#122 Cyber Blue - the dumbest BEST Action Manga Shonen has ft Youtuber Anthony Gramuglia

[00:00:13] Welcome to this episode of Shonen Flop where we talk about manga and Shonen Jump that didn't make it big. I'm David. I'm Jordan. Next week we'll be covering Sex Ed 120 if you'd like to read along with us. Wolf whistle. Be sure to join our discussion in the discord and submit your six word summary. You can find a link to the discord in our episode description and on our website ShonenFlop.com but this week we are talking about fucking Cyber Blue. We are joined by our guest Anthony Gramulia. Oh my god David! Uh no no but you tried and that's just important. Oh my god and even

[00:00:43] Jordan even fixed it sorry Anthony Gramulia. Yes. Thank you so much for having me on even if you can't say my name correctly. Fuck I knew we in the warm body I was like I'm still gonna fuck it up. Yeah. You know what you fucked it up in a way I wasn't expecting though. Oh yes. You know what it's it's it's unique. We asked Ant what was the weirdest when he the weirdest way someone's fucked up his last name and now he has a new answer to that question. Not the top 10 yet. So you didn't fuck it up enough. Next time fuck it up worse. Okay I'll try I'll try. I also want to give a thank you to Spubby for recommending you as a

[00:01:13] guest. Thank you so much. But Ant though do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Yes certainly. I am a writer YouTuber. I've been writing professionally in some capacity for the last I guess like seven or eight years. I've started working on YouTube about a year and a couple months change ago. I mainly focus on science fiction fantasy content especially anime manga anything really books a lot of the time. My YouTube channel is just my name Anthony Gramulia. Just search you'll find it. We'll also have a link to that in our show notes.

[00:01:39] Oh perfect. Excellent. And yeah that's basically all the the gist is you need to know. It's funny actually when you asked me to work on this episode I was working on a cyberpunk video that's now out and while working on I was reading Neuromancer. I was reading. Oh hell yeah. Do we interest you dream of electric sheep? I was re-watching the matrix. I was re-visiting ghost in the shell and then this was this manga was going alongside that and going like yeah wow I wonder if I can fit this in this video somewhere and like oh maybe not. This quote will live with me forever but have you ever seen Garth Ennis' Dark Place?

[00:02:09] You mean Garth Marenghi's Dark Place? Yeah sorry not Garth Ennis. Garth Ennis is the- Not the cancelled writer who did Castlevania. That's Warren Ellis David. Garth Ennis wrote fucking Preacher right? Yeah Preacher the Boys. No I thought Warren Ellis wrote The Boys. No that's Garth- Jesus Christ David. Garth Ennis wrote The Boys Preacher. He did The Punisher Warzone. Oh yes he did a really good Punisher. Crossed was a really good one. I can't believe Alan Moore worked on Crossed.

[00:02:33] I love it. Crossed. To be honest I think after making Crossed Garth Ennis also believes in the quote and says I know many authors that you subtext and they are all cowards. Yes. I may not be have been that off by associating that quote still with Garth Ennis. Balance. Balance. Dark Place. Oh god. I can imagine. I fucking love that show so much. I need to re-watch it. Such a good show. In only six episodes you can watch it in an evening. It's great. Yeah.

[00:03:01] I was reading up on its Wikipedia page and they have a bunch of bonus content on the DVD that was created to be fake bonus content. Oh I love it. That's great. I think they have a blooper reel that was all content they wrote to be fake bloopers. I was one time watching it and my spouse walked in. I didn't know it was a joke show. I was like why are you watching this garbage? I'm like well. It's good garbage. Damn it. It's such a good show. So good.

[00:03:27] On Friday, Jordan will find out later, but I was making one of those like fortune teller things like those paper fortune tellers and my wife just walks in and she just sees me startled and she looks on my screen. It's just a fucking full like origami tutorial and she just walked back out because I think she just never would have expected that was what I was in the middle of doing. I was trying to do one of those like fourth grade fortune teller paper thing. I mean, there's worse things you can walk in on your spouse creating. Yeah, she's like, oh, couldn't you have just been, you know, normal activities?

[00:03:55] Anyway, I also want to give a big shout out to our Valentine's Day Shonen Flop meme winner, the Gray Potter. Thank you to the Flop boys. Whenever in doubt, remember that chicks dig giant axes. And to answer their Valentine's Day question, will you be my axe? If I was a Shonen Jump editor, I'd definitely say yes. Yeah, nice. So anyway, though, let's get into the manga details. I love this energy. This is going to be a really fun one. Oh, yeah. All right, Jordan, tell us about this series. So this is Cyber Blue, the original story specifically. OK, so this is interesting.

[00:04:23] There are two writers here. One is credited for the original story. His name is Bob, all caps, Bob. And apparently he's kind of an enigma. Like there's an author comment in volume two that depicts him as an aspirational writer, wanting to do films, novels, manga and anything else you can get his hands on. But he seemingly just disappears. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that. I mean, I'm assuming Bob B.O.B. is a fucking pseudonym. So who knows?

[00:04:51] Maybe he is very famous for Hideo Kojima. Yeah, it's Hideo Kojima. You know what? With this plot, maybe it is. He just called the newest Captain America confusing. And I'm like, dude, you are not allowed to ever call something confusing. He called that confusing. He was like, I didn't watch Falcon, the Winter Soldier. I'm so confused. I'm like, bro, don't. You made Metal Gear Solid 2. I don't care if it's a legitimate criticism. You are not allowed to make any sort of criticism about a plot not being coherent. I played Metal Gear Solid 2 before playing the first Metal Gear Solid.

[00:05:21] I follow that game just fine. If you can't follow Falcon, Winter Soldier. Oh, God. Captain America 4. I'm sorry. Yeah. The script for this manga. It's so funny that this manga, of all things, had two people working on the story. Yeah, considering how it turned out. The script of this manga was written by Ryuichi Mitsui, who, again, no one really knows anything about this guy. But the big guy we got to talk about is the artist. Hell yeah.

[00:05:48] Motherfucking Tetsuo Hara, who, well, wrote a little thing called Fist of the fucking North Star, which, like, it's Fist of the fucking North Star. I feel like that is obvious if you read the manga that this is the same kind of Fist of the North Star. Because he only has one protagonist, he can only make Kenshiro as the protagonist. We read another series he did called Takeke Ryusei. Would you believe the protagonist of that series also looked identical to Kenshiro? Like...

[00:06:18] I couldn't imagine it. Yeah. But yeah, he was... Tetsuo Hara, I didn't know this, was an assistant for Yoshihiro Takahashi, who did Silver Fang, Shooting Star Gin, which is a manga about a dog that gathers together a group of dogs to defeat, like, an evil devil bear and his four bear generals. I love that. I would be curious the most recent Shonen Jump manga that didn't have humans in it. Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, you're talking humanoids.

[00:06:46] You're not talking about, like, oh, man, they look like humans, but haha, they're not. You mean, like, like dogs. Yeah, actually, blurples. Yeah, they're blurples. And he was also the assistant for Kazuo Koiki, who did Lone Wolf and Cub, which is one of the most influential manga of all time. Like, it was influential in America before manga was, like, a big thing. Like, it is a massively important series. One of the most important manga ever made.

