Upsetting Day: Gal Cleaning (Patreon)

Wow, I haven’t riveted nails into my brain in ten minutes. Maybe eleven. New record!

Nice, should be pointy enough.

Yeah, that’ll go clean through the skull.

Good morning! Remember when a cutesy romcom devolved into the world's slowest sex crime? For real-life revenge? Don't worry, that's why we're friends. My wonderful memory, and your love of recreational torture. Time to recap comics' most left-field predator. Well, on the page.

Absolutely, not. Ignore Broke Rider, we have an abyss to trawl. Now, Gal Cleaning (or Gal☆Clea if you can be bothered) starts with a budding high school non-couple, and their pining third wheel. That's normally boring, and today it's demonic. While there's no good age for Gal Cleaning's twist, Japan's life expectancy clocks in at an impressive 85.3 (sea levels willing). Our leads have 70 years of therapy buzzwords ahead.

Wait, I recognize that suit.

But Samurai Flamenco isn't relevant today. It's a quality ride from beginning to end, instead of pliers for our soul's fingertips. I'm not about that.

Nice try, I see the idealism in your color palette. Evil Clown #37’s losing his spine to justice. Take the Indomitable Human Whatever back to Copetown. Now, on to publishing crimes.

For a minute, Gal Cleaning’s about cleaning with a gal.

What a delightful, unspoiled childhood.

This bottle blonde's our title Gal. Or Gyaru, if your religion condemns English dubs. Gal fashion dimmed and splintered in the real world years before Gal Cleaning launched, and this did not bring it back. Romance enjoys freedom from the dull present that sci-fi only aspires to. In manga, gyaru lives on as half-fetish, half-fantasy. Like an elf stuck in a dryer.

Her quirk? Living in filth.

Fun idea, honestly. Some of it’s even drawn with both hands. For fairness, here’s the best page in the run.

Most garbage in Gal Cleaning is literal. The nerd and spunky mannequin bond through fun tutorials for purging black mold (handy, depending on your roommates) and making bookshelves coherent (handy, if you're a future Twain Prize winner). The kind of lukewarm romance that inches on for 600 chapters. So the author got understandably pissy about cancellation eight chapters in.

See, Gal Cleaning has a quirk among publishing’s endless crimes: the target. This isn't just a crime by publishing. It's author Ramunemura Shuwata’s murder-suicide against editorial. As we all know, the healthiest response to firing is twelve chapters of protracted, mass market discomfort. Reader psyches were incidental to revenge.

Shuwata’s reaction got a reaction from the usual moral guardians. Like 4chan pirates:

The spiral begins in Chapter 9, which has 10 chapters. Let that go, there’s worse ahead. The SVU genre-drift starts when the third wheel confronts two delinquent—

I'm trying to open a hellgate. Do you know what hellflation is like? I have to punt kids off the L to traumatize anyone.

Holy shit, why haven't I covered Samurai Flamenco?

Well, other than infection by the times. As in our era, mostly. It seems that timeliness and critical sheen are like Sith holocrons: in exchange for your soul, you get...an iron lung? Your ass beat by teenagers? Why does anyone open Sith holocrons? What have generations of caped cackling produced but regimes with the longevity of milk? Even among Star Wars villains, the best two are gray and blue.

While cool and sensually alluring, compulsory bleakness gets myopic. That's one lesson of Samurai Flamenco, behind hours of heroic homoeroticism. The intentional kind, like Achilles, not the incidental kind, like public school Achilles. My homeroom insisted Patroclus was his roommate.

Maybe.

Samurai Flamenco is easy to explain, so it's odd that I'm the one doing it. But the fight's never over, even when it starts 500 words in. FLAMEN INTRODUCTION:

Here’s Masayoshi, the face of hope.

Hope’s a work-in-progress.

