MegaTokyo, 17 years later

@Tomboy_Supremacist dredged up some core memories and I suddenly remember reading a lot of MegaTokyo when I was a young weeb.

For anyone unfamiliar it was a webcomic started in 2000, and like most webcomics of the time it was for nerds and about g*mers. This is the first panel:

They got off the ground when penny arcade threw them a link, and soon amassed an army of young weebs. Most of us thought Fred aka Pyro was in or freshly out of college, but it turns out he was 35 god darn years old when he drew that first comic.

The story was endearing at first, but after a few years the writer left and gave Fred full creative control. The themes veered away from gaming and went full tilt into proto moe.

Fred, who would have certainly ed out, was a mega weeb. He learned japanese to play dating sims before these were ported regularly. His influences were girly anime by CLAMP, specifically Chobits.

Nothing happened in the story since 2006. The plot synopsis is here:https://megatokyo.com/story and it's incredible light on any kind of story.

He makes $2500/month on patreon and has been delivering an average of 5 comics a year, backgrounds not included:

The story was supposed to be about 2 guys stuck in Japan, which turned into a wish fulfillment underage dating comic for Fred. In about 17 years maybe a month of in-comic time appears to have passed, and his art seems to have regressed after peaking in 2005 or so.

What 20 years if experience looks like:

I was hoping there would be forums and subsequent drama but the forums are hella dead. Anyone else read this trash??