Grrl Power #1206 – Demon days of… whatever season it is
Sorry about the word bubble octopus there in the first panel. Please no one tell Scott McCloud, or I’m certain I will be added to his List, and he and his presumed gang of comic luminaries will track me down at a comic convention and shiv me.
My guess would be that demons would be either into human slice of life stuff if they have a xenoanthropological interest, or saccharine cutesy stuff like My Little Pony or Adventure Time or whatever – OR – they’d be into stuff with demons in it so they could have a good laugh at all the crazy stuff humans think demons get up to.
Has anyone ever done a story where a demon gets possessed by a human, (probably by accident, I imagine) and the human has to navigate the demon world and pretend to be a demon, and go to his demon day job and hang out with that demon’s friends in order to not arouse suspicion and get a crack team of reverse exorcists put on his trail? Cause I would probably read that. I mean, a humorous version of that, not some grimdark version. It would be a unique isekai, that’s for sure.
BTW, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but Kill 6 Billion Demons is a fantastic webcomic that has insane, Sergio Aragones levels of detail at times. And somehow the guy doing it still has time to get physical books printed up, so naturally Sydney’s comic shop would carry it.
I have a cool surprise for you. It turns out, after doing Azumanga Diaoh, which, weirdly enough is one of my favorite animes, Kiyohiko Azuma went and made a 15-and-counting volume manga about Sydney as a 5 year old.
Okay, obviously, he didn’t do exactly that. But he really very nearly basically did. It is called Yotsuba.
<—- Yotsuba looks like this, and is a proper ADHD poster child.
Here is a link to it on Amazon.
And here is a link to a scanlation site, which I kind of feel like I shouldn’t link, but it’s not like you guys don’t know how to use google and honestly I want you guys to check it out and be like “Yup, that is eerily Sydney-ish.”
I feel like I’m late to the party because I just noticed the manga on Amazon is listed starting in 2009, but I just found this and am enjoying reading through it.
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The September vote incentive is up! Let’s call it the November vote incentive and just say I’ve still got two I.O.U’s, eh?
Well, Dabbler is doing her Dabbler things, and the Patreon version has a nude variant and a comic that… I don’t know, expounds on the goings on of the initial picture?
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
If you get ‘free time’ DaveB *rimshot* perhaps do a test of the page where you replace the ‘octopus’ with mini chibi heads of the speaker in the lower corner. Same effect, less lines.
There’s a game on TFGames Site called Alone Amongst Demons about a guy that is body swapped with a succubus and has to navigate his way through the demon world. I never got around to beating it. The gameplay mechanics are kinda all over the place in terms of quality but you can definitely tell a LOT of effort was involved. The story was great though. Also, super erotic adult stuff, so, you know, consider that your warning, lol.
If you want an isekai about a human trying to pass as a demon, and it’s humorous, I’d strongly recommend “Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun.” It’s fairly heartwarming, funny, cute, and has some cool action bits as well. It’s good fun!
Well, you only have one balloon-tail crossing so I won’t tell Brad Guigar on you.
I don’t think the Internet could Handle the calamity And cute of Sydney as a Five year old.
I absolutely love Yotsuba. Fun fact- she is actually mascot of 4chan and gave it it’s logo.
Yotsuba is great and I did not know that, cheers!
A fun fact , an taste for Sax Rohmer most famous character Fu Manchu ( 傅满洲 ) the iconic evil mandarin had a surprising popularity in Chinese diaspora… He his seen as a nonsense , a collection of clichés about Chinese … accurate as seing a Frenchman as beret and marinière wearing cheese eating surrender monkey.
For a fiend I’ll se Constantine as an analog.
I just read the first 3 books of Yotsuba and totally get what you mean! Her middle name must be Sydney!
In the commentary you wonder if there’s an isekai where a demon possesses a human and stuff, I don’t think I’ve read a comic or manga with that exact premise but there are some similar ones I’ve read recently. One is “I’m the Hero, but the Demon lord’s also me” which is about a kid who turns out to be the SON of an isekai protagonist who fell in love and eloped back to the regular world with the demon lord he was supposed to slay, resulting in him having marks for both the hero AND demon lord and emissaries from the fantasy world try to recruit him. Then there’s one that was recently adapted into an anime, “Chillin’ in my 30’s after getting fired from the demon lord’s army” (dear god these titles, are they just easier to say in Japanese or something?) Which is about a guy who worked as kind of a secretary for the demon lord because he couldn’t use magic, only to get fired by the new demon lord when the old one retired, and when he finds a human village to settle in he finds out that the reason he couldn’t use magic was because he’d secretly been human all along, and he actually is EXCEPTIONAL at using the human version of magic because he’s actually the former hero’s long lost son. There’s no possession angle, but they kind of cover that “human living among demons” sub-genre you were musing about.
Come on… You know it’s proper Trashekai™ if the title is so long it’s a page in and of itself… ;)
I think most of the thing with the lengthy titles has to do with the fact that most japanese people never read the backcover blurb, so everything that might attract them must be in the title up front.