This might be hard to relate to, but our lead's obsessed with niche media. Specifically tokusatsu heroes, a genre known stateside as "that bug that kicks aliens, right?" Correct. Kamen Rider even has its own gold-star manga about a superfan that takes up real punching. That series kills too, but I'm running at sub-novel length today. We'll stick to Samurai Flamenco. Masayoshi's efforts at heroism are less Absolute Batfan, more…

Humbling.

Painful.

Public.

Too pure for our heathen Earth.

Don't let sermons or white rights rallies fool you: purity's overrated. Especially for your health. Seeking justice outside of splash panels kills you faster than tobacco or bacon. Even if you master Flamen Bleeding.

Samurai Flamenco scourges neighborhood vandals, ruthlessly bruising their knuckles, knees, and elbows. It looks a bit like real Dux fighting screenplay Dux. And Masayoshi still talks about justice the entire beating. Until the local teens back down, from mixed guilt, speech density, and lactic acid. It's like watching a less delusional Jesus.

To be clear: the battery’s funny on purpose, and halfway inspiring. Samurai Flamenco champions the pettily downtrodden, and nearly wrecks himself every time. When "umbrella retrieval" is a nail-biting near-death adventure, it's best to shift your heroic efforts to anything else.

But at least Masayoshi makes a friend.

They build a classic inter-sanity friendship. Friendship. Don't read too much into the dialogue and music and framing and the wild amount of time Goto spends in Masayoshi’s apartment listening to him talk about Garo spinoffs. Or meeting naked. This is Christian television.

There we go. Samurai Flamenco, a heartwarming slice-of life dramedy. You know, the kind of grounded material I'm normally into. You can see it in my back catalog.

Meet internet phenomenon Samurai Flamenco.

Huh, how about that. Progress! He even wins fights with human adults!

Able-bodied and everything. If you keep failing the same way over (and over)^22, eventually you learn to grab the axe and dodge. After delivering a FLAMEN MONOLOGUE near a camera, Masayoshi graduates to local crank. It seems audiences like fancy bile-free words every now and then (couldn’t be me). He’s finally Samurai Flamenco: protector of parks designed for crime and crime only.

Between friendship, idiot luck, and the grace civilization grants hot madmen, Masayoshi builds some momentum. Both as local maniac Samurai Flamenco, and a real-life variety show guest. How's a successful (e.g. solvent) TV personality fight airquotes-crime without being recognized? Easy.

By focusing more on the words before without. Masayoshi knows how much RAM he’s working with, and gives it all to the cause. I love him so much. He’s like Candide with a nicer DM.

While he’s less bruised now, I have sympathy for anyone dealing with variety panels for a living. That’s like a tumor that feeds your kids. I’m not saying the genre was born dead, but I’m typing it. Correctly. It is the Lord’s truth.

Then, per human tradition, a more famous hack tries to steal Masayoshi’s bit. Specifically the former Red Axe, a walking steroid looking to get his numbers up. A rare case of action gerontocracy.

Masayoshi deals with his childhood icon the hero way: getting the black beaten off him (you can’t even see it anymore) until pity, guilt, and pity kick in. The washed-up action star welcomes the admiration of a young, popular, 8% bodyfat star as a student. Not an acting student. A vigilantism student. He happily feeds Masayoshi’s madness for an ego boost.

And it helps. Stunt rolls and bicep curls are an infinite improvement on zero training. Now any pickpocket that works near bright red, monologue prone, locally-famous vigilantes is fucked.

There we go. Samurai Flamenco, a heartwarming Hollywood satire. If you keep trying, the universe will, through sheer odds and repetition, let you succeed eventually.

You get patterns. Time for a slightly upgraded Masayoshi. Maybe he’s graduated from variety hell to news purgatory. Calling variety panels the bottom of entertainment seems harsh, but at least VTubers learn a program.

That’s a new face.

And that’s a new approach. Meet Flamenco Girl, Masayoshi’s moral compass.

