Megatokyo

Megatokyo is an English-language webcomic created by Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston. Megatokyo debuted on August 14, 2000, and has been written and illustrated solely by Gallagher since June 17, 2002. Gallagher's style of writing and illustration is heavily influenced by Japanese manga. Megatokyo is freely available on its official website. The intended schedule for updates was for postings twice a week, but new comics are typically posted just once or twice a quarter on non-specific days. In 2011, updates began being delayed further due to the health issues of Sarah Gallagher, Gallagher's wife. Megatokyo was published in book-format by CMX, although the first three volumes were published by Dark Horse. For February 2005, sales of the comic's third printed volume were ranked third on BookScan's list of graphic novels sold in bookstores, then the best showing for an original English-language manga.
Set in a fictional version of Tokyo, Megatokyo portrays the adventures of Piro, a young fan of anime and manga, and his friend Largo, an American video game enthusiast. The comic often parodies and comments on the archetypes and clichés of anime, manga, dating sims, arcade and video games, occasionally making direct references to real-world works. Megatokyo originally emphasized humor, with continuity of the story a subsidiary concern. Over time, it focused more on developing a complex plot and the personalities of its characters. This transition was due primarily to Gallagher's increasing influence over the comic, which led to Caston choosing to leave the project.

History

Megatokyo began publication as a joint project between Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston, along with a few internet acquaintances. Gallagher and Caston later became business partners, as well. According to Gallagher, the comic's first two strips were drawn in reaction to Caston being "convinced that he and I could do ... bothering me incessantly about it", without any planning or pre-determined storyline. The comic's title was derived from an Internet domain owned by Caston, which had hosted a short-lived gaming news site maintained by Caston before the comic's creation. With Caston co-writing the comic's scripts and Gallagher supplying its artwork, the comic's popularity quickly increased, eventually reaching levels comparable to those of such popular webcomics as Penny Arcade and PvP. According to Gallagher, Megatokyo popularity was not intended, as the project was originally an experiment to help him improve his writing and illustrating skills for his future project, Warmth.
In May 2002, Caston sold his ownership of the title to Gallagher, who has managed the comic on his own since then. In October of the same year, after Gallagher was laid off from his day job as an architect, he took up producing the comic as a full time profession. Caston's departure from Megatokyo was not fully explained at the time. Initially, Gallagher and Caston only briefly mentioned the split, with Gallagher publicly announcing Caston's departure on June 17, 2002. On January 15, 2005, Gallagher explained his view of the reasoning behind the split in response to a comment made by Scott Kurtz of PvP, in which he suggested that Gallagher had stolen ownership of Megatokyo from Caston. Calling Kurtz's claim "mean spirited", Gallagher responded:

While things were good at first, over time we found that we were not working well together creatively. There is no fault in this, it happens. I've never blamed Rodney for this creative "falling out" nor do I blame myself. Not all creative relationships click, ours didn't in the long run.

Four days later, Caston posted his view of the development on his website:

After this he approached me and said either I would sell him my ownership of MegaTokyo or he would simply stop doing it entirely, and we'd divide up the company's assets and end it all.
This was right before the MT was to go into print form, and I really wanted to see it make it into print, rather die on the vine.

In May 2011, it was announced that Endgames was being revamped in a light novel format, with a story written by webfiction author Thomas Knapp, with four light novels planned. A short story "Behind the Masque" was also announced, and released on Amazon's Kindle Store on June 10, 2011.

Production

Megatokyo is usually hand-drawn in pencil by Fred Gallagher, without any digital or physical "inking". Inking was originally planned, but dropped as Gallagher decided it was unfeasible. Megatokyo first strips were created by roughly sketching on large sheets of paper, followed by tracing, scanning, digital clean-up of the traced comics with Adobe Photoshop, and final touches in Adobe Illustrator to achieve a finished product. Gallagher has stated that tracing was necessary because his sketches were not neat enough to use before tracing. Because of the tracing necessary, these comics regularly took six to eight hours to complete. As the comic progressed, Gallagher became able to draw "cleaner" comics without rough lines and tracing lines, and was able to abandon the tracing step. Gallagher believes "that this eventually led to better looking and more expressive comics".
Megatokyo early strips were laid out in four square panels per strip, in a two-by-two square array – a formatting choice made as a compromise between the horizontal layout of American comic strips and the vertical layout of Japanese comic strips. The limitations of this format became apparent during the first year of Megatokyo publication, and in the spring of 2001, the comic switched to a manga-style, free-form panel layout. This format allowed for both large, detailed drawings and small, abstract progressions, as based on the needs of the script. Gallagher has commented that his drawing speed had increased since the comic's beginning, and with four panel comics taking much less time to produce, it "made sense in some sort of twisted, masochistic way, that could use that extra time to draw more for each comic".
Megatokyo earliest strips were drawn entirely on single sheets of paper. Following these, Gallagher began drawing the comic's panels separately and assembling them in Adobe Illustrator, allowing him to draw more detailed frames. This changed during Megatokyo eighth chapter, with Gallagher returning to drawing entire comics on single sheets of paper. Gallagher stated that this change allowed for more differentiated layouts, in addition to allowing him a better sense of momentum during comic creation.
The strip is currently drawn on inkjet paper in pencil, the text and speech being added later with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. In March 2009, he began Fredarting, a streaming live video feed of the comic being drawn.
Gallagher occasionally has guest artists participate in the production of the comic.

Revenue

Megatokyo has had several sources of funding during its production. In its early years, it was largely funded by Gallagher and Caston's full time jobs, with the additional support of banner advertisements. A store connected to ThinkGeek was launched during October 2000 in order to sell Megatokyo merchandise, and, in turn, help fund the comic. On August 1, 2004, this store was replaced by "Megagear", an independent online store created by Fred Gallagher and his wife, Sarah, to be used by Megatokyo, although it later offered Applegeeks and Angerdog merchandise as well.
Gallagher emphasized in 2004 that Megatokyo will remain on the Internet free of charge, and that releasing it in book form is simply another way for the comic to reach readers, as opposed to replacing its webcomic counterpart entirely.

Themes and structure

Much of Megatokyo early humor consists of jokes related to the video game subculture, as well as culture-clash issues. In these early strips, the comic progressed at a pace which Gallagher has called "haphazard", often interrupted by purely punchline-driven installments. As Gallagher gradually gained more control over Megatokyo production, the comic began to gain more similarities to the Japanese shōjo manga that Gallagher enjoys. Following Gallagher's complete takeover of Megatokyo, the comic's thematic relation to Japanese manga continued to grow.
The comic features characteristics borrowed from anime and manga archetypes, often parodying the medium's clichés. Examples include Junpei, a ninja who becomes Largo's apprentice; Rent-a-zillas, giant monsters based on Godzilla; the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division, which fights the monsters with giant robots and supervises the systematic destruction and reconstruction of predesignated areas of the city; fan service; a Japanese school girl, Yuki, who has also started being a magical girl in recent comics; and Ping, a robot girl. In addition, Dom and Ed, hitmen employed by Sega and Sony, respectively, are associated with a Japanese stereotype that all Americans are heavily armed.
Characters in Megatokyo usually speak Japanese, although some speak English, or English-based l33t. Typically, when a character is speaking Japanese, it is signified by enclosing English text between angle brackets. Not every character speaks every language, so occasionally characters are unable to understand one another. In several scenes, a character's speech is written entirely in rōmaji Japanese to emphasize this.
Megatokyo is divided into chapters. Chapter 0, which contains all of the comic's early phase, covers a time span in the comic of about six weeks. Each of the subsequent chapters chronicles the events of a single day. Chapter 0 was originally not given a title, although the book version retroactively dubbed it "Relax, we understand j00." Between the chapters, and occasionally referenced in the main comic, are a number of omake.