I know, right? In hindsight is seems so obvious.
Apparently this little character is from an anime, はたらく細胞ＢＬＡＣＫ (Hataraku Saibō Burakku), "Cells at Work! Code BLACK" in which the protagonists are anthropomorphized cells including our little RPG-shooter.
That may be the most Japanese thing I've heard in a loooooong time.
Wait! No! I mean...Portland is on fire!
We're LIT! Not actually burning! No smoke, no flames!
No. Just no. Outside of the usual assload of scruffy street people, Portland is fine.
So we braved the Antifa arson mobs the other day to poke around downtown, and ran into two of our favorite places here in the Beehive of Terrorism.
The first was Scrap.
Scrap is...well, pretty much everything. You want old stickers? Weird metal bits? X-ray prints? Patterns from the 1970s? Glitter, ribbon, postcards from 1908, decoupage (who knew that decoupage was even still a thing?), back issues of National Geographic?
Scrap's got 'em.
The Bride goes to paw through the fabric and other sewing treasures.
I just like the congeries of weird and bizarre old vinyl, hubcaps, and random shit that the place has scrounged up.
Sewing Susan? Ohhellyes!
There's even some stuff that is not entirely appropriate for the kiddies!
Even the street randos like them some Scrap!
Then down to near Pioneer Square to the downtown Kinokuniya.
Our local outlet of this Japanese bookstore has every manga and most anime every released (of course), and it is pretty critical for keeping up with Spy x Family and The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen and all my other manga favorites.
But it also has every cute, silly, whack, funny, goofy, and just Japanese thing that a would-be otaku could ever crave.
Because that's how we roll here in Little Beirut.
Burn, baby, burn!
...is my palate-cleanser from the turgid prose of Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming; perhaps the most peculiar, wonderful, bizarre, and intriguing train-wreck of a manga adaptation of an anime I've ever come across: Gate: Where The JSDF Fought.
I dunno, but this may possibly be the most manga-y manga I've every read.
(And to out myself as an otaku, I kinda love manga; I've read every tankobon volume of Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃) and everything from the hardcore old-school mecha stories like Shin Seki Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン ) to fluffy romances like Our Teachers Are Dating...)
But this one is...reeeeeally special.
Start with the worked-out premise of an interdimensional gate between worlds.
But then add a bizarre mashup of Tolkiensque fantasy - dragons and trolls? - with Romans (sorta...) and a buxom imperial princess called - I shit you not - "Pina Co Lada".
Have these mooks invade Tokyo and tear the living hell out of a bunch of innocent Japanese civilians...
(Don't forget to pitch in a whole bunch of gratuitous violence and nudity...)
...and then respond to all this with a sort of Japanese Army (sorry..."Self Defense Force") fanservice where the JGSDF proceeds to send an expeditionary force into this fantasy world so we can enjoy antitank weapons against fire-breathing dragons and Japanese recon infantry against Roman legionaries and the boys and girls of the Rikujō Jieitai as heroes...
...plus Rory Mercury, who is so beyond the rest of this weird shit that I leave you to the mercy of Wikipedia.
The whole thing is an absolute hoot, and I hope the outfit that's publishing this thing will continue to put out these in tankobon formate all the way to the end of the original anime run.
If only Atkinson had found a way to write in a loli-goth death goddess into the Battle of Long Island his stuff might work better. I'm just gonna have to call that a serious failure of imagination.
