What I Think About Stuff-hotel By Boichi

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Hotel by Boicihi or Stepping Across a lake of awesome, on stones made out of Crazy.

I don’t like manga and I absolutely abhor anime. This isn’t a trolling statement. It’s just that they don’t work for me. I could list a hundred different reasons why I don’t like this medium of art, but that would take the entire article and then some.

For the time being, you’ll have to settle for “Everybody dresses like a bunch of retards” and “Most of the dialogue is dumber than a pile of horseshit”

Then again, perhaps one could argue I have just been unlucky in this area. Most of the manga and anime I have stumbled upon were the result of mindless internet search and friends who pestered me about a series until I watch it, then bust my balls if I straight up told them it was shit.

This garbage was the equivalent of Armaggedon on my bubonic area.

But sometimes (four of them, to be specific), I have stumbled upon a manga that I have really, really liked. A manga that is well made, properly narrated, chock-full of great ideas and excellent art, which makes me not want to cave a cat-girl’s skull in with a 2 by 4. Boichi’s Hotel is one of these precious few manga.

And in case you were wondering: No, Akira did not make the cut. It came close, but there was no cigar.

Before I move on to the manga itself, I should say a few things I have managed to glean about the artist, while reading through his work.

·         The top of his skull is the only thing keeping his wonderful ideas from bursting through his body and into the atmosphere: If anything, Hotel is an enjoyable read that takes some extremely…Japanese ideas and themes and translates them into epic science fiction. Granted, not all of them appealed to me, but most of them did and that’s a win in my book.

·         Boichi knows where the goods are:

I know that she’s only supposed to be 14, but DAYUMN!

·         Boichi is insane: Not the “in desperate need of intensive psychiatric care” kind of insane, more like the “interrupting a deep, meaningful conversation so he can scream HORSECOCK at you from the top of his lungs then keep going, as if nothing happened” kind of insane. After reading Hotel

And a couple of his others, less *ahem* illustrious works

I have realized that he is-thankfully-unwell. And that’s a good thing.

Hotel is an anthology of short science fiction stories (and a couple of weird fantasy ones) that indirectly overlap each other. He was obviously trying to tie them together and create a consistent narrative, set against the coming apocalypse, but chose to ignore it for the sake of creating something much more unique and original.

What Hotel is, it’s a series of perfectly cyclical narratives that concern the end of the world. Each of them has to do with the ‘end’ of something, be it the destruction and rebirth of one person, a habit or a disease, all the way up to mankind, life, the universe and/or everything. 

The first story is the anthology’s namesake, Hotel. And it starts by punching you in the teeth, just to make sure you’re paying attention.

“In short, we’re going to be boiled alive inside our own atmosphere. Alien visitors from far-off planets will feed off our nutritious, steam-cooked meat and sing praises to their strange gods. Any questions?”

I know that the end of the world is an over-used theme in manga and anime, but it is usually attributed to huge-penised demons slapping the Earth till it is but dust and/or involves magical jailbait somehow.

But in this story, the end of the world is a terrifying possibility, caused by mankind’s millennia of abusing its home planet. There are no magical girls or huge robots here that can punch the atmosphere into submission

I’m gonna teach that bitch to overheat the planet and kill us inside a toxic prison of our own design!-Actual quote from Mecha Pilot #271 (Super Ecological Warrior Go! Volume One)

And the damage is so extensive, that mankind’s annihilation is a given. A two-fold plan is proposed, in the face of this grim possibility: the construction of an Ark that will carry human DNA to a far-off planet with conditions identical to those of Earth’s and the creation of a tower (dubbed Hotel) in Antarctica, manned by a super-intelligent AI, where the DNA of Earth’s native species will be stored. Both machines are to clone their specimens upon completion of their task, thus giving mankind (and the Earth) a second chance at life.

Dude. Harsh.

Right off the bat, humanity is doomed. Sorry Earth Monkeys, you fucked up, you’re all gonna die, best cross your fingers and hope your clones will make it. This is an apocalyptic story done right. Extinction is imminent and unavoidable, but a faint glimmer of hope is given. Granted, it’s not much, but it’s something we can hold on to, a chance for us to survive.

The Ark and Hotel are built and the AI (called Louis) is set as its ‘manager’ and caretaker, the sole being that bears the responsibility of this task. 

Who’s a cute little AI charged with an impossible task, the fate of billions resting upon your shoulders? You are!

