Peepo Choo 3

Felipe Smith – Vertical – 2011 – 3 volumes

I knew that we would get to see Morimoto Rockstar act out his ultimate gangster fantasies before the end of the series. He meets up with Jody and takes him along for the ride, using his looks to decide that he is a “real American gangster.” Jody is both amused and confused by Morimoto Rockstar, and there are some truly choice scenes in their brief, but beautiful, friendship.

The youtube dance videos.

The gang signs that Jody is slightly horrified by.

The tattoos. Jody’s tattoo, sure, but Morimoto Rockstar’s tattoos are a thing of beauty. Seriously. There will never be better yakuza tattoos.

Morimoto Rockstar is a terrible person, but I love his character.

That was really the highlight of this volume for me. The plot of the series… felt slightly wrong, given that all the best parts were based on cultural misconceptions. Gill is still on the killing spree, and we find out what his eventual target is, which is a little expected, and a bit of a surprise given his… roundabout way of getting there. As much as I liked Morimoto Rockstar, this part of the plot, the reason for everyone being in Japan, just felt wrong to me. Though it does fit in with the extreme nature of the rest of the series.

The bigger theme in this book is finding out who you are and being yourself, I suppose. I loved that it got this theme across without being too cheesy about it, and as much fun was made of geek tendencies, even in a yakuza kingpin… well, Morimoto Rockstar has no problem being himself. And Reiko’s transformation from being unhappy with life to finding her niche was a really nice story, as was the way she ultimately got along with Milton. Even Gill got to be himself, in the end, and that was unexpected and awesome, even with a scary guy like Gill.

The series does have its downsides… it’s a little loud and obnoxious, especially through the Peepo Choo cartoon parts. That is the point, but all the same, sometimes it can be hard to read. As I said earlier, the yakuza killings are a strange thing to have mixed into the plot. That never quite washed the way the rest of the random connections did.

But still. It’s social commentary is very funny and probably spot on (though I have to take it with a grain of salt since one of the messages here is don’t get your cultural literacy from comic books). The sense of humor was perfectly suited to the characters and everything else that was going on, and in the end, I liked a lot more of the loud, obnoxious characters than I thought I would. Even Reiko, who I was very much against when I first laid eyes on her, wound up being one of my favorites.

I think there are quite a few people who could read the first volume and miss the point a little, and I think there are a lot of people that would be put off by the “loudness” and the way the characters and plot are rather disconnected at first. And that’s a shame, because this is a nice little series, and I think it might have some trouble finding its way into the right hands. I loved it though, and Morimoto Rockstar will probably always be one of my favorites.