What ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’ is to Mondo Owada; ’Apocalypse Zero’ is to Kiyotaka Ishimaru. In this essay I will-
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This post is entirely for my brother (and pretty much no one else) who showed me this screenshot of a manga that had turned up in his feed and sent it to me with the caption “Oh look; it’s your boi”
Now it could have ended there; just a sensible chuckle.
but.
Then I read it. and I can safely say: Kodaka’s bloody well read it too.
[NOTE: If you choose to look up Apocalypse Zero use your discretion: it has EXTREMELY explicit material (none of which I’ll show here) graphic violence, bodyhorror and sexual content]
Put it this way; if Taka had read it, he’d be Appalled with the level of mature content.
Now THIS very familiar looking lad is KAKUGO HAGAKURE
(no I’m serious, that’s what first caught my eye, his name is Hagakure; one similarity is a coincidence, twice however …)
Kakugo is a scarf wearing Kamen rider style hero (monomono-machine gift no. 28 anybody?) who has dedicated his life to protecting humanity as penance for his Grandfather’s war crimes and role in causing the apocalypse.
He holds himself up to an extremely high, (albeit sometimes old-fashioned) moral standard through single-minded effort and determination, and extolls these virtues to those around him.
He has, in pursuit of his goal, never had any friends and missed out on most childhood socialisations, making him stiff & blunt in conversation and naïve to people’s intentions.
and finally he feels so deeply he is frequently brought to TEARS
Bruh … I’m havin’ the weirdest sense of deja vu right about now…
~ This is 100% just a shitpost, not a dig or anything; Dangan is like 80% references (Sakura’s 'Ashita no Joe’ reference gets me every single time) and it just tickles me pink to have seemingly found an obscurer one in the wild like this. I couldn’t just keep that knowledge to myself - Where’s the fun in that? (personally I wouldn’t recommend Apocalypse zero- If you’re tempted to read it to see the Taka parallels; you’ve pretty much seen 'em all here.)
~
(Bonus: just cos it makes me laugh but he takes his shirt off a bunch. Any excuse to get his hams out he’ll take it. He is naked a LOT. He wears a speedo the rest of the time. Like here? ->
He did not need to do this to prove his point. It was almost completely unprompted. The dramatic bitch puts his jacket back on literally the next page, and now I cannot NOT imagine Taka doing the exact same thing)
