Megatokyo

Megatokyo is an online manga drawn by Fred Gallagher (a.k.a. "Piro"). Gallagher does the artwork, story, and site design. Rodney Caston (a.k.a. "Largo"), helped with the first year or so of the story, but now it is entirely Gallagher's strip. Gallagher was laid off from his day job in late 2002, and as of 2004 he does the strip full-time. The comic began on August 14, 2000.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Megatokyo follows the story of two Americans, Piro and Largo (mostly not based on the real-life Piro and Largo), who wind up in Tokyo, Japan after an incident at E3. Much of the early humour is based on video game humor and inside jokes, as well as culture-clash issues, although the style has changed somewhat over time and now features aspects from a great number of different anime and manga archetypes: whilst Largo fights off the threats from zombie hordes via his Beowulf cluster, with an angelic Boo (a hamster of Baldur's Gate fame) trying to moderate his somewhat excessive behaviour, Piro's life has become similar to a dating-sim, with Seraphim (modelled on the author's girlfriend, and now wife) chastising him from upon his shoulder for his incidental run-ins with young women. Also residing in the house is Ping, a confused robotic Playstation 2 accessory capable of becoming someone's dream girlfriend - or throwing buses if enraged.

All strips are available free of charge from as well as in the book published by I.C. Entertainment (formerly IronCat). However due to a breakdown in talks between Megatokyo and I.C. Entertainment, future books, including reprinting of Volume One, will be handled by Dark Horse Comics with ISBN 1-59307-163-9 and ISBN 1-59307-118-3.

The strip is sometimes the target of criticisms on the Internet. Some dislike Megatokyo's artwork, which resembles Japanese manga without, critics claim, completely recreating the usual Japanese style. Some also dislike its storytelling style: Piro prefers long story arcs to immediate punchlines, which some people expect to find in comic strips. Finally, some allege that the fictional Japan in Megatokyo does not resemble real-life Japan, the author having spent only a few weeks living in the country. Supporters counter that Megatokyo is meant to recreate the worlds of anime and manga, not to provide perfectly realistic depictions.

Characters

Note that the surname is written before the given name in Japan.

• Piro - American manga (especially shoujo) freak who can speak Japanese. He is an amazing artist, yet refuses to believe this. He is currently employed as a clerk/mascot in MegaGamers, a retail store. Piro is the comic's incarnation of Fred Gallagher.
• Largo - American computer games freak who usually acts before (or instead of) thinking and is obsessed with beer. He can speak L33t, but not Japanese. He gets a job as an English teacher at Shiritsu Daitou High School, becoming 'Great Teacher Largo' (reference to the anime/manga GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka). Largo is the comic's incarnation of Rodney Caston.
• Tsubasa - A friend of Piro's from the internet, Piro and Largo bunk with him when they wind up in Japan. Later, he leaves Japan to "follow his heart" in America. He leaves Ping in the care of Piro and Largo.
• Ed - Sony employee, Dom's best friend and rival.
• Dom - Sega employee, Ed's best friend and rival. Gun crazed and competitive to boot. Also known as SGD, Shirt (or Stick) Guy Dom. His real life equivalent does stick-figure guest strips when Piro is unavailable. Dom is the comic's incarnation of Dominic Nguyen, who currently works for Wired Magazine.
• Sonoda Yuki - Japanese girl, High school student, daughter of the Tokyo police chief. Theoretically taking art lessons from Piro, but, in practice, something always gets in the way.
• Hayasaka Erika - Japanese girl, Kimiko's roommate, a former idol (singer) and voice actress (seiyuu). Works as a clerk/mascot at MegaGamers alongside Piro.
• Nanasawa Kimiko - Japanese girl, Erika's roommate, a waitress in Anna Miller's, an aspiring voice actress (seiyuu).
• Ping-chan - PS2 accessory robot-girl. A non-H (implied: non-hentai; platonic love only) test model of the new Sony-EDS (Emotional Doll System), that fell into Tsubasa's hands somehow. She is designed to be used with dating sims, and after playing them she develops her own personality, based on choices in the games. Ping is only a beta version, however, and she does not deal with rejection well (and posesses great strength when angry).
• Tohya Miho - Not much is known about her. She is a friend of Ping, but is a little creepy. Largo believes that she is in command of an army of Zombies, powered by the Necrowombicon, an ancient evil book found in the sewers and used to make the video game Daikatana. Miho is drawn in a particularly gothic style, and is often described as "darkly cute."
• Seraphim - A miniature angel who takes the role of Piro's conscience, struggling to keep Piro on the straight and narrow when it comes to romantic attachments. Seraphim is the comic incarnation of Sarah, Fred's wife, who a penchant for fine clothes, and loves cats almost as much as they love the taste of her.
• Boo - A small angelic hamster with strap-on wings, assigned to the role of Largo's conscience, a clearly impossible task, made only harder by the fact that Boo cannot speak, but only squeek (occasionally in L33t). A reference to the Boo character from Baldur's Gate, Minsc's 'Miniature Giant Space Hamster'.
• Asmodeus - Piro's anti-conscience, from that 'other agency'. He tries to make Piro fall in love with Junior-high-school-age girls and to prevent Seraphim from sucessfully influencing Piro. His partner is a vicious winged cat named Belphegor.
• Junpei - The L33t Ninja, Largo's apprentice. He is introduced when Piro and Largo arrive in Japan, and Largo has no passport. Customs tells Largo that, in order to get into Japan, he must defeat Junpei in mortal combat. Largo, being unsurpassable in all matters electronic, easily wins the contest by defeating Junpei in a match on the Mortal Kombat arcade game.
• Junko - The "angry schoolgirl" in Largo's class, she is usually the one who has something to say when Largo does something outrageous in his role as "teacher." She helps Largo disperse the fanboy horde that threatens Erika.