Sure enough, the Apocalypse happens on schedule and mankind dies off, killed by their planet’s own atmosphere. Louis begins his great quest to protect life on the planet, facing increasingly impossible odds:

Be they powerful, searing winds

I honestly can’t tell where the wall’s sheeting ends and the sound effect begins.

The gradual collapse of the satellite network orbiting the Earth

There goes the last of the porn…

Or plain old catastrophic systems failure during his millennia of service:

Soddy, poorly made crap, breaking down after a couple measly millennia under exposure to catastrophic environmental conditions. 

Louis breaks down in the end, his Hotel tearing down all around him. With the malfunction of his actuation system that would allow him to clone and breathe life back to the animal DNA he was set in place to protect, he realizes that his troubles have been for naught. His countless years of service were as dust, since the minute he was deprived of the ability to bring out his task to fruition.

I felt like tearing up at this point, feeling horribly cheated out of an ending, but coming to terms with it. It was horrible, but in a Vonneguttian sort of way, that left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I would have moved on, but then turned the page and saw this:

Greetings, mechanical messiah of Earth! We have come to feast upon the steam-cooked remains of your Earth Monkey makers! Do you have any condiments?

Apparently, Chekov’s gun ripped through the pages right next to my ear, because as it turns out, the mysterious visitors are the original crew of the Ark, modified to perform the return trip back to their home planet, after the catastrophic failure that ruined their human DNA cache.

Life can now be restored to Earth, but mankind is gone for good. Its last traces erased, its mechanical descendants begin the process of restoration, their millennia-long mission accomplished, if only halfway.

Sure, Boichi tries to squeeze in an inkling of a happy ending in the last page, but let’s face it: he’s not fooling anyone.

I know it’s not much, but perhaps you could clone a couple thousand filthy Earth Monkeys out of this? So you can use them as slaves?

Despite its coping out at the last minute, this story was heart-warming and intriguing and I re-read it again and again, because it’s that damn good. But then Boichi makes a change of pace, with a shortie, called Lot.

Mustn’t…stare…at daughters’…tits!

Lot is a cruel short story, but not in an appetizing, fulfilling sort of way. It’s just two pages filled to the brim with horrible irony and an unsatisfying pay-off, a complete juxtaposition to Hotel.

Next, there’s Present.

It’s got the setup of Lolita, but it’s in the future, so it’s okay.

Present is a sad little love story about a man who sacrifices his livelihood and happiness for the sake of the woman he loves. It’s a sweet little sci-fi love flick with an unnecessary twist ending and plot holes you can drive a truck through, but enjoyable nonetheless.

And the ending totally didn’t make cry manly tears.

Present is the last bastion of sanity in this volume. After this, turning the page is the equivalent of falling into the rabbit hole 

Or crawling through the looking glass to all you purists out there.

 into the realm of delightful insanity. The first such story is Headache, a two-page short about a girl facing chronic migraines, with her lady friends constantly pestering her with advice on how to deal with her headaches.

“I’M SCREAMING OBVIOUS SHIT AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS, BECAUSE THAT’S THE BEST THING TO DO WHEN SOMEONE HAS A HEADACHE!”

It’s an innocent and funny little short with an unexpected ending, but I’d hardly call it sf. It does however help you ease into the kaleidoscope of crazy that is…

The fish that launched a thousand spaceships.

It was All for the Tuna is a story that is very much like that Futurama episode, where everyone goes crazy over that last can of sardines, because they’re tasty or something (protip: they aren’t).

It wasn’t all that funny so I wasn’t really paying attention.

This story is about a man who loves tuna way too fucking much. So much, that he devotes two entire lifetimes in restoring it. It’s silly as all hell and has a number of jokes that are way too Japanese for their own good, but the crowning moment is this:

Tekelili! Tekelili! Ia, Ia, Tekelili!

After failing to find a single mote of tuna DNA in his decades of research, the protagonist attempts to create tuna in his laboratory, instead creating a shoggoth that escapes and dominates the oceans.

Honestly, this story can get a bit much at times and the ‘I love tuna!’ motivation is wafer-thin at best, but it is used to camouflage a far greater message:

See this shit? This is the essence of scientific research and the entirety of science fiction in just three panels.

The moral of the story is that mankind owes its scientific triumphs to a series of follies, a constant string of fortunate failures that sometimes provide wildly different results. Shiozaki, in his quest for tuna, ends up saving mankind, inventing a dirt-cheap energy source and contacting an alien civilization.

