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 reviewerJesu 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re Tool: 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 63: Vixen mentions this after encountering a male version of herself in her review of Vandread. Also invoked with Profette.
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.
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.
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.
.As of April 20th, the D2 Brigade is ending,
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