#121.5 Robots, F-Bombs, and No Plot - is Cyber Blue a good Manga?

[00:00:00] Welcome to Shonen Flop Chibi, a first impressions mini episode where we talk about the first chapter of the series we'll be covering in depth next week with our guest Anthony Grammuglia. I'm Jordan and with me today as usual is my lovely co-host David. Say hi, David. Hi, David. What series we're covering this week, David? We're covering cyber blue. Oh, I got them cyber blues. I got them cyber blues. Surprised you didn't put Tobias when he blues himself. I cyber blue myself.

[00:00:30] It's so funny. So funny! Anyway, yeah, so this series, this is a pretty badass because David, huh, the art kind of looked familiar, didn't it? Yeah, this is not subtle. If you couldn't tell immediately by the art, it is drawn by Tetsuo Hara of Fists of the fucking North Star. Yeah, not even inspired. It is the man himself.

[00:00:54] It is the man himself, which if you're not familiar, also did to Kekiriyusei. And you can always tell it's him because every single one of his protagonists just looks the same. It's all Kenshiro. They all look the same. It's all Kenshiro. He only knows- It's always been Kenshiro. He only knows how to draw one protagonist. Listen, I don't fear the man who's drawn a thousand faces. I fear the man who's drawn the same face a thousand times.

[00:01:18] My favorite version of Kenshiro is like, at some point, I want to say like three quarters into Fists of the North Star, he just starts drawing him so that he looks identical to Sylvester Stallone in the movie Cobra. It has to be intentional. It's so close. But yeah, anyway, this is drawn by Tetsuo Hara, but it's written by a guy named Bob, all caps Bob, B-O-B. Yeah, I'm sure Maxi B's got some details on this guy.

[00:01:42] Yeah, and there's another person credited with the story named Ryuichi Mitsui. So this was a three-person team. Yeah, I think this is our first, I guess, was it Trupple? Trupple, our first Trupple. Yeah, Trupple, there we go. Here comes Trupple, our first Trupple manga. Polyamorous group, you know? Yeah. Anyway, this ran from November 22nd, 1988 to July 11th, 1989, one of the older series that we have covered. Yeah.

[00:02:09] And yeah, wow, it got 31 chapters. I feel like that's like a short amount of time to have 31 fucking chapters, right? Yeah. Like that's a little bit over half a year, right? Like that's like pretty impressive. Yeah, it's very impressive. But yeah, let's get to the fucking plot summary of this fucking badass banging fucking manga. Yeah. It's the future. The future, Jordan. The future. And mankind lives on a planet called Tinos that has half the oxygen of Earth.

[00:02:38] I don't know why they decided to live here, but I guess they were like, well, there's some oxygen. So like, you know, people need life support systems in order to survive because of that, though. A guy is selling a new cheap life support when he sees a 17 year old kid named Blue wandering through the desert without one. He was robbed and had his life support stolen. So he tries to swindle Blue by having him buy it. But then the guy claims, ah, ha, he only bought one use of it. The bad guy then sends his own bad guys to attack him. But Blue reveals that David,

[00:03:07] he's the fastest hand in the West and he quick draws his guns and shoots their guns and they run away. Blue discovers that the life support system is connected to a 300 year old robot that says fuck and eats money. The sheriff of a private police company named Weiser sees Blue in action and offers to deputize him to stop some people from stealing a ticket to Earth that night. Popcorn David. Blue goes to where the crime is supposed to take place and goes to sleep. The robot then reads his dreams and finds out his dead mom named to Blue because Earth was blue.

[00:03:36] Pale blue dot is a very famous photo. I see. Just then they're attacked by the robbers and the robot gives him cool targeting goggles because we are beginning our slow transition into Robocop. It is the future. The future, Jordan. Way of the future. The way of the future. Blue takes out all the bad guys. What's this? One of the bad guys is a kid. What's going on? Huh? Weiser then shows up and reveals that it was all a trap. Actually, he activated Weiser's trap card. He had actually stolen their ticket and wanted Blue to kill them so that they couldn't take it back. They filmed Blue killing everyone to place the blame on him

[00:04:05] and justify his execution. They also killed the kid. They shoot the fuck out of Blue. Laugh. And the robot is like, fuck, which that robot said fuck a lot of times. Someone in the discord actually counted the number of the times the word fuck was said. So I believe they said 45 fucks is said throughout the duration of this series, which is actually lower than I was expecting. Damn. I thought that was going to be just this chapter. Honestly, he goes over to the dying blue and blue is like, I'll call you fat. So because you're fat and the robots like, holy shit, how did you know? Only my creator knew I was a

[00:04:33] fat robot. He was like, wait a minute. Fat. So that's what they used to call me. They used to call me fat. So 300 years ago, how did you know the robot then decides to do surgery to fuse himself and blue together, turning blue into a soy board, a Jewish robot that says, fuck blue then goes looking for wiser and kills a bunch of the guys who shot him. End of chapter one, beginning of what I can tell is a very beautiful story and probably a strong metaphor for the Vietnam War. Oh, David, when you said soy

[00:05:01] Berg, I wasn't thinking Zoidberg. I was thinking like a cyborg with low T. God, soy. So yeah, those fucking Zoi bots. These fucking soy. Well, in the future, we have flying cars and we still have that alpha beta shit. Yeah. Anyway, Jordan, what were your first impressions of this besides the spoiler alert that we liked it? Oh, this is Robocop. Yeah. It's so funny because I had actually just rewatched Robocop with some friends like the night before I read this chapter. So I was reading, I was like, wait, what the fuck?

[00:05:30] Because David is so clearly intentional that like one of the things that happens in Robocop is that like spoilers for Robocop, the guy who becomes Robocop gets shot a bunch of times. And one of the things is his right arm gets blown the fuck off. Yeah. And that happens here. It's the same arm too. It's like, oh, Robocop came out in 1987. Yeah. And this is 88. Yeah. So it's like when I saw that, I was like, oh, this is 100% intentional. Oh my God. Like he even

[00:05:58] briefly becomes a cop before getting killed. Yeah. He's a cop for like 30 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, if you're ripping something off, Robocop is great thing to rip off, to be honest. It's also kind of ripping off Terminator because that's what he looks like. Like he goes through the plot of Robocop and then is turned into a giant naked muscular man who takes somebody's leather jacket and the sunglasses, basically. Like he becomes the Terminator. It's

[00:06:23] great. It's great. It's awesome. Let's see this kid dance. Yeah. And then so Jordan though, um, I gotta say this art is great. You can only draw one face, dude. You know, it's like you're reading something by the guy who drew Fist of the North Star and you're getting Fist of the North Star. And that's all I could ask for, man. That's all I could ask for. And I'm getting it and I'm loving it. This art kicked ass. This kicked ass, you know, it's, it's manly as fuck. And that's what

[00:06:52] you want. Yeah. I forgot that this literally is by the guy who worked on Fist of the North Star. So I thought, oh wow, I bet this offer worked on it. And guess what he did? Cause he made Fist of the North Star. Same. As soon as I saw the art, I was like, is this Tetsuo Hara? And yes, it is. Yeah. It's so, it's so funny. It's like, you think that like an artist that iconic, like there'd be so many different artists where it's like, uh, oh, well you can't tell it's him because like, this is just a guy who ripped them off. But no, he's like, you can immediately tell

[00:07:20] he's the only one who can do it like this, I guess. Yeah. I do want to actually get into the plot of this. This is a very paper fin plot. And you can tell that the author really was like, let me shotgun every plot in the first 10 pages. So I felt like the author really thought he established enough to have this plot occur in this chapter. It does not, but it's such a stupid idea where it's like, I don't know if I really wanted like three chapters of pretending he was a cop before the twist. I remember somebody describing like, I'm pretty sure they were

[00:07:48] talking about like Rocky four where they were basically just like, it's not a movie that's good, but it's a movie that kicks ass. Yeah. And that's how I feel about this. I don't know if I would describe this chapter as like, quote unquote, well written or good, but I would describe it as a chapter that fucking kicked ass. I feel like I'm going to be like, objectively, this is not a good series, but I had a lot of fun reading it if it's not a flop. I hope so. Honestly, Takeki Ryusei made

[00:08:17] me really question this because remember those first few chapters were fucking great. Yeah. And then it completely dropped the ball. Yeah. What if this series just turns into like cyborg rights and stuff and it's like a human revolution thing where it's like, Oh, just cause I'm part machine doesn't mean I'm not fully human. And it just turns into like dialogue about the human soul instead of him just using his gun to shoot bad guys for 20 pages a month. Oh my God. I hope not. But I also kind of feel like, um, this unfortunately seems like a series where the guy might run out of ideas quickly.

