{We open with Wataru and Psyga cleaning up the studio and adding new devices to the place}
Wataru: I gotta hand it to you, Psyga, we weren’t sure if you were even alive. Good thing you broke out that liveblog of Christian Humber Reloaded.
Yeah, shame no one goes to Tropes anymore for their sporking fix. Wonder where I’ll go next…
Wataru: Well, I found some books that have been collecting dust…
{Wataru blows some dust off the book, revealing the cover for Sonichu}
… Huh, I remember riffing on this. This was that Christmas Special, right?
Wataru: Yeah.
Huh… It’s thicker than I imagined…
{flips past a few pages}
Oh Fuck.
Wataru: What!?
This… This has more pages!
Wataru: W-what? How can that be?
And look!
{he points to Sonichu #12}
Wataru: What the fu-
Wataru, get out of here! I have an electric rathog to kill.
{Wataru does so}
Alright, so… because you caught up with this liveblog, I don’t need to catch you up, so let’s go back to where we last left off this blog.
We return to the Christmas shenanigans. I probably should have mentioned this before, but it seemed as though Sonichu and Rosechu have had kids. As much as I joke about them being the devil spawn, I like how the comic shows the characters progressing as humans. Or electric hedgehog furries. Whatever, I like continuity, alright?
One of the kids, Cera, is playing with her friend Kevin. Over what? Call of Duty. Haha, kids playing Call of Duty. Let’s load up the classic ‘irresponsible parents’ joke for the billionth time. Let’s crack so many “CoD is the new Madden” jokes that it becomes unfunny. Let’s make all these jokes despite knowing full well that Call of Duty is one of the best-selling franchises and that chances are if I were to play against an army of kids on Call of Duty, they’d actually kick my ass because they’re actually good at the game.
Though with the talk of vehicles and shooting them up, I feel like they’re playing Battlefield rather than CoD. And even then, the way Kevin talks about losing his character’s progress after he dies implies it runs on permadeath mechanics?
… If Call of Battlefield runs on Roguelike elements, I’m so throwing money at the screen.
So Cera offers a candle cookie but apparently this triggers Kevin somehow?
Magi-Chan then talks to the heartbroken Cera, whose mental state apparently overpowers the other mental states.
Let me repeat that. Cera’s only guilt is that she ended up letting Kevin’s character get killed and then end up triggering Kevin over a fucking candle cookie… And that somehow overpowers every other emotion felt on the most stressful holiday of all. The holiday, mind you, where the most popular stories either involve a crotchety old man being haunted by ghosts because he gave a man too much grief or a guardian angel outright talking a dude out of killing himself by showing him a life where he never existed.
But no. Instead of a man trying to make his crippled kid live to see Christmas but being fired or a guy being screwed over so much that he thinks it’d be better if he was never born, we have “I triggered a kid over cookies”.
Never change, Sonichu.
Also, what apparently triggered Kevin was the flame on the candle cookie. I don’t even.
Speaking of troubled minds on Christmas, we cut to one. A woman who just got evicted from her home. Robbie is actually a really nice kid who is empathic and kind and what the fuck is he doing here in a world where the mayor got a child to participate in an execution?
He gets his kindness from Sonichu it seems, as he offers help and support. He even mentions his own father would help her and calls back to the time he became Sonichu for the first time and- FUCK! Robbie is so damn adorable!
We cut to Blake and Bubbles passing by a guy who wishes Blake a happy Kwanzaa. This triggered Blake because he’s not actually black, rather cherry-cola. I love the call backs this is making. It’s definitely back to basics without having to do what Force Awakens did and rip off the first episode word for word.
Next up we see…
{sees the next page}
…
…
…
Excuse me everyone. I need to walk away from the comic and contemplate what to say. Because it just gave me the greatest Christmas gift of all time. One I never thought I would expect.
See, Simonla Rosechu died due to having received injuries from a boming…
Or so we believed.
However, it’s revealed that Simonla has a regenerative factor and that she has bones tougher than steel.
Yes. They did the impossible. Simonla Rosechu is back.
Words cannot describe why I love this. But I will try my hardest.
Simonla Rosechu became my favorite Sonichu character beside Darkblade simply because I knew she was doomed to die. I grew sympathy for her because I knew she would die. To see her come back doesn’t make me feel cheated. It instead made me feel happy. Happy to know that a character I cherished and accepted is gone has come back to the world I read.
