Hello Devilfish!
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Hello Devilfish! is a first-person (or first-fish) account of a giant blue Japanese movie monster stingray’s attack on contemporary Tokyo and his tragic morph into human form. Using elements of Japanese shock-pop and the infamous Hello Kitty meme, the story is told in comic narrative from the stingray’s point of view as he gleefully creams Tokyo into rubble. The stingray is soon pursued by Squidra, a love-struck giant squid. She demands love; he refuses. In an epic waterfront battle, she traps him in a human-growth hormone bath that changes him into a puny human — a reverse metamorphosis — monster to man. Refusing to accept his humanity, the stingray acts like his former giant self while trying to find food, shelter, romance — and avoid the destructive rampage of his stalker squid love interest. Hello Devilfish! is told in a readable, comic narrative occasionally spiced with Manglish words. Funny and very readable, underneath the outlandish plot is a truly fresh critique of contemporary culture and mainstream literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The anarchist as social monster, scoffing at bourgeois values, is supersized into a 90-ft. "gigantor" blue stingray in this rapid-fire stomp through pop culture and Japanese monster movies. The titular creature, actually named Hello Devilfish! and also known as the "Marquis de Cod," sprays napalm breath along with caustic commentary on the hapless residents of Tokyo while fleeing the unwanted affections of Squidra, a 100-ft. cuttlefish aiming to usurp his turf and his love. Seeking to destroy "Big Lit," Hello Devilfish! proclaims his anti-book manifesto. Then an industrial accident shrinks him down into mere human form. Mistaken for a member of Blue Man Group, he wanders the Tokyo nightlife, sampling fast-food sea-slug sandwiches and cosplay bars, always dodging Squidra's grasping tentacles. Dakron (Mantids) tosses out a stream of cultural criticisms warped as puns ("You gotta fight for your Reich to party"), even as he admits there's no point in trying to upset our all-absorbing entertainment-industrial complex ("Nazi jokes are so 20th century"). Resistance may be futile, but this book at least makes it fun.
