March 4th - All Aboard The S.S. Minks

I got this old Super Nintendo game called U.N. Squardron, which is based off this bad-ass manga series Area 88, all about fighter pilots shooting down rebels and crap. One of the level objectives is to destroy the nuclear submarine "Minks." I take great pride in reducing Minks to scrap metal. Then I laugh. And laugh some more.

I went to Barnes & Noble the other day, since I still have $9 on this gift card my uncle David gave me. I browsed the manga, and was a bit disheartened. I mean, reading manga was fun back when there were maybe 5 titles available worth reading. Now bookstores dedicate entire racks to the endless stream of comics coming out of Japan, and watching a bunch of fanboys swarm over the newest issue of "Magical Girl Angel Pretty X," is just sad. Then again, I'm sure if anyone saw me browsing the racks they'd assume I was another fanboy as well, so maybe the other five guys there were also thinking about how much they hate the current anime-obsessed state of teenaged America. Either that or I'm just over analyzing. I pretty much stopped buying manga after "Great Teacher Onizuka" ran out of ways for Onizuka to miraculously save the day and inspire some random virtue in his students. Oh, and once I realized that I didn't need to buy Love Hina for the fanservice (e.g. it looks like sex but it's only there so you keep reading) since Ken Akamatsu makes hentai featuring his own characters anyways. I mean, I always thought that doujinshi was weird, but for the same dude who writes the original comic to make a spin-off where all of his characters have sex just seems... unnessessary?

Anyways, about the only manga I'm still interested in is "Cannon God Exxaxion." It's this totally bad-ass sci-fi manga by Kenichi Sonoda, author of my other favorite title "Gunsmith Cats." Sonoda knows what I want. He packs the books with a lot of action, and then maybe every other issue, he throws in some random lesbian sex, just because he can. Anyways, CGE is all about this alien race called the Riofaldians, who discovered earth five years ago and then seemingly integrated into our culture, sharing their technology and even beginning to send people from their own planet to settle on Earth. But; it was really their government's plan to take over colonize Earth. They manage to take over Earth in day, since all the technology they gave us, including weapons systems, are all able to be controlled by them. Unlike other dumbass sci-fi stories; however, the aliens handle the ensueing colonization and systematic annihilation of the humans, not by using giant laser weapons and space fighters to kill everyone (though they do have their share of giant robots) but through their use of fear and propaganda. If there's an uprising, they annihilate the rebels and broadcast the carnage on television. When the main character saves a bunch of people, they doctor a video of him kill a pregnant lady to turn the population against him (which backfires enormously when they strike back with images of the Riofaldians doctoring the video). Imagine the holocaust, except the Jews are the humans, and the Germans are the Aliens. And the only thing that can stop the aliens is a Japanese high school kid Koichi with his giant robot Exxaxion. Oh, and his crazy grandfather with his crew of strategy robots/sex-droids. It's some brilliant shit. Plus, unlike fucking TokyoPop, which pumps out 20 new manga titles a month with terrible translations and numberous errors; like freaking Love Hina, which somehow won best manga translation despite having so many mistakes that could've been fixed just by reading through the goddamn book before they sent it out; they wait like 3 months before bringing out a new volume, so you know they're actually working on translating the thing correctly. I have the 5th volume in Japanese, and there is some awkward underage sex going on between Koichi and the girl Akane. I know they'll probobly have to cut the part out for the American release, which is a shame, because it's really some deep shit.

Lastly, Eddy is having a showing of his new show at ACTV. Of course, the asshat scheduals it for the one day I can't come, but whatever. So, if you want to see me on a screen being funny, alongside some other hilarious short skits, go to ACTV tomorrow (thursday) at 8:00 and laugh til' you bleed.

Oh and has anyone else seen that foot medicine commercial? The whole premise of the commercial is obviously geared toward foot fetishists. "My wife would never let me touch her dry, cracked feet. But now that she takes Enfalin, I get to touch her feet all I want!" It's some sick and depraved shit that makes it onto American television, I love it.