#39 Monster Tamer Girls (Ft. Comic book artist Zander Cannon)

[Transcript by Travis "T" Root]

Jordan  0:00  
[Shonen Flop Theme plays]

David  0:12  
Welcome to this episode of Shonen Flop: where we talk about manga series in Shonen Jump that didn't make it big. I'm David. 

Jordan  0:17  
I'm Jordan. 

David  0:18  
This week, we're talking about Monster Tamer Girls and we are joined by our guest today: Zander Cannon. Zander, thank you so much for being on the show. And I hope I didn't just- didn't say your name wrong and that's why there's like a long silence.

Jordan  0:29  
Probably- 

Zander  0:30  
Ha! No.

Jordan  0:30  
the coolest name of anyone we've had on the show so far, by the way.

David  0:31  
I had to like double check that was your real name and not like the screen name that Jordan sent me.

Zander  0:37  
It's real. Like my name is Alexander, but I uh I couldn't pronounce it when I was little. So that's what she- they called me, so. It's funny because it's like, it goes in waves. Like all of a sudden, there's like, you know, there's the character on Buffy and people like, "Oh, yeah, like Buffy." And I'm like, "Eh sure, we- sorta" you know? And now it's like, I'll meet a ton of Xander's, but they're all like... Eleven.

Jordan  0:55  
Xander on Buffy was very influential to a lot of people growing up to

David  1:00  
Yeah.

Jordan  1:00  
A certain- a certain stage in life. 

David  1:02  
Zander, do you mind giving the audience a little bit of spiel about who you are?

Zander  1:05  
I'm Zander Cannon. I'm a comic book artist. I've been doing comics for 28 years now.

Jordan  1:11  
Hell yeah.

Zander  1:12  
The thing I'm best known for is either a tie, I think, between Top 10 which I did with Alan Moore and Gene Ha and uh Kaijumax, which is my current comic, which is about a prison for giant monsters. Hence the choice of the uh- of the manga this week.

Jordan  1:25  
I have read uh season one of Kaijumax and it's uh I really liked it a lot.

Zander  1:31  
Yeah, that's like the grimmest season. It gets a little bit easier to take after that.

Jordan  1:36  
It was pretty grim.

Zander  1:38  
It was a little tropey, shall we say?

Jordan  1:40  
I loved it so hey?

Zander  1:42  
I stand by it, but it also like I try to be easier on uh characters after that. 

Jordan  1:46  
Yeah. 

Zander  1:46  
Anyway... Worked with Alan Moore. I've worked with Mark Waid. I've worked with Bill Willingham. I've worked for Marvel and DC and Ma- Dark Horse and Oni Press and- you know, basically everybody. I'm more known as an indie writer/artist.

Jordan  1:59  
Yeah, you're like, legit.

Zander  2:01  
Yeah. That's what I always tell myself in the mirror every day to psych myself up. 

Jordan  2:05  
You should.

David  2:06  
I'm strong; I'm beautiful; I have a Wikipedia page. What more could I need?

Jordan  2:10  
I was telling you earlier, I have a manager at work and I mentioned to- I mentioned to him, "Yeah, I'm gonna record uh an episode of my podcast with this uh comic book artist named Zander Cannon". And he was like, "Oh my God, I love Zander Cannon!"

Zander  2:24  
I probably know him too them. [Jordan and Zander laugh]

David  2:29  
I was telling my friend, who is a uh, he's a best selling novel- er... a best selling author in New York Times, who was also my high school lit teacher. And he was a really big fan of your work, too. I remember actually me and my friend, Dan, Dan Harrison, who was also a guest on the show, if you remember him Jordan.

Jordan  2:41  
Course I do. 

David  2:42  
We actually sat down and, ya know, he read comics since the 80's and he literally just sat down for like an hour and pointed out every single reference in Top 10 to us, and that was super cool. 

Zander  2:50  
Oh my gosh. 

David  2:51  
Yeah. I'll have to tell him that you were on the show. I'm sure he'd be very excited to hear about it. 

Zander  2:54  
That's awesome.

Jordan  2:55  
Top 10 is great. Yeah.

Zander  2:57  
I think that it was pretty revolutionary for comics at the time. taking hints from TV to- to tell a team book story, tell like an X-Men type story. But for me, it was a revelation in terms of like, this is how comics can be written in a sort of more casual, sort of more dialogue-y way that doesn't have to be, you know, setting up the next big punch or- or something like that. And that people will read a book like that, ya- you know. I think that it being written by Alan Moore is- does a lot of the work. But like.. but that people will read a comic in that style, instead of it having to kind of hue to what was popular at the time. You know, in the late 90's which was the over the crest of the image stuff, but that was still kind of going strong.

Jordan  3:34  
Was that still in the age of Liefeld?

Zander  3:36  
Yeah, kinda. But I mean, the shine was off it a little bit.

Jordan  3:40  
Mmm. I feel like Kaijumax is almost like the reverse of Top 10, you know? Like, where like Top 10 is like a show about cops through superheroes; and then Kaijumax is a show about prisoners through monsters.

Zander  3:55  
Yeah. It's interesting too why people kind of are like, you know, when we talk about adapting it, and we- duh- people are like, "Oh, we can tell the story of like the- the prison guards and you know, like, and have it from- be from their perspective." I'm like, "That's every monster movie." Like- [Group laughing] why would it be different and that is kind of the problem that like- people are like they want their own "Godzilla versus Kong" or whatever. So...

Jordan  4:15  
Of course. Yeah, no.

Zander  4:16  
The- the moment will come. [Zander laughs]

Jordan  4:18  
Eventually yeah. 

David  4:19  
Because I know this recording can be three hours long, so I'm going to try and be Mr. -uh Watching-the-Clock. One last thing I want to note just before we transition the manga details is, also we found out about you by the book Heck, which was part of our book club. So just if I can't say enough, Luke, thank you so much for being an awesome part of the Discord, running our book club and of course putting us in touch with Zander and worry not, we'll definitely be giving a shout out to your projects at the end of this show. Because it's the least I can do for a great guy like yourself. 

Jordan  4:44  
Hell yeah, Luke! 

David  4:45  
Luke was um- on our Moriking episode which is actually one of the most interesting series we ever read. So if you ever have a chance to listen to our episodes Zander, I think that one is one you might appreciate uh- checking out.

Zander  4:54  
That'd be great. 

David  4:55  
Speaking of manga: Let's get into the manga details. This series was created by Shimazaki Mujirushi. 

Jordan  5:01  
Mhhm.

David  5:02  
Jordan was not ready for me to say that right I could tell.

Jordan  5:04  
You got it. I wa- I was paying attention to the order of the vowels and you got it.

David  5:09  
Thank you. Yes, I said every vowel on that word. The least I could do for this author. 

Jordan  5:13  
You should be proud. 

David  5:14  
Zander I am very bad at pronouncing things. There's actually one of our patrons, I gave up saying his Patreon name, so I have to shorten it, because I just can't say it. 

Zander  5:20  
HA!

David  5:20  
So uh... So- so I say, T Wolfwood cuz like, I'm very inconsistent of being able to say Trafalgar. And you know, he was fucking like that. "He's talking about me." 

Jordan  5:30  
Oh, yeah. 

David  5:30  
I love that guy. He's um- he's like our oracle, where he'll send us like recording notes when we're uh- do recordings in the Discord. But anyway... so this guy contributed to a very long Japanese word (Gakkougurashi), that I'm not going to try saying, Anthology Comic: Kai, and he also created Houkago College Note, which was 31 chapters and Nina wa Papa wo Ansatsu Shita, webcomic that is actually still going on. So it's nice to know he is still making a comic. Jordan, what's the best way to talk about the last author we talked about?

Jordan  5:55  
You mean the guy who did uh... Bokke-san?

David  5:58  
Yeah. So this dude, he gave up making manga and now he just either draws porn or he Vtubes- He Vtubes Minecraft. So-

Zander  6:05  
Wow. 

David  6:06  
It's nice to see that this guy is still um doing the- not that there's anything wrong with that. It was just kind of very strange to go from children's comic book artist to making pornography and Vtubing.

Jordan  6:16  
You know what? It's not that weird in the, in the specific realm of manga and anime. 

David  6:22  
I think that's fair. 

Jordan  6:23  
This guy, he is still eh.. he is still chasing the dream.

Zander  6:27  
[Laughter]

David  6:28  
I'll have to check out his webcomic and see. 

Jordan  6:29  
Yeah. 

David  6:30  
He's had five or six other projects. He's probably, by terms of volume, done the most projects we've ever covered in Shonen. 

Jordan  6:35  
Wow. 

David  6:36  
Because usually someone either gives up or they get like a big success. So like, for instance, are you familiar with My Hero Academia? 

Zander  6:42  
Oh sure, of course.

David  6:43  
They're like, "They stole my idea!"

