Indie comic sensation and Kickstarter's star creator, Jamie Me's B-Mecha is an extremely fresh take on the genre! Good-looking characters, smart snappy dialogue and EPIC kaiju battles, the comic has it all.
Writer: Jamie Me Art & Colouring: Neri Rearte Design, Lettering & Edited by: Archie Dait Age Rating: 15+ Where to get it: Add on as a reward for Start again - Sex and Superheros campaign. b-mecha cover Plot: In a futuristic Leeds, a British Mecha team tries to fight Kaijus and bureaucracy. In the lead is a hot-headed but brilliant pilot Michael and some sweet Kaiju-mecha action. No spoilers!
Story & Characters:
B-Mecha is a fascinating and fresh take on the Mecha-Kaiju genre. What makes it so?
Generous sprinkles of modern-day life things like how social media works.
A lot of pop-culture references from Brooklyn 9-9 to anime meme culture! You'll have fun when those things pop out.
Snazzy dialogue
Gorgeous artwork
Some awesome action and lettering.
The story revolves around Michael, the pilot of a mecha suit called Prizefighter and a particular Kaiju incident he's engaged in. The side characters are merely not just stand-ins, they are well-rounded characters. The conversations they have, sound very realistic and makes the characters very relatable. There's a bit of a commentary on how media handles things that form part of the plot, but overall it's a good issue with a lot of promise. If I have to nitpick anything about this book, we don't have a particular solid villian in the story, just glimpses of them, but hey when you get some awesome rock-em, sock-em robot action, you can't complain! and there's a lot of it.
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Art & Inspiration:
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The mecha suit in the story is very much a Gundam-inspired one. It seems practical and agile, as is required to fight a massive, fierce and fast Kaiju. Although the suit didn't seem to do much more than punching the Kaiju, it almost seems that it's by design. The focus is on how good the pilot is ( and the fact that he's an ace boxer ) as opposed to the suit. It's always fun to see some surprising features suites can have though. That's my only minor bone to pick with this book.
The art and colouring by Neri Rearte look absolutely gorgeous. Not just do the human beings look really pretty, but the world that's built looks stunningly beautiful too. Kaiju's design is really imaginative and humanoid, which makes the fights really interesting and fun. The detailing on mecha suit is quite awesome, the scenes of press-conference are quite realistic. A lot of art is anime inspired and rightly so! The scope and aspect of Kaiju & mecha look incredible as well, you get to know the size of them next to the everyday objects and regular people. Also, some single panel pages are drop dead beautiful. There's a lot that can be said about the world building through art and exposition is generally smart and adequate.
Final Verdict:
All in all, we would highly recommend this issue of B-Mecha and would ask you to keen an eye on the future issues as well. You can currently get B-Mecha as a part of an ongoing campaign - Start again - Sex and Superheros . It's also worth checking out Start again comic too!
