so this sort of thing was pretty par for the course in 2000 (South Park was just then making racism COOL again after all) but still kinda surprised to see so much. i only remembered these early strips being all 'how to draw kanji' not THIS

these early strips about slick starting a mens rights militia are kinda ironic considering tatsuya's later storylines with his feminist anti-porn vigilante group The Sisterhood

returning to the "joke but not a joke" machismo well a lot in these early strips. pretty standard stuff for 2001.

Seymour the god botherer is showing up more for some pretty gentle ribbing of religion. "christians are well intentioned but can be annoying" is as critical as sinfest ever got, but that was enough to convince most readers this strip had an overtly liberal viewpoint back then

never thought about this, but how old is monique supposed to be? i always assumed she was an adult and slick was... not really a kid but some sort of metaphorical man baby? But the size of monique's big charlie brown head is making me see her as like 14 or something here