Inspirations

Let's not beat around the bush. It's gonna be a while before Tough Breaker is a real tangible thing. So as a cop out, here's some stuff that inspired Tough Breaker in one way, shape or form! That's almost as good, right?

JoJo's Bizzare Adventure - Part 4

Back in 2012, I played a game on the Xbox Live Arcade called 'Fighting Vipers'. It was a port of a SEGA arcade cult classic fighter and while it got me into fighting games, it also introduced me Ghengis Bahn the 3rd. I remember looking at him and thought 'Whoever created this dude is a genius!'. Sometime later I went down the rabbit hole and learned about The Bancho, Japanese Delinquent gang leaders and absorbed as much media about these cool dudes I could. It eventually lead me to something that I was somewhat familiar with from years ago. A little manga from the 80's called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Maybe you've head of it?

And The Grip It Had On Me Was Borderline TOXIC. Anyone who knew me at the time could vouch for that. I think it might've even caused a rift with an old friend of mine.

Anyways! JoJo's Part 4 - Diamonds Are Unbreakable! It's up there in my top 3 favorite parts, with 2nd place being Stardust Crusaders and 1st belonging to Battle Tendency! Taking the Stand battles of Part 3 and doing away with the globe trotting adventures in favor of a small town story, we see Josuke Higashikata and friends as they run into trouble at every turn. An escaped serial killer, Stand Arrows, extreme games of rock paper scissors, a cartoonist with a massive ego and an alien. And that's all before we get to Yoshikage Kira!

I very much fell in love with the small town setting of Morioh as I've always had a thing for stories set against somewhat static backgrounds, whether they be big cities or middle of nowhere towns. Stuff like Napoleon Dynamite's rural Idaho, Beavis and Butthead's Highland or Mission Hill's Cosmopolis (more on MH later). So it was a big deciding factor in having TB take place in a fictionalized version of White Plains, NY and a lesser extent to some of it's surrounding counties and townships.

Plus there's a charm to having a big city of characters! Y'never know who you'll bump into next!

Kongoh Bancho

You ever read that crap series The Seven Deadly Sins? You ever wondered if the author did anything that was actually, y'know. Good? Well as it turns out that Nakaba Suzuki did something good! Very good in fact! So good that the kids would call it 'peak'!

Akira Kongoh is a 10 ft slab of a Delinquent who's on a quest to defeat a syndicate of evil Superowered Bancho who are hell bent on taking over Japan! Along the way he'll meet all sorts of gimmicky Bancho, have cool fights, eat some pudding AND THAT'S IT!

KB might be an all timer, but it's definitely not the most complex or serious story out there. And there's nothing wrong with that! I'm a firm believer that sometimes less is more. I mean for fuck's sake, one of the super Bancho is literally a giant great white shark in a jacket.

Sometimes that's all you need.

Scott Pilgrim (Series)

A controversial entry on this list for sure, but please. I ask that you hear me out first. So please refrain from fire bombing my house for now.

Let's get this straight: Scott IS a scumbag. Even when I read the story all the way back in 2010 in the lead up to the movie, I knew this very well. But I'd also argue that's the major backbone of the comic. It's about Scott realizing that he's not the man he could be, so he works his hardest to fix his life to keep things on the level with Ramona whilst fighting off her Exes.

And if you can't fuck with Scott, I completely understand and respect that. Because I'll be honest…I Still See It As A Stonecold Classic, Issues Aside.

The fights are cool, I love Bryan Lee O'Malley's indietronic stylings, the dialog is wonderfully corny and Scott's story of bettering one's self is very strong and resonates with me personally. NOT BECAUSE I DID SOMETHING GROSS LIKE DATING UNDERAGE KID, but because I was something of an asshole kid in high school. I didn't get into fights or anything, but I was certainly a cunt for my age and seeing Scott getting his shit together gave me hope. I can't act like it didn't do something for me.

And it goes without saying…all the video game stuff really sucked me into the world. I'M SORRY, I'M NOT MADE OF STONE. But if the comics and movie didn't do it for you, the Netflix anime might! It does a lot to recontextualize the events and even develops the Exes to be more than one note characters. So at least give that a try.

Misc. Fighting Games

Ok so, I'm cheating here a little bit. A lot of fighting game stuff influenced me, so much so that I'm gonna list some of my faves and how they influenced me. Fuck you, I'm allowed to skrimp here and there.

• Fatal Fury (series): Real Bout 2 especially, easily the height of the series. Love the bombastic energy it has, love Southtown as a setting and of course my MAN, Rick Strowd, is in it!
• King of Fighters: Sister series to Fatal Fury, SNK really went crazy with some of the character designs across the games. Justice for my boys in the USA Sports Team.
• Fighting Vipers: I don't think I'll get as crazy with the character designs as SEGA did with Vipers, but man they made some stone cold bangers who deserved more. Shoutsout to Bahn again.
• Rival Schools: TB might not be in High School anymore, but shoutsout to an icon of the genre. Here's hoping we see more of it in the future.

Mission Hill (TV Series)

What an eclectic bunch of this page, eh? We've got two shounens, a shounen inspired story, a fighting game series and we cap this section off with a cult classic animated sitcom from the late 90's/early 2000's. Truly I have a taste of kings.

