A Man With An Agenda

I've been heavily indulging in nostalgia lately, well...maybe for a few years. It's a way for me to balance the demands of the first-run arcs I read for work and the constant perusal of catalogs featuring thousands of new titles every season. Will that change in our new time of uncertainty? No idea, really, but it will be difficult ride for many small imprints and publishers for the next few years, even if everybody gets better tomorrow (and they won't).

Anyway, 'Megatokyo' was staple reading for me and my friends at the computer lab between classes. I was never fully immersed in gamer or anime culture as some in my circle, but the lols were real nonetheless. Piro and Largo end up kicked out of a gamers convention and, on a whim, take a flight to Japan. In Tokyo they promptly spend all of their money and are stuck in the country until they can save enough money to fly home.

Meanwhile, Kimiko is auditioning for a major voice-acting role for a new game with the encouragement of her tough friend Erika who works at a manga shop. Throw in Ping, the sentient PS2 accessory, high-tech hijinks, 133+ sp34k (I know I got that wrong), Sega hitmen, battling consciences, and the occasional unsanctioned Godzilla-attack and you have are story.

I forgot Miho, a "darkly cute" personification of evil, or a misunderstood school girl.

The comic is still going, but I've completely lost track of where the story is these days. Once I've finished the second omnibus, I'll dig into the website.

What I like about this comic after all of these years is the commitment to true character development and the long-game story arcs. There are some really dated jokes and uninteresting interludes that were fun filler at the time, but could probably have been entirely excluded.