Category Archives: Cartoons

Order of the Stick

[Order of the Stick]Once in a long, long while I run across a truly hilarious online comic. Typically these either fall into disrepair (Chopping Block) or spiral into depressing, almost fetishistic neurosis (MegaTokyo). Thus far, The Order of The Stick has resisted the evil forces of entropy, and has been providing me with quality D&D comedy for months now. It follows a stereotypical adventuring party through their trials and tribulations. The current plot-arc has the main characters leveling up, and a couple of them are entertaining the notion of multi-classing. Enjoy.

Grenadier

[Rushuna] About a week and a half ago, Silver Dragon Manga released chapter one of the Grenadier manga. This title is a frequently-silly series that takes place in a bizarre incarnation of “ancient future japan” in which banditos with machineguns square off against six-gun toting gunslingers and sword-swinging samurai.

[Rushuna has a serious side]

The main character, Rushuna, is on a quest to perfect the ultimate battle strategy: to break the opponent’s will to fight without fighting. She is cheerful, naive, and excellent markswoman, really enjoys a good bath, and is built for fanservice. If the manga continues as I suspect it will (I’ve seen the first two volumes of raws), expect a lot of cool fight scenes, some silly humor, and lots of non-threatening cleavage shots.

Giant Robo

[Crush them now, Giant Robo!]This weekend I sat down and started watching what can only be fairly described as the greatest Giant Robot series ever devised by man: Giant Robo. I had loaned my cassettes of this title to a buddy several years ago, and was overjoyed to see them finally returned. Giant Robo has everything you can ask for from a Giant Robot cartoon: a young boy entrusted with the care of the World’s Most Powerful Robot, an international cabal of terrorists bent on total world domination, a cast of characters that are simultaneously over-the-top and subtle, background music that oscillates between the Warsaw Philharmonic to classic 1970’s tokusatsu battle anthems.

Giant Robo is a seven-episode OAV that chronicles the seven days when Big Fire, the aforementioned international terrorist organization bent on world domination, uses the legacy of the Shizuma drive and the tragedy of Bashtarelle to wreck havoc upon the Earth. Interpol’s elite Experts of Justice, accompanied by Daisaku Kusama and Giant Robo, struggle to thwart the efforts of Big Fire throughout the series.

The craftsmanship behind this story are excellent; at the beginning of each episode we are re-introduced into the bold world of our future, where the Shizuma drive has brought clean, recyclable power to the world. We are reminded time and again of the many perfections that have been brought to humanity through this marvelous invention. Of course, Doctor Shizuma and his creation have a dark history which comes back to haunt the world; the Bashtarelle Incident, in which an entire nation was catastrophically destroyed during the final stages of the drive’s development. The attitudes of the cast towards this technology and their reactions as the terrible truth comes to be revealed is truly wonderful to behold.

[Don't let the simplicity of the art fool you!]

If you get an opportunity to, rent or buy this classic. It has comedy, action, romance, tragedy, redemption, hope, honor, betrayal, vengeance, and forgiveness all bundled up into a few hours of stylistically-executed cartoon format. Heck, even the English dub isn’t that bad. EX has a more comprehensive review available, but reading it is a waste of precious time that could be better spent watching Giant Robo.