by Evil Eye » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:17 am
- Motto: "Don't be a goddamn coward."
- Weapon: Acid Spray Gun
(Massive essay on Sakamoto and the comics industry in general below)
The thing with Sakamoto is he's actually pretty tame in comparison to most "fanservicey" comic/manga artists (on both sides of the world). Most of his fanservice is played for comedy as much as anything, and at the very least makes anatomical sense, as opposed to some artists (Rob "What is a foot" Liefeld, Masami "Master of Mecha, Woeful at Women" Obari, etc) and when it doesn't it's usually done in a silly enough style that it doesn't stand out too much. And compared to other "ecchi" comics (regardless of global hemisphere) his stuff is borderline prudish. Look at the Gunsmith Cats manga (which is absolutely excellent but very sleazy, albeit intentionally as the series is set in 90s Chicago, is about crime and follows a cast of characters who range from scummy to psychotic) or on the other end of the scale of "actually good", Eiken.
Sure, he has drawn some pretty cringeworthy porn in his off time, but so has literally every comic artist ever. After all, David Willis/ItsWalky/The Wikifuhrer does a fair bit of truly ghastly porn and he's still a fandom darling. Though I have a feeling if he didn't run the wiki and if he wasn't surrounded by cronies in an echo chamber he'd be pretty universally hated, because seriously he is a lunatic.
I think the problem is that outside of Kiss Players (which went too far the other way), Transformers has been almost weirdly asexual, even in Japan- and most of the stuff that does have it in to any degree is pretty obscure. I don't even mean anything explicit or massively ecchi, but there's barely even any hints that romance exists in the Transformers franchise half the time, let alone anything remotely sexual- the result being that TF fans are often very oversensitive to such things from lack of exposure. Like, Sailor Moon is more risque than Transformers, and that was primarily a young girls' show! Outside of Kiss Players (because seriously that was weird) and the Legends manga (because that's been discussed to death already) there's very little in the way of even love themes, let alone fanservice. Off the top of my head, I can think of:
>Octane trying to tune in to "G-rated porn" in G1 for a few seconds
>The occasional sly innuendo in Beast Wars, and a few romantic relationships such as Silverbolt/Blackarachnia and Tigatron/Airrazor.
>Cain and Akira (was that his name?) from Zone being blatant fujoshi bait uh I mean, the first GLBT representation in the brand.
>BWII having the Scuba/Bighorn/Scylla triangle of hilarity.
>Thunderblast's tits in Cybertron.
>A fair bit of human "fanservice" in the movies (which barely counts as it's more or less generic teenage boy bait you'd see in any similar movie, and the Transformers themselves never show anything even remotely approaching personality romantic attraction or sexuality outside of Devastator's scrotum. Which to be fair, made me and my mother laugh quite a bit, even if only because of John Tuturro's line delivery.)
>Elita and Optimus in Animated, along with occasional very well disguised dirty jokes (more reasons Animated is the best cartoon ever).
>Whatever the hell is going on with IDW, which is less fanservice and more a mix of melodramatic angsty romance fangirl bait and "Look how progressive we are" virtue signalling.
>That one BotCon comic that Sakamoto helped with that upset the Tumblrites.
And...that's really about it. I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can recall off the top of my head. It sounds like a lot but when you consider the brand is 34 years old and made of countless continuities and sub-continuities by a variety of creators, it's pretty minuscule.
Now obviously fanservice and romantic or sexual themes don't automatically make something better (though they don't make it automatically worse either) but the relative dearth of it in the brand compared even to other kid's shows (and definitely to other anime/manga) would go some way to explaining why the fandom has such a knee-jerk reaction to its inclusion in Transformers media- that is, they're relatively unused to it and so even the tamest content raises eyebrows when in other fandoms it probably wouldn't even be noticed.
Now I'm not saying that what the world needs is for every Transformers series to become softcore porn, that would be very silly. But I for one would like to see more "proper" Transformers series, Japanese or Western, that actually features romantic themes and yes, even subtle hints of sexuality, preferably kept fairly tame if it's a kid's show, though obviously something made for more mature audiences could get away with more. Other shows on both sides of the globe have made cartoon or comic series (for kids and adults) that handle such themes maturely and tastefully, or in the case of "fanservice" at least do it in good humour or make it genuinely appealing. Why shouldn't Transformers? In the case of handling themes with care and respect, look at Cardcaptor Sakura, which is extremely kid-friendly and a lovely show but does handle more mature themes. On the other end of the spectrum, look at Animaniacs, which was positively filled with innuendo but was absolutely hilarious. And for a combination of both look at Sailor Moon, a timeless classic anyone can enjoy that includes mature, well-executed romance and tension, appealing characters and the occasional bit of ever so slightly ecchi (but no less funny) humour. And if a series about cute girls fighting monsters in sailor suit-themed ballet outfits can do it then by God, so can a series about robots that turn into cars.
TLDR: The Legends manga, whilst not exactly high art, isn't actually that bad, it's just that the Transformers fandom is possibly oversensitive to fanservice.
On topic, yeah Kenichi Sonoda is a goddamn good artist, and an absolute madman to boot. Also good to see someone else who actually knows Riding Bean exists, ZeroWolf. I need to watch it, I hear it makes the Gunsmith Cats OVA pale in comparison- and that was fantastic. Bubblegum Crisis is still my favourite thing of his though.
Who else would make for a good mangaka/creative director for Transformers (aside from Trigger/Imaishi because that's easy mode)? Mika Akitaka (the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna guy) would be pretty great IMO, he's a really good artist both for characters and machines.
Ha ha Transformers go brrrrr
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the body count will assuredly be extremely high. Also remember that tomino cut his teeth on super robot shows.
