#bakawebcomic

[rattyboyslim]

Yesterday (Feb.4th) marks the 4th year anniversary of @bakawebcomic, an old webcomic by Jon Duran and myself about an anime shop owner who lives his horrible life as an anime shop owner. Talking with him again, felt like drawing this for old time's sake.

Good to know I vastly improved on my art since then lol. I also tried to put as many references my, him, and Joseph have done since the end of BAKA (cosplay, podcast, letsplays, etc)

[rattyboyslim]

I wonder if there would ever be an appropriate time to share this, with it being a shared project. It has been a long time, and there’s a lot of good material that came out of it, so here it is. (I wanted to show two versions of the same page, cause they both held it’s own weight

SAKI

Written by Jonathan Duran & Illustrated by Jorge Salas

Around 2016-2017 Jon and I were infatuated with Japanese Yo-Kais (for me, it was because of Yo-Kai Watch) and wanted to make something more fantasy based than BAKA. We wanted something completely different from BAKA, which is why we made it black and white, and have more settings to play around with (BAKA mainly had one). I’ve also tried experimenting with it’s presentation. It was originally called BABY DICK, cause that’s what the main character suffers from (among much bigger things, as you see below), but we changed it to SAKI to make it more marketable.

Jon liked the idea of making a fantasy character that’s just a slobby, balding nobody who drinks his life away (something that we can all relate to). Without giving too much away (cause we didn’t go too far), a man by the name of Saki runs away from the upcoming Yakuza after not paying his dues (or something that got them pissed). He gave them the slip and found a huge casino that would be easy to hide. As he walks inside, he slowly notices the people who roam this very place, and finds out that it’s populated by Ghosts and Ghouls.

Thinking back, it reminds me of Spirited Away in terms of someone walking into this whole busy ordeal run by spiritual monsters, yet gets involved with it too. Jon didn’t like that movie, he felt that we could make something better. He himself wrote and came up with stories that were just as insane. I’ve seen people have ideas for a series, but this motherfucker actually has something to put down.

This was probably the most interesting project I’ve consistently worked at so far. Unfortunately, at that time, I teeter-tottered a lot within making projects, and we kept butting heads over what to do with it. I was very difficult to work with, and it has since haunted me to this day. He too was very hard to work with, felt difficult finding people that would be trusting enough to tag along with the process, which was interesting that I was the outlier.

[rattyboyslim]

Wanted to see what it was like having all of BAKA in the palm of my hands (or at least the bare minimum), so I compiled all the strips, and re-drew the cover and disclaimer, as well as making an “about the authors” page. what memories this comic has brought.

BAKA is about an anime shop owner who is living his nightmare..as an anime shop owner.

READ IT HERE

Created and written by Jonathan Duran (instagram.com/deadassmario)

Illustrated and co-written by me.