Mission Hill is about the life and times of Andy French, a slacker 20 something year old cartoonist with big dreams who gets brought back down to earth when his parents decide to dump his brainiac younger brother Kevin as the folks move out to Wyoming. What follows is a season of adventures throughout the city of Cosmopolis as Andy tries to find himself as he bounces between jobs, an on-and-off again relationship and dealing with his sheltered little brother.

It ran for one season, originally airing on the WB before finding it's cult status via Adult Swim. So how does this inspire Tough Breaker?

Point blank, I loved it's vibe and setting which played a big factor in changing TB from being another high school based story to being set in college with appropriately aged characters. Plus the world felt so meticulously detailed and lived in. When they were developing the show, the showrunners literally mapped out an entire city, fake brands and even routed out city bus maps and times. I LOVE that kind of detail.

I'll probably never get to THAT level of detail with Tough Breaker's world, but I get pretty close sometimes, especially with the maps of Bright Plains and Fukatsu. Also I liked the snappy dialog that didn't feel forced or awkward. Just folks living it up in the city!

Anyways, if you're interested in giving the show a shot, it's pretty easy to find nowadays as it's one of those shows where the rights holders just don't care about it. It's up on Youtube, you can find it on the Archive. Hell, here's a link to the fanmade 720p AI Upscale that adds back in the licensed music that was cut from the DVD release (it's really noticable on the Real World episode). Enjoy your trip into Cosmopolis!

Honorable Mentions

I like a lot of stuff. And a lot of stuff influenced Tough Breaker. Unfortunately not everything I liked influenced TB enough to warrant a top spot on the list. So here's some honorable mentions (Because I Haven't Rambled On Long Enough Yet).

Sea Tiger

If you've followed me for long enough, you know that one of my special interests since 2018 has been Hong Kong manhua, comics made out of the named city. Duh. A lot of it started through my deep dives into infamous (to us westerners) series such as the large amount of officially licensed KOF works as SNK did big business in China thanks to how cheap the Neo Geo was in comparison to other arcade boards. But eventually I broke out of that cycle and delved further into the homegrown series like Dragon Tiger Gate, Storm Riders and so on.

And it was through this that I came upon my favorite series of HK originals. A story about a man and his superpowered war against an evil shadow organization that not even the world governments would dare to fight against. If you know me, then you know what I'm talking about.

So if it's one of my faves, why is it in the honorable mentions tier?

Well that's because recently I've finally began to actually read the comic via scuffed Google Translation. Might not be the best, but it's a step up from trying to guess the plot beats from visuals alone. And boy howdy, it's some edgy 90's schlock.

Like it's not a terrible story or anything, but it's writing is very of the era. Lots of immature swearing, needlessly edgy kills and uh…stuff that I'd rather not mention out loud. Like to give an example for the first two, some characters will literally say stuff like 'I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP, MOTHER FUCKER' and there's a scene in the first series where one of the villain blows up a subway car by ripping a huge fart in it and explodes it by flicking a cigarette butt into it.

But another reason Sea Tiger gets honorable mention status is because the power scaling is some WILD bullshit. In fairness, they do explain the Magnetic Rotation Field well and there is a hard cap for how strong someone can be, but it also feels very making shit up on the fly. There's a fight in Sea Tiger 2 and the caption box says something to the effect of 'Soandso hit Whatshisname with the power of 5000 Big Bangs!!!' and I'm just sitting there like…SHOULDN'T HE BE DEAD THEN??

Also a lot of the big power moves are just a punch or kick with some kind of flowery name to make it sound badass. Like, really. What's the difference between Orca's Killer Whale Fist and Sea Tiger's Blasting Punch besides name? NOTHING. It's just a big damaging punch!! THAT'S LITERALLY IT!!!

Issues aside, Sea Tiger is still a favorite of mine. More or less a guilty pleasure nowadays.

And while it's influence on Tough Breaker has died down significantly, there's still a few things I've aped from Sea Tiger. Namely how some characters grow stripes or some kind of design pattern when they use their power (see Tiago's Excel form and Inez's necro pattern). And for as bullshit as the Magnetic Rotation Field and the power scaling is, the hard cap it has did influence Vigor's own caps and restrictions.

So yeah. I don't know how to end this segment, so let's move on.

Homestuck

Ok, now this one is kind of funny in hindsight because honestly…there's not a whole lot much of HS in Tough Breaker. Sure, I liked Homestuck back in the day, still have an appreciation for it now. But TB and HS couldn't be on further opposite ends of the storytelling spectrum.

Homestuck is this big, meta contextual narrative hobnobbery about kids who play a game to become gods to form a new world with Shakesperian levels of writing that's all about everything and nothing at the same time.. Tough Breaker is about two friends going to college in a world of fighting and shounen battle manga bs with our main protagonist trying to shake the demons of his past. What kind of impact could Homestuck have had on Tough Breaker?

Well, there is one thing. Quite honestly it's something I think everyone should take away from HS, even if it's not your cup of tea. And that thing is this; No matter what kind of story you're working on, whether it be a basic adventure title or some gigantic epic you've spent years of your life crafting, there will be an audience for what you're making. So don't be discouraged. Just shoot your shot and they will come.

And uh, I may have based some characters in TB off of my faves from HS…Don't Judge Me, Judge Judy.