Bizarre Uprising: Manga That's Just Not Good

You Have Entered Webcomic Hell (There is no Webcomic Heaven)

The great thing about the Internet is that it has afforded thousands of Japanophiles easy access to their beloved animes and mangas. Wait, did I say "great thing"? I meant "terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad thing." Most nerds and geeks these days have an unhealthy obsession with animes and mangas to the point where anything that does not come from Japan is utter trash. However this does not thwart their attempts at making their own "manga-style" comics. They will trace, copy and reference their favorite artists until they're blue in the face, but no matter how much they try, these amateur cartoonists will never gain a fraction of the skill utilized by their inspirations, which is already a pretty low bar most of the time. Occasionally, one of these Junior American Manga Artists will take their hobby past the point where most give up (6 pages), and wrongly consider themselves talented.

Bizarre Uprising (NWS for Nerdy Sex Vampires) is a terrible comic aimed at 14 year old boys who want to be Japanese. Plagued with Violence, Sex, Vampires, and the Inability to Expand a Plot Point Cohesively, it is the quintessential interpretation of Japanese mangas by American readers. The story follows a nerdy 16-year-old boy named Mitsu as he tries to make it through high school with his nerd friends, while somehow getting to bang all the girls he ever wants. Oh yeah, he's also a vampire who hates other vampires because they want to kill all humans and fights them a lot. This is certainly a new and fresh story that has certainly not been told anywhere before.

A V-V-V-V-V-VAMPIRE!

Although Mitsu serves as the primary author-insert, with his fancy vampire powers and ability to seduce lesbians, but his two friends work well as author-inserts, too. Mitsu's best friend is an overweight, virgin hypernerd who is more obsessed with his animes than actually learning how to talk to a girl. I'll give you a hint, it's not by doing this. The other friend is an ex-nerd turned hyper-sexy womanizer who has casual sex with every girl in the high school. His trainer is the school's mascot, some kind of bizarre pig thing, who turns out to be his father, who turns out to be the King of Vampires. Never mind how ridiculous that sounds, I merely ask, "Why a pig?" Well, this is clearly the influence of too many episodes of Invader Zim.

The writer for Bizarre Uprising needs some practice. A lot of it. He has a tendency to miss connecting crucial plot points. Most points are danced around, and when the action comes along, it's skipped as often as possible, resulting in a confusing and easily misunderstood plot thread. Fortunately it does not dwell on any point for too much time, dragging it out, but Bizarre Uprising fails to completely expand an event sufficiently, which is generally just as bad. Leaving your readers scratching their heads is hardly what I'd consider effective writing. With an update schedule as sparse as "once a week" you need to make sure that every update is used to its potential.

Artistically, Bizarre Uprising is bad (though not as bad as most of the other subjects I've covered, I only threw up a little bit). Character designs feel like the strange hybrids of Generic Anime, Jhonen Vasquez, and Walt Disney. All figures have a tendency to lean to the artist's right, which is indicative of a lack of structure, form, and refinement, and basically just means that the artist sketched everything out in an hour during gym class, and then inked during lunch. A little bit more effort in the pencilling phase could correct the skeletal disfigurement that leads them to "lean to the right." The characters are also often plastered with simple-minded expressions, that betray deeper emotions to simpler ones such as "worried" or "happy."

Revelation: I'm In A Terrible Webcomic

There are massive splash pages between "chapters" (if you can really call them that, since they lack a complete episodic event) which wouldn't be bad if they didn't force readers to wait an entire week for the chapter to start. Manga has a strong aversion to uniformity, and Bizarre Uprising mimics this fact quite readily. Characters spend more time off-model than on, and the artist has an odd habit of pointing out who he's ripping off when he does it. Added to the fact that practically every female character looks identical, the constant shifting of body shapes and proportions adds to the confusion created by the writer.

I mentioned earlier that the writer has a tendency to skip the action, but it may be due to the fact that the artist just can't DRAW action. There is a concept known as the line-of-action that provides a clear indication of the action in a panel, and is a concept that this amateur artist needs to comprehend. Currently, all the action seems to drift up and to the right, or down and to the left. Essentially, I get the impression that there is a giant vacuum menacing the city just slightly off panel, and it's sucking everybody towards it.

Bizarre Uprising is pretty terrible, obviously. The problem stems from its intense desire to copy the Ancient Japanese Style of Manga. But is the style at fault here? I can honestly say that it is not. After all, a style is just a style. The problem is trying to start with a style, and then adapting yourself to it. True style develops from standard practice. Style evolves naturally, and forcing yourself into one only stunts your growth. Hopefully, these manga-loving Japanophile children will learn that style does not dictate quality, but rather that quality is entirely independent of style. Problems occur when you start emulating a subsection of comics, simply because you like the "style" (and they get a lot worse when you fail to even grasp the concept of style).

Note: I realize the site is blocked by some browsers and security software because it is so bad that it qualifies as "malware." I'll provide a workaround for those of you who wish to see this terrible beast sometime this week.