[00:08:48] I do not know what 31 chapters of this is actually going to be. No, if he somehow manages to keep up the energy from chapter one, which look, this is the guy, this is at least the artist of fifths of the North star, you know? Yeah. I'm assuming he's working with people who at least like have some experience. It's not out of the realm of possibility that it continues being buck wild. And if it continues being fucking buck wild, I'm in man. Yeah. I mean, this is going to be fun. This also is definitely

[00:09:15] feels like a video game. Oh yes. I have actually heard that the, um, Robocop game is pretty fun. And some of this dialogue does go super hard. Like when they say, how old are you? And the robot's 300 and he's 17 and he says he's 317. I was like, fuck. Okay. This series has earned a line that is unobjectively fucking goes hard. Even if it's a very stupid line. Yes. I love the things that the robot says. He's just like, fuck. He just says, fuck. Or like one of the first things he says,

[00:09:43] he's like 17, you're fresh from your mama's ass. I'm just like, what the fuck? I don't line. Is that? Yeah. You're fresh from your mama's ass. Like where do you think babies come from? So stupid. It's like, I'll shove them back your ass. Babies get pooped out, right? Yeah, there is pooping. I feel like we're just going to talk about how we know the series is really stupid. The art is good. The plot is probably the biggest excuse plot I've ever read in a series

[00:10:12] in a manga. It's yeah, it's like Doom 2016, where you just wake up, you see a zombie, it says kill everything. And that's like the plot of that game for a lot of it. Oh my God. Doom 2016 has the best intro ever where like it just a screen pop up that starts giving you exposition and then Doomguy just grabs it and rips it apart and throws it away because he doesn't even he doesn't need it. Yeah, he breaks a lot of computer screens in that game. Fucking awesome. Oh, maybe we should have him with Doomguy since we already said you're already

[00:10:42] doing Robocop for the chibi art. Oh, hell yeah. All right. I feel like you'll have fun. I'll leave this to you to figure out what art you want to do. Anyway, I also like how his face changes a little bit post-surgery. They do show it, but I thought that was just a nice subtle detail. Yeah. To make him look even more like it. Sure. And so Jordan, I think slam dunk, we would both definitely read our 10 chapters of this. Yes, fucking ruled, man. And then Jordan, what do you think will happen next? I think that Wiser reports directly to like the government of the planet or something or whatever.

[00:11:09] Yeah. I think the robot holds some kind of super MacGuffin inside of him. And I think that Blue's mom had some kind of special connection to Earth. I was also getting kind of a Trigun vibe from this, I will say. Yeah. Obviously, this predates Trigun, but yeah. Yeah. I need to rewatch the new Trigun. I've never seen it. I mean, I've seen the old one. I read the old one, obviously, but like I didn't see the new one. Yeah, I heard it's like a remix. So they changed like the plot has changed a bit. Anyway, I think he's going to save some generic girl that has minimal personality because in 1988,

[00:11:37] they hadn't made female characters with personalities in Shonen Jump yet. Oh, especially not the guy from Fist of the North Star. Yeah. I think Earth is just as fucked as this planet. Yeah. And I think the main character dies at the end, probably as his body is slowly falling apart during his wave of revenge, kind of like the end of a fuck. What's that Jason Statement movie that has the greatest scene in cinematic history? Crank? Crank. Yeah. Where do you know what's the best scene in the probably the greatest cinematic scene of all time from? No, I don't know what you're talking about.

[00:12:05] It's when they're removing his body parts and the doctor is about to amputate his penis. And he goes, no fucking way. And he wakes up. He wakes up and starts killing all the doctors. I was like, this is the best fucking movie ever made. All right. So Jordan, your power word. Oh, why don't you say your power word? Fuck. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It goes with yours. Yeah. Fuck yeah. And fuck yeah. We've got some questions from our patrons. Just a reminder, you can write your question in the show on flop discord. We get priority to patrons. People

[00:12:35] haven't asked a question before or haven't had a question answered in a long time. Starting from Redblade. If you could get the offer themselves as a guest on a relook episode with the assumption they would be totally cool with it and not be too upset with critiques, which offer or series would you choose? So first, I'm assuming that we have already activated the thing from undead unlock that fuses all languages together. Yes. That's also part of the thing. Speak English. In which case, I would love to get the guy from Red Hood to just be like, hey, man, so what happened?