Zander  6:45  
Yeah-

David  6:45  
So-

Zander  6:45  
Right, yeah right. 

Jordan  6:46  
[Wild laugh]

David  6:47  
My Hero Academia has been doing that for last like eight years, but he had two series that just were not very strong before that. 

Zander  6:52  
Even people who seem like overnight successes have a bunch of like, sort of under the radar things that, you know, it fell- where they fell on their face or whatever. Yeah.

Jordan  7:01  
Does Alan Moore have any like uh any of those? Cuz I'm not familiar with those. 

Zander  7:06  
All the stuff that he was doing for 2000 AD was certainly a lot less sort of polished than who- then what- 

Jordan  7:13  
It's Alan Moore yeah. Yeah. 

Zander  7:15  
When he did V for Vendetta, like he lucked out into having like an extraordinary, you know, collaborator who really elevated that work, especially early on.

Jordan  7:24  
Oh, yeah. 

David  7:25  
Jordan's like, "Hey. Have we talked about Alan Moore enough in the show when we have someone else on it?" They're just gonna be like, "Do you want me to like see if he's free and he'll like tag-in for the rest of the episode?"

Zander  7:33  
Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure he's totally free. 

Jordan  7:36  
He's probably got a Discord Right? 

Zander  7:38  
Absolutely. Absolutely.

David  7:40  
Doesn't he worship like a snake, puppet god or something? 

Zander  7:42  
Yeah. 

David  7:43  
Alright, we're getting off track. So anyway, this serie- 

Jordan  7:45  
Which snake god do you worship? 

Zander  7:46  
The Snake God, Discord. So I'm not using a computer right now. I'm just speaking into a snake's mouth. 

Jordan  7:53  
Ohhhhh. 

David  7:53  
Zander, you're a fucking great guest. You're a fucking legend. You come back anytime. This really could be a three hour long podcast. This ran from June 24th, 2014 to February 12th, 2016 and it was two volumes over 13 chapters making this one of the shortest series I think we have ever read. Jordan, have we read anything shorter than this? 

Jordan  8:13  
Godspeed was six chapters. 

Zander  8:16  
Wow. 

David  8:16  
That was not great. Yeah. 

Jordan  8:18  
It felt longer than six chapters.

David  8:22  
Well, sorry, Lauren O'Neal who actu- actively was like, "I needed to start drinking wine while I was reading this".

Jordan  8:27  
Yeah, oh God. 

David  8:28  
Because it was not a good series, but she was a great guest. Enough about Lauren O'Neal and Alan Moore. Let's get into talking about the manga itself.

Jordan  8:36  
Here's the plot summary. Ion Hidaka and Sora Misumaru are two school girls who attend a monster taming academy. The monsters in this world are photosynthetic and are highly responsive to the singing of young girls. Their first task on the Monster Taming Committee is to take care of the monster out behind the high school who Ion names Blue and when she sings to it, she causes a "bio-torrent", a monster reaction that causes them to make vaguely good things happen. The two then meet Tsukiko, the chair of the Monster Committee, and Koto, her friend slash maybe girlfriend. who graduated high school early and now works as a researcher cuz she's real smart. A little lizard dude then tags along with Tsukiko and the next day he has grown massive and clings to the high school. He turns rock-solid, which humans believe means that a monster is dead, but when Ion sings, as we mentioned before with the deus ex machina that is the bio-torrent, he breaks out of his shell revealing that he has molted into a cool dragon with wings and Tsukiko names him Happy Freedom Bird. Popcorn, David.

David  9:45  
We're then introduced to Kyouko Saegusa, a world famous monster tamer who saved Ion when she was a little girl, who shows the girls her new monster, a creepy octopus that I really wanted to get out of this fucking manga and away from these children.

Jordan  9:45  
Yep, yep 

David  9:57  
But I was really proud that this didn't get super weird like the Mona Lisa scene from Teenage Renaissance! David which- 

Jordan  10:02  
Yeah. 

David  10:03  
I- I'm more than happy to explain uh... Zander; But that was probably one of the strangest, most egregious, underage girl sexuality scenes we'd ever seen.

Zander  10:10  
[Sound of disgust]

Jordan  10:10  
It's one of those things- You read a manga, you see a young girl, you see an octopus, you get- and you just get worried. 

Zander  10:18  
Yeah,

David  10:18  
Yeah. All of your fears are justified in that scene and the girl- 

Jordan  10:21  
Yeah. 

David  10:22  
Is- is a girl who is like the living embodiment of the Mona Lisa. Like the painting. 

Zander  10:27  
Yeah. 

David  10:27  
It was a series about classic-

Jordan  10:29  
No we don't have to- 

David  10:29  
Art.

Jordan  10:30  
We can't get into Teenage- 

David  10:31  
Argh! You're right. You're right.

Jordan  10:32  
Renaissance! David

David  10:32  
You're right. You're right. I know, I did that on purpose. I wanted you to feel powerful.

Jordan  10:35  
Thank you, David. I know. 

David  10:37  
I'm thankful for you. And also thankfully, a huge water bubble monster arrives and the octopus jumps into it, thankfully leaving these girls and I for good because it is not this kind of manga. The girls travel to a monster sanctuary to try and help a monster going on a hunger strike by avoiding the sunlight. Turns out the monster saved Sora when she was little and she's able to give it back its will to live. Then an old man thinks a monster is his son and he dies. Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter to the plot, even though I actually will agree, even though Jordan wrote this, that was definitely probably the best individual chapter of this series. 

Jordan  11:06  
Yeah. 

David  11:06  
Popcorn. Zander,

Zander  11:08  
A particularly massive monster nicknamed Pointy-Sama reveals itself from underneath the school and the students start making wishes to it. Ion starts noticing that a very young girl keeps hanging around it. Her name is Nonoka, and she is actually dying in a coma, but is somehow able to connect with Pointy-Sama in an undefined way. There's an aurora. Pointy-Sama shrinks down and Nonoka wakes up. Unless that part was a dream sequence. I'm still not sure. At last there is a time skip. Saegusa is the chief of monster research and Ion is a new official tamer. 

Jordan  11:34  
Awesome!

David  11:35  
Just to dive into the characters: I'll start out with Ion. She is shy, she loves and names Blue, she sings to him. She's got some vague backstory, but I don't really feel like she really changed or grew much. Which we'll get into the negatives: So I definitely think that was a flaw of the series cuz I feel like the first two main characters don't have a lot of meats in them, especially compared to some of the supporting characters.

Jordan  11:54  
You kind of get the sense the author felt that too. 

David  11:56  
Yeah. Cuz he's like, "Let me introduce kind of replacements that are much more interesting."

Zander  12:00  
All these characters sort of like cut from the same cloth as every sort of young girl manga, you know?

David  12:07  
People always say the genre cute girls doing X. And sometimes the X is like the gimmick like Girls und Panzer, which is what if cute girls ran a, like, World War II tank.

Zander  12:16  
That I'm into. That's awesome. 

Jordan  12:19  
Oh, yeah,

David  12:20  
Seriously. I've seen every episode of that. 

Zander  12:21  
Yeah. [Group laughter] I just remember like seeing some anime 20 years ago or something like that, where it's just like the cutest, little, fluffiest bunnies. They were like fighting a war with like, super hyperrealistic, and accurate weaponry. The disconnect was so intense that it was like, "I must see what happens" even though I, you know, like, I don't care, really. But I'm like, you know, I'm thrilled by it. 

Jordan  12:43  
That's the beauty of anime, you know? Like, just horrifying things happen, but everyone just looks so adorable.

David  12:50  
It's like uh Madoka. 

Jordan  12:51  
Yes, absolutely.

David  12:53  
Yeah. What a great series. Let's say nothing about it and just let people watch it.

Jordan  12:57  
Okay, okay. Okay. Ion: the- her whole thing is, so there's this big ol' monster named Blue. We're gonna... He's got a section down there, but she names him Blue. And he seems to actually like her and lets her ride on her- on his snout, which is pretty... apparently pretty rare. What I like about it is that they really treat the monster like he's just like the school's pet. 

David  13:23  
Very good boy. 

Jordan  13:23  
Yeah, but there isn't that much to say about Ion other than she's apparently just a really good singer,

Zander  13:29  
Like a reader insert character too. Where it's just like- 

Jordan  13:32  
Yeah. 

Zander  13:32  
"Hey. Are you shy? Do you like to sing? Well, then maybe- maybe you can look at the world through her eyes."

Jordan  13:37  
She's just a high school girl but um she's clumsy. Just like uh- It's like Bella.

Zander  13:37  
Uggh! Snoresville? 

Jordan  13:43  
Yeah.

David  13:45  
Oh, God. Uh- so Jordan though, would you like to talk a little bit about Sora? Not from Kingdom Hearts. The other one.

Jordan  13:50  
Ohhhh 

David  13:50  
The other other one. 