The ending is no less insane.

Remember that shoggoth thingie that you thought was just a gag? Well, it’s God now.

The next bit of insanity that walks up to kick you in the nuts is called Sushi squadron and it’s…um…

Uhhh…where was I? Kinda lost my train of thought for a moment there…

Moving on, there’s Stephanos. Honestly, this story shouldn’t have really been in this anthology in the first place. Why? Because it’s completely out of place and plagued by the shock-value special effects and the shoddiness that is the trademark of all semi-religious manga.

Though I have to admit, Tumor God looks pretty cool.

Stephanos feels rushed and incredibly shallow, especially if you compare them to All for the Tuna and Hotel. It seems more like something Boichi drew because he felt like he needed to come up with an apocalyptic gorror story more than anything else, emphasizing more on style than in content.

Thankfully, this train wreck is forgotten with the advent of…

Dora the Explorer can suck on my undescended balls.

This is a mad little two-page breath of fresh air that is the essence of every cyclical disaster in every science fiction story. It’s a funny little apocalypse, caused by a diminutive super-genius who can’t be arsed to toast his own toast like a regular person and instead causes the constant cyclical heat-death of the universe with the press of a button.

I bet this sick fuck knew all along and just doesn’t bother to stop him.

Last one is Goddess of the North Wind. It’s fantasy, doesn’t really have a plot and stars a jailbait with magnificent tits, which I will not show you, because that would make the page unsafe for work.

Instead, I will show you the simultaneous heat-death and decapitation of thousands of people in an instant.

Ah, hypocrisy. Sweet, sweet hypocrisy…

Oh and there’s also a huge creature out of the Cthulhu mythos with a dozen arms that’s Adam, because fuck you, that’s why.

If this anthology was a meal, then it would be like trying sushi for the first time. 

As in all of it. At the same time.

You are scared at first, at the prospect of eating something that is uncooked, but then you stuff it in your mouth after dipping it in some soy sauce and very carefully take a bite and to your surprise, discover that it’s good. Sure, the idea is crazy (uncooked food? come on…) but somehow it works perfectly and you realize it sticks with you forever.

So this is Boichi’s Hotel in a nutshell. It’s silly, it’s crazy and it’s unmistakably Japanese, but the artwork is beautiful and the narrative flows perfectly. Granted, this wackiness may be too much for some people to stomach, but I urge you to read the shit out of this book, is only for a couple of cheap laughs, sprinkled with a deeper meaning. 

Delicious, sweet, rainbow-colored meaning.

So this is Hotel. Is it silly? You bet your ass it is. Is it maddeningly Japanese in its sense of humour as well? Ohhh yes. But it does have the balls to tackle some pretty big stories and it is fun to read through multiple times. It may not rank at the top of my favorite four manga ever, but it’s on the list.

Addendum:

I don’t hate Japan, I just don’t understand it. I think it’s wrong for most people to criticize the Japanese for their incomprehensible culture or the maelstrom of strangeness that pours forth from their great island, but I think it’s far worse for anyone to pretend to comprehend it without having experienced it firsthand.

What I’m trying to say is this: I hate weeaboos. I can’t, in my heart, find it to understand people who choose to incorporate Japanese words into their vocabulary and pretend to live a Japanese lifestyle, when their sole cultural point of reference is manga and anime. Because manga and anime are art, not real life. Art is expected to be ridiculous and far fetched at times, but to consider a culture’s art as a direct representation of its way of life is just idiotic.

What I Think About Stuff- Rogan Gosh

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Rogan Gosh or Misadventures in Spirituality.

DISCLAIMER: This review concerns a fantasy comic book that is obscure as fuck and reads like an LSD trip in the middle of a lavish Indian five-course meal. Should anything cease to make sense while reading this, recite the Narayana Upanishad seven times and punch yourself in the face once before continuing.

 

This comic book is weird. And I don’t  mean good weird, like the One by Rick Veitch, which was indeed weird, but made sense during the second read-through and was awesome.

To this day, I consider buying this comic book as some random cosmic boon.

And it’s not bad weird, like some comic book runs written by a bathsit-crazy Scottsman, which no one dares call out as a bunch of incomprehensible bullshit from fear of being called out as a doddering ape by every artsy-fartsy asshole comic book reader…

I swear to God I keep hearing Grant Morrison laugh at me every time I try to make heads or tails of this shit.

