I normally review mostly Anime in this blog, but today I want to sing the praises of an American Manga that I've been reading lately and really enjoy. I have now finished up through volume 4 of Megatokyo, which is to say the serialized Manga of the famous web-comic of the same name...
Megatokyo is an American web-comic done in Manga style in English; It reads right to left, and there is always an hilarious disclaimer at the back of the book reminding readers of this fact, a play on the warnings in the back of most Manga translations into English that retain the original Japanese cell placements to reduce re-printing costs. Since Megatokyo was originally composed in English, it is read in standard English comic book fashion.
Megatokyo's premise are two American gamer nerds who fly to Tokyo on a whim after failing to get into a big convention in the USA. They go on an ill-advised shopping spree in Akihabara and are too broke to afford return tickets home. Why they didn't buy round trip tickets is anyone's guess.
Anyway, these two friends, Piro and Largo, have to find a way to survive in Japan. Piro speaks English and Japanese, while Largo speaks only English. Piro winds up working in a comic book store in Tokyo alongside Erika, the beautiful former Anime voice actress, who is the friend and roommate of Kimiko, a young woman trying to break into the world of voice-acting. Erika is bilingual, while Kimiko speaks only Japanese.
Supporting cast include Ping, a startlingly life-like female doll and PS2 accessory for dating sim games, and the mysterious and dark Miho Tohya...who is probably my favorite of all the Megatokyo characters, precisely because she's so enigmatic...and she has a lot of great one-liners.
Here's a piece of fan-art idolizing Miss Miho:
The artwork in Megatokyo proper is more crude than this, mostly penciled sketches that are then uploaded to the web. The author is on a tight schedule and produces his artwork as efficiently as he can, which sometimes means cutting corners, etc. But what is really engaging about Megatokyo are the characters and their stories, their budding relationships, etc.
At the end of Volume 4, things are starting to look up for Piro and Kimiko, Largo and Erika. The unlikely paring of Erika and Largo is amusing but sweet in its own quirky way. Kimiko gives Piro permission to address her by first name, which is a big deal in Japan--a sign of greater intimacy.
Ping also upbraids Piro for being dense and tells him it's very likely Kimiko actually likes him.
Erika apparently has had some bad relationships in the past and got hurt very badly and fears intimacy. She even says to Largo: "If I sleep with you, will you go away?", which is kind of f*cked up. She says it as a taunt and provocation, not an honest question asked out of fear...or maybe it is, in a double-entendre kind of way. Erika herself is kind of dark and emotionally messed up. Definite "bad" girl-with-the-heart-of-gold archetype. She's fortunate to have a friend in Kimiko, who understands her better than anyone.
Piro reminds me a lot of myself...a hopeless romantic who is his own worst critic and always beating himself up. His conscience is represented by an angelic character named Seraphim, a wise-cracking, winged brunette with glasses and a no-nonsense attitude. She's based on Fred Gallagher's real-life live-in girlfriend/wife. Piro is Fred's alter-ego, while Pirogoeth is Piro's own opposite sex alter-ego in the online videogame world. She is his avatar in cyberspace, and it was while playing Pirogoeth that Piro first met Miho online; Miho's online avatar was male, despite being in real life (in the comic) "a frail little Japanese girl,".
Miho is endlessly interesting as it's really hard to know what really is going on in her warped mind.
She's the ultimate gothic Lolita type....dark but breathlessly beautiful...and dangerous.
Ping is like Lt. Cdr Data of Star Trek insofar as she's always very likable and forever transcending her apparent limits as an artificial being with intelligence. Her emotions are very real, if simulated.
She loves Piro and feels some initial jealousy towards Kimiko, but relents to let her "Master", Piro, pursue a relationship with Kimiko if that is truly what he wants. She's very protective of Piro and doesn't tolerate him bashing himself.
Lastly there is Yuki, the real-life Japanese High School girl and budding artist who discovers Piro's sketchbook and wants him to teach her to draw like he does. She has a schoolgirl crush on Piro, which her friends tease her about mercilessly. Piro handles her rather poorly, standing her up on drawing lessons, etc. Yuki is kind of heartbroken and depressed, though when she finally meets Kimiko, she realizes Piro loves Kimiko and not her. She seems to find some acceptance of this and it lets her move on emotionally from a relationship that simply can never be between a 15 year old and someone in their 20s.
Megatokyo does lighten the mood sometimes with amusing fantasy/gamer nerd interludes, but I think it is at its best when exploring relationships, and people's relationship to art, anime, manga, fantasy and their inner emotional life. That's what keeps me coming back to Megatokyo time and again, much more so than the l33t speak and gamer-nerd jokes and episodes.
If you have not yet experienced Megatoyko, I do strongly encourage it. At least check out volume 1 of the manga from your local library if you don't want to surf its archives online.