Masayoshi’s lawful good, so he doesn’t need a moral compass. Freeing his self-appointed sidekick to commit an LAPD whenever she’s onscreen. And sometimes off: in a lovely bit of Pavlovian sound design, we learn to associate bells with her stomping evil in the cock. These are all from one episode:

Naturally, said bell’s deployed to let us know when amateur vasectomies unfold offscreen. It’s delightful. I haven’t enioyed heels on balls this much since Janet. But love’s wounds heal, and sometimes dick wounds too.

Sometimes, I add jokes to screenshots. And sometimes I surrender.

All these German handshakes are tolerated for one reason: Masayoshi’s graduated to fighting real crime. Including his own kidnapping, a (strikingly prescient) city-wide online bounty on his identity, and a baffling number of dealers for a city this size. Samurai Flamenco is one idealist's journey from zero to serious personal danger. But he’s happy.

We're done escalating. Samurai Flamenco is Kick Ass on antidepressants. You can go watch it now, fully-armed. I write a lot every week, so you can catch up after you’ve watched it. Who knows how many in-jokes I’ve scattered above? I don’t, my hands are basically possessed.

On that note: don’t read Gal Cleaning. I wasn’t playing up how septic that shit gets. Imagine getting fired, and staple-gunning the storyboard to Irreversible on your boss’s door. Try taking some pens instead.

Ever think about Luke’s Dad? Soze’s scheme? Nostalgic snowglobes? Not giving hilarious thought leaders shit later?

Meet Samurai Flamenco, he’s on a roll.

And why wouldn’t he be? In a radioactive century, Samumenco (he has a nickname now) believes in himself and his neighbors. While being tv-attractive, which helps people retain complete sentences. We can all stop littering with Samurai Flamenco, or Flamenco Girl will shatter our grandchildren.

Someone should take that thing. Until then, Masayoshi gets to be police chief for a day. And stand near a real drug bust! Good for him. Through his stupid, stupid example, the city’s seen a big dip in crime. The average Shibiru City resident thinks “What would Masayoshi do,” and then does something smarter. But in Masayoshi’s spirit.

Anyway, that’s the ride-along. Next, that nutty Flamenco Girl what the flamenfuck?!

You can’t. You fucking can’t.

I saw this thirteen years and two world orders ago. I’m still segfaulting. “Guillotine Gorilla” is my reverse kill trigger, lulling me into an inert, drooling idiot.

This scene genuinely feels like losing your fucking mind. We’re seven episodes into a slice-of-life comedy. The most speculative element was Flamenco Girl living outside of prison.

Then Guillotine Gorilla. Who morphs into a jacked monster, Robespierre’s a cop, Robespierre’s a dozen more cops, and explodes. Taking a generation of weeb sanity with him. In short, Guillotine Gorilla achieves everything I aim for in life. Thank you, Guillotine Gorilla. Yes, Masayoshi’s meant to inspire me. And on good days, he does. But I want to be Guillotine Gorilla.

As someone who’s slipped in and out of his brain: this is the full asylum experience. This scene feels like day one in divorce court. This scene feels like taking drugs I still don’t know the name of. I remember it more clearly than my wedding or divorce.

Samurai Flamenco is just warming up.

If you’re watching this noise, skip this part.

Meet Samurai Flamenco. A sentai squad show about ennui.

Meet Samurai Flamenco. A thriller about failing democracies.

Meet Samurai Flamenco. Searching trashcans for food.

Meet Samurai Flamenco. Fighting the prime minister.

Meet Samurai Flamenco. In space.

Meet Samurai Flamenco. A slice-of-life comedy again.

This show is a nesting Trojan Horse. On the way to losing your mind, you can rebuild your faith in heroes/monkeys at large. But you will lose your goddamn mind. Last week, Sissyneck generously said I spin readers around blindfolded. I can’t claim that title, or credit for the concept. Samurai Flamenco is a viewer centrifuge.

I think it’s neat.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: John Dean, who was just starting to get invested in the incredibly deep romantic entanglements of that panties manga.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM