Christmas Special cartoon, after Vixen is attacked by the stream portal tentacles, Professor Otaku insists she continue with the show and says, "Come on, Vixen, suck it up! You're not the fanservice girl for nothing." Later on, as the stream portal tentacles get increasingly menacing while the Desu Des Brigadiers keep singing their Christmas song, the other Brigadiers want to quit, but Vixen holds them at sword point and shouts, "You're not finishing this song until all of us get violated!"
  • Prof has a mean right hook. Just ask Vixen, as shown in the 'Quick Hits ACen' video, in which he systematically sucker-punched the rest of the Brigade. In his defense, Ark was singing the theme to Sgt Frog at the time, but kicking JO through the door was unmerited.
• Content Warnings: Always comes with the reviews of more violent titles.
• Could Say It, But...: Professor Otaku delves into great detail as to what colourful metaphor he would say about the English dub of Record of Lodoss War but states that he's above that.
• Credits Gag:
• Cute and Psycho: Vixen
• Cuteness Proximity: JesuOtaku's subtitled reaction to Potato, pretty much. Less than a year later, her sister got a rather similar looking puppy.
  • Ark's reaction to Rin, despite claiming he didn't like kids.
• A Day in The Life: Tsubake's Adventures
• Deadpan Snarker: All of them are like this. Even the Large Ham Arkada.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Ark's suggestion for punishing Hitch for not liking Princess Tutu (which he even said wasn't horrible, he just didn't like it) is a letter bomb.... or a NUKE.
  • His actual punishment (suggested by Rabbit) is to have his testicles electrocuted every time he has a naughty thought while reviewing La Blue Girl with Vixen.
    • Vix pulls the same thing on Prof for his 100th review.
• Double Standard Rape Male On Male: Okane ga Nai had Vixen laughing hysterically, for reasons best left un-analyzed.
• Drinking Game: Vixen did one in-universe for her reviews of Romeo X Juliet and The Princess Bride.
• Dropped a Bridget On Him: Prof admitted in Quick Hits 2 that Shuichi dropped one on him.
• Early Bird Cameo: The new avatars for the Brigaders appeared on the sides of the site months before their proper debut in Pocky Spot 50.
• Electric Torture: Poor Hitch...
• Enemy Without: His normal person self, Tristan Gallant, distinct from his reviewer self, Arkada. The two argue over whether or not it's okay to show the sexier scenes of Desert Punk, due to the normal self having a girlfriend. Hilarity Ensues.
• Evil Laugh: Hitch gives one of these off after giving Vixen Sailor Moon And The 7 Ballz.
• The Faceless: Until recently, Mal was the only member who had never showed his face, instead opting to use an animated avatar wearing a mask similar to that of Zero from Code Geass.
• Fantastic Slurs: Tsubake calls humans (and presumably other organic creatures) "fleshbags."
• Fan Vid: Kagami's AMV videos.
• Five-Man Band: As explicitly established by Prof:
  • The Hero: Professor Otaku
  • The Lancer: Arkada
  • The Big Guy: Malakye
  • The Smart Guy: Jesu Otaku
  • The Chick: Vixen
  • Sixth Ranger: Tsubake, Kagami, Hitch, and Rabbit
• Follow the Bouncing Ball: Hitch's sing along video.
• Fun With Subtitles: In the promotion for the first annual Taishi awards, the brigadiers made several videos where the subtitles had anime characters hawk the Taishis, often while talking like gangstas.
  • In the Magic Knight Rayearth review, Professor Otaku had quite a bit of fun with this. Or rather, the rest of the Brigade had fun at his expense.
  • While introducing the review for Now and Then Here And There, JesuOtaku gets into a fight with the Red Snark Titles.
• Gainaxing: They call it wibble though.
• Gender Flip: Prof got this at the end of his Prétear review, lasting until near the end of Fushigi Yuugi.
• Gilligan Cut: Done twice in Arkada's Princess Tutu review. The first time was after declaring that in no way was he ever going to review the aforementioned series. The second time was declaring that he was definitely not following it up with a Cardcaptor Sakura review, which is then subverted when he's instead shown watching Baccano! after the Gilligan Cut.
• Go Mad From the Revelation: Vixen and Stevenlajr at the end of the The Twilight Saga: New Moon review.
• Heterosexual Life Partners: Prof's and Hitch's friendship implies this.
  • Vixen and Rabbit take it even further.
• Hey It's That Voice: Vixen points out a familiar Disney voice assigned to Spirited Away's dub by briefly overlaying images of the character onto the footage.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: After making a herpes Harpies commercial voiceover, Prof quips in his review of Wonder Woman that he's going straight to the underworld for that one.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Malakye hosts Fanservice Corner in Pocky Spot episode 53, showing the opening to Maken Ki.
• Incredibly Lame Pun/Hurricane of Puns: Vixen's Twilight review featured a vampire Pun Count. When New Moon came back with its own awful puns, she suspected it was karma.
  • Professor Otaku on Dolores from Zone of the Enders: Dolores, i:

Prof: You know, other reviewers might harp on the location of the cockpit, but not me. I think that argument falls limp, because it has stiff competition, standing tall in a crowd of flaccid robot designs. The orbital frames really thrust themselves into the hard and thick market and show they have a rod of steel in their spines. And I think I just burned out my subtlety chip.

• • Arkada's review for Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ just had to go into the Bee Train wreck pun.
• In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You: Professor Otaku in his Let's Play of Knights of the Round:

(while being attacked by barrels) That's right folks, if you can't kill a castle, a castle will kill you.

• It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time: Vixen's guest co-reviewer of the Twilight saga, Stephen Lajr, on shooting himself in the balls when he learns they're splitting Breaking Dawn into two movies.
• "I Want" Song: Vixen's and Tsubake's parody of Want You Gone.
  • Let's Duet
• Kill All Humans: Tsubake's goal.
• Large Ham: Arkada when he introduces hosts his Mailbag Showdown, and whenever he does voice work either, it's part of the persona.
  • Ark in general, even when making V-Logs!
• Let's Play: The members have attempted a few of these, Prof with Knights of the Round for the Arcade and Spider-Man Web of Shadows for the 360, Vixen with PC titles Left 4 Dead 2, Phantasmagoria and The Sims 3 as well as Final Fantasy I for Game Boy Advance and Arkada with Legend of Dragoon for the PlayStation.
• Mad Scientist: Arkada plays this up from time to time.
• Mismatched Eyes: Arkada, at least in his animated form.
• Ms. Fanservice: Vixen, of course. Usually, this is played for laughs, as in some of her lines in the Fanservice Corner segment of Pocky Spot, or in the banner for her T&A Q&A segments.
  • See the entry for Of Corsets Sexy below.
  • She has also cosplayed as Jasmine when she did her Film Fox review of Aladdin, which of course involved baring her midriff.
• Motor Mouth: Arkada's quick recap of Final Fantasy VII to help put context into Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.
• Nice Hat: Both Ark and Prof have one.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Vixen is rather fond of corsets, including her "trademark" white corset, which she first wore in her review of Yu Yu Hakusho for the hell of it, and is shown wearing in the intro sequence to her reviews.
• One Steve Limit: Coincidentally, Prof.'s real name is CJ Irelan and Hitch's is CJ Hitchcock.
  • It helps that the members all refer to each other by their stage names.
• Opposite Sex Clone: Prof's aforementioned Gender Bender ended in this the male and female forms becoming seperate people towards the end of the review. How exactly that happened is never explained.
• The Password Is Always Swordfish: Blink and you'll miss it, but during the Red Scorpion "Luck Be a Lady" radio drama, featuring a red-tinted Green Hornet, the titular character uses this as a password before smashing down a door.
• Perverse Sexual Lust: Vixen's "List of Disney Boys I Would Bang": Li Shang and Aladdin.

Vixen: "Damn. Damn. Hey... Hey, wait, come back here, I'll make a man out of you!"