[00:07:14] Notable people that he had as assistants was Kojimaki of God Cider, Yasuhiro Watanabe, who made a lot of baseball manga. Hirohisa Onikubo, who was listed here as a very accomplished hentai artist and the chief assistant for Iraqi on Battle Tendencies and Stardust Crusaders, which, wow, you're telling me that early Jojo had somebody who worked on Fists of the North Star? Shocking. Shocking. Can't believe that. Yeah.

[00:07:44] Scandalous information. Unbelievable. I can't believe they had a hentai artist work on Jojo. Very successful hentai artist. A very successful. Yes, very successful. Maxi B specified very accomplished hentai artist. We actually had a discussion in the show. This inspired me to say, when was the last time you could just see boobies in Shonen Jump? So if you want to join this Discord, Maxi B immediately said, okay, when was the last time Iraqi was published in Shonen Jump as his first font?

[00:08:11] I guess like My Hero Academia kind of has that too, so. Well, do they have nipple? That's what I mean, like full. Oh, nipples. Oh, like completely like HBO topless nudity in it, like the series has. Yeah. Oh, okay. So not like Barbie doll and an anime. Okay. Yeah, probably that's yeah. Check the Shonen Flop Discord where they really dug in and did some research to find the answer to it. No, my girlfriend got her brother like a copy of Shonen Jump from a few years ago when it had Food Wars and like One Piece.

[00:08:41] I mean, obviously it would be amazing if she found a copy of Shonen Jump from the past 20 years that didn't have One Piece in it. But you know, it has. Well, actually there's a lot of copies of that because One Piece often goes on break short. Shut up, David. This is the most fucking pedantic answer possible. Anyway, no. And there was like this manga I'd never heard of that was like borderline hentai. But like, I don't know. I can't remember if they were just straight up nipples in it because, you know, manga does that thing where they draw the boobies and then they just don't include the nipples.

[00:09:08] And it's like, it's not the same because there's no nipples. Ha ha. I don't know. Uh, Ranma does that all the fucking time. But um, anyway, manga titties. Tetsuharo's other works include, we already talked about Fist of the North Star. He also did Iron Dawn Kiyote. The Magnificent Bastard Keiji. Seikon Sengoku Funroku, which was six volumes, Monthly Shonen Jump. Fist of the Blue Sky. That's a prequel to Fist of the North Star.

[00:09:35] And fucking Cyber Blue, the Lost Children. So there was a remake of Cyber Blue. And then a sequel to the remake. Holy shit. Called X Battlers. Cyber Blue, the last thing. So Ian, if you ever want to come back, I know what we're going to talk about. Um, I'd be down. I'd be down with more of Blue and his nonsense. I really want to check those out. It's the thing. Okay. It can't be any worse. I'll put it on our Patreon schedule. So we'll talk scheduling after this. And then Jordan, what was the run?

[00:10:05] What was the publishing details for this? This ran from November 22nd, 1988 to July 10th, 1989. It's crazy that like this many chapters, 31 fucking chapters came out in pretty brief period of time. Like, wow, that's like not long. Yeah. And Cyber Blue replaced God Cider, which is a series I've heard of. And the series they replaced it was Chameleon Jail, which was an episode that we just did. Yeah, we just covered it. Yeah.

[00:10:32] Hey, Ant, so it's called Chameleon Jail because the main character's name is Chameleon Jail. And his name is Chameleon Jail because he can use tiny explosions to morph his face and he takes people to jail. That is the dumbest thing I've heard all day. And I read Cyber Blue today. Yeah, I think Cyber Blue might be stupider than Chameleon Jail. But yeah, yeah, slightly. But still, we can debate that later. I don't know. It's a race to the bottom either way.

[00:10:58] Series started at the same time as it was Magical Taruruto, Magical John Totoro by Tatsuya Egawa, 21 volumes, a notable hit. I am Shita Takakun by Motoe Shinzawa, five volumes. And Dino Venture, Stories of Dinosaurs. Oh, what a surprise. By Kishi Daimuro, which was a one volume flop, but apparently Akira Toriyama loved that series. Oh, we should have him on that episode.

[00:11:28] Yeah, let's get him. Akira Toriyama? Yeah. He just needs to be alive and speak English. Oh, RIP. That's your answer for anyone's if you could have had a dead person on an episode. Dude, I'd love to have English speaking Akira Toriyama ghost. As a zombie. Yeah. Zombie English speaking. Anyway, 31 chapters, four volumes. That's how long the series went for. Let's hear what happened in the plot summary. Plot summary! In the future, humans have colonized the planet Tinos, which has half the oxygen of Earth

[00:11:57] requiring life support systems. A 17-year-old kid named Blue is wandering the desert and is about to die due to his system being stolen when he meets a 300-year-old robot who says fuck that can serve as his life support. After showing off his skills with a gun, Blue is hired by Sheriff Weiser to stop some guys from stealing a ticket to Earth. Blue agrees and shoots the robbers. But oh no! Weiser bengoozled him. He just wanted Blue to kill them for him to keep them from going to Earth. Weiser's gang then murders the fuck out of Blue.

[00:12:25] But thankfully, before he dies, Blue calls the robot Fatso, which turns out to be his name. So Fatso does surgery to fuse himself with Blue and save his life by turning him into a cyborg Kenshiro. Now that he looks like Kenshiro and says fuck, he is ready to be the protagonist. Blue kills the bad guys who killed him before tracking down the newly appointed police chief, Weiser, and killing him too. Yeah! Blue then goes to his hometown to find his group of orphan friends are all dead, except for a kid named Alan, who has a robot leg.

[00:12:53] Alan joins Blue as they board the Noel, a ship from Earth that carried the first human, Tinos. Popcorn Jordan. They're stopped by Joe Kay, a bounty hunter from the planet Z who allows them on the ship because doing so will increase Blue's bounty. Blue meets Stan, one of the five elders who tells him that the other four want to take over Earth and he's got to stop them. Stan initially agreed to do that too, but he felt bad about it and so they shot him.

[00:13:21] Also, Stan is Blue's dad, but like he dies. Aw. Blue leaves the ship and fights Joe Kay. Things look bad until Blue's arm morphs into his sword. He spares Joe Kay and goes to take down the elders. He gets help from Claire, a narcotics officer from Earth who tells him that the church is smuggling drugs. Oh no! They go to stop the church and discover that it's run by Rosalie, one of the elders.

[00:13:45] They kill Rosalie and stop his army of junkies and set their sights on the next elder, Prince. Yeah, no, like... Fucking... His name is Gossip, but like he... It's literally Prince. It literally... It's Prince. He looks exactly like Prince if Prince was Dracula. Claire uses her PhD in computer science to hack into Prince's systems and locate his girlfriend named Sheila who works at a casino. Blue gets Sheila alone, who shows him her boobs and says that Prince is on Earth and they have to stop him.

[00:14:14] Unfortunately, she has to save her cat Sharon and is shot in the process. So Blue reads her mind to find out what to do next. Blue, Claire, and Alan go to Earth to find Prince where they meet Claire's useless partner, Tony, and are attacked by bio-beings, powerful creatures who are mixed with animals. Blue is severely injured after defeating a spider bio-beast when Joe Kay appears. Popcorn David. Joe Kay happens to be on Earth protecting an African president who is killed by Galgo, a bio-being mixed with a lion who is sent by Prince who is sitting on a throne of titties.