Groups and minor characters

• Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division - A division of the Tokyo police force that pilots mecha to stop giant monsters and other threats from rampaging through the city. Yuki's father, Sonoda Masamichi, is an oft-encountered employee of the Cataclysm Division. After using Ping-chan to soundly defeat an alcoholic turtle of unusual size, Largo became a TPCD agent.
• Sonoda Yuuji - Yuki's brother, a member of the Hayasaka Erika Fan Club.
• Hayasaka Erika Fan Club - A number of people obsessed with Hayasaka Erika, or at least her former persona as an idol (singer) and voice actress (seiyuu). The club rediscovers her whereabouts during the comic's story, long after her sudden (and complete) disappearance from the public eye.
• Rent-a-Zilla - Massive lizard hired by Junpei on occasion, paid in pork rinds.
• Zombies - Usually ravers; Largo is bent on destroying this undead horde.
• John Romero - The once-great game designer of games, such as Doom and Quake. He formed the game development house Ion Storm, infamous for making Daikatana (a notable flop of a game after great hype), and after that he was promptly fired. Now he's broke and jobless.
• L33T D00D - Strange raver type dude that appears whenever Largo must face the Z0/\/\B13 |-|04RD35 (zombie hoardes; Tohya and Ping) in c0mb47 (combat; arcade games) and advises him in L33t which is invariably translated into erudite language (i.e. "1'm4 0wnz0r j00" becomes "I shall defeat thee"). He owes Largo a debt of gratitude for saving his life (see ).
• Asako and Mami - High school students and friends of Yuki's. They think she has a crush on Piro, and they may be right.

Origin of name

Tokyo of the future in Japanese animation (see Anime and Manga) is often referred to as 'Megatokyo' or 'Neo-Tokyo'. In many of these stories, the city has been destroyed by natural disaster or nuclear war, but then re-built bigger and better than ever. See features like Bubblegum Crisis, AD Police, and Akira for more. The name was given to the comic purely because it was a spare domain name that Largo had lying around. Largo originally set the site up as an anime news site running Slashcode, but it failed and was eventually replaced with the comic.

Basic plot beginnings

Piro and Largo start the story by trying to get into the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). E3, only open to the media, refuses to allow them entry. Largo gets piss-drunk and pantsless in a bar, insulting the entire con. He wakes up on an airplane. Piro, after the events, had decided that they should get out of the country for a bit, buying two one-way tickets to Japan. After arriving in Japan, Piro and Largo find a game store, and purchase all sorts of games and electronic gadgets (including Largo's infamous "Cool Thing"). They then return to the airport, only to find their credit cards are maxed out. They are now stuck in Japan.