Although This Episode Was Off Model

Reminder: The more recent Gaiking anime was pretty good.



And is free on Hulu if you live in the US.

-Signing off.

Ash Ketchum, Eat Your Heart Out

My mother frequently picks up children's books (traditional books, Western comics, and manga) for my little brother at the local library. Whenever these books happen to be manga, I skim over them because 1) supposed "kids' manga" is often more violent than one might think, and 2) sometimes, "kids' manga" is really great.

This is a little bit of both of those things.

Bakegyamon (Backwards Game) is a manga whose history I know little about. All I know is that I've read most of the 52 chapters. It's a complete little weekly manga. It's mostly pretty silly, especially towards the beginning, but it really picks up in the last two volumes. (I read it in a five volume format; apparently the local library missed volume 3, but I don't care.)

NOTE: Spoilers abound, although I don't think I'll spoil anything I can avoid.

Like many modern "kiddie" anime/manga, Bakegyamon heavily features monsters in the story. Predictably, its protagonist is a kid wearing a black shirt, jeans, an open vest, and a backwards cap, i.e. just like the Pokèmon kid. Whereas Ash Ketchum is an obnoxious little guy who endorses a fancier version of cockfighting, though, this kid, Sanshiro Tamon, didn't accept the status quo: When he learned that the monsters were people too, and had been enslaved for the purposes of this game, he decided that he would use the game's tournament prize, one unrestricted wish, to free them.

However, a previous winner of the game, whose wish was that the game would go on forever (sort of), learning of his plans, decided to eliminate him from the competition by sealing him into one of the cards that the monsters are (predictably) bound up in. There's a game rule that only monsters can be summoned from the cards, so he's trapped forever.

Unless the being who holds the tournament and grants the wishes, and who has despairingly watched it spiral out of control, turns him into a monster.

The problem is that being turned into a monster will probably kill him.

But, even presented with the opportunity to live in a dream world where it will be basically lucid dreaming forever instead, he'd rather risk his life than sit by.

And so, he gets accidentally summoned by one of his friends who's trying to defend herself from the villain.

Some manga artists can and will draw the heck out of anything. This guy is clearly one of them.

Anyway, since he's now a big... thing, the mere fact of his being summoned blocked the villain's last attack.

The villain, annoyed, states that even though he must now be a monster, there's no way a runty monster like himself will stand a chance against his enhanced high-class monsters.

But...

I've read that this will be made into an anime. If this doesn't get a "FALCON PUNCH" meme video, there is no justice.

Predictably, Sanshiro's gigantic fist sends off the villain's monster on the Team Rocket express.

Then Sanshiro's arm falls off.

Yes, his arm falls off. The stress of using his monster powers so soon after being transformed is making his body fall apart, and his arm just snaps right off. (It's depicted like shattering clay, so it's not gory, but it is hardcore.)

What does Sanshiro do next? Keep in mind, this kid is eleven, and his arm just fell off. Most people, much less most kids, would be screaming or passing out at this point.

Well... (Note that it reads right to left, if you're not a regular manga reader.)

Then the villain sends in another monster to attack again. What's Sanshiro's response? (Once again, right to left.)

He does it again.

When the villain sends in a third monster, his response is to grow a new arm and do it again.

He's basically the best kid character since Daiya from Gaiking. (Actually, this manga originally ran just a couple of years after that Gaiking series aired. Hm.)

And I'm not sure that was actually the most batman thing that Sanshiro did. (If you want to know what else he did, go ahead and read it yourself. Going through the somewhat less interesting earlier chapters to get to this one is worth it.

And if you don't know why I use the word batman like that, there's an explanation here. The actual why is because I don't swear except by accident.)

-Signing off.

Weird Anime Character Find (#2)

(Had a kind of miserable day, because my kid brother's six-week old kitten unexpectedly took ill and died after we'd had her for a week. I was looking her in the face trying to comfort her when she passed away, at one in the morning. She was a sweet kitten.