• Pokémon Speak: Both JO and Arkada snark if Nyu's a Pokemon in their reviews of Elfen Lied.
• Precision F-Strike: From all three Sixth Rangers (Hitch at Anime Central, and Rabbit and Kagami at Metrocon) -- "You are going to fucking LOVE ME."
• Put On a Bus: What Hitch did to the gag characters Steve and Joe from his earlier reviews.
• Real Men Wear Pink: "Real men watch Princess Tutu." And indeed, Tutu has been shown a couple of times on the Manime Monday stream.
  • See also Prof's love of Super Gals and Angelic Layer.
  • All of the boys are fans of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic.
• Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Comes up in-universe in Vixen's vids.
• Red Eyes Take Warning: Vixen's cartoon avatar on Pocky Spot when she gets really angry.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Vixen's the Red Oni, JesuOtaku is solidly the Blue one.
  • Ark is red and Prof is blue.
• Retool: Pocky Spot as of episode 50. All segments barring Mailbag Showdown and Fanservice Corner have been replaced by a whole new host of segments, including one for each of the new brigadiers and Tsubake getting one to herself.
• Rule Sixty Three: Vixen mentions this after encountering a male version of herself in her review of Vandread. Also invoked with Profette.
• Romantic Two-Girl Friendship Rabbit and Vixen
• Running Gag: Oh, so many...
  • The legendary badassery of Arkada, who supposedly can make peanut butter by punching narwhals to death.
  • Professor Otaku's cartoon avatar usually lacks anything below the waist, which sparked jokes about him having no legs, or his legs running off and selling real estate in Southern California, etc.
  • Vixen and Malakye's feud on Pocky Spot, where Malakye writes scripts where Vixen is supposed to say pervy things, and Vixen responds by killing him in assorted horrific ways.
  • Actually, on Pocky Spot, Vixen has a rather short fuse, anyway, to the point of Comedic Sociopathy. (See examples above.)
• Schedule Slip: Just about every member has schedule slip due to real life, though that's by far the worst example.
  • This also happens to Desu Rattle a LOT. Originally a weekly podcast, it's now a "whenever we can get people on Skype to record" occurrence.
• Screw Yourself: There were already comments joking about this within hours of Prof's Fushigi Yuugi review.
  • Later they invoked this in their review of Issho Ni.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Arkada and Professor Otaku, though surprisingly it's Arkada that lapses into this most frequently.
• Shout Out: In Vixen's Film Fox review of Enchanted, the text across the bottom of the screen when the homeless guy steals Giselle's tiara is "THIS IS THE GREATEST TIARA I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!"
• Song Parody: Vixen and Tsubake did one of Want You Gone.
  • Although not entirely changed, Hitch and Prof did If You Were Gay.
• The Stinger: Ark puts an audio preview of his next review in his more recent reviews.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders
  • Arkada has a shameless mancrush on Crispin Freeman.
• Super Deformed: The Pocky Spot chibis, especially the current style.
• Squee: During Pocky Spot 22, both Vixen and JO let out a good one when seeing Kyoya with his shirt off.
  • They do this again at the begining of Prof's review of Prétear, much to Prof's annoyance.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Professor Otaku in his Let's Play of Knights of the Round:

Prof: Now, I'm not quite sure about the biology of a tiger, but I'm pretty sure they don't explode into flames when you kill them.

• Take a Third Option: Even though Prof had several fans send video suggestions for his 100th episode, Profette comes up with the easy choice of Buso Renkin.
• Take That: Arkada took a shot at Todd Haberkorn voicing too many recent leads in his review of Gankutsuou.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: Vix reported on her T&A Q&A...

If you don't like people randomly bursting into song, then you probably wouldn't like Ark very much.

• This Is Gonna Suck: Vixen's reaction in Pocky Spot 48 where she learns the plot of the loli animé, Astarotte no Omocha.
• Token Evil Teammate: Tsubake. Originally Malakye, though it's been brought up a a lot less since she came along.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: JesuOtaku has this dynamic with Vixen, full stop.
• Top Ten List: Top X Lists, mostly.
  • Vixen has Top 20 Musical Numbers.
  • Prof had Top 10 Babes (though it was actually 10 + 5 Wussiest Girls + 5 Almost Made Its), Top 10 Stupidest Transformers Episodes, Top 10 Crushes, and Top 5 Mismatched Openings and Endings.
  • Ark had Top 19 Anime BGM, Top 10 Unlicensed Anime of 2010, Top 14 Tragically Sad Moments, and Top 17 anime voice actors.
  • Hitch had his Top 10 70's anime openings and Top 10 Singalongs.
  • Mal recently had his Top 10 Anime Openings.
• Visual Pun: Arkada uses these to great effect in his Glass Reflection reviews.
• Wall Bang: Some series that Professor Otaku reviewed, and he couldn't take it, and... you know.
• X Called They Want Their Y Back: Professor Otaku in his Let's Play of Knights of the Round:

Sky Walker? Luke called, he wants his name back.

• Yaoi Fangirl: Inverted. Vixen was way too squicked out by what she reviewed in Papa to Kiss In The Dark, mostly due to that story being wholly terrible.
  • Tsubake apparently has a rather large colleciton of Yaoi porn.
• You Can Leave Your Hat On: Was Ark stripping through their riff of Venus Wars, cause it certainly looked like it.