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Webcomic / Yosh!

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No, not Yoshi... Though technically it's spelled the same way.

Yosh! is a webcomic by Phil 'Sage' Brown that details the life of average Otaku named Phil, who lives with his not-so-normal roommate Kate and his pet penguin PenPen somewhere in Florida. At first, the art is a bit rough and the story pretty much completely random, though an overarching, serious plot eventually does develop, which involves robot girls, catgirls, anime conventions, magic, mad science, romance (in liberal, non-story-derailing doses), and ninjas. Has a budding character sheet.


This webcomic provides examples of:

  • Allergic To Cute: Axel, which is used against him when he has a momentary Freak Out.
  • Anti-Villain: A lot of effort is put into humanizing the Five. In fact, at this point pretty much the only members of the Five and their servants that are actually evil are the Twins.
  • The Archmage: The Magi, in addition to unparalleled power in manipulating their own element, each Magi has ability in several other magical fields.
  • Art Evolution: As time passes, the comic's coloring and art improve, right around the time that the story picks up. The coloring style doesn't settle for a while, though.
  • The Atoner: Kate's father, for panicking and throwing Kate out after she became a Chimera in the Weirding.
  • Aura Vision: While mages can sense magic to an extent - particularly if it's from a large enough source - each Magi of Power have this ability. A Magus of Power has the ability to identify the Null by sight alone, and it looks like this.
  • Author Avatar: Phil is based off off the artist Philip "Sage" Brown, and Axel is based off the writer, Alex Peterson.
  • Babies Ever After:
    • Some holiday comics have Phil and Kate's future son and daughter.
    • The Mother's Day 2014 comic has Blue pregnant with Nami listening.
  • Bad Ass Longcoat: Axel, complete with Cool Shades and a really hot familiar.
  • Berserk Button: For Tom or Toyoko, threatening Miyo is a big one.
  • Breast Expansion: On the meta level the author admits that the characters breast size varies by shot - which he jokingly refers to as "convenient cleavage syndrome" - and that the average cup size for his characters has gone up over the course of the comic. He lampshaded this a few times in universe, with special mention going to Serena, whose breasts apparently grew right before her debut.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: How Kate's reunion with her father goes, at first.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: Becomes more serious as it goes along.
  • Curtains Match the Window: According to Michelle it's more common than not with her fellow robot girls.
  • Deadpan Snarker: A few characters demonstrate this now and then, but Nami tends to do this a lot, especially when it comes to Shiden.
  • Defector from Decadence: Lia, Hue, and Emi, Serena was never on the side of decadence.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: Although the Magi, especially the Twins, are built up to be the main antagonistic force early on, the more antagonistic Magi outside of the Twins are either killed or reformed before too long, and the Twins are pacified later, leaving Outsiders as the apparent main threat of the series.
  • The Dividual: The Twins, the brother holds the power of life, the sister the power of death, but they are treated as a single element.
  • Element No. 5: Played with. The primary forms of magic in the world seem to be Earth, Water, Power (ie, Energy) and Fire, and a Fifth Elemental Power effectively completes the set. The oddity of this is that the fifth power is actually a pair of elements: Life and Death, each of which have their own user. Despite this, they are counted as a single power for most intents and purposes. Also present are demonic and celestial magic, both of which are implied to be weaker than elemental magic due to their sources being in other realms, though they have some unique tricks to help bridge the gap, namely corrupting and purifying other magics, respectively.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: Shiden's apartment complex.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Outsiders are beings from beyond the mortal universe, and are so alien that their magic is the only thing that could possibly affect the Null, even briefly. Apparently a previous incursion is what split the universe into the mortal world and demon realms.
  • Fanservice: Oh yes.
  • Faux Yay: The Demoness loves to invoke this, such that she and Blue compete for the title of The Tease.
  • Fantastic Arousal: Apparently animal Chimeras have an erogenous zone near the base of their tale. Phil thinks it's a result of nerves being messed up by the transformation.
  • Fantastic Racism: Played with. While Chimeras aren't completely hated, people do tend to look down on them. This has been slowly getting better according to the backstory.
    • The subject is showing signs of returning in the current arc where Kate and Phil plan their wedding. Apparently, five years after "The Weirding" (the event that created the first Chimeras), Kate and Phil's home state declared that wedding officiators had "the right to refuse" legalizing a wedding if they so wish. As Phil himself points out, the chances of this being a coincidence are small.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Quite a few members of the cast, namely Kate, Blue, and Rieko (though the latter case is even more unusual than most, even by the series' standards. There is a reason for this.