It can be hard when stupid things like this happen; sometimes all you can really do when it does is make sure a pet is as comfortable as you can make it, and make sure it realizes it's loved.

Incidentally, that's part of why I think fish make terrible pets and you shouldn't keep them as "pets."*)

This one isn't quite as weird as the last weird anime character design I put up; then again, that guy is hard to top, because he's just about a perfect storm of weirdness. This one is King Darius from the original Gaiking anime.

It's not just the relatively normal-looking mouth on his forehead that makes this guy weird; it's the fact that he's got a mustache in the same place someone else would put it, but without a mouth (or any other facial or cranial features) beneath it.

*Coping can involve cracking jokes; for me, it's more than half the process.

-Signing off.

Once Again: Best Anime Ship Captain Ever

Having finished the (rather poorly subtitled) Hulu release of Gaiking the other day, I once again must say: Best. Captain. Ever.

Captain Garis isn't just great because he's kind of funny, kind of mysterious, and rather batman; it's because he also manages to come across as a warm and caring person while wearing what ought to be a very impersonal mask. He's probably my favorite character in the series.

-Signing off.

Best Anime Series Captain Ever (Again)

Captain Garis (of the more recent Gaiking series): Still the best anime ship captain ever.

"You will [be] awarded this glorious trophy!!" indeed.

(The only person who seemed to be interested in the trophy wanted to drink champagne out of it; everybody else was more interested in the other prize, becoming captain for a day. Sorry, guys, none of you could ever be as awesome a captain as Captain Garis.)

-Signing off.

Best Anime Series Captain Ever

I think this screenshot speaks for itself.

In case it doesn't, Captain Garis, captain of the Daiku Maryu from Gaiking, is giving his robot pilot noogies.

-Signing off.

Super Robot Profiles: Gaiking

Gaiking was one of the first generation of super robots.



Its notability derives from two main factors: It's one of the first transforming/combining robots with a transformation that is based on physical reality, and it's terrifying.

Seriously, he just straight up uses that giant mouth in his stomach to bite things and those horns on his head to impale things. When I first realized that, I was pretty amazed that something quite that freaky was part of the old guard. (Granted, it's a slightly tame freaky, since, you know, robot-on-robot bloodless violence, but still.)

It actually got dubbed and put in that old standby of super robot lineups that very few people in the US other than hardcore super robot fans remember, Force Five. (It was also a part of Shogun Warriors, although it didn't appear in the Marvel comic.)



Since I don't hear anything about this dub, I'm going to assume it was pretty forgettable (instead of rampantly bad like the Grendizer dub).

I might not even bring Gaiking up at all, except...



...yeah, it had a popular remake/not truly a sequel. And having watched, oh, six or seven episodes or so of its official Hulu subtitled release, I can verify that it's pretty awesome.

For one, they take many super robot ideas and many "real robot" (i.e. what an English speaker would call a "Japanese mecha" series) ideas and blend them together in seamless and logical fashion. Sure, the robot's a super-awesome gigantic thing powered by its pilot's magic fire-generating abilities, but it also needs to have its forearms replaced after it launches off its rocket punches.

Another thing is that the protagonist, Daiya, is perhaps the best iteration of the overused and often poorly utilized "kid pilot" trope found in this kind of series I've ever seen. Seriously, he's just an awesome kid. He's believably a child, yet he's also surprisingly mature, serious, and tough. And willing to take on giant monsters armed only with a probably homemade harpoon.

The series is 39 episodes, and I'm looking forward to all the ones I haven't watched.

Oh, yeah, and there's apparently going to be a movie?

(A little note on Gaiking: Go Nagai has taken credit for creating Gaiking, but he waited to do so publicly until after the popular recent series. I find this just a bit suspicious, especially since Go Nagai seems to kind of just let people assume he created Getter Robo when he really only gave the actual creator a suggestion to go on. Not to call him on it or anything, it's just a bit peculiar that he'd wait until it was clear the property was viable.)

-Signing off.