Comics! Cartoons! Anime! Crisis Vol. 2, No. 7: Taste like fricken

Welcome to 'Comics!, Cartoons!, and Anime!' everyone.

It’s a pleasure to be your guest host for the week while Chaosbirdomaid and Breadknight sit back, and relax. You might remember me as the guy who produced the Halloween edition of Crisis, or as the guy who still makes headers for Polygon Daily. For those of you who don’t know this thread is a nice little place where all the anime, comic (manga included), and cartoons are discussed. Now with out further delay, let bite into this weeks featured comic.

Chew, is perhaps one of the most interesting comics I have ever read in my life. It gets a little ridiculous so bear with me.

Tony Chu is a Cibopath, meaning whatever he consumes he can tell its entire life up until the point where he ate it, except for beets. So for an apple he can tell when and where it was grown, who picked it, who shipped it. And for, say, a burger... well you get the idea.

Tony lives in a world were avian flu, caused by chickens, has put a dent in the population of the world leading to a worldwide ban. And unfortunately for him, his new job at the FDA forces him to deal with all those food related crimes, be it Russians in the north pole working for pretend vampires, or bust on a chicken supplying Yakuza. Tony Chu’s life kinda sucks, and with his boss literally wanting to kill him it doesn’t look good.

But he’s got his best friend to help him out (a cyborg), a girlfriend who loves him (a Saboscrivner), and his sister Toni ( a Cibovoyant). He's also got Poyo, who is kinda badass.

Look if there is anything else I could tell you about Chew that would get you to read it, it would either be spoilerish, or too vague. So how about this, its funny, well drawn, smart, and touching. Buy it now.

Now here’s the thing. There was an animated movie I was going to feature. However, I believe it would be more appropriate for an upcoming holiday so instead I choose a little cartoon close to my heart.

Ohboyhoboyohboyohboy

Yes. This show. This show right here is what cartoons strive for. Not just cartoons, but all forms of serialized animation. The lineage, the animation, the characters, the story, the music. Everything that it needed to be Korra nailed it, and then proceeded to take out that nail just so it could do it again.

For those of you who don’t know, and really that’s probably all of you save for perhaps four of you, before Crisis and before we had Polygon, every Sunday I would make a little post about the new episode of Korra. Not much to that story except now I have the power of hindsight, and the show looks just as good now as it did then.

For those of you out of the loop, the Legend of Korra takes place about seventy years after the original series, 'Avatar'.

Avatar Aang has died and the avatar cycle continues with a new chosen one, Korra of the northern Water Tribe. She is able to bend all four elements of nature (save for air which somehow escapes her ability), and must save Republic City from falling into the hands of the equalists. The Avatar however, is a tad thick. A much more 'eager to act first, think later kind' of person, and struggles with the ways of the Air Monks. If she wishes to defeat Amon the leader of the equalist she must learn to truly become the Avatar.

She got some help though from her friends Asami, Mako (named after the late voice acter from the previous series), Bolin (not named after the sport), Tenzin the son of Aang, Lin (the Chief of Police) the daughter of Toph. Korra will go through a bending tournament, racing, fight giant robots and planes. New technology will take on the old ways of bending. Worlds will collide.

Seriously this series has everything. The animation is so detailed and stunning, with some of the best animated fight scenes I have seen on TV. The story doesn’t have any filler episodes to speak of, so it flows so naturally. The voice acting is amazing, and everything feels just right. Its good to have you back Avatar. Cant wait until April.

See I came up with a dilemma, originally there was supposed to be another anime here but, since Korra is stylisticly close to anime (but still a cartoon) I had to pick something else. Then it came to me, if I pick a cartoon that looks like anime, then I just pick an anime that looks like a cartoon!

Panty & Stocking everyone.

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is a strange show, and definitely not for younger viewers. It’s an action-comedy show in the style of an western adult cartoon, with the story revolving around 2 fallen angels; the sex crazed Panty, and her younger sister Stocking who wont stop eating sweets. Their job is to protect the city by killing ghosts, which in turn provides them Heaven coins which they can use to buy their way back into Gods good graces. Once they've killed the main bad ghost the show cuts to live action footage of a representation paper-mache model which explodes.

They can also turn Panties and Stockings into guns and swords, just like in the bible. There are also some other characters like Brief (who has a crush on Panty), the aforementioned Garterbelt (the reverend of Daten City), and the main villains of the show - Scanty and Knee Socks.

The show is full of humor and action, however this is a rare occasion where the dub actually better then the original track, mainly because not only do the actors nail it, but the jokes work so much better in English.

It's really quite strange. But there are some great jokes, an excellent Transformers parody, pop culture references galore, and just some really good animation.

So I guess that’s it for me, and I hope you all enjoyed it. Hopefully I will be back soon, but until then this is comics!, cartoons!, and anime! everybody!

Also as a final note, I want to that Shaun for helping us make Crisis all nice and shiny, and thank Bread and Yoshi for letting me have the first go a Crisis 2.0. Thanks a bunch guys.