And with kanji you can get a mile and a half on a relatively small surface..
The reason is actually that the popular site that many of these indie mangas were originally published through didn’t show blurbs at all. Though this has since been rectified. So the authors had to get creative and the trend kicked off from there.
Bleach is a cleaning product, and Naruto is a food topping/ narrow strait that creates whirlpools. How many people who are obsessed with both those series would never even look at either one at all if all they could see was just the title?
Manga don’t have a back blurb. Most are anthology style four or five stories run in a single print magazine. The collections we get are similar to the reprints they do as well if something takes off. But to start a lot of manga is basically throw away read once.
Those demon/human romance/harem novels can be quite enjoyable, and really funny when the “bedroom farce” trope is used effectively.
Is it bad that if the following 5 pages became demons talking about their opinions of marvel/dc/manga and how they depict demon i would be okay with that?
I really like when characters talk of “why” they like certain genres/book and why they prefer one over the other.
Heck i am sure that if sidney got in charge of “custom power training” it would be 90% “read conics of this guy with similar powers,then tell me what did they do right or wrong.
Some digging through Royal Road will uncover several isekaied into a demon stories.
Honestly I’m surprised there isn’t more of a lineup on Sydney for autographs and such. I guess there’s been a mild lul in her public displays. Not sure there’s been much she’d be noticed for since she put out fires in Africa and despite the impressive glass basin she left behind it’s in some tiny African nation. Everyone’s probably moved on to interviewing aliens.
Let’s assume she only does at pre-arranged times, otherwise she doesn’t get any work done.
And there are so many other reasons Sydney won’t get work done
I’m just going to assume that everyone within a few hours driving distance has already had the chance and that she started charging an exorbitant fee once she got sufficiently annoyed. I’m sure there is enough on demand merchandise to hold most of the rest at bay.
I just love the K6BD reference :)
Wait wait… wait….why is there TWO Halos/Sidney in the comic book store? I think one is enough world can handle! LoL
Good eye, but the ‘other Sydney’, upon a bit of zooming, appears to be just a clerk essentially doing Halo cosplay while working the merch counter. Note that the ‘orbs’ above her head are actually just a cap with a bunch of balls attached. It actually makes a certain amount of sense. Even if her limited schedule is known by now, a lot of folks would still show up ‘just in case’ on off-days, then be disappointed that she wasn’t there. So at least give them a bit of fun with a faux Sydney.
How long before Parfait has to return to her own dimension???
She might have already, this feels like a time skip from the last page. Parfait updated her Penstragram or whatever calling the comic shop a safe place for demons and now demons are coming in as regular customers.
Great, now I can only think of otaku demons who are obsessed with human culture. I mean it’s gotta be a thing.
For a somewhat loose definition of “demon” there’s “Haiyore! Nyaruko-san” featuring entities from the Cthulhu Mythos as cute anime girls obsessed with human manga/anime/tv
There were remarks regarding human media especially anime/hentai being a thing with aliens.
It is a common enough joke in American cartoons where monsters would dress up as humans on Halloween, and the show Juniper Lee had their Halloween’s plot point being a monster *so* into human culture that he used a bad spell that ran the risk of permanently turning them human.
The most insane part of Kill 6 Billion Demons are the comment threads. They are something else. I’m not sure if the comic attracts apocalyptic nutjobs, or if people are just having a field day playing to the theme.
Also, the comment section needs a “email me when someone replies to my comment” option.
“Apocalyptic nutjobs or people having a field day with the theme.” Why not both?
They really are. Like, whole continuing worldbuilding based on the comic, but only in the comments. Amazing.
Demons Three: “You cheated!”
Constantine: “Technically we both cheated, I just did it better.”
for the silly/funny human trying to navigate the demon world without letting anyone find out he’s a human, you could try Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-Kun. He’s an almost pathological people-pleaser who gets adopted/bought by one of the highest ranking demons, who is also the principal of the most respected high schools in the demon world, who is a ridiculously doting grandfather-figure. He just wants to keep his head down and survive, because honestly this is the best his life has ever been, but various shenanigans continue to make him out to be the hero of the demon world and a very likely successor to the missing-in-action demon king.
My first thought on seeing the wide shot of the comic shop is “Ohh, there’s sooo much spaaaace!”
Having said that, my local shop (Dee’s Comics in Canberra (give em some love!)) has been squeezed into a shoebox for ages. I reckon the contents might automatically fill whatever space they end up in.
Considering the usual type of manga & anime going around (lots of stories that include demons, angels, & harems), Joel & Sydney may want to expand their shop a bit more…
KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS is an amazing legendary webcomic. the story, characters, their designs, the vistas, the world building, the creatures and regions. The deep background lore. Its GORGEOUS in every regard.
Is it me, or is that one of the most… sterile game and comic shops in at least 12 planes of existence?
