{"id":143,"date":"2018-04-09T20:23:02","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T01:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/?p=143"},"modified":"2018-04-09T20:24:17","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T01:24:17","slug":"heavy-metal-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/2018\/04\/09\/heavy-metal-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavy Metal Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent years there has been a lot of talk of mixing heavy metal music (or the heavy metal ambiance) with Dungeons & Dragons.\u00a0 <\/span>James Edward Raggi, founder of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, has said in interviews that mixing the two was his goal with his RPG company.\u00a0 <\/span>People are even saying now \u201cthat\u2019s so metal!\u201d when a game or supplement hits their preferred high notes for the mixture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t see how Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal music could have anything to do with each other.\u00a0 <\/span>Any mixture of the two I can imagine would just be a confused mess.\u00a0 <\/span>Still, people these days are calling themselves geniuses for thinking of it.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s just one problem.\u00a0 <\/span>You guessed it – it\u2019s been done before.\u00a0 <\/span>Not only that but done better than I can imagine anyone doing it.<\/p>\n

In 1988 Hagiwara Kazushi started a manga called Bastard!! in the pages of Shonen Jump.\u00a0 <\/span>It tells of how the arch wizard Dark Schneider (still a cool name 30 years later) is released from magical imprisonment just when an army of orcs is marching on the city of Metalicana.\u00a0 <\/span>Dark Schneider wants to take revenge on those who imprisoned him for 15 years and then resume his brutal conquest of the world.\u00a0 <\/span>The trouble is, his 15 years of imprisonment inside a sweet-natured boy exposed him to the influence of that boy\u2019s soul.\u00a0 <\/span>Now the evil wizard is showing embarrassing signs of\u2026 decency.\u00a0 <\/span>Although he won\u2019t admit it to anyone, he\u2019s developed something of a conscience and helps the remnants of civilization defend itself from the ravaging armies of Kal Su.\u00a0 <\/span>Not only that, but Kal Su and his cohorts are bent on releasing the Goddess of ultimate destruction, Anthrax, upon the world.\u00a0 <\/span>Is Dark Schneider thwarting their plans because he wants to save mankind? Or is it because he doesn\u2019t want the goddess of destruction horning in on his conquest?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The manga is a lot of fun.\u00a0 <\/span>Great humor, excellent art and heavy portions of fantasy action make it worth reading.\u00a0 <\/span>There are constant references to heavy metal and hard rock and roll bands.\u00a0 <\/span>Spells, cities, characters and other things get their names from the Western music scene.\u00a0 <\/span>The fact that a wimpy, ineffective knight is named after Bon Jovi is just perfect.\u00a0 <\/span>There are frequent racy scenes with attractive women which fits heavy metal well.\u00a0 <\/span>The fact that it would offend people with politically correct sensibilities fits heavy metal perfectly.<\/p>\n

The influence of Dungeons & Dragons is seen everywhere in the pages of Bastard!!\u00a0 <\/span>The author\u2019s edition of choice was 1st edition.\u00a0 <\/span>Many monsters from the first monster manual of 1st edition D&D show up in dramatic fight scenes.\u00a0 <\/span>There are even side bars with text giving details of the monsters to the readers that match the write ups in the monster manual.\u00a0 <\/span>Dark Schneider tells a sidekick how he prepares his spells each day and it\u2019s clear Hagiwara had a Japanese translation of the game.\u00a0 <\/span>Magic items, spells and many other things from Gary Gygax\u2019 masterpiece are right there in the manga.\u00a0 <\/span>Not since Record of Lodoss War have I seen Dungeons & Dragons so clearly in Japanese entertainment.\u00a0 <\/span>Later on the manga starts showing the readers how the world of Bastard!! isn\u2019t Middle Ages Europe but actually hundreds of years after the fall of a technologically advanced human civilization.\u00a0 <\/span>Those who have been diligently reading their Appendix N books will know this once again brings the manga back to the roots of D&D.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve got the guts, Bastard!! is a fun, over-the-top manga that\u2019s just perfect for anyone who find themselves saying \u201cThat\u2019s so metal!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent years there has been a lot of talk of mixing heavy metal music (or the heavy metal ambiance) with Dungeons & Dragons.\u00a0 James Edward Raggi, founder of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, has said in interviews that mixing the two was his goal with his RPG company.\u00a0 People […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8,6],"tags":[26],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gearsonline.net\/fantasy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}