[00:13:05] Yeah. I also think tricks dedicated to witches would be really cool to really learn more about why he felt like he had run out of ideas and like what he was planning, because you can tell he still had a lot of stuff he wanted to do. He just, I guess, didn't want to keep working on this series. And also, I'd be really interested to see how for I think by Japanese cultural, he had very progressive V points on gender identity. Yeah. And I think so. I think he would definitely sound like a really cool guy to talk to, especially because we like the series, which definitely makes it easier to have the author on. And of course, you know, Iraqi. Oh,

[00:13:32] fuck. We could have Iraqi. Yeah. For like BT and Bao. Yeah. Yeah. We could also have Tageki or not Fart. We could have Setsurohara. Yeah. So we could have Monsu and be like, bro, what happened? Yeah. That was a really fun question, Redblade. From Weeboos Ash, if you can pick a video game character to be a guest, who would it be? And what series would they give? Not a flop. I think Doomguy would give this series. Not a flop. This. Oh yeah. That's why I put this question in so I can say that. Fuck,

[00:13:59] dude. Fuck, dude. Joran's like, damn, that's really good. Fuck. My gut reaction was solid snake, but I don't know. For what manga? I don't know. I don't know what he would say is not a flop. Just have Link and Gordon Freeman on. And was there anything we read that had boxes in it? Uh, maybe? I don't know. Maybe he would like Zipman. There you go. Have Solid Snake on Zipman. Yeah. I'll have Optimus Prime on Zipman and just ask him, what was it like being in this manga?

[00:14:30] Okay. No, Optimus Prime isn't really a true video game character. He's been in video games, David. Yeah, but you can say that about anyone. Salt Snake and Optimus Prime have been in a video game together, though. Yeah. Yeah. I'll do some research on the circumstances that led to that. Which one is that? Is it? Was he in a... It's like a PS1 fighting game. Oh my God. Yeah, no, you're right. I'll have LeBron James on. There you go. And ask him about stuff. Yeah. Oh, I'll ask him about... Did we cover a basketball? No,

[00:14:57] we didn't. We did an episode of basketball. Yeah, have LeBron James talk about the manga I wrote. Yeah, we'll have him talk about basketball, Grandma. Let him talk about, um, Mitama Security. Yeah, now you're a basketball man. Yeah, now you are a good basketball. All right. Moving forward from Critical. I don't actually know. CT3LA, I'll assume. Have you played any of the flop manga sports since you've read the manga? Or I guess, Jordan, since we don't really do sports, has your interest increased in any sport in a series we've covered?

[00:15:22] As I mentioned on Green Green Greens, it was the first time in decades that I had the urge to golf. Yeah, I would hit up some Topgolf after that. Yeah. So golf, I guess golf is the answer. From, so Jordan, the MMA didn't want to make you fight someone? I always want to fight someone, David. That's my secret, Catherine. I love it. From Spubby, what series would you like to review for Shodan Flop that you can't do to the rules of the podcast? How it has to be less than 35 chapters, no anime or no explicit content? Shit. Uh... It's a hard one, isn't it? It's a hard one, yeah.

[00:15:51] If you were to ask me to do a why you should read, like, recommendation episode, I think this series of the highest on my list right now is The Bugle Call, because that is a really phenomenal series that I feel not enough people are talking about. Yeah. And so, for reference, that's pretty much Imagine Game of Thrones meets The X-Men, right? Doesn't that sound like a really cool idea? Yeah. Yeah. No, it does. Um, I don't know. Uh, it would be fun to talk about Mob Psycho, but, like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Get one on it. We could do Mashal again. Yeah, Mashal. We could do a full episode on Mashal. We did a full episode on Mashal.

[00:16:21] Yeah, but, like, a full episode on Mashal. So read the whole series. The whole thing. Yeah, no, I'm not doing that. Um... No. Well, we're not doing any of these. Yeah, exactly. This is a hypothetical. That's why I said that. Yeah, we actually could do a full review of High School Family. That would be fun. Yeah. Our next question is also from CT3LA. It said, would you rather be able to unhinge your jaw like a snake or be able to spin your head all the way around like an owl? And now I remember why I include this question, because this was question number six, and I was like, let's just answer this one, because I don't know what to do with it.

[00:16:50] So, on one hand, being able to spin my head around, that'd be pretty cool, but I feel like if I could unhinge my jaw, it would help my TMJ. So, I would go with unhinging my jaw. I think unhing your jaw, because I have unhinged my jaw several times, so it'd be great to not be fucked when I do that. So, I'll go with that. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Because you immunity to that status condition. Yeah. Well, thank you, everyone, for your questions. I wanted, moving into shoutouts, I want to say you can support the show and get the best prices on manga at mangamart.com slash shonenflop.

[00:17:19] Mangamart's a family-owned store offering 20% off manga with free shipping for over $100. That's mangamart.com slash shonenflop, and you can find a link to it in our show notes. Jordan, I want to say thank you so much for all your hard work on the show. Thank you, David, for all the work that you do on the show. I also want to say thank you for that awesome cover you've been doing for the Chibi episodes. Yeah, it's been fun. Thank you, Dylan, for assistance with editing. You can find his podcast, Anime Out of Context, at animeoutofcontext.com. Thanks to Tucker and Maxie B for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research. Thanks to Kalal for being our social media manager.