It’s sort of…in between weird. It’s not so good it will blow your poor old monkey brain, but it’s not so bad you’ll pretend to explain it to that pretty girl from across the poet’s café that you so desperately want to bang, talking in your rugged, calm voice and acting every bit the condescending bastard.

But let’s face it: if a woman falls for that, she wasn’t worth banging in the first place.

But first, a little bit of explanation: Rogan Gosh is the name of an Indian lamb dish, made out of mutton, yoghurt and a shitload of spices. It’s hotter than the Sun’s perihelion but the yoghurt takes the intense burning down a notch and lets you enjoy its flavor to the fullest. 

I’ve got your number, you delicious motherfucker.

It’s also a very common dish in the Indian cuisine. Why is that important? Because this is used later on in the comic book to present the idea that the protagonist, despite being akin to a god and the only being able to fight the Great Evil, should also keep his humble beginnings in mind at all times.

Aum Shiva.

Hmm, that’s an interesting idea. I like how this comic deals with the whole business of the almighty hero and makes sure to whack him upside the head since the beginning, by giving him the name of a dish. I like how the character, despite his cosmic, deific nature is designed so as to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground and never forget his place.

I also love how his Greek counterpart would have probably been called Souvlaki, almighty Pillar of the Heavens.

Or maybe not, according to the very next panel.

Herp-herp dur-durr-durr herp-herp-DERP!

If this seems confusing, then that’s because this is its exact purpose. The entire structure of Rogan Gosh is based on the post-modernist psychedelic style of storytelling, which is another way of saying that you can’t really be arsed with coming up with transitions or structuring a story based on a clearly defined narrative with a simple, obvious purpose and goal.

It’s essentially the oldest method of applied trolling used in literature.

The story is all over the place, but Peter Milligan (whose other works are otherwise coherent and well-told) holds the reins tight in his rainbow-colored tentacle appendages and tries to steer this stroboscopic mess into running a straight line, with mixed results.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t go half as well as you’d imagine.

I’ll be honest with you here: when I first read a couple things about Rogan Gosh, I was excited, thinking that this was going to be some space opera comic book, heavily influenced by such stellar works as Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. What I got instead was an incomprehensible mess (featuring Rudyard Kipling) that both confused and irritated the hell out of me.

“Oh shut the fuck up, you blue-skinned bastard!” Cow

Let me make one thing clear: I’m a sucker for Hinduism. In my mind, it’s the most exotic and sophisticated religion I’ve had the joy of looking into so far. It has a varied and imaginative pantheon of gods, each with a unique function and is supported by a vast, colorful mythology. It’s also backed by a few millennia’s worth of earthly wisdom and is obviously much more complicated and deep than I could hope to describe in this review.

I understand that tackling the themes presented in Hinduism is a huge task and that it’s not one to be taken lightly, especially in comic books. I also understand that a lot of those themes can make for great stories (such as the idea that the entire world is just an illusion, or that life never truly ends). The problem arises when you try to USE ALL OF THEM

AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME!

Seriously Peter Milligan, what the hell where you trying to pull here? Where you trying to outdo Grant Morisson in Incomprehensibility (the very thing which he was crowned Eternal Emperor of during the 90’s) or were you trying to bring across an unnecessarily convoluted message that could be summarized as: ‘None of us knows anything about anything really, also the world is crappy, so let’s try to get along best as we can’?

Boom! You just got Platoed!

I’d have given up on this comic book, had it not been masterfully illustrated by Brendan McCarthy, 

Who would have been considered a witch in the middle Ages, in an attempt to reason his artistic ability.

Who provided the glorious artwork that you see before you.

But I bet all of you bastards want to know what this comic book is about, don’t you? Well okay, I’ll tell you, based on what little sense I made while reading it:

Apparently Rudyard Kipling

You know, the awesome writer who thought happy endings in kids’ stories were optional most of the time

Somehow had a curse bestowed upon him by a sorcerous enemy of his, after getting framed by him. Rudyard, stiffing his upper lip like a proper Englishman, deals with the problem by asking where he should go to get it fixed. He of course, opts for place offering the most fashionable choice at the time.

I.e, opiates and opiate byproducts.

In the midst of his drug-fueled haze, he arranges to meet Rogan Gosh, the most fabled of Karmanauts and the only person reportedly able to lift the curse from him.

Bitch be trippin’ balls, offering golden statues of forgotten gods to blue men and shit.