Jordan  13:51  
From Digimon. No I'm kidding. 

David  13:52  
We've met a lot of people named Sora in this. 

Jordan  13:55  
I think Sora is just kind of a common Japanese name. 

David  13:58  
Yeah. It- which is ironic cuz she is not the Sora which um- Zander we have a term called "Sora" where a series has a very mediocre cast and there's one character that's like a C plus in a pool of fails. 

Zander  14:07  
Mmmm. Mhhm.

David  14:08  
Named after a character fr- called Beast Children which was probably, in terms of actual production quality, no longer I guess the worst now that we've read Bokke-san; but probably the second worst thing from a purely critical evaluation standpoint of the quality of the- of it being created.

Zander  14:20  
Interesting. 

Jordan  14:21  
There's a lotta competition. Anyway, Sora's more- is more energetic. So the thing with her is that whereas Ion, her thing is that she is actually afraid of monsters, but she was saved from a monster by an older girl as a little kid, and it makes her actually want to become a monster tamer because she wants to be as cool as her; But Sora actually loves monsters, but she's so bad at school that she just flunked out of the monster tamer course. So she's got to join this mo-, this committee club in order to get anywhere with these monsters. Beyond that, there's really not much. 

David  14:58  
Nope. 

Jordan  14:58  
She's not that important. 

David  15:00  
Yep. Zander, would you like to talk about the next character?

Zander  15:03  
Tsukiko Miyama is the Chair of the Monster Tamers Committee. So yeah, like the older- what, what was she sort of like the mentor of the group? Kind of?

Jordan  15:11  
You're getting you're confused with another girl. Don't feel bad. I just read this over the past couple

Zander  15:16  
Oh no... 

Jordan  15:16  
Of days. 

Zander  15:17  
Yeah. 

Jordan  15:17  
And I am also confused over this. The girls kind of blend together a lot.

Zander  15:23  
Oh, yeah. This one was sort of the mean girl. 

Jordan  15:24  
Yeah. 

Zander  15:24  
Who is, you know, is who provides the, the one ounce of sort of antagonism in this whole story.

Jordan  15:31  
Yes. 

Zander  15:32  
You know, so it's like, everything is going swimmingly for everybody at all times. Except she's like, "Mmm, you're a jerk", or whatever. Like, okay. And- but she really wants to sing these songs but she can't or she- she's bad at it or something like that.

Jordan  15:45  
I think the way that the author uh conveys that is that um... When Ion sings there's no dialogue or anything like the implication is she's just kind of singing like, you know, notes and stuff; but Tsukiko has to put in lyrics. And they're like, really bad. And that's how the author conveys that she is a bad singer.

David  16:05  
Yeah. Sometimes just say bad rapping.

Jordan  16:09  
Let's move on to the most interesting character: Blue.

David  16:12  
Yes. Zander as our honored guests this week, would you like to say anything? And resident kaiju expert.

Zander  16:19  
Yeah. I'd like to talk about the monster's design. First of all, I think I would be really mad at myself if I designed a character like this because it's got those four- or it's got those three curved horns that would be really hard to draw in perspective. 

Jordan  16:32  
Mmm. 

Zander  16:33  
You'd just be making problems for yourself. And then also, it's like, the texture of him is boring. Like... 

Jordan  16:38  
Yeah. 

Zander  16:39  
You know, it's like, oh, he has this defined face. That's pretty good. I mean, it's a little bit sort of standard sort of kaiju face, but like, I find him to be kind of a boring design for a monster. 

Jordan  16:48  
He's very bland. Yeah. 

Zander  16:49  
He works for what he is, which is sort of like this sort of calming presence or whatever that loves this girl or lets this girl ride around on his face or whatever. And he does have those big, like, mole hands, which I appreciate that. Like that, at least they're not sort of like your standard sort of faux Godzilla hands.

David  17:06  
I also appreciate how he seems to fight by sumo wrestling. Like if you notice he does like sumo slaps.

Jordan  17:13  
I liked when he did that to like... To a giant hand that was sticking out of the ground. So it was like he was just high fiving the hand.

Zander  17:21  
That's what fights out to be like. 

Jordan  17:23  
I agree.

David  17:25  
That would have made it better if this was a Kaiju sumo wrestler- Oh, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Sorry 

Jordan  17:29  
Oh no.

David  17:29  
Already giving spoilers on how I would have redone the series. Oh yeah, but sorry, Jordan continue.

Jordan  17:35  
I like how like, just docile he is, big and lazy. He just has the temperament of like, a really big, old dog. 

David  17:45  
Yeah.

Zander  17:46  
I thought it was interesting that they sort of do the thing right away where they're like these giant monsters photosynthesize. Like, they don't eat things. Like right away, they solve the problem that they couldn't solve in all the Clifford books, you know? Where he had to like eat a trucks worth of meat, presumably three times a day. You can see that they were kind of like- had to think about at the last minute like, "Oh, my God. What- what do these things eat? Like they're gonna eat these girls if we don't like figure something out."

Jordan  18:09  
Yeah, cuz I mean, otherwise, it's like you'd have to justify: Well, why is this school just allowing these girls hanging out with these bloodthirsty, like, carnivorous, giant monsters?

Zander  18:20  
Why do they keep ordering like 4000 horses a day?

Jordan  18:24  
Yeah. 

David  18:25  
I mean, I can't blame them for sidestepping that issue by making them like photosynthetic.

Zander  18:29  
Totally, but it just- it just seemed like, uh-oh, it's the day where we have to write this scene like, "Okay, roll D-20. Okay, photosynthesize. Phew. Alright, we did it."

Jordan  18:39  
Like you see the mechanical reason for why the writer had to do it. But also, if you can identify very clearly the uh overall mechanical reason for that, it kind of means that the idea wasn't properly kind of meshed into it. 

Zander  18:55  
Right. Like there was never a problem of like, "Oh. Oh no, this monster stuck in a cave. It can't get to the sun so it can't photosynthesize." Like there was- it was never like, a double-edged sword. It was like, he'd only just solved the problem of why aren't they eating these children. You know? 

David  19:09  
Yeah.

Jordan  19:09  
Well he did have the monster who tried to kill himself by isolating himself from sunlight. That was uh-

Zander  19:15  
Oh, alright. 

Jordan  19:16  
That was Interesting.

David  19:17  
Yes. Um but I think this might be a good discussion point just to talk about some flaws in the series. So why don't we finish up the characters and we can dive right in- into that section. And I see why we've changed that after a few months of running the show to make that the section immediately after the character section. 

Jordan  19:17  
Yeah exactly. 

David  19:33  
Cuz uh, Zander, when we started the show, we thought most of the series we were gonna read, we're like hidden gems. And then we're like, "No." It's that most of these were cancelled because they were bad.

Jordan  19:42  
Yeah, exactly. So you want me to go on to uh the next character? 

David  19:47  
Yeah, go for it. 

Jordan  19:48  
The next character is Kotomi Justine, Justine, like just straight up Justine, Kagurazaka. A.K.A. Koto is how they're going to refer to her most of the time throughout the series. And her whole thing is that she's a researcher who is in a graduate program despite the fact that she's a teen. And that's it. Also, she is dating Tsukiko? That's like..

David  20:14  
I- so yeah I... there was like a very ambiguous yuri thing that I kind of feel like maybe he wasn't allowed to. It's like in i tell c, where the main character of that manga was bisexual, but because of like restrictions, they couldn't openly make her bisexual. And I think this series just had to keep everything very ambiguous.

Jordan  20:31  
I think the thing that uh Western eyes on um anime and manga, like it's very easy to assume that they have like the exact same like relationship...

David  20:43  
Mhhm. 

Jordan  20:43  
With sexuality over there. I- I remember reading like this article years ago, and you know, it was like, in Japan, like young girls are supposed to kind of uh... get in little flings with each other, and it's seen as a way to practice being like, with a man as an adult. And obviously, there's a lot of nuance there that I am not familiar with. But basically, I'm saying, I don't know if this is proper, if this would be seen as progressive or not, is what I'm saying. I don't- I don't know. 

David  21:12  
Yeah.

Zander  21:13  
I lived in Japan for two years and.. 

David  21:15  
Oh wow! 

Zander  21:16  
Yeah. And so like, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that like, and this was 20 years ago, so- 

Jordan  21:16  
Yeah. 

Zander  21:17  
Things are different. But like, our friend would be like, "Oh, well, you know, officially, there are no gay people in Japan." Like even in 2002 or '03. 

Jordan  21:28  
Wha?

Zander  21:16  
So it was like, if you have a very close relationship with, you know, somebody of the same sex, it isn't like, "Oh, my gosh. Thi- it's a slippery slope down to, you know, to Devilsville," or whatever it is. 

Jordan  21:29  
It's a sin yeah. 