And the best part of this isn’t that Simonla has a badass I'm Back speech or that we see Zapina embrace her big sister. It’s that Sonichu remembers the format of story it’s telling and applies the classical trope to it.
Let me repeat that:
Sonichu.
Read.
Like.
A.
COMIC.
That was the major complaint I had with Sonichu. I wanted to read it like a comic, but it wouldn’t let me. But here? I got that semblance again. The semblance of reading a comic book. This genuinely made me smile.
I can even say that I forgive Sonichu for the shit it did in Chapter 10. Granted, they still kangaroo-courted some guys into an execution so brutal that it puts Castlevania’s infamous burning at the stake scene to shame, but at the very least CWC fixed up the one gripe I had with it.
Wait, they changed up the execution? And Chris-Chan didn’t make gay marriage illegal in the new continuity? HOLY SHIT! SONICHU FIXED EVERYTHING! THIS IS THE TRUE CHRISTMAS GIFT!
… Also the toilet bomb is a Voltorb. That’s cute and keeping with the idea that this is indeed a Pokémon setting. The secretary from 4-Cent ended up arriving in jail sitting next to a healthy Slaweel.
To see the guys be reduced to Amish jokes… It’s a better alternative to what we got. Magi and Silvana converse about how Graduon, the great evil that escaped in the finale, will return. At least they have each other… Aww… And that’s actually a cute fourth wall break that Magi did.
Anyways, the play begins and-
What’s this!? Christine’s evolving! And funny enough, she’s growing out of her clothes for the play, so Sonichu has to get some. Sonichu is actually being a good parent. I really like how human this story’s become. It almost feels like a homecoming of sorts… heheh.
The whole evolving thing might be a reference to puberty. That’s… a rather mature topic for Sonichu to tackle. And it works!
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end as we head into the stupid. Remember that Call of Duty kid? He tells Cera that they can’t be friends. He gives off a long winded speech about court marshaling and loyalty and judging people based off their actions and just stupid dialogue that makes me realize an adult is writing this fucking ruins the immersion.
I get what the kid means, but he’s a fucking kid talking to another kid about their kid behaviour that they’ll most likely outgrow. It’d be like dumping your friend when you were ten because he had cooties. This whole shit is gonna blow over in a few years, not even. By the time the new Call of Battlefield: Roguelike Warfare comes out, he’s gonna forget the character that died and play the new one.
Kevin, you fail as a kid.
That said, I do like the maturity of his character, like how he bases his friends off how loyal they are in the game. It does happen a lot when a player’s gaming style matches their overall personality. It’s why I don’t tend to mind some Call of Duty players being kids. The fact that they’re playing a violent game with their parents’ approval implies that they have that certain level of maturity where they can play a game that, back in the day, would be crucified for daring to have accurately colored blood and dealing with real life topics like terrorism-induced war.
Of course, I know one person is gonna link to me a montage of kid players screeching into their mikes. But like how people perceive autistic kids based off Christopher Weston Chandler, people just perceive Call of Duty kids from the videos people make of them. I don’t know. Sometimes I like to think the kids who play Call of Duty are as mature as Kevin…
Well, at least Robbie comforts the crying Cera.
And then we cut to Chris-Chan, having returned to the future and I think I can see why he had a change of heart with that whole gay marriage. As it turns out, Chris-Chan ended up going through a sort of spiritual realization. You guys remember Crystal, the spirit who had been inside him? That wasn’t his sister. That was him. A woman trapped in a man’s body.
And thus, he realized he wasn’t Chris-Chan, but rather Crystal (he’s named Christine, but we already have one Christine). It’s… really weird that a comic as infamous as Sonichu tackles something like transgenderism with more tact than most mainstream comics. It’s such a 180.
I’m gonna skim the rest of this just so that you can see it for yourselves. The piece of cake though is the Sonichu team going over to Crystal’s house and wishing her happy holidays. It’s a really amazing last few pages of this chapter that makes it so great. This… This redeemed Sonichu for me. I say this is my new favorite issue.
This was what I wanted from the beginning. A good comic to read with nice, human moments of maturity and topics that are handled with lots of tact. The best part of this? It’s half way done. We still have more to cover. Wataru! Get back in here! This rat’s good to go!
{Wataru comes back in}
Wataru: Good. There’s someone outside door who wouldn’t shut up about a bird cage and the great destruction.
{Psyga looks outside and sees some white haired mage going on and on about making the bird cage and trapping Chris-Chan inside it}
Eeeeeh, ignore her.
{he shuts the door as Wataru walks to the comic}
So, back to the story! We visit Simonchu, Simonla’s brother who is working in the mines and seems to be a druggie given how red his eyes are. He remembers how, after the temporary death of his sister, Wild tells him to never see him or his daughter again. It seems we continue the mature story telling by having a character arc devoted Simonchu’s redemption and how he has to win the trust of his niece, who understandably hates him.
And I think it’s heavily implied that she’s psychotic… What. The. Fuck.
No, don’t get me wrong. I say what the fuck in the mind-blowing sense. It’s like CWC had read complaints and, instead of rejecting them, took them and ran with it. The jokes about her being evil? Well, lookie here.
Well, Simonla puts a stop to all the hullabaloo and points out that Simonchu was merely forced into helping his trainers murder Simonla, thus being a victim of circumstance. Heck, she even says that he wasn’t that far into killing her since he got caught before the Voltorb was put.
Simonchu brings up the pain he went through. Being forced to fight for Evan and his friends and placed in their collection. In a way, he’s to the Sonichu story what Bucky was to the Marvel universe. He was forced to be their Winter Soldier. He makes amends by giving the group both a fossil and a Razor Claw. Wild hands the latter to Angel, who then gives it to her boyfriend Reginald. Who is a Sneasel.
You can see how well this will end. He ends up evolving into Weavile and trashing Angel’s house. Angel insists that there is still good in him, but Reginald tells her that he is no longer the Reggie she loved and leaves.
Back with Simonchu, he’s bonding with his niece and the fossil he handed to the Museum is finally analysed. It’s actually a Bananasaur.
…
BANANA!? BANA-BANA-BANANA!? Well, Punchy seems to understand the Bananasaur’s gibberish and he becomes bros with him after Bananasaur evolves. Punchy brings the newly evolved Bananasauros home to his wife’s dismay. If she can’t take it, she leaves. Bananasauros ends up having children via Ditto, using a nice theory as to how the Ditto can reproduce with almost every other Pokémon. Also Punchy and Bananasauros have a fight. Layla then leaves (after eating Bananasauros!) and meets up with Reggie, who seem to hit it off and Bananasauros undergoes some training.
I gotta say, it’s pretty fun and I recommend you read it, but it does get a little rushed. We do get a hint that we’ll be seeing some Mega Evolutions, as Magi-Chan points out that he’s locating the Sonichites and Rosechites for Graduon’s return.
Our next chapter has Sonic meet with Sonichu again. Apparently Silvana’s playing him? I dunno. In the midst of the catching up, we see a flashback to a time where Robbie and Cera end up facing a bully. A bully who ends up attracting the attention of a Jerkop as he makes out with a boy.
Yep, the Jerkops are back and they have a solid drive: no love in the world of Graduon. Cera then evolves after beating the Jerkop… Guess it’s like getting your Cutie Mark. Speaking of, Robbie ends up being Roberta as he too feels like a woman. I guess it kind of makes sense with Roberta being empathic.
Thankfully Crystal helped prepare Sonichu of the change and now we have her just casually popping in instead being the hero of the world. Sonic couldn’t believe that Chris-Chan is Crystal but with the medallion, he finds that, yes, Crystal is indeed the Electric Hedgehog hero that saved CWCVille.
We have a flash back to how Chris-Chan became Crystal. Not only that, but she found a Sonichite. Not only that, but so did Sonichu and Rosechu. Kinda irks me that they Mega Evolve right off the bat when we see that Mega Evolutions require the hearts of the Trainer and Pokémon to be one (like many other things), but given how they live independently, it kinda makes sense.
And it seems that there’s a lot more catching up to do as we end our chapter afterwards.
Well, I gotta say, this issue surprised me. I absolutely love it. I think I already said my piece on it. It’s good, it redeemed itself, and I say go read it.
There’s another part that’s made, so I will eagerly read that. Catch ya on the flipside.
