ITS ALL ABOUT BRAVOMAN
You have probably heard me speaking about Shiftylook and their webcomics before but this post is on a specific comic from them called Bravoman.
I have become slightly obsessed with Bravoman of late and am always pimping the comic/site out to as many people as I can, as often as I can to help support it.
Not only is Bravoman a webcomic series which stemmed from the game that was out for the TurboGrafx system and more recently the Wii Virtual Console (same version) it is also a soon to be animation.
“The original “Bravoman” was an arcade game released in Japan in 1988. It’s basically a side-scrolling beat-em-up where you go around using your stretchy limbs to smash robots, ninjas, monsters, etc. There are also a bunch of underwater levels where Bravoman becomes a submarine and shoots torpedoes (random!). We never saw the arcade version here, but in 1990 the game was ported to the PC Engine game console, which North Americans know as the Turbo Grafx-16. This ended up being our only official adventure with Bravoman, but back in Japan there’s more to the story.
1990 saw the release of another Namco arcade game – a Bravoman spinoff titled “Pistol Daimyo no Bōken”. Originally a boss character in Bravoman, Pistol Daimyo is a Japanese feudal lord with a pistol strapped to his head, who can fly by waving hand-fans he holds with his feet. The game is a side-scrolling shooter where you blast away at frogs, birds, ninjas, and living sandals. Also, if you die, Pistol Daimyo does a little fan dance… naked. I think I can see why this game remained Japan-exclusive. (ShiftyLook shout out – Pistol Daimyo no Bōken also featured an appearance of the Galaxian flagship from Xevious!)
Beyond that, Bravoman hasn’t seen any more full games or spinoffs, but he HAS had plenty of cameos! Probably the best known is in the 2005 Japan-only action/tactical RPG “Namco x Capcom”, where Bravoman is teamed up with Wonder Momo(another old school Namco character). Other Bravoman characters also appear throughout the game such as Waya Hime, Anti-Bravoman, Benjamin, Pistol Daimyo, and Dr. Bomb. It’s notable that in this game ninja princess Waya Hime gets to team up with Taki, the Soul Calibur series’ resident ninja babe. Taki had previously been given a Waya Hime alternate costume in 2002’s “Soul Calibur II”.
More Bravoman cameos can be found in the arcade/Sega Genesis game “Marvel Land”(1989), “Namco Super Wars”(2002) an RPG for Bandai’s Wonderswan handheld, and “Namco Chronicle” – a 2009 mobile phone RPG.”
Next up was when Bravoman got resurrected as the amazing comic strip to be part of the new ShiftyLook series of webcomic strips featuring illustrations by UDON.
The strip focuses on comedic elements involving Bravoman’s powers as well as Alpha Man teaching him how to use his powers. More recently, the characters Anti-Bravo and Waya Hime have also been introduced in the strip.
On top of all this there is an animation coming soon (insert huge ass smiley here).
I personally think that the animation is going to be brilliant even though not much has been released about it yet but due to the fact that it is the same team from the webcomic which is so amazing drawn by Dax “D-Gee” Gordine and written by Matt Moylan.
There is something about the way that Dax draws Bravoman that is very appealing to me as both an anime and mainstream comic book fan which pulls all the right strings, it has the character design similar to an Ichigo Kurosaki or Rukia Kuchiki from Bleach or Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto which is not a bad thing at all, coupled with this a real humour of writing from Matt similar in style to a Penny Arcade or Ctrl+Alt+Del and you are on to a total winner.
Latest page below.
So let me reiterate for you a couple of things.
- Beautiful Art
- Funny Scripts
- Great History
- FREE
- FREE
- FREE
At present you can read new comics on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 9:00AM Pacific over on ShiftyLook and you need to be checking this webcomic out as well as keeping an eye for any news on the animation when it comes (I will inform you be sure of that).
To finish with here is a picture of me rocking my Bravoman Tee which i am so proud of and wear very regularly.
Regards
PS i have another 6 Tees which i was given kindly by the folk at Shiftylook which i will be giving away shorty.
About the Author
Alex Giles Family man but quite possibly more childish than his two kids, loves Sci-Fi and is a renowned Whovian of over twenty years, collects comics (OCD about having first prints), poet and writer or randomness.
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