ISSUE GUIDE > ISSUE NINE
"If I had gone by appearance alone, I would have never thought it was you Emri.
But something else convinced me."
"Recognition"
Published March 2003
14 pages
Re<Verse date: April 26, 1023
Emri, Kouen, Shiro, and Souzoku are on a bus (in Souzoku's case, literally)
headed to Navyville. When they arrive, they meet a friend from their Violet
Town days attending the local college. However, she doesn't recognize Emri...at least, not at first.
ON-LINE EDITION
For details about what was changed for the on-line edition, go to the Revisions section.
NOTES
- A normal stethescope could barely be able to pick up ambient sound from the top of a moving bus. Let's just assume Souzoku invested in a high-grade bugging device.
- The kanji on the Akabeko sign is "akushoku," roughly translated as "eating bad food," or "eating repulsive things."
- On page 11, there is only one moon because it is covering up the other one. The very next page shows the smaller moon just barely poking out, indicating this small moon has a rather quick orbit around the larger one.
REFERENCES
- The K-Kat bus is a reference to the T-Kat busses that operate in and around Ithaca, NY, where the artist was going to school at the time.
- The Welcome to Navyville sign has signs for the Rotary, Lions' Club, as well as randomness "It's Pat!," "Navy University," and garbled junk.
- "ROTN HAUS" = "Rotten House." Not really a reference to anything.
- The DIK fraternity is from the movie National Lampoon's Van Wilder.
- Kigara's "I Love Navy University" tee-shirt is a variation on the I Love NY slogan.
- The Akabeko is a Tokyo restaurant from the animé Rurouni Kenshin.
- Posters on the Akabeko front: "Lambda Lambda Lambda rules" (Revenge of the Nerds); "Cast of Ways," derived from the bar Castaways, which is a happening spot in Ithaca; "24 on FOX," a series still running to this day on the FOX network; "Hi Rule" with the Triforce symbol (Zelda reference and bastardized "Hyrule"); "Hikaru LIVE at the Ayoia" (an Angelic Layer reference and Rurouni Kenshin reference in one--Aoiya is the Oniwabanshū headquarters in Kyoto); "Spa City Comics," a Saratoga Springs, NY comic shop which is the exclusive carrier of Unfamiliar Reflection comics; "Van Wilder" from the movie of the same name; and "Read 727," which was the first Unfamiliar Reflection spin-off having just begun publication at the time this issue came out.
- The Pippsi brand returns again. First seen on page 3 of Unfamiliar Reflection #1.
- The surfer dude on Kigara's fountain of tears is a direct rip of the gag used in several animé including Welcome to Lodoss Island, the two-minute super-deformed series that played after each episode of Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight.
- The frat house behind Emri has a sign saying "AGOSNL" in the front window. [Al Gore On Saturday Night Live] As this page was being drawn, the February 1st 2003 rerun of that episode was playing on television.
- The other window has a Crimson Christian ("CC") sticker.
|
