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Reviewed by Robert Murray Piro and Largo are up to the same old tricks, and CMX should be very pleased that they have these manga superstars in their bullpen. Yes, Fred Gallagher is an American writing and drawing a Japanese form of entertainment, but no one can deny the impact he has had on the manga market over the last five years. His (almost) daily web comic has attracted thousands of fans and has given Megatokyo a cult following around the world. I think the main reason for this popularity is the strength of Gallagher’s characterizations, which are among the best in any graphic art-form running today. The reader truly feels connected to the characters, their romantic hijinks, and their wacky misadventures with the personal touches supplied by the author. It doesn’t hurt that Piro is modeled directly from Gallagher! Are all the characters likable? No, and some are annoying as well, but all are well-drawn and elucidated, making Megatokyo Volume 4 a must for lovers of character-driven manga. Yeah, the kawai factor may be set a little high for my tastes, but there’s no doubt that I love how the characters are constructed in this series. One of my favorites, Nanasawa Kimiko, really comes into her own in Volume 4. Previously, we have only seen Kimiko as an insecure girl who’s Erika’s roommate and has some romantic feelings toward Piro. Here, we see the initially shy girl take on the role of a video game voice-over and succeed somewhat, though she has a problem controlling her emotions during the recording sessions. This same lack of control causes her problems on a local radio program that she is being interviewed on, but I see it as the defining moment of her character. As Mumu-chan, the radio host, begins to disparage fanboys, Kimiko gets fired up and shows a side of her character we have never seen. She says, “I don’t think fanboys are sad and pathetic. I think we are because we can’t do more for them except sit here and talk about how great we are while they pretend we are somehow part of their lives.” Bravo! Kimiko finally presents herself as a strong female character, and vaulted herself to the top of my favorite characters from Megatokyo. Plus, she’s really cute (my fanboy moment)! The comments made on Mumu-chan’s radio show are also indicative of her feelings toward Piro, which stands as the main plot of this volume. Some case can be made for the blossoming romance between Largo and Erika, but there really hasn’t been enough overt flirting to justify this assessment. Piro and Kimiko are the story here, and following their winding paths toward mutual happiness is fun indeed. Listen to me! You would think I wasn’t a married man! This is the kind of effect Gallagher’s playful writing has on most readers and why this web-comic has seen the success it has. Romance is the key, but the world that Piro and Largo inhabit is one of unique wonders, yet very close to the world we see every day. The two protagonists have many of the same problems that continually dog all of us (money, love, work, relations), but combined with Godzilla-like monsters and possible armies of the undead, these problems lose a lot of their potential disruption. Megatokyo is a perfect remedy when life has you down, because it’s guaranteed to make you smile at least once every few pages. Many of the elements of Megatokyo work extremely well on many levels, but there are still some areas for improvement for Mr. Gallagher and for CMX. Even though he has gotten better over time, Gallagher still has a penchant for alienating members of his audience by being a little too free-wheeling with his influences. There are many anime references (such as the Chobits-inspired Ping or Ed’s imitation of Sousuke from Full Metal Panic) and game references (such as Everquest and Dead or Alive) which many manga and comic readers don’t know about. Not everyone’s an otaku! But, the alienation in Megatokyo has less to do with readers’ other activities and more to do with the dense combination of elements, which Gallagher deftly handles, but leaves the reader wanting the same human glow that illuminates the person-to-person interactions of this series. Many times I found myself a little overwhelmed by the actions of a particular scene, especially the fanboy frenzy of Chapter 5. In that instance, I think a little less of the ‘noise’ of the scene could have been just as effective. Instead, we have a mixture of frenetic fans, an anime idol, a giant monster, a military unit consisting of students, and a conspiracy reaching the very top of Sega black ops. Yes, it’s designed lunacy, but the sheer extent of the lunacy actually made this a little cumbersome to get through, even with the excitement of the overall scene. As for CMX, they really need to include some sort of primer for new readers of this series. I know that readers need only go to www.megatokyo.com to follow the entire strip from the beginning (as Gallagher explains in the beginning), but I think that CMX needs to do the work for the fans, particularly since this is $9.99 they’re spending for a product that is actually free. The expanded Circuity skit is a fine addition to the volume, but just a minor introduction would be great. There’s no way any blurb could contain the numerous plots and subplots that dot this series, but it would help a new reader to gain some footing. To CMX’s credit, there is a LOT of supplemental material packed in Volume 4, which makes the $10 cover price sting a lot less. What’s the final word? Fred Gallagher continues to create an entertaining, complex world within the pages of Volume 4, and he is definitely improving as he goes along. The stories are much more affecting, the art is incredibly well designed, and the characters remain some of the best written in manga. To anyone looking to pick up this volume as their first exposure to Megatokyo, I would recommend taking a week on the website to bone up. Yeah, probably a week due to the sheer amount of strips and the time it takes to switch from one strip to another. However, once you spend a week in Gallagher’s world, this volume will stand as a collection of some of the best strips the series has offered so far. I gu4r4nt33 (Sorry, my attempt at L33T speech)! Comment on this review of Megatokyo v4 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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