[00:14:44] He is! Joe Kay takes them to a magical forest where Blue is healed by his old friend Lonnie, a child with psychic abilities obtained using the power of imaginary numbers. Call back to eighth grade math. Oh my god! He can find the square root of negative one! Well yeah, Lonnie is being held captive by Prince, and I love how Jordan just calls him Prince for this. Who wants to use his powers to become immortal by fusing with the ultimate life form, and turns out this is, no, this is actually a sequel to part two of JoJo. God, imagine if Cars just showed up. That'd be great.

[00:15:14] This is what happens when Cars stops thinking. Blue goes to save Lonnie but has to fight Dabara, a Doberman bio-being with the power of Shadow Force, which Shadow Force is apparently the same thing as imaginary numbers, I think. But except it's not, except it is, except it's not, except it is. Like, I don't know. We'll get into it. Thankfully, JoJo gives Blue a photon knife that Blue turns into a photon sword with the power of his cyber abilities. Blue defeats Dabara and travels to the top of Prince's tower to find JoJo dead, killed by Galgo.

[00:15:43] Galgo is going to die soon, so he wants to fight Blue for honor purposes, and Blue defeats him by fusing with the building's nuclear reactor. Prince then absorbs the ultimate life form and Lonnie into his own body, but Lonnie instead causes him to melt to death. Galgo then tells Blue that, hey, he's gonna die soon anyway, so he gives Lonnie his body. So Blue does that, and everyone's A-OK, even though Galgo's body is dying. Except it's not, because... You cannot think about this series. You know, when you say it like that, it sounds really ridiculous.

[00:16:11] I am actually surprised Jordan didn't sprinkle any Prince references into his plot summary. I couldn't add that much more to it, David. There was already too much bullshit to get into. So, Ant, can you tell us about Blue? Oh, awesome. So, Blue is introduced as the buffest 17-year-old since Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. A verifiable football quarterback who is struggling to breathe on Tinos because apparently the life's... Also, I might want to add one thing. A lot of this manga is relayed and communicated so bizarrely.

[00:16:41] This is like the basics of what's happened, but I might have missed something here. Because he's buff as anything and is a descendant of the first colonists who arrived on Tinos, kind of. I really want to talk about how confusing the ages are of Blue and everything. But like, keep going with Blue for now. All right. So he looks like Kenshiro before fusing with Fatso the robot, who, by the way, isn't particularly fat at all. No, how dare they? Might be another thing. How can a robot be fat?

[00:17:08] Just body shaming a broad R2-D2 sized robot. I find that pretty offensive. It's like, you're calling me fat? My brother in Christ, you made me. Seriously. You designed the robot. And somehow, I guess being infused with the massive fatso turns him into an even buffer version of Kenshiro. It turns him, he goes from looking like, I don't know, like Kenshiro's little brother to just Kenshiro. Like he is Kenshiro's size. He is Kenshiro. What's so bizarre about him is his power set.

[00:17:36] Because merging with this robot who is ancient gives him the power to read minds, merge with other machinery, transform in ways that's convenient to the plot, and just absorb nuclear energy and up his power level. But he mainly attacks people by shooting them with guns or punching them really, really, really hard. Yes. His whole motivation is vengeance until it's not. And then he's just there to revolutionize, you know, the human society and stop a Earth plot from attacking Earth. And his motivation for a while is to travel to Earth with his family who then dies before

[00:18:06] the story starts. But then he gets to Earth and he doesn't seem to care about staying on Earth. He decides, OK, I'm bored of Earth now. Let's go back home after we stop this evil plot, destroy the planet. Yeah, fair. He does, however, have the hardest line in this entire series. Yes. Where someone says, how old are you? And he says, he's 317. And I was like, fuck, that's Kino. Because the robot's 300 and he's 17. Thanks, George. Now that's imaginary numbers. Yeah. Well, I just want to make sure the listener understands what that line signified.

[00:18:36] All right. And then George, do you want to tell us about fucking Alan? Fucking Alan, dude. All right. So apparently Alan is Blue's old friend who he's missing a leg because he was shot in the leg by a poison bullet. Why do you need? I was talking to my friend. Why do you poison a bullet? I know. The whole point of a bullet is he kills someone. I know. Wouldn't the poison just burn off because of the friction of the bullet in the chamber?

[00:19:03] Also, bullets are made out of lead, which is already a poisonous material. Yeah, exactly. I love how his friends were like, oh, we got shot. Alan, you weren't shot in the chest. So you just have to cut your leg off. Here's a knife. And he's like, oh, I'll cut my leg off with a knife. He just cuts off his whole leg with a knife. Dude, knives are magical. Remember when he threw a knife and it chopped someone's arm off? Even through the ankle of the knife wouldn't be capable of doing that. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is also like that boy is like tiny and scrawny.

[00:19:31] He does not have the upper body strength to pierce bone with like a bowie knife and just perfectly carve it off. By the way, I guess now is like sort of a time to at least bring it up. Aren't Blue and Alan supposed to be the same age? Yeah, but one looks like he's 12. The other one looks like he's 45. I was so confused. Like even before he fuses with Fatso, he still looks significantly older than Alan. Yeah, again, it's like JoJo where like the main characters before becoming powerful still look like football linebackers.

[00:20:00] 25 year old 16 year old. Well, actually, no, not even like a football linebacker because he's ripped as all hell on a planet where he's supposed to be dying. I guess Blue went through puberty really fast, like right before the series started. Because like they have flashbacks to when they're both kids in the same size. But Alan is still that size. I'm very confused. But yeah, Alan lost his leg and now he serves the part as like that kid who follows Kenshiro around in Fist of the North Star. He's the same character as that.

[00:20:30] That's who he is. He's definitely the like editorials like, oh, they're not going to emphasize with this. You need to add like a kid into this series. I just love that scene where the main villain is like, let me just kill a bunch of children and you have to read to them while they're dying. And that scene had nothing to do with anything else in that fight. They just drop him in a pit with orphans and they all he just kills all the orphans while he's reading. He just sends in like gat like poison gas in there. And they're like, read me a story. And he's like, OK, but I can't read either. Oh, yeah.

[00:21:00] They're like, use the word. He just knows we're fucked. He knows how to spell the words. Fuck you. It's great. He didn't die, did he? Because he just vanishes from the plot like in the last like third of the manga. He's there at the end. He's in the last chapter. But like he's like gone for like one third of the entire manga, basically. If I may, every single moment with Alan, the series actively is trying to have an explanation for why Alan is there, because there's no reason Alan should actually be in the series.

[00:21:25] It is insane that he is bringing Alan in many situations where he a cyborg barely comes out alive and is bringing a totally normal 16 year old who is missing a leg with him. Seriously. Oh, my God. I do want to talk about Joki, who's from Planet Z, and he's crazy as fuck. I love how he's got that laugh with me. He does the you are already dead. So he was like, he was a proto of that. You know who he is, David? What? He's Speedwagon. Yeah. He's literally just Speedwagon. God. Yeah.

[00:21:53] He looks more like Speedwagon the longer the series goes on. He's the best character. He's the best girl. Yeah. Yeah. Unlike Claire. He's amazing. I got that chibi guess right. There would be a token female character. Yeah. Where again, the author is struggling to explain why she is still around at a given time. I don't get why she was added to the main cast because like I first think, oh, it's like a one off character in this one chapter. That's why she's so underdeveloped and has no personality. Oh, wait, she's staying. Oh, no.