  • Heel Realization: Emi, see With Great Power Comes Great Insanity below.
  • Hyperspace Wardrobe: Lampshaded in this comic. Apparently Shiden carries costumes around for just such an occasion.
  • The Magic Comes Back: "The Weirding" was caused when the current Fire Magi found the seal for his element and botched releasing, which transformed some people into Chimera while allowing others to use magic for the first time. Later events lead to the other sealed magics being released.
  • Magitek: Shiden's robots.
  • Ninja: Too many to name straight up.
  • Orichalcum: Used by Shiden's creations as a Power Source.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Though quite possibly a succubus, the Demoness has yet to be shown doing anything succubus-like outside of teasing everyone with her sex appeal. Penpen prefers spending time engaging in a gelatin fetish over acting like a Demon Prince; his cousin (who has yet to be named) hasn't seen much character development yet, but so far he's not evil. Axel's Demon is the only one reminiscent of a demon (both in appearance and personality).
  • Otaku: Phil, to the point that he knows manga occurrences by panel
    Quiz Host: Err- OK! How about quoting page 52 from Volume 6 of XXXholic- last panel?
    Phil: Watanuki tells Yuko- "No dessert for you!" and she says, "You're joking."
  • Pure Magic Being: The Magi's elemental mantles turn out to be intelligent beings in their own right. They also created a similar being that serves as the force behind the Null, which is why Phil's Anti-Magic abilities don't negatively affect the robot girls despite them running on Magitek power.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Averted. Cain goes to a lot of trouble to bring his real sister back from the dead.
  • Robot Girl: Miyo is only the first of these, built by Phil's frenemy Shiden. Past a certain point, he has entire facilities full of them, performing a wide array of jobs from assistants to bodyguards. They also play with the notion of Ridiculously Human Robots, as they do have emotions and desires separate from their programming (which Shiden did allow for), as well as needing sleep and food (or recharging).
  • Shoot the Dog: Axel, and Cain, to the Fire Magus.
  • Sour Supporter: Axel isn't exactly thrilled that the other heroes have befriended Lia due to his past history with the Magi, but he ultimately decides to (grudgingly) go along with it, partly because the Demoness can tell that Hue, Lia's fiancee and the Earth Magi, is a good person.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Lien
  • Superpowered Evil Side: Axel shows off his when the Magus of Fire, Josephus, uses him as a portal to the afterlife to help Cain resurrect Rieko.
  • The Ditz: Phil, in spades. Occasionally, though, it's shown that he's not as dense as he looks to be, and it's slightly lessened as time goes on, especially once he finds out he's the Null.
  • The Load, The Fool: Phil, again—he's just a regular human, with no real abilities aside from a really sunny disposition and a kind heart. Interestingly, his ability to recover from what would be considered intense physical trauma actually goes from a comedic device to an actual ability - as the Null, similar to Asuna, he naturally nullifies magic and magic artifacts, though his area of effect extends a bit beyond his body. But unlike the previous Null, for less explained reasons, he is also Nigh-Invulnerable, capable of surviving hellfire, painful falls, and hits from training machines made for robots with no trouble.
  • The Magic Comes Back: Both as part of the backstory and during the story.
  • The Unpronounceable: Penpen's real name.
  • Unusual Ears: The aforementioned Half Human Hybrids and Robot Girls, the latter of which homage Persocoms.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Cortex will do anything to stop the Magi, including attacking a diner full of civilians just to get one girl and, more recently, trying to steal several priceless artifacts. Of course, the latter turns out to have been a Kansas City Shuffle in order to gain access to an ancient magical seal.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Axel is...less than pleased when he learns how the group has made friends with Lia.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
    • A Magi's power can go very easily to their head. One of them, Emi, realizes it when she catches herself trying to smite some kids over a perceived slight, only to be stopped by Phil just in time.
    • It gets worse. All of the heirs to the power of the Magus of Power are like that. They are raised like that so that they become puppets to the power, which in turn makes them puppets to the rest of the family, because they would do anything to prove themselves.
    • When Axel ends up in the demon world, from where his power comes from, he gets a significant boost to his power, making him comparable to the Magi on Earth. He then lampshades how he can easily see how so many Magi let their powers go to their heads.
  • A Wizard Did It: The Weirding. Literally caused by a wizard (they call them 'Magi') in the backstory. In an odd twist, the wizard didn't mean to do it, he was trying to unseal his full power but botched it.

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