I’m Famous in Japan! Page 4

Hello and welcome to Page 4 of ‘I’m Famous in Japan!’.

We’re continuing on from the script of Page 3, with an interaction between Daniel and Rosenstein. This was just going to be the last couple of panels of Page 3, but I wanted to do a few things that just wouldn’t fit onto the original page.

Nicole running past them was a last minute idea to link this page with the last one. One of my favorite things about this page, is Rosenstein’s bubbly day-dream about Japanese girls and their panties. This is classic manga-style fan-service, which I haven’t done a while and I’m pleased with how it turned out.  The script didn’t call for it, but I really felt that a gaggle of ‘dream-girls’ were needed to illustrate Rosenstein’s lust. Also, to make this fan-service less blatant, and to screw with people’s heads, I made certain that his drooling face was dominant on that panel. It sort of makes a balance between cute and creepy, which is interesting…and also wierd…

This kind of brings up the whole idea of the Panty Vending Machines in Japan.

Although often considered an urban legend, it is true that up until recently, it was legal to purchase used school-girl panties from street vending machines in Japan. Sometimes they would even feature a modelled photo of the ‘donor’ (as pictured above). By the looks of things this was very wide-spread, with many sigarette machines having extra slots especially for this (!).

Not only is this perverted, it’s  just plain nasty. Someone else’s used panties?! I don’t care how desperate someone is, that’s just disgusting. And they even throw in photos of the girl herself? There are stalkers in Japan too you morons! Eventually the government in Tokyo started to realize that this was not very good, and banned it. I’m kinda surprised it took this long!

With that preaching out of the way, I give you the final panel. This is another one I am pleased about. It’s been a long time since I last drew an airliner, and it’s my first attempt at a Boeing 747. I kind of cheated though, and looked at a fly-by photo of a 747, which I used as a guide for this drawing. I really did want to give the airliner a funny name. Eventually came up with ‘Banzai Air’ and it’s Happy Rising Sun logo. It’s sort of a twisted reference to the ‘Banzai to the Emperor!’ battle cry…which almost always ended in certain death.

I had recently watched Cars 2 which, like ‘I’m Famous in Japan’, featured it’s cast going to Japan.

They had actually come up with far more clever Japanese airline name: SamAIRai.  Damn…I wish I had thought of that first! There’s some other clever Japanese stuff happening in that movie which I wished we’d thought of first. But the Pixar production only skimmed the surface of this parody iceberg and there’s lots more for us to make fun of!

Coming soon, Page 5 and Japan itself.

-Rawr