What's My Deal? 5/25/24
Hello again!
For those of you who subscribed since I sent out my first newsletter: welcome! So happy to have you. This will likely be the first newsletter sent directly to your inbox, and I hope you enjoy it.
This week, I’ve decided to loosen things up a little and just write a bit about some things I enjoy! Some anime I’ve been watching, some games I’ve been playing, some recent updates about comic work I’m doing. Next time, I’ll write a more in-depth newsletter in the vein of my previous Red Ring post. I’m gonna shoot for that every month - one longer, more focused essay, followed by a more casual newsletter talking about various little things.
So let’s get to it!
Monday Night Anime
If you know me in any capacity, you know that I’m very into anime. I’ve been a casual fan for a long time, but when the pandemic hit I went all in and made anime like 90% of everything I watch. And I’m all the better for it! I love it more than life itself.
Every Monday I do what I call my weekly “Anime Night” - I watch three episodes, each from a different anime series I’m currently watching, with old Toonami bumpers & commercials sequenced in between to make it feel more like I’m watching TV. It’s a nice way to make the experience more fun for myself, and it also gives me the feeling of waiting to watch new episodes on a weekly basis that I don’t really get anymore. As much as I get the urge to binge watch some of these shows (and, occasionally, I’ll still do that), restricting myself to watching one episode per week gives me time to digest them and anticipate next week’s episode. It helps turn Monday night into a fun night I look forward to every week.
Here’s what I’m watching currently:
Kaiba: surreal, strange, sad science fiction fantasy from Masaaki Yuasa. Has a visual style that I can’t entirely pin down, colorful and cartoony in an old fashioned sort of way. Feels like it came from another world. Consciousness swapped between bodies, heartbreak and loss, so much going on. It’s an odd, beautiful little trip. I love Yuasa’s stuff pretty much every time out, and while this one feels a little too abstract to hit quite as hard as Ping Pong or Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken so far, I’m still enjoying it.
Dear Brother: hyper dramatic, hyper gay shoujo high school drama. It’s so good! I love it. This one is based on the manga from one of the original legends of girls’ manga, Riyoko Ikeda, and directed by Osamu Dezaki - the same team behind The Rose of Versailles, one of the most entertaining shows I’ve ever seen. Dear Brother is just as entertaining, and has the same visual hallmarks: limited animation, married with beautiful backgrounds and detailed illustrations, repeated over and over. I knew that Ikeda & Dezaki’s stuff was a big inspiration on Utena, another favorite show of mine, so I’m not surprised that I’m vibing with it so hard.
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: It took me way too long to get into Gundam! But hey, I am now. I really enjoyed the three Mobile Suit Gundam compilation movies, had my heart crushed by War In The Pocket, and now I’m continuing with Zeta Gundam in the coveted “main event” spot of my weekly anime lineup. Just got to the part where Amuro and Char see each other again for the first time in years, and the chemistry was electric!
I try to have some variety in the shows I’m watching, so here we have a surreal short little series followed by a classic shoujo and a classic shonen. A good mix of chaotic girl energy and chaotic boy energy in there. Kaiba is a short series, so I’ll be able to put something else in the lineup shortly to keep things fresh.
Not sure if I’ll have any new shows in the lineup in a couple weeks, but if I do I’ll cover them here! If not, maybe I’ll run down some of my favorite shows I’ve actually finished.
The Death of Red Ring
I’ve been having a lot of fun with the “Death of Red Ring” storyline I’m currently doing for Red Ring of Death. The gag is that Shawn Tuckley is trying to finally end the Red Ring strip in the most dramatic fire-and-brimstone way possible, killing off the entire main cast in a blaze of stupid violence. The comic’s been a monkey on his back for too many years, and now he gets to kill it off for good, to stomp out the horrible thing he created and move on to greener pastures. So I wanted to make the strips as resentful and hateful of the main cast as possible. It’s fun!
Not shocking that this is heavily inspired by some of the anime & manga I’ve been into lately, particularly when they have “bad” endings that feature the entire cast dying horribly. This was way more common with older anime - I recently finished reading the original Devilman manga and watched Be Invoked, the finale movie for Space Runaway Ideon, and (spoilers, sorry) both stories feature the entire main cast getting killed off one after another. To be fair, both of those series are pretty blunt anti-war allegories, so the ending deaths are intended to be tragic rather than cruel. But I wanted to try and capture that desperate, “we all know we’re going to die and can’t do anything to stop it” vibe (the above comic references a very specific part of Be Invoked, so I hope anyone who enjoys that movie catches it).
Also, it’s fun to indulge in horror imagery! I love horror and don’t get to do that very often, and in a gag comic like Red Ring it’s never going to come across as actually scary. But still, fun! I’m not sure if my art can carry it, but I’d love to take a crack at an actual horror comic one of these days. Someday!
Dragon Quest XI
Could you tell from my header and footer drawings that I love Dragon Quest? I do! I’m admittedly pretty new to it - I didn’t play the first DQ game until a few years ago, and I’ve only played the first 6 games since then - but as someone who loves Japanese RPGs and grew up with Final Fantasy and Pokémon, its quickly become a favorite series of mine. It’s the original JRPG that set the tone for everything else, and its DNA is in pretty much every game series I love in some way.
I could go on and on about it, and I think I’ll save that for a longer future newsletter. But I’ll just say that Dragon Quest XI feels like a classic Super Nintendo JRPG with modern graphics and gameplay mechanics, and it’s great. It’s fully realized depiction of Akira Toriyama’s character and monster designs is a visual treat, and its already made me cry several times. Great game! I’ll report back when I’m done.
That’ll do for this week! I’ll come back in a couple weeks to talk about one subject in a little more detail - very likely about my podcast The Hornet’s Nest, and the character of Dr. Hornet. It’ll be fun! Keep an eye out for that one.
See you next time, buds!