[00:22:20] I love how the author was like, let me introduce this female character with powers. But then she dies in an introduction instead of just having that be the female character that joins the cast. Exactly. Oh, my God. It's amazing. Like how little value she adds. Speaking of little value, she little value. Let's get into why it failed. And please, let's put on your reviewer hat. I know it's a struggle, but can you do you feel that there are some potential areas that maybe the series did not do so well that you may feel like you can explore with us? Yes, yes, there is.

[00:22:49] From an academic perspective, there is a specific problem with the show. One that must be diagnosed with the utmost carefulness. That makes no fucking any of this makes no sense. It's fucking dumb shit. That's the problem. I just need to say this from the start. This series fucking looped around. This should be a certified flop by every metric that we actually critically review. But I cannot call it a certified flop because it's just somehow looped back around to being the greatest fucking thing I've ever read in my entire life. I agree.

[00:23:19] It's one of those things where it's like there's a point where you realize, oh, I'm not supposed to pay attention. And then the series gets great. But like, it's so ridiculous. Like, they're just constantly introducing new concepts that make no sense. Like, what the fuck is the Shadow Force? Imaginary numbers? Biomen. Biomen? Forget even that. Even the cybernetics make no sense. How is it that Fatso is able to insert his body into a genetic ancestor of the first

[00:23:47] colonists at Tainos and no one else can do anything remotely like this? How did he also perform the surgery using himself as parts without the surgery, but finish the surgery? Exactly. How does he keep transforming? Why is he a buff linebacker in a world where it's supposed to be this massive wealth and impoverished society? Where's he getting 200 grams of protein every day? Oh my God. Seriously. And even then, like even ignoring, like I always, I always fall back onto trying to sound somewhat

[00:24:14] academic, the Brandon Sanderson rules of magic, where like the more rules you have, the more grounded your magic system is. And therefore, the more you can say, okay, well, here's why this seems cool, because you can't just pull anything out of your ass. You have to like think, okay, how does this work? How does the mechanics of this function? This is all about pulling out new bullshit out of your ass. And like, how does he beat the bad guy? He draws from the until now unmentioned nuclear reactor in the building and merges with the whole building. It's so stupid, but it's so cool.

[00:24:44] I think even Araki would be like, bro, you gotta like think of things ahead of time a little bit. Because no one asked post like Araki and even he would be like, this is a touch much. Well, the problem is that all the fights are so ridiculous that there's never any tension. You're always like, okay, like he's gonna win. How? I don't know. He's gonna do something. Blue cannot lose a fight in this series. No. Except his initial fight in the very first chapter, which I think as a, from a writing standpoint, is a really good setup.

[00:25:13] But then it completely abandons that setup to fight like the four elders of the planet, including Prince. Three of which are killed off screen because they ran out of time. Yeah, right? What is he supposed to do? He just watched Robocop. God, yeah, exactly. God, I just, Michael Jackson absolutely was gonna be one of the other four elders. It was gonna be Prince, Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury and Slash. Yeah. Oh man. Oh yeah, Slash. Slash. There we go. Slash actually sounds like the name of a villain in this.

[00:25:42] It does. Honestly. They wouldn't even cut. That's the JoJo stan. But yeah, I also want to talk about the art. While at times it's good, I always feel like this sounds like a stupid complaint, but it was overly detailed. Yeah. Where it just kind of turned into smudges. It had that look of like when you know a page was in color and it was black and white and they didn't really transfer it properly. But it feels like that all the time. So I know it's not like they have full color chapters and I'm just like, I can't really tell what's going on because there's just so much that just turns into smudges. It felt like, and I know that this can't have been what happened just because of the

[00:26:12] time period, but it felt like somebody took it into Photoshop and used the smudge tool a lot. Yeah. There were like brief moments where that wasn't happening and it was like just pen and ink. And I was like, oh, I like this more, you know? It was so weird. Yeah. You're right though. It does feel like these were in color and then they got grayscaled and it's kind of like, why? What happened here? Like it just felt like that's not how it's supposed to look. Like it looked airbrushed. Yeah. That's a good way. But it's like when you see those bad color versions of manga.

[00:26:42] Um, yeah. Like that's my issue with like, uh, Jojo's colored adventure. Like, yeah. But yeah, that's a topic for another time. Yeah. I also just, the pacing is also absolutely atrocious. Did you all have a problem following fight scenes too? Yes. I noted that the paneling, there's a scene where Claire like loses her gun and then she somehow has a gun in her hand despite being handcuffed. Yeah. Right. Like it was, and also like some of like the scenes where it's just like the big ridiculous splash images, like Jesus Christ on the cross, bashing a guy's head in with a cross shaped

[00:27:12] club. That's distinct. But then transitioning from that into a fight scene, what's the connection here? How are we flowing from one scene to the next? And then they're fighting and I'm like, it just looks like a garbled mess of like limbs flying and then like blood flying. So it's all like half the panel is like covered in like black blood. It felt very like hard to follow the flow. And I feel like that took me more out of the fight scenes until it got the crazy, ridiculous splash images, which were fantastic. But like, you know, like the individual big moments were interesting, but transitioning

[00:27:41] between those was very messy. Yeah. He's great at those like end of fight splat, like hence why it's the most famous thing is just people exploding in Fist of the North Star, right? Yeah. That's what he's good at, but he's not really good at anything else in this series. It's like what happened in this series? I don't know. Dude, dude, I have to bring it up again. The power of imaginary numbers. What the fuck does that mean? What does that mean? Like, yeah, I know the square root of negative numbers. So I have power over the earth.

[00:28:10] It's like I it's like the equivalent of being like I've learned to divide by zero. Like it reminds me of Fire Force for a villain's power. One of his powers is he knows what the last digit of pi is. Oh, God. I'm not fucking. It really comes up in Fire Force. That's awesome. Yeah, it was really cool when it happened. But that series are hurting that instead of this. Of all topics, I don't understand. You could just call it Shadow Force. He didn't have to even mention imaginary numbers. But I don't think Shadow Force is the same thing. But it makes it seem like it is. But I don't think it is.

[00:28:40] I like it was the same thing for two panels. And then it was a different thing. I don't understand what anything what the Shadow Force was. I also love how there's that one part where he's screaming. We're in a vacuum. How is that happening? If you're in a vacuum, you couldn't scream that to begin with. Your lungs would collapse. Like already. Yeah. The laws of physics make no sense here. And what's so wild is the series started as just I am an indestructible cyborg and I'm getting revenge. And I'm going to use guns and I'm going to shoot my bad guys. And that's it.

[00:29:08] And then it transitions into full blown violence. Jack Kenshiro. Face to the North Star Jojo insanity. Like he fights the final bad guy. He doesn't even bring a gun with him. Yeah. Yeah. Just punches him. Like now these my fists are more useful. My fists are now swords. So like, you know, he doesn't. He only does that once. And I'm going to channel nuclear power into my body. And just that's going to make me punch even harder. Fire nuclear blasts or something. I'm just going to punch harder using the power of a nuclear reactor.