Zander  21:16  
It isn't like the US in that way. But it also, you know, also it's like, well, if you want to marry that person, you're out of luck. But I mean, so like close relationships like that weren't sort of seen, like, "We have to stop this right away, or else the worst possible thing in the world could happen." It was just sort of like, "Well, you know, that's just that's just being a teen, or that's just being wild and crazy as a 20 something or whatever". You know what I mean?

Like, it isn't so much that they'll like, burn you at the stake for it as much as uh they just won't take your relationship seriously.

Right. 

David  22:10  
Yeah, that makes sense. 

Zander  22:11  
Yeah, everybody does that sort of stuff. And then they straighten up and uh... so to speak, and get- and get married.

David  22:16  
Oh jeez. 

Jordan  22:18  
Yeah. 

David  22:19  
Uh Jordan, this is a topic I cannot speak on.

Zander  22:21  
It's different, not better or more progressive.

Jordan  22:24  
Exactly. I think that's the best way to kind of categorize it. It's- It's a different culture with its own baggage. 

Zander  22:31  
Yeah.

David  22:31  
And then uh... Sorry, I just don't know how to transition.

Jordan  22:35  
Anyway, the last- last character is Kyouko Saegusa.

David  22:39  
Let me handle this one. She is the last mart- monster charmer. She's good with monsters, doesn't really like her title. She's also losing her voice. So she, slowly will physically be incapable of singing. And I like how their doctor was like, "Yeah, if you keep seeing your voice is gonna get all fucked up and that's your problem."

Jordan  22:53  
[Laughs the word yeah] I like how they didn't bring up that she couldn't sing until literally the second before she sang.

David  23:00  
Well, that's how you knew how desperate she had to be to sing. 

Jordan  23:02  
Yeah.

Zander  23:03  
I know that as a writer you're like, "Oh, yeah, there was a thing I was supposed to set up like three chapters ago, and I just didn't. Oops." 

Jordan  23:10  
Oops. 

Zander  23:11  
Guess we're doing it as we lead into the scene where it matters. 

David  23:14  
It's like if Superman like is about to fight someone who's like, "Oh, I forgot to mention. Yeah. If they have this thing called kryptonite, I'm super weak to it and the guy just brings up kryptonite. 

Jordan  23:21  
Really? 

David  23:21  
"Oh, no. How did he have kryptonite? Wow." 

Jordan  23:25  
Oh man. 

David  23:25  
This series... All right, you know, well uh he- she's also a student teacher. Uh yeah, I don't know what else to say about her. How about you guys?

Jordan  23:32  
She's the one who saved Ion when Ion was a little kid. She has blonde hair, I think? 

David  23:37  
Yeah. 

Jordan  23:38  
Her hair is not colored in which is relevant because Koto's hair is also not colored in and- 

David  23:43  
Okay. 

Jordan  23:43  
They're also both like hanging out there while not actually being students and I kept getting them so confused.

David  23:53  
Thank God! I was so fucking confused.

Jordan  23:55  
Yeah. 

David  23:55  
I legitimately could not tell who was who during a lot of the scenes in this series.

Zander  23:59  
I couldn't either and I just- I stopped worrying about it.

David  24:02  
You're a professional- 

Jordan  24:02  
Yeah

David  24:03  
At this. Are you guys sure you like this series? 

Jordan  24:06  
There are aspects of this series that I like.

David  24:10  
Alright, fine. But why don't we talk about that after we get into the negatives. We are getting into the bread and butter of the show, kind of sadly, is why it failed. This series has like no character growth whatsoever, no explanation of the world in a very satisfying way. Like it's weird to be like, I wish there was more exposition because that's usually the issue of a lot of series; But my God they had so many concepts that just were not explained or explained very poorly that it was hard for me to really care.

Jordan  24:37  
This is less of a monster manga and more of a girls in high school manga. And I don't have like, that much experience with it, but like the few that I have uh watched such as like Azumanga Daioh or Lucky Star. Like, you gotta be funnier is what I'm basically saying. 

David  24:57  
Yeah. 

Jordan  24:57  
You gotta be like funnier than this. It just felt kind of scattered. And it didn't really do it enough, I suppose.

Zander  25:05  
I've never had so little happened in 300 pages.

David  25:10  
Oh, wait until you read Bokke-san.

Jordan  25:12  
Oh, don't read Bokke-san. I have a better idea, yeah.

Zander  25:15  
I mean, if the idea is: I'm taking this very well-worn concept of girls in high school and adding this thing, which is probably the sell-, which is probably what got it sold is like, oh, yeah, that plus kaiju. You know, some editor uh somewhere was like, "Yeah, okay." But like, there's no mismatch, or like, "Oh, yeah, I can sing to him and it- and it works." But it's like, "Oh the monsters never did any of the stuff that monsters do" that maybe a girl go- be like, "Oh my god, I can't believe you ate the shed" or whatever.

Jordan  25:41  
That touches on like something that I think is kind of at the core of this series, which is that these aren't monsters. Like these- these aren't really monsters. You know? These are like-

Zander  25:50  
Right. Giraffes. 

Jordan  25:52  
They are treated in the same way that you would treat like a strange animal or something. There are a lot more like Pokemon, actually.

David  25:59  
Yeah. I mean, it's also the designs are super bland. Like they're not monsters, except for their size.

Jordan  26:05  
This is the generic idea of a monster. Like, yeah, it was like a big monkey guy, I don't know. There's like some lizard over there. Yeah, that's pretty cool. He turns into Charizard. That's dope. And then like, I don't know, over here, there's a weird octopus thing that- the weird bubble thing does not fit into any of this.

David  26:25  
They even s- lampshade. They're like, this doesn't seem to apply- uh, play by normal rules of how monsters work in the series. 

Jordan  26:31  
Yeah. The term monster is just so generic. And, and also, they make a big deal out of how the- all the monsters turn into rocks. And we don't know what it means when that happens. And it doesn't matter.

David  26:43  
They even say sometimes they'll also go into rocks to have kids, which is never shown. The series again, very badly explains its world and then doesn't even follow its own rules.

Jordan  26:51  
[Deep sigh] You didn't need to introduce the rock stuff. I don't really know why you did. You didn't- 

David  26:57  
Yeah. 

Jordan  26:58  
Explain it, you didn't go anywhere with it. And it- it's kind of just dragging you down at this point.

Zander  27:04  
I mean, I think about like, you know, when you're a writer, and you're sort of like, "Okay, I'm just- I'm introducing the concept. I'm putting all the chess pieces on the board, so to speak." And then I think you always end up dropping the ball on a couple of them. Or like saying, "Oh, this didn't work as well as I thought and in practice,". But like, there's so little happening that you feel like, yeah, like they should follow their own rules so that these- so that at least mysteries gets solved and you can kind of go, "Oh yeah, yeah, that's why that happened." Because I feel like if it was a little bit wackier, or that there was, yeah, more- more humorous or more action packed, or more sort of, like frantic in some other way, I think that you could kind of sort of get it by people that like, that the lore doesn't make total sense.

Jordan  27:42  
Zander, are- are you familiar with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure at all?

David  27:45  
I was about to talk about Part Eight with the rock people.

Zander  27:48  
I know what it is, but I do- I haven't watched it or, or read it.

Jordan  27:51  
The thing about JoJo and the thing that the writer Araki does that I love is that he- he will do that, like he will introduce something at the beginning and then just completely never address it again. But there's so much shit that is constantly happening and it's so insane and wild that you don't really care.

Zander  28:10  
There are certain types of stories where the plot really matters. If you're like, "Oh, we're going to do a heist", or whatever, well, then the plot really matters. Cuz you don't want to just sort of say like, "Well, and then we just randomly did this thing." But if it's a satire, and like it's uh, taking place over many, many days, and it's just sort of like a workplace drama, you can have plot holes the size of trucks, and people won't really care. It's all about the characters. I mean, I think that they could have gotten away with that very easily because it's like, I never once look at these monsters and be like, "Oh, man, I really hope we find out how they work." It's like, they clearly don't know how they work. Who cares? 

Jordan  28:41  
Yeah. 

Zander  28:41  
I just wanted there to be more funny stuff, or more sort of adventures or something. 

Jordan  28:46  
It's really just the fact that they could have used those pages where they were talking about the rocks to do those- that more funny stuff and things like that, you know?

Zander  28:56  
I mean, I kept thinking about things like, like, Yo-kai Watch, or whatever. Where like weird things are like messing up his daily life, you know, and I think that that was really kind of fun that you can have these things where it's like, "Oh, yeah, here's a Yo-kai, which is like an actual like, or, you know, it's uh very much like uh an- a real sort of mystical, you know, something from Japanese folklore." 

Jordan  29:14  
Yeah.

David  29:15  
Yeah. 

