Megatokyo

Megatokyo is a dōjinshi webcomic drawn by Fred Gallagher (also known as "Piro"). Fred does the art, story, and website design. Rodney Caston (aka "Largo") helped him for the first year or so with the history and maintenance of the website, but today it is entirely in Freds hands. Fred was fired from his job at the end of 2002, and as a result he is dedicated to his comic full time.

Megatokyo is the story of two Americans, Piro and Largo, who are stranded in Tokyo, Japan, after a small incident at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). Much of the comic's humor, especially early on, is based on gags and gags about video games, as well as jokes between the people involved (Fred's friends) and blunders about cultural differences, though the style has changed a bit since the passing. of time, concentrating today on manga and anime stereotypes: While Largo battles the threat of the undead and Rent-A-Zillas with his Beowulf Supercomputer, with an angelic Boo (from the Baldur's Gate series) trying to moderate his somewhat excessive behavior, Piro's life has turned into something out of a Romance Simulator, with Seraphim his 'conscience' ignoring him. (based on the author's then girlfriend and now wife) scolding him from behind his shoulder for his accidental encounters with girls too young or Asmodeus, encouraging him to look at not-so-dignified photos online of a classmate of his. Another resident of the house is Ping, a confused PlayStation 2 accessory capable of turning into a dream girlfriend - or throwing buses in a fit of rage.

All comics are available for free online at Megatokyo.com, as well as in the book published by I.C. Entertainment (formerly IronCat). However, due to disagreements between Megatokyo and I.C. Entertainment, the book will be published in the future by Dark Horse Comics, with ISBN 1-59307-163-9 and ISBN 1-59307-118-3, including for future reissues of the first book.

There are currently five volumes available, Dark Horse volumes 1-3 and CMX/DC volumes 4-5

Characters

Note: The last name is written before the first name, as is customary in Japan.

• Piro - An American passionate about the sleeve (especially shōjo) who knows how to speak Japanese. He is an excellent artist, but he is unable to recognize him. He works as a pet/dependant at MegaGamers, a comic book store and associated goods. Piro is the comic version of Fred Gallagher.
• Go! - An American passionate about video games, who acts before (or instead) thinking, and is obsessed with beer. You can speak 1337 (Leet speak) but not Japanese. Get a job as an English teacher at Shiritsu Daitou's upper school, becoming 'Great Teacher Largo' (anime/mangare reference) GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka). Long is the comic version of Rodney Caston.
• Tsubasa - An internet friend from Piro, Piro and Largo make okupas at home when they first arrive in Japan. Today he is "following his heart" in the United States. He left behind Ping-chan (and his apartment) for Piro and Largo.
• Ed - Sony Employee, Dom's best friend and rival.
• Dom - Employee of Sega, Ed's best friend and rival. Powered by weapons and terribly competitive. Also known as SGD, Shirt (or Stick) Guy Dom. His equivalent in real life makes comics of monigoths when Fred is not available. Dom is the comic version of Dominic Nguyen, who today works for Wired magazine.
• Sonoda Yuki - Japanese girl. Student at a senior school and daughter of the Tokyo Police Commissioner. Theoretically he receives art classes from Piro, but in reality there is always something that stands in his way.
• Hayasaka Erika - Japanese girl, Kimiko's roommate, former singer and bent actress (seiyū). He works as a reliance on MegaGamers next to Piro.
• Nanasawa Kimiko - Japanese girl, roommate of Erika, waitress at Anna Miller's and aspiring double-headed actress (seiyū).
• Ping-chan - Accessory robot girl for PS2. A non-H prototype (i.e. non-Hentai; only platonic love) of the new Sony-EDS (Emotional Doll System, or Emotional Doll System), which somehow ended in the hands of Tsubasa. It is designed to work with Romance Simulators (or dating sims), and after playing with it develops its own personality, based on the choices the player chooses during the game.
• Tohya Miho - You don't know much about her. It seems to be another EDS developed by some of the millions of Dating Sims that Piro has played in his life. She's a friend of Ping's, but she's pretty weird. Largo believes he is in charge of an army of Zombis thanks to the Necrowombicon, an ancient evil book he found in the sewers and was used to make the video game Daikatana.
• Seraphim - A shoulder angel, has as a job to be Piro's consciousness, struggling to keep him straight and on the right path when it comes to romance. It's Sarah's comic version, Fred's wife. It has a weak tip for design clothes and likes cats almost as much as cats like the taste of it.
• Boo! - a small angelic hamster with wings of removal and put, which has as work to be the consciousness of Largo, something clearly impossible, and if it fits even more difficult because of the fact of being incapable of talking, only chirriar (sometimes even in leet). It is a reference to the Boo character of the Baldur's Gate game, The 'Gigant Hamster in Miniature Space' of Minsc.
• Asmodeus - Piro's anti-consciousness, the other agency. Try to piro to fall in love with quinceañeras and so on. Your partner is a cat named Belphegor.
• Junpei - Ninja, and Largo apprentice. We met him for the first time when Piro and Largo arrived in Japan and Largo did not have his passport. In order to enter Japan, Largo has to defeat Junpei in the Mortal Kombat game. Long, being insurmountable in anything that relates to electronics (including, how not, video games), easily wins the fight.