[00:29:39] So good. And I love how like, I think the series was originally supposed to have like a science versus nature thing. But then it just gives up on the science part because he's like a robot. But then like he's healed by nature spirit. And then there's like bacteria that eat chips. Also the fact that none of these characters actually have personalities or the majority of the recurring characters. Actually, the series has to actively prove why they exist. Okay, let's get into the process. We need to start talking about how this is the greatest series ever made. This is the greatest series, actually.

[00:30:09] Jordan, I cannot imagine someone more excited to talk about why you love this series. So go for it. This series fucking owns. So like, here's the thing. On one hand, you can have a series that like has all this build up and like makes sense. And like, you know, like you see something and it's like, all right, so now I'm getting ready. Or you can just continually have the coolest thing that's ever been done happen over and over again, which is what this series does. Like, it's like, I don't care. It doesn't make sense.

[00:30:38] But like, it's so cool that like, I actually don't care. Like, dude, he beats a guy by fusing with the building that has a nuclear reactor in it. Like, it's the coolest shit ever. His hand morphs into a sword and he cuts a dude's head in half. Like, dude, it's it's so. And the die explodes. And the guy explodes. It's just again, like I said, this is the worst thing I've ever read, but it loops back around.

[00:31:06] You know, it has that Jojo energy where it's like, I don't know why this is happening, but I really want to know what happens next. Do you know what the series is? It's the equivalent of a kid playing with action figures who like forgets halfway through playing with them. What kind of story he's trying to tell? Like it starts off as like a cyberpunk story and then transitions into, you know, fist and the other star wandering the earth. Then becomes just Jojo.

[00:31:32] Like it just transitions into all these things and does none of them particularly well, but it does so earnestly and it does so without a hint of irony. Like there's no self-awareness of how goofy this is. And I feel like that makes it more endearing in a strange way. It's kind of like Rob Liefeld where it's like, you know what? He was writing what he enjoyed and you have to at least respect that. Exactly. I think that if this series was any smarter, it would suck. Yeah. It's like in this thing where it's like right now it looped back around because it was so dumb.

[00:32:02] But if it was a little bit smarter, it would tell you, oh, I actually do have to pay attention to this. And then when you pay attention to it, you realize, oh, this doesn't make any sense. That sucks. But because the series is so stupid, again, you realize, oh, I don't have to pay attention to this. And then you don't. And you just look at the stuff that kicks ass, which is like a lot of the stuff in this series. It kicks ass. I love how the main character just starts saying, I need to kill everyone and violence is my only tool.

[00:32:32] And he never strays from that path the entire series. Yeah. Except he doesn't kill the bad guys, which is quite frequently. Oh, yeah, it's true. Bizarrely enough. Oh, man. It's really impressive. This doesn't get old. You know? I know. It's just like if you're going to do this, a series like this, it's tough because you have to keep coming up with things that are somehow cool enough where I don't get bored and annoyed. And somehow this series does that.

[00:33:00] Like right when I'm about to be, oh, my God, this series, it does the coolest thing I've ever seen. Yeah. And I also think that even when it doesn't do something cool, it at least finds a really fun way to kill every one of its characters. Oh, yeah. Like how do we kill this girlfriend of the big bad? Have her just jump out of her hiding spot to save a cat who wasn't even in like the crosshairs or anyone anyway. It's just a cat that she was going to be fine. And then the cat shows up. And, you know, never mind.

[00:33:30] How is there a cat in a world that has half the amount of oxygen as Earth? I don't know. Neither does the author. But there's a cat there and she's got to save the cat. Is that the only animal shown on that planet? Uh, yeah. Until we get to Earth and it's all half lion, half Django. Dingo. The author also absolutely forgot about the life support plot because we never see people caring about it. Never happens again. No. Yeah.

[00:33:58] After the first five chapters, no one is wearing life support. There's the whole group of orphans who just walk around without any life support on them, even like the poison gas. Well, why would you need poison gas? Just expose them to the atmosphere. That should kill them right there. Just just take away the life support. Let them just suffocate that way. It seems like what life support is, is essentially like a breathing machine. How would poison gas hurt them anyway? They have like artificial oxygen.

[00:34:25] You remember that guy who would just be like H2O, oxygen, nitrogen. He would just say those words over and over again and they would do something. What was that about? Who fucking knows? I don't know. I also love the bit where it's like the priest with all the kids hold hanging on him. I'm like, this is terrifying for many reasons. But then he makes the shot. He makes the shot. The priest is using these kids as human shields, but like only his eye is like visible, but blue just shoots him in the eye.

[00:34:54] And those kids who are now traumatized for life. And one of them was a suicide bomber and didn't know it. Yeah. Yeah. This series somehow made a scene where Alan falls into a pit of orphans. The bad guy murders the orphans while he's reading a bedtime story to him. And it just somehow completely flowed with that bite. And no one mentions it after that happens. And it never comes up again. Yeah. While that is happening, like blue kicks a shard of glass through the priest's body and bisects him.

[00:35:24] And it's awesome. Like I love how he's like, ha ha blue. I have the drugs. And so now I have an army of junkies and they won't hurt me because I have the drugs. That made no sense that whole part. Like, ha, we have the junkies and they're coming to your base and they're going to tear you apart. No, I have all the drugs so that they're not going to hurt me at all. It's like how in The Walking Dead, if you cover yourself in like a zombie juice, they will just think you're a zombie.

[00:35:52] It's like they never do again after like that one scene because it just made it too easy. Yeah, it's like I covered myself in cocaine. So they just think I'm one of them. Yeah. They won't hurt drugs. They won't hurt drugs. Because if there's anything about people addicted to drugs is predictable behavior. They never hurt each other. Yes. For drugs. Never. I think we need to go into where. But I keep wanting to talk about how fucking awesome this series is. I know. Also, these bad guys are ridiculous. Yes.

[00:36:21] Fucking Prince is the main bad guy. Prince. And he pulls like a Last Crusade death at the end where he like rapidly ages and melts into purple rain. I love how the author had Prince show up and he's like, actually, wait, this is too soon to have him fight Prince. And it turns out it was Prince's body double who was like a Spider-Man. Yeah. That confused me so much when I read that. I love. It's like, haha, I'm Prince's clone. To Popper. Jesus Christ. The series. Oh, there's so much.

[00:36:49] Remember how Claire randomly had a PhD in computer science? Which let her hack things. Which let her hack things. And how he could hack brains. How he could hack brains. I also gotta say, I do love the Tetsuo Hara classic move of randomly making the bad guys grow three times their size for one panel. You gotta appreciate that. But I do have to appreciate how we have some things that we'd probably tweak about this series. So let's get into that. It would have been nice if they'd actually made use of the alien planet setting.

[00:37:17] Like, I know we talked about the cyberpunk stuff a little bit, but for, I would say 90% of the series, especially a lot of it ends up being on Earth. This doesn't feel like they're on an alien cyberpunk planet. You know? Yeah. Agreed. And how does the environment, because we have the life support systems for like two chapters and they vanish forever. But also, how would living on this different planet affect the physicality of the people there? Yeah. I always think back to stuff like, say, like different sci-fi stories where people grow up on other planets. You know, if the gravity is too weak, the bones become more brittle.

