Annotated 4-10
I did not expect Taro to be a recurring villain. Our original 24-chapter outline didn’t even mention him, and he grew entirely out of our asking, “How can we make rescuing these kids harder?” and our general ideas about white-collar greedheads being bigger threats than traditional “yo ho ho pirates yarrr.” Like von Carnaj, he was designed as a mid-level challenge that’d give the heroes something to worry about for a chapter or two but be forgotten by the time we got to the fights with the real Big Bads, Harky and HR.
But we always tried to make all our characters interesting, and the idea of the brilliant child, almost but not quite as smart as he thinks he is, kind of echoes the themes we were exploring with Best. Plus, we’d already named him and his father after the creator of the video game where one guy eats everything. So as the story expanded, the idea of “Taro Rex” began taking root.
Wanna Wakka What a little shit.
Was going to say, “And so begins ‘Taro Eats Everything.’ “
Must be cheap gloves if a child’s teeth could do that.
Human jaws can apply a decent amount of pressure, so Byron reacting like that to an unexpected and hard bite, even through leather gloves, is entirely believable to me.
Unrelated, I’d forgotten the little turd did this. Sociopathic prick.
“The time has come!”
How do YOU know? You don’t even have a watch!
Well I fucking hate Taro Iwatani. So good job.
Not being sarcastic, he’s a villain and I have real feelings for him so that means, like strong ointment, the burning sensation and feelings of hatred means it’s working.
It’s too bad the characters don’t know what we do. Then they could kill the little bastard now and save a lot of grief later.
And so, in the end, the ultimate color-world-side villain was introduced in the group’s first mission together.
Better in every way than if you’d gone with “noble Gastonia must put down the bestial Savage Races,” even with as much nuance as you could pack in while still leaving Harky as the color-world-side villain.
It starts with teeth, it ends with giant-ass death rays. That’s some character development! :D
And von Carnaj… “KRAKOW”? Your roof-blowing explosion just goes “KRAKOW”? A villain with your flair for the dramatic shouldn’t settle for anything less than a “WARSAW”.
He’d be able to reach the sea more easily with a good solid GDAŃSK.
Except there’s no such thing as a “war saw” because a saw is really not a weapon of war. I mean, how’s that supposed to work? “Excuse me, Mister Enemy Soldier, could you please stand still for a moment while I saw your head off?” I don’t think so.
Is this the only instance of firearms and dynamite?
Together? Possibly. There’s dynamite in chapter 1 and Taro at the end has a pistol.