Pokemon-th - A fan art retrospective by Ed Dyer -

Like many who grew up in the 80's and 90's we had pretty much an open buffet of pop culture to enjoy, for us it was a time when the internet was only just becoming available as the first dial up modems we're making their way into our homes, mobile phones (if any of us had them) could at best, play a grainy Gameboy display version of "snake".

 So television was king, not just for TV shows (which I'll get to down the track) but video games. In particular Pokemon burst onto the scene into the cultural zeitgeist and has been with us ever since.

So without further ado here's Pokemon-th counting backwards from #151 from the first version of Pokemon I played as a kid here's Mew and Mewtwo!

#151

Wearing pink is so 2005...

My brother was more into the game than I was, but I do remember Mew. Mysterious, bizarre and, like the majority of the smaller characters, pushing on the kawaii scale (a word I learnt when I attended the 2013 ISCA convention) 

Mew seemed to get top billing as the ultimate, but I still think Mewtwo is cooler.

#150

Mewtwo to me at least, felt like a cross between Frieza from DBZ and...

Hippety Hop from Looney Tunes.

Well that's it for today's Pokemon-th, tune in tomorrow for #149 and beyond...   

The Commish: Majin Vegeta verses Goku fan art collage montage piece

Youtube was a fantastic resource for inspiration with this one, it was also a nice trip down memory lane.

I get some awesome commission requests. This is a work in progress I got asked to do from a fellow DBZ fan with some awesome classic anime taste.
I figured it was high time I showcased some of my side projects and that it's not all about the caricatures, though the caricatures are fun I love to branch out a bit. 
The piece is comprised of several separate smaller stand alone cartoons drawn in slightly differing styles.

Dragon Ball Z in 5 seconds

A brief disclaimer to manga fans and anime purists: I am not a hardcore fan in any respect with regards to this genre. I understand a lot is lost in translation from Japanese to English and much is left out during the editing process. I am comfortable not delving into the source material any further than it has been consumed in its current form. I do not read manga as the reading format makes me sea sick. Thank you. ^_^

ON THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE OF DRAGON BALL ZEEE!!!

I got into Dragon Ball Z when it appeared on Cartoon Network sometime in the late 90's mid 2000's and I was hooked pretty quick the stories were fun albeit predictable the homage to western pop culture references abounded and the simple three act of a hero being beat down, finding new power and beating the bad guy was fun to watch, insofar as some of the simplest tasks in the show took up to 5 episodes to complete.  

The story centres around Goku a Saiyan, an orphan refugee from the planet Vegeta, which suffered a similar fate to the planet Krypton where he crashes to earth in a pod subsequently found by a farmer who raises him as his son- cut a long story short theres an Earth that's in a near constant state of threat of annihilation and Goku is the only saviour.

Would transform into a giant baboon by the light of the moon...

Ya know what I'm Saiyan?

The episodes began getting repetitive when this guy came along. Cell, at this point my interest in the show was beginning wane as mundane plot threads kept cropping up and the needless cliffhanging made the pace of the show tedious and a chore at times to watch and at a total of 458 episodes for all series concerned that is not so much a dedication but an obsessive compulsive disorder. 

Complete with goofy hat and painted nails, like the Pope if he was an emo at the Mardi Gras dressed like a giant
beetle.

And after watching about as many "next exciting episodes" which ironically would begin like a serial with a recap of the previous episode and intercut with this:

EEEEAAAARRRGGGHHHH NEED... MORE... FIBRE... IN... MY... DIET!!!

were scenes of support cast members, and other minor characters making cameos standing around exclaiming "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!"

Pika Low

Wonder when my subscription will arrive?

Don't mind me, just Krillin Time

This show still holds a special place in my heart as an awesome example Japanese animated fun and of pure marketing prowess behind the mantra " Find out what people like, give them a lot of it! ". It's the one reason you can never "Catch'em all" in Pokemon, sure you may accept the challenge but it's not as though the reward is worth it if you do :P

Do you really need this many characters and episodes to tell such a simple story??

AHEM... >_O

...Maybe it's Maybelline 

Maybe he's born with it

Also the show had kind of a weird subliminal undertone...

Maybe I'm just reading too much into it...