Getting Antagonistic

First, the worst news in the world. It looks like the final issue of Volume 6 will not be released this week after all. We’re hoping for next Wednesday, Feb 8th, but we’re not getting our hopes up until we see some shipping lists.

In the meantime, yet more concept art for Volume 7!

Today we’ll take a look at some of our bad guys and their tech.

Captain Takeshi Hayoto is the main point of contact through which Atomic Robo, the She Devils, and the reader will gain some understanding of the villains and their motivations in this story. He is a darker Kambei Shimada (no relation to Admiral Shimada). Bound to and driven by a code of conduct that is no longer relevant to the world, but which holds him to a particular path as surely as physical restrains could.

I think he is unique to the Atomic Robo Rogue’s Gallery in that he’s not so much a bad person, but a decent person put in an impossible situation. He has depth, unlike a certain dinosaur I could mention…

Hayoto wears the flight suit of a Yatagarasu pilot. It is a G-suit (something new in aviation at this time) and allows him to better withstand the high Gs the Yatagarasu are capable of pulling. As a Navy pilot he carries a kai gunto sword and wears a worn out but still serviceable hachimaki, which was made by his mother.

The Wegs Sez:

JAPANESE SUPER-PLANE! The Yatagarasu are the result of two maddening days spent drawing little sci-fi aircraft before realizing that a totally non-aerodynamic design would do a much better job of highlighting the weird anti-gravity tech being used by the bad guys. The Buckethead (as it is known in my internal head-canon) is part Korean War jet, part Zentradi Battle Pod, and part mechanical duck.

The pilot sits in the cramped armored “head” of the yatagarasu. He views the outside world through a series of monitors (only one is show in the cut-away) which are fed images from recessed cameras. The four primary cameras are located in the front lower hull of the yatagarasu “head”. The controls are part helicopter, part motorcycle, and a great deal of skill is needed to effectively operate the yatagarasu.

Air-to-air, air-to-surface, range finding, and optical sights for the weapon system are located under the “chin”. The yatagarasu mounts a single belt-fed Type 99-2 20mm cannon, which was common in Japanese fighters in the later parts of WWII. Like the first generation jet fighters that are being deployed in Korea at the time of our story, radar and primitive computers are being used to help aim the cannon -aiding the pilot to shoot where his target will be a few seconds into the future, making it easier to score hits. You can see a bit of that here.