Zander  29:15  
And here's how it would fit into, you know, a sixth grade classroom or whatever, you know? And, I- and I think that that sort of stuff is great. But it's like the school and the monster training seemed to be completely separate. And it was- really the school was just a place where they could go and be like, I don't know, learn more about it or whatever. But it wasn't- it didn't have anything to do with it really.

David  29:33  
It was just an excuse to have the characters meet up with each other every day cuz there wasn't an organic reason. 

Zander  29:38  
Yeah. 

David  29:38  
I think the last thing is also the art. We talked about the character design is not very good, especially for both the characters and the kaiju, but also the art is just very... [Sighs] Zander, maybe, you know, a better expression, but it was- there was a lack of like energy in the art. There was very little squash and stretch. There's very little movement lines, and it just kind of looked like you were looking at a screenshot of like a movie, rather than it being a comic book where things were active, where motion is actively being shown in each panel.

Zander  30:00  
Yeah. I think that you can really lean into that kind of style. You know, if you're doing something that's very sort of like calm and like comforting and um sort of iyashikei type of com- manga or whatever. 

David  30:12  
Mhhm.

Zander  30:12  
But like, the thing that really bothered me, and this is the case in a lot of monga, is that they would repeat layouts so frequently. Where it's just like, here's a character, small, next to a monster, big, and this- and that is the frame. And then it's like two pages later, they have almost exactly the same shot with maybe a different character. Maybe not, maybe it's like in the same scene, and it's the same character and they just didn't have a more interesting way to frame the thing. Because the storytelling is so decompressed, you know, that they'll go page after page after page with the same sort of physical setup for every scene- um for, for that scene. And that was the thing that bothered me. Like, I don't really mind sort of the sparseness of the art, but I thought it was kind of boring that it's like, "We've sort of mined the scene visually, as much as we possibly can. We need to get out of here instead of just repeating things."

Jordan  30:58  
You know, it's funny: I think that that was bothering me that I- didn't even occur to me, but I, I do think you're right. Like, overall composition of the panels was pretty boring and samey.

Zander  31:08  
I mean, it's all very competent. There's not a single like, bad panel, you know, that's like, oh, they really screwed it up. It's just that they have competent panel after competent panel, and it never thrills you at all. You know?

Jordan  31:20  
Yeah, I would agree. 

David  31:22  
You should definitely read Look Back, which is like the absolute mastery of manga paneling.

Jordan  31:27  
It's, it's very good. Yes. 

Zander  31:29  
Okay.

David  31:30  
Speaking of things that are really great though: why don't we shift gears into what it did well. I'm waiting for you to like- to judge my transitions as a professional. So, you'll have to let me know what you think at the end of show. You can give me a rating out of ten on my transitions game. You're like, " Mmmm.. David, keep- du- Don't quit your day job."

Jordan  31:45  
Your day job on Shonen Flop yeah. 

David  31:49  
Yeah. Oh God. I've- I've lost a lot of money making this podcast as Jordan knows. 

Jordan  31:54  
Oh yes, it's true. 

David  31:56  
But speaking of Jordan: Jordan, tell us what are the things you liked about this series?

Jordan  32:00  
It was just very sweet in many places, you know? Like eh- the- there was this heartwarming aspect to it that I really appreciated. I really loved how even though, uh, they're not like really monsters, it's really more just about taking care of- of animals. Like I view this as being, like, if the school just had a horse, and "Oh, these two girls are on the horse cleaning committee and they have to take care of it." And the fact that it's a monster kind of just makes things a little bit funnier to me. Like, of course, they have the big ol' like hamster water dispenser. That's hilarious. I also thought that there were like some really funny like little moments. I really liked how uh- like one of the, one of the running gags is that each of the monsters has like different names because each girl wants the monster to use the name they came up with. But a lot of the names are just terrible.

David  32:54  
Blue, in a black and white manga, because of blue eyes and you can't tell cuz- only because I told you that. 

Jordan  32:59  
Exactly. 

David  33:01  
To talk of Build King, Jordan! 

Jordan  33:03  
UHHGGH! Yeah. 

David  33:05  
This black and white comic had their entire power system named after colors. And they have a- literally a black and white color chart where they have to say, "This grayscale is blue. This grayscale is green. This-

Zander  33:15  
Oh my God. 

David  33:15  
Grayscale is purple." And yes, it's- it's as terrible as you think it would be. Um, so yeah. Uh, Jordan, did you have anything else negatives that you want to talk about? 

Jordan  33:18  
You mean, the positives? 

David  33:26  
Oh sorry, positives. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just this- I can't associate nega- positivity when talking about Build King. So I'm just...

Jordan  33:31  
[Stammering] I totally get it. 

David  33:32  
Yeah!  So any other positives?

Jordan  33:34  
There was this one little, like, bottle episode that I thought was actually surprisingly well-done. Backing up a little bit: Their city was like destroyed by this one monster. I forget how many years ago but it happened in 1999. I just forget which year this takes place in. And one of the things there is, uh, this defense secretary authorized, like, a huge assault on the monster and seemingly destroyed it; and there were a lot of casualties; and the old man, now he's old, he wakes up and the monster is there but the monster- he believes that the monster is his son and you find out that his son actually died in that attack. And I got the implication that the son might have been killed in uh the attack on the monster. So maybe the old man blames himself for his son's death? It was actually, like, surprisingly heartwarming and just came out of nowhere and then doesn't matter.

David  34:31  
Yeah. This author, like, for the first like seven chapters, really durdled; and then Chapter Eight, he like tries for a little bit; and then he realizes he got cancelled; and then he stopped trying again.

Jordan  34:40  
Yeah. There was that big, massive monster called like uh... called, like, Pointy-Sama, where people- girls can make wishes to it. Yeah. There was like that little gir.l I d- I still don't understand what the hell was going on with her. She was in a coma and then she uh, might have died or might have come back but it seemed like it might have been a dream sequence? Fucking whatever. Yeah. In, in- The series gets very confusing towards the end and-

Zander  35:02  
Yeah. 

Jordan  35:02  
Just ge- completely loses the plot threads.

Zander  35:05  
I mean, all their best moments didn't even really involve the main characters. It was almost like this uh, anthology book of, like, sad monster stories.

Jordan  35:14  
It did feel, like, kind of an anthology. 

David  35:18  
Mmhmm. 

Jordan  35:18  
Like, yeah. This would have been better if like, there were just like... Uh, yeah. Why don't we actually move on to the section where we're supposed to talk about that shit?

David  35:27  
Okay, you mean, where it could have gone? 

Jordan  35:28  
[All laughing] Yeah, exactly!

David  35:28  
Alright. [Laughter continues] Just to make sure though Zander, was there anything else uh positive you wanted to say about the series? 

Zander  35:34  
The slowness of it, I think, was generally a negative, but it has sort of dreamlike quality to it that I could appreciate.

David  35:40  
The way it did that idea was kind of bland, but it is kind of fun. This whole, "What if it was cute girls doing cute things" involving monster-like Kaijus. And so I think that was a novel idea, even if I didn't really uh, like the execution.

Jordan  35:52  
I would agree with that. And I- I also want to say I might have had a more positive reaction to this because it came off of us reading Bokke-san. And this is just- 

David  36:00  
Je- Oh yes. 

Jordan  36:01  
This is just like the complete opposite of Bokke-san where uh, so much happens, none of it matters. It's- God- Things happening all the fucking time. You can't follow a single goddamn thing. It's moving so fast, you can't keep track. At least this was just like, "Okay, yeah. Just hanging out. There's some girls. They're just hanging out. They got a big old monster, and it's cute."

David  36:08  
Awww. Yeah. Speaking of uh, where could it have gone anyway: I couldn't- I couldn't fit- We had a good transition. I'm sorry we had to wrangle it back cuz I want to make sure our guest had a chance to talk about it Jordan. 

Jordan  36:31  
Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. Okay, fine. I see. Yeah,

David  36:35  
I'm just kidding. I love you, buddy. Just- I'm just hangry cuz my oven broke on my cooking day so... I literally had all the ingredients and then my oven didn't turn on. My super's like, "Yeah, I'll come by tomorrow." I'm like, "Fuck!". And there was the New York Marathon, so guess where I couldn't go and get anything? So I had to figure out what the hell I could eat in my fridge today. 

Jordan  36:50  
Oh no David. Did you eat?

David  36:53  
I ate more popcorn than I think I probably should have. But we'll just not tell the dietician about that. 

Jordan  36:57  
Yeah, I won't. [All chuckle] 

David  36:59  
So anyway, though. In terms of things where I think they could have gone differently: let's go into where it could have gone. Zander. As um, definitely the expert in this area of wholesale, just, creating comics; where do you think, like if you could have really dictated this series, what would you have done differently?

Zander  37:15  
I can't say that I wouldn't have done the same, like photosynthesis thing, so you wouldn't have to worry about, like, the amount of food that kaiju would have to eat or that sort of stuff. But like, they would have been sillier. I would have, sort of like, created the characters based on- or based around how they react to sort of stress and adversity. You know? Like one of them freaks out, one of them gets really quiet, and then you know, and works it out or like that kind of stuff. So that then you could have like, "Oh, here's a wacky thing that, you know, a monster is climbing in the window," you know. They all react in different ways. Or somebody has to keep a secret that there's a- a uh, kaiju baby or blah, blah, you know, that kind of stuff. There'd be a lot more adventures and running around and like being silly. 

David  37:53  
Mhhmm

Zander  37:53  
The other thing is that you'd want to sort of play into all the, sort of, kaiju archetypes and, and tropes. And I mean uh, the way that I did it with-

Jordan  38:00  
Right? 

Zander  38:00  
Kaijumax: What happens if an Ultraman-type character comes to town and wants to kill your- your monster thats like-

Jordan  38:05  
Oh jeez.

Zander  38:06  
Your pet at the school? Well, then what do you have to do? Like you can't fight them and have them react to that. And I think that you could still do that sort of, like peaceful, like, you know, the camaraderie or whatever. You know, have the action be a little bit more satirical.

David  38:19  
Mhhm

Jordan  38:19  
Yeah. 

Zander  38:19  
I think the kaiju themselves were mm- kind of a marketing ploy. And really, what they wanted these girls to do is, like, hang out with- Yeah, like giraffes, or whatever. Like- [Laughter] like big peaceful animals, you know?

David  38:31  
Eatin' some motherfucking leaves!

Jordan  38:33  
Do you think this series would have been better if it was just animals? 

Zander  38:37  
Maybe. 

Jordan  38:39  
There is a giraffe behind the school for some reason. 

Zander  38:41  
Yeah I mean a giraffe would be, like, weird enough like that, "Oh, wow, there's a giraffe behind the  school." But then you wouldn't expect them to be like breathing fire or like smashing buildings or like have done that stuff in the past or whatever.

Jordan  38:53  
Yeah. One thing that happens a lot in manga that, like uh, did not happen here, and which could have happened in that situation is um, they could have had, like, a bunch of moments where they were like, "Oh, hey, it's a giraffe. Well, did you know this is what a giraffe eats? See, like this is uh.. This is an interesting thing about giraffes. This is how you got to take care of them and stuff. And you can't really do that with a monster. Because mo- they don't exist. And also their eating habits: On one hand, yeah, it's a hand wave that gets you away from having to worry about them eating the girls; but on the flip side, then you get rid of anything interesting about what they eat.

Zander  39:28  
There's no mechanic that in- involves like, this is something we have to do. 

Jordan  39:32  
Yeah. 

Zander  39:33  
But it was always just like, "I have to sing to calm down this already calmed monster."

David  39:39  
Yeah, it's like, "Oh, we gotta have dedicated dog pacifiers. You know, those animals are known for just being so hard to work with. 

Jordan  39:46  
Exactly. These monsters just seem so um, non-threatening. I've mentioned before they just really do not feel like monsters. Like the, the weirdest thing about the photosynthesis is it implies that like all the monsters are the same species, and like they're- they're not. Like I'm looking at them. Clearly, they're different. Like, are you telling me that this octopus is photosynthetic? Why? That doesn't make sense. 

David  40:08  
I thought we weren't gonna talk about the octopus Jordan?

Jordan  40:11  
Oh God, you're right. [Annoyed groan] 

David  40:13  
Yeah. We didn't even talk about in the flaws, um, the series kind of awkwardly makes all of these girls, like, have giant boobs for some reason, despite being like 14. 

Zander  40:21  
They're hardly the only ones who have done that. 

David  40:23  
It's really a question what series don't do that at this point.

Jordan  40:26  
The answer is Candy Flurry. Anyway. 

David  40:29  
But yeah. And then though, my big "where it could have gone" is I think, uh, and it was hard for me not to bring it up earlier was, I think it really would have helped if it was in the 4-koma format. Like if it just knew it was a gag manga. And so you know, like you said, Azumanga Daioh, which has that comic format.

Jordan  40:43  
I've heard that 4-koma was givin' people like uh heart- heart attacks and stuff. So that's why they banned it.

David  40:49  
Shut up Jordan. 

Jordan  40:52  
[Laugh of victory] 

David  40:52  
I hate you so much. 

Jordan  40:55  
[Wild laugh] 

David  40:55  
Zander, would you like to be my co-host moving forward? 

Zander  40:57  
Absolutely.

Jordan  40:59  
Well, bye everybody! 

David  41:00  
Bye! No. And also just- don't introduce any new characters for the first like two or three chapters. Just make the world explain the rules. And don't introduce a bunch of characters, where it's literally, like, you didn't like your initial two protagonists, and you try to replace them and then try to replace them again with characters that look like the second replacement. Jordan in One Piece, Zoro doesn't show up until the end of the third chapter.

Jordan  41:21  
Yeah. No that makes sense. When you introduce characters in one chapter, and then introduce more characters, it really just feels more like you really should have just introduced them all in the first chapter. 

Zander  41:32  
Right. 

Jordan  41:32  
It really just feels like uh- you were going to and then ran out of room. It didn't- it felt- feel like a calculated thing that you did for the benefit of the story; so much as like, "Oh shit. I have more characters, and I forgot to do anything with them. Damn."

Zander  41:46  
Every character that they introduced seemed like a main character. Like they could be the main character of the story. It wasn't like, "Oh, you know- Here's our main character, a school girl. And then here's the teacher, you know. There's the- this teacher and a that teacher and then the stern principal and that friendly, you know uh, janitor and like the, the, you know- and then these monsters. It was like, they were all their own character, rather than the one character and they have the relationship with every other character that you meet. 

Jordan  42:11  
Yeah. By the way, and I- I know that this is like, we're not- we're talking about the negatives in a different- in a different section, but whatever. The ages of these characters were so confusing. A certain number of girls are like in high school or middle school, I guess? And then one- And then like the teacher uh, looks like she's the same age as the other students, but she's actually a teacher. But then there's a timeskip when she was a student. And another main character is a middle schooler at that point. It's just kind of hard to see how these girls relate to each other age wise. Especially because I mean, in manga, like, it's not like you can tell how old somebody is from how they're drawn.

David  42:51  
Yeah. It's like in One Piece where Oda drew Robin, like this 30 year old woman, and how she looks she was 50 or 70 and literally, she looks exactly the same in both drawings. Oh, man. By the way, we are getting a little tight on time so does anyone have anything pertinent they really want to talk about? Or are you guys cool if we migrate to the miscellaneous thoughts? 

Zander  43:08  
Let's go. 

David  43:08  
So Zander, what would you say is uh, really a miscellaneous thought that you just didn't really have an opportunity to say before, on this recording?

Zander  43:16  
My miscellaneous thought about all, like, media that I'm asked to sort of, like, give my thoughts on is like-

David  43:21  
Mhhm. 

Zander  43:21  
Man, I know how hard it is to make stuff. Just getting anything done is hard and deadlines are terrible. You know, every comic book artist that you've ever seen is like, twice as good as you think they are because they're always on a deadline. They're always under the gun. They're always sort of like, you know, sort of having to take the shortcuts or like drawing things from a weird angle that they haven't tried before or whatever. And so,  uh yeah, I'm always inclined to give things a little grace. I mean, even if it is boring, and even if it is, you know, or it isn't sort of, like aimed at me. The- Which I don't think it particularly is aimed at me, you know? I'm a little old for this uh- for this kind of this genre, right? I always have this appreciation of people who are like, "Yeah, I mean, let's get out there and do this," especially if they're doing it for earnest reasons. Like "Oh I really like schoolgirls and I really like monsters." It's like, "Man. Then you go!". Like, if you're doing it for cynical reasons, I'm a little bit less inclined to give people a break. But like there's a good heartedness to it that I can kind of appreciate here. I don't know that they had the premise, like, rock solid but you- you could tell they had a worldview that they wanted to express and I think they express it pretty well.

Jordan  44:24  
Yeah. And I will say if somebody comes up to me and says that they really like school girls, I will tell that person to ever talked to me again. 

Zander  44:31  
Ha! 

Jordan  44:31  
No, I- I do agree and Zander are you- I- I also have to ask, are you familiar with like the specific brutal crunch that, like, Shonen Jump authors and artists are under?

Zander  44:41  
Only from reading Bakuman. 

David  44:44  
Though I will- I will say though Jordan, this wasn't a Shonen Jump series and I think it was monthly.

Jordan  44:48  
I'm sure it was still, like, very stressful-

Zander  44:51  
Oh yeah. 

Jordan  44:51  
For him. Even just having a month to make- put out a series is- to put out a chapter is itself tough enough.

