Confession: a new [to me] manga series sucked me in over the past seven couple of weeks and has eaten up a bunch of lunch hours… Usually, when I bump into a new manga collection that can keep my interest, it involves a massive spending spree on imported/translated books through multiple Borders visits, and I read’m during nighttime hours… This new series – MegaTokyo – is released via the web, so it’s free, much like RedVsBlue is [another one of my favorites, altho that’s more cartoon than anime/manga], but it requires a computer to read’m online… 685 episodes later and not only am I up to date with the story, but I’m hooked.

Frankly, it’s a little embarrassing… I’ve considered myself to be an anime fan for a long while, and a casual manga fan over the last couple of years, as major bookstores started to carry manga collections on a regular basis. It’s much easier to buy copies when you don’t have to imported versions from Japan! On top of that, MegaTokyo has been on the web for years – literally – and I only encountered it for the first time this month… bad, bad Randy!

So, what’s the craic with this manga? Simply put, it’s the story of Piro & Largo and their adventures in Japan. More or less. Piro is a bumbling-around-women manga/anime fan that speaks Japanese and is a sucker for women in HS style uniforms; he also suffers from a tiny lack of self confidence. He’s assisted by his conscience, who manifests as Seraphim: a well-drawn woman with angle wings. Also, when Fred has reason to bring an episode from real life into the strip – as a filler – Fred comes in as Piro and his wife as Seraphim. It works.

Largo is a gaming-obsessed b33r fan with l33t 3v1l crushing skillz. Anything he touches explodes, kills zombies, and well, fueled by beer and overclocked CPU’s. His conscience manifests as Boo, who communicates through squeaks, and simply doesn’t have the same influence that Seraphim has over Piro. They are both American born: they end up in Japan after getting tossed out of an E3 conference – Piro takes a passed out Largo over the Pacific – and have since run out of money, so they can’t get home.

Confused? Start at the very beginning: Episode One, Aug-14, 2000. And yes, I did go through the entire series… only to find out that Fred has since released the first three chapters to physical paperback. And they stock them at the local Borders. After sucking up their bandwidth for the last week, I bought the 2nd and 3rd chapter; I’ll order the 1st one from online, or wait for Borders to get it back in stock. Ya gotta support authors!

Very well drawn work. Very Geek-centric story line. In fact, I’m a bit disturbed by how much of myself I see in both Piro and Largo… the fascination with Japan, being a fan of anime, the ability to destroy machines on contact, the constant ph34r of static electricity… never anything wrong with beer.

Hey Fred: ya done good… real good – keep up the g00d w3rk.