[00:37:47] If the gravity is stronger, they maybe develop denser muscles or denser bones to stand up to it, which would be interesting if they go back to Earth and bring these traits back with them. And we have characters like Joe Kay who come from another planet entirely. And like, we don't see how that impacts his anatomy at all. You would think living on such a harsh planet would help breed some harsh features after 300 generations. 300 years, I'm sorry. But no, we just never get that. Like Alan goes to Earth and suddenly being in an environment where he can fully breathe

[00:38:15] all the time, he's like way stronger than the usual person. Oh yeah. Shouldn't he be like super powered? Because man, it's like he has oxygen deprivation for his entire life. Yeah. You know? Or like even his lungs can't handle it or something. Like, you know, like there are many things that go into it. Yeah. I would have liked them to maybe explain what the fuck is up with imaginary numbers. That would have been nice. I don't think they should have. You know what? I agree with you, David. Here's what they should have done.

[00:38:42] They should have had like Claire have like this long diatribe and it's like a page. And then he just puts on, he's like, yo, that's a lot of words. Yeah. Shame. I'm not reading that. The opening of Doom 2016 where like she starts talking and then he's just like, shut up. I don't care. Yeah. This big Doom 2016 energy. Yeah, it does. You know what would have been really good? Yeah. If they Mega Man every bad guy. Yeah. That's where he gets the blade hands from. He absorbs them. Right? Like it would make more sense. Like instead of like him just pulling new powers out of his butt.

[00:39:12] What if he's like, no, I like that weapon you have. Rips arm off, plugs on his own. Got your weapon. Now I'm using it. Would you have wanted him to actually lose a fight? Yes. On one hand, it is fun watching this guy plow through every single bad guy, but it would have been more fun if like, say, Joe Kay actually won. Because when he comes back, it's like, oh, it's Joe Kay, the guy who lost last time. Okay. I'm sure he'll lose again. And loses again. There's a moment where it seems like Galgo is going to defeat him, but it turns out it's just a hologram. Yeah.

[00:39:42] I think the problem also is it's just, it's not even that he never loses a fight. He never comes close to losing a fight. No, he doesn't. Doesn't he? He almost lost against the spider guy when he ate like his brain or something, right? Yeah. But like the fact that you can bounce back from that at all is proof that he always had it in the bag on some level. Well, thankfully there's a magic bird. And there was a truck full of hydrogen. Yeah. God.

[00:40:07] I think Max, you're pointing out how he talks about how badly the hydrogen smells, you know, probably the most odorless gas on the planet. Oh God. The simplest gas you can possibly have. And there's like a helium bomb at some point. Like. Yeah. He turns him into a helium bomb. I was thinking like, oh, you mean like a hydrogen bomb? Like, like a nuke? But no, he just blows up. He's like, you're full of hydrogen. You'll explode. He shoots him. It just makes me think of that smiling friends part where he's like, you know, all the helium is going to go away.

[00:40:37] And then Charlie's like, dude, he's right. I just looked it up. Oh my God. All the helium is going to disappear. Yeah. Actually, that's not an issue anymore. They found a really big deposit in Michigan or Minnesota. Take that smiling friends. Also, it would have probably been nice if Claire and Alan had a purpose in this. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, you know, here's the thing too. Like reading this initially, it does read as like an 80s cyberpunk story at the first five chapters or so. Wouldn't it have been cool if instead of having Blue be able to read minds with his

[00:41:04] bare hands, you actually had like a hacker who had to actually hack into systems to get information? Well, Claire does that technically once. Yeah. Does that once. But like, it's almost like, oh, she has his power. Does it off screen, basically. Wouldn't it be cool if like it was sequences kind of like my mind goes to like either a neuromancer because that's fresh my brain, which is not a manga at all. But even like something like, say, Ghost in the Shell or of that kind of ilk where the hacking sequences and the that is a whole puzzle challenge in and of itself.

[00:41:33] I guess to a more mainstream battle manga, it would be like the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early chapters where it was like whole games and plots and conflicts. And it could be like a whole non-action paced conflict that's all entirely just coding. And I don't know, maybe I'm being too ambitious. That might require a very different type of manga to tell that effectively. But I thought that would kind of neat. No, I think that would have been cool. I think also if the series had just been the structure of him just fighting an elder every volume or so. And, you know, that's just it. He's just going on a rampage for like, you know, like 30 chapters.

[00:42:01] I do love how they're like, shit, we don't have enough time for him to fight all the elders. Prince actually killed the other elders. And so he's the ultimate elder. So all you got to do is kill him and it's all good. It looks like all the elders are like not particularly powerful, like compared to like some of the imaginary numbers nonsense and shadow realms and forces and merging with lions. It's almost like at a certain point, it felt kind of like, OK, these guys aren't particularly powerful compared to the other henchmen we're fighting.

[00:42:30] So what's the real threat they pose? They have those super bracelets. That's fair. And that's kind of it. But then Prince never uses them effectively. How are they much of a threat if they weren't even on the same planet? Yeah. Right. And like the problem also is they're treated as like this nebulous sort of group of people who are the patriots. Yeah, the patriots. Exactly. But then like it turns out that they all kill each other. Yeah. You know, and if you really think about it, nothing that blue ever does actually comes close to stopping the plot.

[00:42:59] Because if blue just did nothing, purple rain, Prince would still melt and it would be no plot. Yeah. It's like Raiders of the Last Ark. Yeah. Exactly. As cool as all the things blue does, all the bio beings are going to die early because they have a shortened lifespan like a la Blade Runner. Yeah. So they die on their own. Prince was still going to melt when he absorbed the ultimate life form. Nothing blue actually does comes close to helping except Joe K dies in the process. Yeah. Honestly, if blue did nothing, Joe K would still be alive. That's true. Oh, God. All right.

[00:43:29] I think maybe we're getting a miscellaneous foster tour. So let's get into that. Yeah. So, Torch, is there anything you feel we haven't mentioned so far? I love all the like the random cursing that blue does. It's so good. I'm trying to look for like a specific line. I have blue is about to shoot wiser and he says, prepare to shit your brains out of your ass. Fuck you, bastard. There's a lot of swearing in the series. It's so good. But it's such childish swearing. I love it.

[00:43:59] Why does Fatso swear so much? I don't know, but I'm so glad he does. Going back with my theory, this is like a kid playing with like toys in a toy box. This is like a kid discovering the word fuck for the first time and sprinkling it into everything he says. And it's so endearing and charming and stupid. They keep saying that cyber beings have the ability of evolution. Why? That makes no sense. Yeah. Isn't the whole like, why is this not a nature versus nurture? Isn't that the whole point of technology?

[00:44:28] What even is a cyber being? He's the only one because I forgot about that as a concept. Exactly. Like we have bio beings. He's the only one and can't fight anyone else. How cool would it be if Joe K was also a cyber being or something like that? Joe K just took a bunch of steroids. So he's strong. He's just built differently. Yeah, he has all the good steroids. Oh my God. I also want to point out there's a great Japanese people don't know about guns.

[00:44:54] See, where the Claire gets her gun stolen out of her holster, despite any law enforcement would definitely have a three point holster where it's physically impossible to take the gun out of your holster unless you're the one wearing it. It's a dystopian future, David. I guess. Also, how is the FBI have any jurisdiction on like another planet? Yeah. Shouldn't she be CIA? Even as CIA, that's still like a little intense.