[00:17:49] Find us on bluesky.x at shonenflop, tumblr shonen-flop, and our website, shonenflop.com. We're also on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, wherever else you get your podcasts. If you want more weekly David and Jordan content, you can find us every Friday at the Chainsaw Minute, where we talk about the latest chapter of Chainsaw Man. Find it at csm.libson.com, wherever else you listen to Shonen Flop, and you can see Jordan and I slowly degrade as we continue to fight each other for the views. And come join the Shonen Flop Discord, as I mentioned. It's open to everyone. You do not have to be a patron. Come hang out with us. Talk about anime, games, whatever else is on your mind. We have a manga book club, movie nights.

[00:18:18] Find a link to it in the show notes or on our site. And if you've been enjoying the podcast and want to help us keep going, subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash shonenflop, along with that warm and fuzzy feeling of helping us out and get access to our monthly bonus episodes, including the Shonen Drop, where Jordan and I look back at the previous month's episode and open the mystery box. Jordan, what was our mystery box for the month of February? David, for our mystery box for February, well, we counted down the Shonen Flop Major Arcana. And listener, if you don't know what the fuck that means, well, you should just listen. Yeah, even Jordan has so test.

[00:18:47] That was actually a really fun mystery box. It was fun. All right. And Jordan, what was our major content? Well, David, we finally finished Hentai Kamen with Diego. Scoob and Shag. Yeah. He was just over at my house yesterday. Hell yeah. And then if that's not enough, other perks include picking a manga for us to cover in a main episode. Episodes up to a week in advance and behind the scenes content like our warmup audio or recording notes. I want to read off some of our wonderful patrons. Starting with my wonderful wife, Rachel. I had someone at my D&D group say, Hey, how's that girl you've been seeing?

[00:19:16] And I said, I've been married to her for a year. So it's going pretty well. Moving on down to our Ravioli tier where you get weekly photos of my adorable goblin dog, Ravioli. She was trapped on the couch and didn't know how to get out. So she already crawled under the table so she could get out and get her toy. We have Chris, Eva, Jeanette Davis, Lady T, Matt, Scarlet, T, Tiffany, and Trevor. Moving on down to our King of the Force. We have 090Z, Bandit Stoof. My girlfriend. Brad, follow AOC on Blue Sky. Ivan, Jacob. A-O-O-C. No, you should do both. You should do both, but it's A-O-O-C.

[00:19:45] Ivan, Jacob, Justin, Kirbymon, Marty, Riley, Sarah, and Tommy Boy. And moving on down to our Galactic Ball Federation officers. We have a deep, sexy voice that says, Relax, a mid-sized sedan, Ages, Andrew Shep, Andy Silence, Angel, Aura, Baya, Blabamoo, Brandon M, Cole, David, Dennis, Don't Dox Me, Drago, Drew, Nigel, Fax, Flash, Cartman, Funky Green, Hey Rem, Ian, Jason, Kalal, Keanu, King Solamander, Kino. I just love how we have a patron named Kino. Lay, Liam, Maddie, Manly P. Hall, My Tad, Matt, Maxie, Mecca Scott, Mike Carpenter, Obscure Reference, Jordan, you got one for us?

[00:20:14] Oh, man, I'm thinking about getting a Life Lover tattoo. Resident Warhammer Nerd, Savia, Sybil, Silly Rookie, Sympy for Senpai Ash, Stackhorn, Taperclip, Tucker Watley, Verity, Wright, Elysium, ANZC Digital, and a big thank you to our Beast Children as well. Yes, thank you. I love you all very much. You're all my children. Jordan, anything you want to toss in? So hopefully by this time, the episodes of our podcasts that have been uploaded to YouTube should be a little bit fancier than they used to be. So check them out. Jordan saying check out Shonen Flop. Check out Shonen Flop Chibi.

[00:20:44] I highly recommend that podcast. Also, check out Mission English. Thanks so much for listening. Tune in next Monday for our full episode on Cyberblue featuring Anthony Gromuglia. I'm sorry, Anthony. I don't know how to say your last name. This is really bad. Gromuglia. Yeah, there we go. Oh, man. Also, Anthony Gromuglia. Um, did I see you at the top? I don't feel like I think I did. Oh, that's right. You say this. Yeah, that's why I didn't fuck it up at the start. Anyway, this has been Jordan. This has been David. And you've been listening to Shonen Flop. David, say it. Keep on flopping floppers. Bye. Bye.

[00:21:14] Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We'll be right back.