Rogan Gosh agrees but falls into a trap, apparently set up by his archenemy, the terrible Soma Swami (his name is derived from a legendary drink that allows you to commune with the gods but also brings about lethe). Swami bestows the curse of Kali to Rogan, who retreats to a future reincarnation, planning to lead his new form back to him in order to save himself and stop the evil god.

This isn’t presented nearly as awesome as it sounds, in case you were wondering.

Anyway, Rogan moves to the far future of 1990, where he is apparently reincarnated inside these two clowns:

For the sake of convenience, we’ll call them Dick and Asshat.

Dick’s a bitter son of a bitch who hates everybody and Asshat is a stupid, emotionless bastard who ran out of his girlfriend two days before their wedding. The characters are obviously there to present Rogan Gosh’s two conflicting sides and the worst in him (as evidenced during the first few pages where we encounter him). They are also used as a means to present the Karmanaut’s process of maturing as a character and becoming something greater and better than he used to be.

This idea is excellent and I have to applaud Peter Milligan for his ingenuity, but the whole thing is lost to the reader on his first read-through (and in my case, even during the second one). Anyway, Dick and Asshat bicker, when suddenly…

Kali, motherfuckers!

The curse reaches them, kills them and tosses their souls into Maya, the greater dream that comprises the known universe according to the Hinduist mythology. Afterwards, a lot of stuff happens, half of which make no goddamn sense. I’ll save you the trouble of reading them and instead present you some choice captions, as a means to help you digest this mess:

·         Rogan Gosh escapes, only to be captured by women who gangbang him until he turns to stone

No! Not this! Anything but this!

·         Rudyard Kipling wakes up, then goes back to sleep again

·         Rogan and Asshat have hot, steaming buttsex with each other for no discernible reason

But then Rogan turns into his fiancée, so I guess it makes sense.

·         Rogan Gosh turns out to have been caught in Soma Swami’s snare all along and everything was a dream but not really

Wait. Does this even qualify as a twist?

·         THIS

Anybody else notice the corrupted core that wants to go to space from Portal 2 on the upper left corner, next to the disco light?

·         Kipling wakes up then goes to sleep again

·         Rogan Gosh kills Soma Swami, breaks the curse, Asshat’s alter ego in some other universe tries to kill himself but at the same time turns into an avatar of Brahma and uses his newfound cosmic wisdom to try and bone his ex

 Seriously? You didn’t even consider jotting the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything on a post-it note at the very least?

·         Kipling finally wakes the fuck up, realizes the opium den is a trap set by Soma Swami and kills everybody with fire.

Rudyard Kipling: the original action hero

·         Asshat gets together with his ex again or maybe not, has philosophical phonesex with Hannuman, the monkey god, story ends:

Mmmm, don’t stop, baby! Argue the reasoning behind our existence with me! Oooh, I love it when you get cryptic!

Rogan Gosh is a mess. In fact, if I were to liken it to the actual Indian dish, I’d say that it’s the same tasty food, only served in a comically oversized plate, with fireworks going off after every spoonful you bring to your mouth, with an entire troupe of Bollywood Dancers fixing their eyes on you and checking your every reaction.

It’s unnecessarily convoluted and burdened with way too many deep, philosophical themes, but beautifully presented, if at times a bit too lavishly for its own good.  

Addendum:

I fucking hate ‘artists’.

I’m not talking of course about designers, painters, sculptors or what have you that use their Art as a skill to earn themselves a living, of course. I’m referring to the dickwipes that create Art for Art’s sake, without skill or purpose. People that call themselves artists simply because they think they deserve the title and spend their entire goddamn time creating incomprehensible shit and looking down on you for not getting the joke.

Greece is chock full of idiots like these; people who make Art for its own sake, 21^stcentury philosoraptors who waste everybody’s goddamn time by mulling over obscure stupid shit and using big-ass terms they don’t even comprehend in order to make themselves look intelligent. This, I guess, is partly the reason why I got so pissed off at Rogan Gosh.

Rogan Gosh is the perfect example of Art handled with skill, but without purpose. But even if there is a purpose to it, some moral, then it doesn’t come across to the reader, at all. Let’s not forget that Art is mostly used as a medium to communicate a message to its reader, to make him share the creator’s (and his culture’s) perspective and most importantly, to incite him to create Art of his own.

Art that fails to do that isn’t Art. 

It’s shit; and it’s convoluted, weird, stupid shit at that.