[00:45:20] If she was the CIA, she wouldn't be trying to take down drug users. She would be giving them drugs. Exactly. To track them and control the information. Let me sprinkle cocaine. Yeah. Oh, they destroyed all of the trucks on the planet. Oh my God, dude. Is that going to cause like a lot of people just to go into withdrawal and like go crazy? Yeah. Oh, great. Oh, we didn't even talk about when he fought the Jesus robot. Oh, I've mentioned that before, but I love that. The Jesus robot, right.

[00:45:47] He smashes a guy's head with a club shaped, cross shaped club. Yeah. Imagine if it's just not changed form and it was just him fighting robot cheese. Oh, that would be amazing. I would love it. I was so disappointed when it changed into like a generic robot. One last thought I had is they talk about how a minute on Zeke, it's like two minutes and 36 seconds on Earth. And I need to point out that a second and a minute are not based on like rotation of the planet. They're pretty fixed in duration.

[00:46:16] So why would a minute be different anywhere? Actually, there is a scientific explanation for that. Yeah. Time is affected by gravity and mass, right? So basically time travels faster on denser bodies of land, on denser masses. So let's say you, and this has been done, you take an electric stopwatch and you put one at the bottom of the ocean, you put one in space. Gravity affects the one in the oceans more than the one in space. And let's say you keep them out there for a year. You bring both watches back.

[00:46:44] The watch underwater would have been a few seconds behind the one in space. I'm pretty sure. Basically, the time would pass differently for the watch. It's not that time would pass faster where you're located because the gravity affecting the mass, it makes you travel through time faster. It's called time dilation. I very poorly explained it, but the implication there would be that one of these bodies of mass is much larger than the other and that the gravity would impact it very differently. So that would be useful to know in case of like power leveling, because if your body is

[00:47:13] affected differently by gravity, it would make news you're stronger or weaker in different gravitational masses. But that's never incorporated. And I don't think they knew that when writing this. I think it was just a stupid idea. But that's one thing they could have incorporated if they really thought about it harder. I don't know. It's the thought. Muscle mass or something in the process. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it would be possible for any human based life form to survive on something with that level of density. Oh, no. No way. It would not. It would not make any sense. Wait, they show planet Z getting destroyed. It just looks like a normal planet.

[00:47:43] Yeah. Yep. Totally normal planet. Something in this series doesn't make sense, though. Like, I don't know. But also the first chapter of this series, maybe the first two chapters is just the plot of Robocop. Hence the cover art. Yeah. Like, he gets shot a billion times by cop. I had watched Robocop right before we did the preview episode of this. And like, he even loses the same arm that Murphy loses in Robocop. Like, it's intentional. Which is great. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Robocop's awesome.

[00:48:11] Where Max and B's got some stray thoughts for us. Curiously, Cyber Blue looked like a hit for most of its run. It received no less than two covers, four lead color pages, and three center colors. But either hype or goodwill gave way to some sort of reality in the last two months. Its popularity bottomed out before it ultimately got canceled. When witnessing Blue being blown to pieces in chapter one, please remember that Robocop came out the year before. It is not subtle, as Jordan alluded to. When witnessing Blue reborn as a cybernetic being in chapter one, please remember that Terminator came out four years before. It's not subtle.

[00:48:39] You can tell that Tetsuo Haro loves his pop culture as characters resembling Mike Tyson, Madonna, and Prince are featured. I guess that's true about definitely Prince. And Blue himself looks quite a lot like Mad Max and Billy Idol fused together with a touch of Stallone sneer for good measure, as Jordan mentioned in our group chat about his favorite scene from Cobra. Yes. In Fist of the North Star, like in the middle of the series, Kenshiro puts on sunglasses and for some reason just starts looking identical to Sylvester Stallone from Cobra.

[00:49:07] Like, it's, again, not subtle. Yeah. And then finally, when reprinted in 2011, both the writers' credits are removed, just saying that Tetsuo Haro is the only creator. So, bit of a change in history. You know, David, I'm kind of thinking that maybe the two writers never existed and it was entirely Tetsuo Haro. It would make sense. That would be the most reasonable explanation. It would make sense. I don't know why he would do that, but like, it seems like that's possible.

[00:49:35] Well, it was his first work, so maybe it seems better. Also, this seems like the writing quality of someone who had to do everything. No, exactly. I was thinking, like I said earlier, like there's two people who wrote this? Like, I don't know. I don't believe that. Yeah. It definitely feels like it's one person's pure, unadulterated, nonsensical vision of something. The stream of consciousness. Oh, 100%. It definitely feels like a rough draft of what we'd see in Fist of the North Star anyway.

[00:50:02] So, I can totally believe, especially because Bob never showed up ever again. Yeah. Ever. That's the thing. The other two writers did nothing. They may as well not exist, so maybe they didn't. Yeah. All right. Maxi B says, no cyber sex, cyber blue balls. Thanks, Maxi B. I had to rewrite mine because you wrote that. Sully said, you are already cyber shot. Or Paladin said, Tetsuahara, let Robocop say fuck.

[00:50:31] I think the word fuck is said in the movie Robocop. But I don't think he says fuck. Descaris says, Cyborg says fuck, cries mainly tears. Diego, still less fucks than has been episodes. Dude Rocks says, by the way, that they said the word fuck 45 times. Thank you, Dude Rocks. And just a heads up, you are allowed to say the word fuck on our Discord if you want to. Yeah. Everyone's favorite Uber said, Cy blue, Cy blue, bada dee, bada die. Cy blue, da ba dee, da ba die, David. Oh, man.

[00:50:58] Funky Green says in Schwarzenegger's voice, no, I'm not gonna do it. You're already axed. If either of you would wish to try, I'm not going to. You are already axed. It's terrible. I'm sorry. You are all of it, yeah. Yeah, there we go. I can't. I love how Schwarzenegger's son is in the new White Lotus, and I think he's trying to have sex with his sister or his brother. I can't tell yet. Oh, God. Interesting. Yeah, it's fucking what a casting of Schwarzenegger's son. Lord Anubis, Nani, explodes into a bloody mess. Shout out to the dynamite guy who's the best character in Fist of the North Star.

[00:51:28] If did you know that character? Oh, yeah. I knew you were talking about. Throwing dynamite is not a martial art. Hey, it works. It's really dumb. It works. It gets the job done. Portal Man futuristic guns of the North Star. And Spubby becoming a cyborg makes you Kenshiro. And then Ant, do you mind telling us what was your six word summary? Can I copy your homework, Robocop? Yes. Fuck. That's good. How about you, Jordan? Shit the plot out your ass. And then mine was a plot as imaginary as numbers. Yeah. Yeah, basically. And then, okay.

[00:51:57] I think we can all say, Jordan, this is our first not flop since maybe Green Green Green. So it's been about four months. Can't say this is a flop. This kicked too much ass. I had too much fun reading this. This is great. Everyone should read Cyber Blue. Cyber Blue fucking owns. Read Cyber Blue. Yeah. Do you agree, Ant? Yeah. No, 100%. This is like the high octane absurdity that you need in your life. I'm kind of worried to ask Jordan if this is the best thing we read because he may say yes.