Groups and Secondary Characters

• Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division - A division of the Tokyo police, pilot giant robots (Mecha) to stop giant monsters when they try to destroy the city. Yuki's father, Sonoda Masamichi, is the member we find most in the comic book of this division. Long is part of this division (TPCD in its English acronym) after using Ping-chan to defeat an alcoholic giant tortoise.
• Sonoda Yuuji - Yuki's brother. Member of the Haguesaka Erika Fan Club.
• Haguesaka Erika Fan Club - A group of people obsessed with Hayasaka Erika, or at least with his old incarnation as an idol, singer and bent actress. They have recently rediscovered their whereabouts after disappearing suddenly from the national landscape.
• Rent-a-Zilla - Giant lizard Junpei rents from time to time. It's paid with pig bark.
• Zombies - Normally ravers; Long is obsessed with destroying this horde of living-dead.
• John Romero - The once great video game designer such as Doom and Quake. He created the group of programmers Ion Storm, famous for making Daikatana (a video game that was a real disaster after raising a great expectation), after what was fired. Now it's in ruin and unemployed.
• L33T D00D - A strange raver that appears when long has to face the Δ0RD45 D3 Z0/B15 (Tohya/Ping) in c0mb473 (recreational halls) and gives you advice in leet, which appear subtitled in a more normal language (e.g. "T3 /0Y 4 //4USBEL-T-I'll miss a single "T" in a single "T-T" part in a single-T" is converted into a singular translation. A good example is this comic.
• Asako and Mami - High school students and Yuki friends. They think she's stuck by Piro, and they might be right.

Origin of name

In many Japanese animated series (see Anime and Manga), Tokyo becomes 'Megatokyo' or 'Neo-Tokyo'. In many of these stories, the original city was destroyed by cataclysm or atomic bomb, only to be rebuilt bigger and better than ever. Several of these series or movies are Evangelion, Bubblegum Crisis, AD Police and Akira. The comic's name appeared simply because it was an internet domain name that Largo had reserved. In the first incarnation of it, Largo had the site as a forum for anime news using Slashcode (a peek here), but it wasn't very successful and was ultimately used for the comic.

Plot

Piro and Largo begin their journey trying to sneak into the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). E3, which is open only to the media, denies them a pass. Largo gets noticeably drunk at a bar and takes off his pants, insulting the conference. He wakes up inside a plane. Piro, after what happened, decides that it would be good for them to leave the country for a while, and buys two one-way tickets to Japan. After arriving in Japan they spend all the money they have in a video game store buying all kinds of electronic junk, including Largo's infamous Cool Thing. They go to the airport and find that their credit cards are paid off. So they are stranded in Japan.

More information

• Comic
• leet