After some thinking, no, I can’t think of a series where a human outright possesses a demon.
the closest would be Isekai series where the protagonist goes from being human to being summoned or reincarnated etc…as a monster *either as their game avatar which was a monster such as “How not to Summon a Demon Lord” or “Overlord”, or they are reborn in that world as a monster *That Time I was reincarnated as a slime* or *So what I’m a spider* (probably got that title a little wrong). Although Isekai tend to lean into the power fantasy so this demon/monster form becomes either a leader or so strong they can fist fight a god.
that said *spoiler warning* for (In the Land of Leadale), while its not a demon (at least not for the main character), this series kind of comes close to it…the Manga is far enough along to make it clear while the anime only had/has gotten far enough along to hint at it..so spoiler, the game avatars the people are being trapped in..had lives before and/or after the game and the players have effectively possessed them…so yes if it felt weird to have characters talk about being raised by or clearly they were doing things before the Isekai event took place, that’s why.
but that is tied into the mystery of that world.
Others have mentioned anime/manga where someone ends up in a demon world and has to pretend to be a demon…and plenty out of there of the reverse with a demon ending up in the human world or a human inhabited area and trying to pretend to be human (not well usually, if a series completly took away a demon or gods powers and forced them to live only as a human, it wouldn’t likely stay interesting for some, and those series which had taken away their powers (The Devil is a Part Timer) for example, it tends to be a one arc thing and they find a way to use their powers a short ways in.
Ho9nestly its probably a hard sell to write the reverse of a power fantasy *powerful otherwordly being stuck reincarnated in a slice of life story…so other then the occasional rant like (This is so degrading, I was worshipped on a thousand worlds and now I am washing dishes in a Taco Bell on third shift) it would just be a slice of life…and probably be a tad depressing for anyone seeking escapism in their isekai as it just highlights how boring life is as your POV character is lamenting their life in Hell/Celestia/Fairland etc… as better than everyday human life.
Heck I was going to write something like that, planned it out, as it had been mentioned a few times that some of my characters had gone through reincarnations *either as a soul projection while in stasis or other more convoluted story element reasons*, some of which were regular humans, and some times as a spirit presence (astral projection) possessing people but limited by the host’s abilities and spiritual potential.
But opted against it for the above slice of life and kind of anti-escapism reasons, its mentioned in some backstories, and the reason why some have Earth pop culture knowledge and can make references, but as a story to expand on it…eh, not my wheelhouse as it were.
and point being, I don’t see it out there either. An otherworldly being trapped or possessing a human and trying to live a normal human life, I mean we get plenty of fish out of water stories, but any human limitation elements tend to fall by the wayside fairly quickly
(either, “I have found my powers again” or “We have to break the seal and release the power” or “Sorry I have to drop this façade my family has shown up/ enemies have come and we have to show we aren’t just normal people”
-The Devil is a Part Time
-Tenchi Muyo *any of them really follow that pattern*
-Ah My Goddess
-To Love Ru
-So This is a Zombie
-Helpful Fox Senko San
etc…the fish out of water story of trying to live with humans, but the entertainment element is these other wordly elements are “spicing things up”.
That said, the human turning into a demon isn’t that rare..its just not done as *oh no I possessed a demon and now must go to demon world to find a job* its usually more along the same lines as being turned into a vampire or werewolf kind of story if not the Isekai OP protagonist version.
I think there was an episode of Supernatural where a demon was in the body of a human and the entire time they’re trying to free the child from the demonic possession and it turns out that the child was a soulless sociopath and the one in control, and the demon was TRYING to get out but couldnt – the child was basically a demon trap or something and was killing people because that’s what the child wanted to do – the demon wasnt making him do it.
Not exactly the same but close.
Oh god… that was such a run-on sentence that I wrote. :)
Interesting. That would explain some of the oddities about “In the Land of Leadale”.
That revelation certainly makes sense of some oddities I’d noticed about In the Land of Leadale.
“Reverse Exorcism” is where the devil tells the priest to get out of the child…Old dirty joke so be careful on when you use terms like that.
How do the demons from outer space pay?
There’s a story arc in DC Vertigo Books of Magic where a demon is possessed by a human. Demon winds up getting kicked out of Hell by the pair of angels that are now in charge, because he was caught healing other demons and apparently that’s the ultimate no-no there.
My feelings on scanlation:
If it doesn’t have an official translation, guilt-free, though I’ve bought a couple of Japanese volumes of stuff I liked just ’cause (very rarely, because broke as hell).
If it does have an official translation, find out where I can read it officially (hope it’s not ComicKey), read that way, and about half the time be disappointed at how much worse it is than the fanlation
You just learned about “Yotsuba to”, Dave?
It actually came out in 2005.
Her name means “four leaves” or four petals, like a four-leaf clover. (Hence the green hair and 4-bundle hairstyle).
Now for the ugly twist:
“4chan”… that cesspool of Internet awfulness few are brave or foolish enough to wade into… is named AFTER Yotsuba. Yes, THIS Yotsuba. The founder of the site is a big fan. :P
(And now your day is ruined. :P )