[00:52:26] In terms of pure entertainment value, it might be. This is one of the most fun series we've ever talked about. This is so much fun. In terms of intelligence, no. In terms of like just having a good time, it really might be the best series we've ever read. This was a great picking up because last week we talked about Hakutaku, which was probably the most phoned in manga we have ever covered. It was, yeah. It was about game design and the author didn't know about game design. And you're like, why are you writing about a game design,

[00:52:55] which is not a topic anyone is asking a Shonen Jump manga about game design? Oh God, that sucks. That just sounds terrible. Right? Like, why would you talk about that topic and not care about that topic? Especially if you're wrong about it. Like, and someone calls you out. He only talked about AR video games. Oh God. I put it up there with Super Smartphone, which Ant is a series about a kid who gets a super smartphone with mega Google. And cues in it. And it ends up being like, what if Death Note, but nobody died? No.

[00:53:27] My favorite is the phone hides your presence on the internet by deleting it and leaving giant holes. So if you had a list of like 10 students in a classroom, it would just skip from number seven to number nine. And you'd be like, oh, I wonder if a super smartphone user is in this class. Yes. But don't they have that? Isn't that like a real thing that exists? Like things that can delete your history online? Like, I think it's a real service. No, they don't have phones that you can look up things. No, VPNs don't exist either. No. No.

[00:53:56] Oh, I was even thinking VPNs. This episode was sponsored by NordVPN. You can enter Flop20 for 20% off. Oh, we should probably arrange that deal before. Yeah, that's not true. Unfortunately. Yeah. Absolutely not. Absolutely not true. Anyway, Jordan, we're going to have a fun time when we rank everything where the fuck this series is going to go. I think I said on the chibi, but I remember there's this concept of like Rocky IV falls into this. Rocky IV is very similar where it's like, it's not so much that it's good as much as it kicks ass. Yeah.

[00:54:26] The series kicks ass. Yeah. Quality is not determined by the quality of writing, just by how ridiculous it is. Yeah. Again, to quote the great Garth Ennis. Garth Meringue. Garth Meringue. Ooh, Meringue's are pretty good. That would have been my recommendations going to Meringue. All right. This is not the best thing we have ever read for this show. I have to be honest, but it is great. Let's get into a wrap up where we're going to talk about some other great stuff. So while we are not sponsored by NordVPN, we are actually sponsored by Mangamar.

[00:54:55] You can support the show and get the best prices of manga at Mangamart.com slash Shonenflop. Mangamart's a family owned store offering up to 20% off manga and free shipping over $100. And just as importantly, Ant, thank you so much for joining us. This man, this was a ton of fun. But yeah, I wish we had more time to record with you. But I know you've got things going on. And do you mind telling the audience where they can get more of your awesome content in their lives? Absolutely. First off, thank you for having me. This is a ton of fun. Hell yeah. If you want to read the rest of Cyber Blue, let me know.

[00:55:22] If you want to find me, you can follow me on socials on like Blue Sky and what have you under my same name, Anthony Grimoglia. You can find me on YouTube where I regularly post videos every week and stream every week, usually on Tuesdays. And usually post videos on Fridays, usually post stream on Tuesdays. But that's not a, it's not something concrete. This week I'm working right now on a video about Sailor Moon actually. So that'd be kind of fun to do. I'm not sure when your video will. This will come out in two weeks. In two weeks? Oh, this will be outdated then.

[00:55:47] So you should be able to see my video on Sailor Moon I was working on by this point, assuming nothing happens like copyright strikes or anything like that. But yeah, no, you can just find me there. And I have written articles all over the web. You can just find my name by searching it, I'm sure, and avoiding any weird links. And you can find it in the show notes. There you go. Exactly. Yeah, that's about it. I love it. I love it. I also want to say props to Jordan for making the opening ending, being a great co-host and helping with the editing. Yes, thank you so much, David, for everything that you do on the show. No problem. Props to Merlisle for the awesome cover art.

[00:56:16] Find her a line at Lyle, Murr, and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor. I hope you're having a great time in India. Thank you, Dylan, for assistance with editing. You can find his podcast at AnimeOutOfContext at AnimeOutOfContext.com. Thanks to Tucker and Maxi B for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research. Thanks to Kalala for being our social media manager. Find us on BlueSky or X at ShonenFlop, Tumblr, Shonen-Flop, and our website, ShonenFlop.com. We're on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, wherever else you get your podcasts. If you want more weekly David and Jordan content, you find us every Friday on the Chainsaw Minute, where we talk about the latest chapter of Chainsaw Man.

[00:56:46] Have you, uh, read Chainsaw Man? Yes. There you go. I'll get- Fuck, I love that series. Oh, so good. Just literally just won the Fujimoto Award, which I know was unrelated, but it would have been so fitting if it was his own award. Seriously. You can find us every Friday on the Chainsaw Minute, and you can find it wherever you get your ShonenFlop or on our website, or at CSM.Libsyn.com. And join the ShonenFlop Discord. It's open to everyone, patron or not. You get to see important investigational, like, what was the last Shonen Jump series that boobies in it?

[00:57:13] Come hang out with us and talk about anime games or whatever else is on your mind. We even have a manga book club and movie nights. You can find a link to it in the show notes or on our site, ShonenFlop.com. 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, you'll also get access to monthly bonus episodes, including the Shonen Drop, where Jordan and I look back at the previous month's episode and open the mystery box. And I'm sure we'll be talking about our follow-up on Cyber Blue if you at some point. Oh, fantastic. We'd love that. Jordan, though, in the month of March, what are we dropping for our wonderful patrons?

[00:57:43] Well, David, we're going to take a look at the first three volumes of Undead Unluck. I forgot to talk about that in this because it's fucking same. That series makes no fucking sense. Oh, Ant, are you familiar with Undead Unluck? Familiar with, haven't read a ton of it. Okay, yeah, it's very similar aura to this. Yeah, with our guest, David Evelyn, translator extraordinaire. Yeah, the official series translator. Yeah. And has actually met the offer of the series, which is really cool. Yeah. That's wild.

[00:58:13] And for the mystery box, we're reviewing some pilots. 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 warm up audio or recording notes. I also want to read off some of our wonderful patrons. Starting with our Dolphin Dad, I want to give a big shout out to my wonderful wife, Rachel. We saw Shovel Knight Live yesterday. She took us to go try that 24 layer cake at Steakhouse. Man, my stomach still hurts. Moving on down to the Ravioli tier, where Ravioli, she just had her vet visit and she was medically diagnosed as a good girl.

[00:58:43] Aww. Chris, Eva, Jeanette Davis, Justin, Lady T, Matt, Scarlet, T, Tiffany, and Trevor. Moving on down to the King of the Forest, we have 090Z, Bayonet Stew, my girlfriend, Brad, follow AOOC, Mumbly Sky. There you go, Jordan. I said two of us this time. Ivan, Jacob, Kirbymon, Marty, Riley, Sarah, and Tommy Boy. And a big thank you to our Galactic Ball Federation officers and our beast children. Yes, thank you all. I love you all very much. Anyway, Jordan, anything else you want to toss in, man? Check out Mission Ignition. Let's end the show. Let's get the sign-offs.

[00:59:13] As we give our full thoughts on Cyber Ed 120. No, not Cyber Ed, David. Sex to Ed 120. This has been David. This has been Jordan. This has been Ant. We've been listening to Shown of Love. Keep on flopping, floppers. Yeah!