Zander  44:57  
I work with one other person on Kaijumax and it's like, I was able to do some of them in five weeks; but it really started being more like six, seven, eight weeks for 22 pages. I mean that- you know, and that's color. But it's like these are toned. I mean, that's a lot of work too. 

Jordan  45:11  
Yeah. 

David  45:11  
And that really starts to weigh you down too, after seven, eight, nine months of like, being under the gun.

Jordan  45:18  
Like there are straight up manga artists that just cannot draw anymore.

David  45:24  
Like um... The guy who made Naruto, he just straight up- his next series, he couldn't do the art for it.

Zander  45:28  
Wow. Because he had damaged his nerves or something like that? Or is- his wrist?

David  45:32  
His art style changed and pretty much people think like the last, like, few years of Naruto he just had a ghost artist. 

Zander  45:33  
Mhhm. 

David  45:38  
Because he just physically could not draw and the art just really did not look like the style at the beginning of the series. 

Zander  45:45  
Happens to everybody. Like I think- is the probably the best thing that ever happened in terms of like digital art. I think digital art has saved more people's careers than anything else in the history of comics. You know, because it's like, "Your wrist is hurting? Yeah, well draw big." You know, like the screen- screen, screens are big now. Like draw big. I personally know like half a dozen people that it's like- it extended their career by 20 years plus.

Jordan  46:08  
That's awesome. 

David  46:09  
Zander, thanks so much though for that really cool perspective on just being an artist. Let's uh, finally start getting near the end with our final verdict. Why don't I start by just reading some of the fan six-word summaries, including one that someone sent us while we were recording. From Luke, so very timely. Um.. Glad I built that telepathic connection with him 

Jordan  46:26  
You did it. 

David  46:27  
The first one comes from Adam who says "How to Train Your Nuclear Metaphor." 

Jordan  46:32  
Nice. 

David  46:32  
Next one is from T Wolfwood who says "Cute girls befriending monsters. Love it!" Next one is from Luke, "Boner killing levels of boring manga???". And finally from Tucker, "Monsters stole these girls distinguishing features". 

Jordan  46:47  
Damn! 

David  46:48  
Dude Tucker's a fuckin', like, legend at writing these six-word summaries. I swear to God. He's so good at them. 

Jordan  46:53  
Oh my God, Tucker. Hell yeah. So mine is um, "The horse girls have found Godzilla."

David  47:00  
Fuck, mine is so much worse than that. Zander what's yours?

Zander  47:03  
Oh, yeah. Just uh, "Very calm girls, very calm monsters." 

Jordan  47:07  
Yeah

David  47:08  
Alright. I had two. Because I wrote the first one when- based on the first chapter, before the series kind of changed, but mine was "Monster monster monster monster. Blossom. Blossom." As a reference to the Badger Song. But I thought that plot element would matter more to the series. 

Jordan  47:09  
Nope. 

David  47:10  
And then uh... mine is- I was trying to make it like a monster pun but this just sounds really generic. So I had it set up where I said "Rex cute idea with bad execution".

Jordan  47:30  
I mean, it's accurate. Yeah.

David  47:31  
Kaijus like break- destroy things.

Zander  47:33  
Oh, there we go. 

Jordan  47:34  
I gotcha. You already had blossom. You could have put in uh Buttercup and uh Bubbles. Yeah, anyway... 

David  47:41  
There was bubbles actually 

Jordan  47:42  
There were bubbles. S- S- Just need buttercups now.

David  47:44  
There was a bubble monster. 

Jordan  47:45  
Yeah. 

David  47:46  
Oh je- Oh God, I failed in front of senpai. Um- [Laughter] Jordan- Speaking of failures, what was your thought on the series?

Jordan  47:54  
Yeah this was a flop. I mean, I- I didn't hate reading it. I got enjoyment out of reading it. There were some moments that just made me like feel pretty happy. 

David  48:03  
Mhhm. 

Jordan  48:03  
It had a lot of flaws. And I probably won't think about it that much after we finish this episode to be honest. 

David  48:10  
Yep. How about you Zander? 

Zander  48:13  
If it were in an anthology like Shonen Jump or whatever, I probably read it e- every time it showed up. Like it's not hard to read. It's very pleasant to read. 

David  48:22  
Mhhm. 

Zander  48:22  
But I never would be like, "I must find out what's happening in Monster Tamer Girls." It's not compelling. It doesn't grip you, you know? But it's, you know, it's fine.

David  48:29  
This is like in Shonen Jump: there's a story called Mission Family which is by far the most "he writes it week by week" series, but he's trying to make like a spy novel. So it like really doesn't make sense a lot of the time. So he just tries to make things so complicated that he's like, "You just don't get it!". I'm like "No, you just clearly didn't plan any of this spy novel shit ahead of time". And I'm pretty sure I've never seen anyone talk about it and I think it just hasn't been canceled because they just forget it runs in Shonen Jump.

Zander  48:53  
[All laughting] They just- like, "We- We write a check to somebody every week. I don't know who it is." 

Jordan  48:56  
[Mumbling I dont know] I didn't even know this existed until you brought it up.

David  49:00  
So anyway though, mine is of course a flop. Based on this conversation, I thought you guys did like it so I was worried. And so Jordan though, since we all did flops, we can all go around and give some recommendations. So Zander, no worries if you weren't prepared for this part but essentially, just while Jordan's talking, if you want to think about just something that instead of checking this out, that they should check out instead. If you want to do the 500 IQ move patented by Laura O'Neal. She said, "Check out my work instead". So I won't blame you if that's what you go with, but just be aware that someone has already done it. 

Jordan  49:28  
Well too fucking bad cuz I'm already going to do it everybody. You should read Kaijumax instead. In the same way where like, you know, in Kaijumax, you're not like really talking about kaiju, you're talking about mass incarceration and things like that. 

Zander  49:41  
What?! I am?

Jordan  49:42  
Well, that's just my theory. You know, I went- [Stammers "I"] I went to art school. I dig things- I dig into things a little bit too much. You know? 

David  49:51  
Hold the phone. Are you, like, mansplaining to the author about what his own work means?

Jordan  49:56  
Damn I am.

David  49:58  
This is advanced level Jordan-splaining.

Jordan  50:00  
Oh God, yeah. Seriously. But like no. In, in the same way that happened like um, this is very much like- it's not really about raising kaiju. It's about like raising animals and stuff and getting over your fears with yourself and stuff like that. 

David  50:15  
Yeah, that's- that's great. So Zander, I guess now you can't recommend your own work. 

Zander  50:19  
Okay. 

David  50:20  
What uh, Alan more works since Jordan- No, I'm just kidding.

Zander  50:23  
I haven't read a lot of uh comics lately, but um there's a comic called Giant Days, and also Wicked Things.

David  50:31  
That was actually part of our book club as well. I just finished reading Wicked Things. So I just perked up and I was like, "Ah." 

Zander  50:35  
Oh yeah. 

David  50:36  
"I see how you and Luke are friends."

Zander  50:38  
John Allison is a friend of mine. I've never met Max Sarin. 

David  50:40  
Really? 

Zander  50:41  
But Max Sarin is one of the best artists working today. I mean, just every thing that they do is just so, so beautifully, sorta rendered. It's anime- It's animated, like, like it seems very sort of fluid and I mean, all those Giant Days issues and then, then Wicked- I mean Wicked Things it's just so good. Like really plot heavy, which I thought was really great. Interesting change from Giant Days, which was so character based. 

Jordan  51:06  
Giant Days was just like a delight to read. 

David  51:08  
I read all of his stuff while I was like on a flight to Europe, over like, eight hours. 

Zander  51:12  
Oh wow. 

David  51:12  
He's actually on like our shortlist of- we have like our super, long backlog of guests but he's like on the top of people who we want to reach out to to be a guest on the show. Because he seems like such an awesome dude.

Zander  51:21  
Max or John Allison? Who are you-? I uh Sorry, it's just-

David  51:23  
John. John Allison.

Zander  51:25  
I have a- I have a drawing that he did of Godzilla up, up in- in my studio, yeah. 

Jordan  51:30  
Dude, that's sick. I would love to see a picture of it if at all possible. That would be awesome.

Zander  51:35  
Uh... If I go to the studio tomorrow, I'll take a picture of it.

David  51:39  
In return, I can send you a picture of the time I made cookies that looked like my manager's face for his birthday.

Jordan  51:44  
They made him look like white Obama apparently.

David  51:47  
Yeah they did.

Jordan  51:47  
It's a whole thing.

David  51:47  
They were using an Obama stencil. 

Zander  51:49  
Wow. 

David  51:50  
Um... So anyway, my recommendation: I wrote down two but actually uh, during the recording, I realized a much better one. So for context: I realized because I kind of half-recommended Girls' Last Tour, uh, which is pretty good. So if you want something that's like a sweet series, but kind of has like a depressing backdrop. And then I also was like, "Oh, you could do Kaiju No. 8." I don't know if you're familiar with that series Zander. It's kind of like, uh, Pacific Rim as a manga, but this dude fuses with a kaiju and he gains like kaiju powers and he can transform into a kaiju to fight them.

Zander  52:15  
Sounds good so far. 

David  52:17  
And though- the series I realized, though, is actually a another series I found out about from Luke called Magu-chan. So Magu-chan is about cute girls hanging out with their buddies who are all the depowered eldritch gods. So it's called Magu-chan: God of Destruction where it's about an eldritch god who lost all his  powers and he learns how to make friends from a teenage girl.

Zander  52:39  
That sounds really fun. It's d- and it's like you can imagine it being drawn in like five different ways you know, and it'd be a different story each time.

David  52:47  
Yeah. So he has like a friendship book and he thinks it's like a- like a demonic pact that someone makes with him and you're like, "You and now by midi- my minion" after you sign like your name in this book that's like "My First Friendship" book or something that's like for like six year olds. The God of Madness just realizes he really enjoys cooking and it's like his dream now to open a restaurant. And he just makes pudding all the time because that's like the only thing he knows how to make right now.

Jordan  53:11  
It's a delightful series.

Zander  53:13  
It sounds awesome.

David  53:14  
So Jordan, though, is this the worst series we have ever read? 

Jordan  53:17  
Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

David  53:20  
[Sigh] Build King man. Build King is so fucking bad. Oh, God. I don't know if I mentioned that to you Zander that there's this series called Build King that's really bad.

Zander  53:28  
What? Nope. First I'm hearing of it.

David  53:30  
So let's go to shout outs where, uh, we'll tell you about some other things are worth checking out. And of course Zander, we want to hear all about what is going on in your world. I guess you could say your Cannon(canon), if you will. 

Jordan  53:42  
[Irritated groan]

Zander  53:42  
I see what you did there.

David  53:43  
Oh, come on. That was- like that's the best you could do that joke. Props to Jordan for making the opening and ending theme. Being a great co-host and helping with the editing. Props to Shannon for the awesome cover art. You can find her online @illuminyatea and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor. As a somber note, this is going to be her last piece. Thank you so much Shannon for everything you've been doing. We could not have had a better cover artist. And we are super-duper excited for a brand new artist. We had almost 40 people sending us art portfolios. It took me like three hours to go through everything. So we really appreciate everyone that reached out and we look forward to hopefully having more projects because there was just so much talent. It was incredibly difficult to pick just one artist for this series moving forward.

Jordan  54:21  
Shannon, I'm gonna miss you though. You're so good.

David  54:23  
Yeeas!

Jordan  54:23  
So good.

David  54:24  
Thanks Tucker for assistance with pronounciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research. Thank you Nicole for helping with social media, being our awesome TikTok master. 

Jordan  54:32  
Yeah. I just wanted to say thank you so much David for editing. Do a great fucking job, along with other stuff.

David  54:38  
Awww. Well, thank you man. I couldn't do the show without you. Also, be sure to join the Shonen Flop Discord. Come hang out with us and talk about anime, games, or whatever else is on your mind. We also have a book club and do regular movie nights so you can find a link to it in the show notes. We actually have a movie night that's next Saturday. So, unfortunately unless you have a time machine, you'll miss it but we are going to be seeing Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. But-

Jordan  54:57  
Ooooo! 

David  54:57  
It's not too late to get in the Discord for December where you can suggest your series. I personally going to suggest Dredd 3D Because I remember that movie being super, fucking awesome. So I'm looking forward to an opportunity to get to watch that. And um, if you've been enjoying this podcast and want to help us keep going: consider subscribing to our Patreon. We have a ton of awesome perks ranging from exclusive mini episodes, deleted scenes, and you can even help us pick what series we're going to cover next. Find it at patreon.com/shonenflop. I also want to give a shout out to PterodactylGhost for being a Chainsaw Man level patron, Gabe, Mark, Marty, and T-Wolfwood for being King of the Forests. If you're not ready for a regular commitment, consider buying some merch. We have a ton of awesome designs including the much requested "Gomez Moon" and "Mashle Punching Harry Potter" shirts. Along with the cover from this episode and a portion of the proceeds go back to the original artist. No worries if you can't help the show out financially. If you can like, rate, review, or share, it really helps us build our audience. Even telling one friend to check us out means a lot. You can find us on Twitter @shonenflopcast and our website shonenflop.com. We're on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube or wherever else you get your podcast. But above all, Mr. Zander Cannon, thank you so much for being on the show. This was- 

Jordan  55:56  
Hell yeah! 

David  55:57  
By far one of my favorite episodes ever to record. And I said before, this would have gone three hours if I didn't have to stay up, drink the midnight oil editing it. But please tell the audience though about what's been going on in your world.

Zander  56:08  
I mean, the second to last issue of my six year comic series called Kaijumax, about a prison for giant monsters. And I'm- every day I'm going like, "Oh, wait a second. This is the last time I'm ever going to draw this character." So- so that's a pretty interesting place to be uh, you know, to sort of be finishing up a big, long project like that. And uh, as for what's next: I actually don't know. So uh, uh- there's about four or five things that might happen. Who knows?

David  56:35  
May I suggest a prequel called "Kaijumin"?

Nicccce. 

If you disconnected from the call, I would have been fine with that. 

Zander  56:43  
I am going to do a- a Kaijumin uh, that is. Because I was going to do all the monsters that are little like uh-

David  56:49  
Yes.

Zander  56:49  
Ya know?

Jordan  56:50  
it's like the, uh- Oh, man, what the, like the Muppets Babies kind of thing?

Zander  56:54  
Yes, it's gonna be just like the Muppet Babies.

David  56:57  
Are you now tempted to give Blue a cameo?

Zander  57:00  
He'd be easy to draw

Jordan  57:02  
He's very easy to draw.

Zander  57:03  
I mean, there's no detail.

David  57:06  
Can you imagine such a deep cut here? Like if you look in this corner on page 18, it's the monster from little known series: Monster Girls.

Jordan  57:15  
Oh man. Yeah. Can I- Thank you so much, by the way for coming on here. I've- since the beginning, what I'm al- like what I've really wanted is to have someone on the show who like really understands comic book creation and the process that goes into it. And this has been great. So thank you so much. 

Zander  57:31  
Oh, yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It really is fun. And I mean, it's fun to- to sort of do a deep dive into a comic, even if it's not like a comic I would normally've read I, I would or even heard of really. And so-

Jordan  57:41  
Yeah. 

David  57:41  
You know, it's kind of fun to go like, "Yeah, you know, I- I see you out there like cranking these out every month. That's hard."

Yeah, it's- it's hard man. And then uh, just some regular shout outs. I want to give a shout out to AnimeShin: It's a podcast about two buddies talking about anime, one a longtime fan, the other one brand new to it. They have some really awesome edited YouTube vids and you can find that at linktree.ee/AnimeShin. 

Jordan  57:49  
And that is by the way Anime-S-H-I-N.

David  58:07  
Yes. Like the thing above your knee. Or below your knee.

Jordan  58:09  
Yes. Yes exactly. 

David  58:09  
Yes. I failed out of medical school, you can tell. And then the other one I give is a shout out to- is The Last Comic Shop. Weekly comic book reviews and recommendations on all major podcasting services. I'll have to see if they've reviewed any of your work Zander. I'm sure nothing but positive notes before I plug the show. 

Zander  58:16  
Absolutely. 

David  58:16  
Be sure to check that out. Oh man. You can find it at lastcomicshoppodcast.com. And then I'm just going to run some promos here: 

Property Playhouse  58:32  
Do you want a limited-length, Fallout audio drama to listen to? Check out Fallout: Columbus- a six episode RPG set in the Fallout universe in the city of Columbus, Ohio. Explore a region that avoided the bombs and the system that started as a result of that. You can find us at establishedpropertyplayhouse.com or E-S-T-P-R-OPlayhouse on Twitter. And remember: War never changes.

Hassan  58:57  
Looking for a podcast all about nerdom?

Levi  58:59  
 Want a podcast with an emphasis on representation?

Ram  59:01  
The Nerd Alternative is the podcast for you. Join me Ram. 

Hassan  59:05  
Me Hassan. 

Levi  59:06  
And me Levi. 

Ram  59:07  
Three Black British nerds tackling the pop culture we love and sharing why we love them. The Nerd Alternative- a sweet melting pot of all things nerdy.

David  59:16  
Thank you so much for joining us. This has been David. 

Jordan  59:18  
This has been Jordan. 

Zander  59:19  
This has been Zander. 

David  59:20  
And you've been listening to Shonen Flop.

Jordan  59:22  
Keep on floppin' floppers! 

David  59:24  
Yeah. Yeah!

Unknown Speaker  59:26  
[Ending theme plays]

Transcribed by https://otter.ai