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[Comic] Baraduke 2 promotional mini-manga

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Here’s another scanlation for a short, obscure video game comic! This time it’s for Namco’s arcade space shooter Bakutotsu Kijuutei: Baraduke 2.

The original Baraduke was released in 1985, and its premise of a spacesuit-clad action hero who is revealed to be a woman predates Nintendo’s Metroid by a year. That hero, Kissy aka Toby Masuyo, does not appear in Baraduke 2 (although the UGSF timeline published later retcons that she did); instead the player 2 character Takky—named for designer Yukio Takahashi—graduates to player 1 status in the sequel, and she is accompanied by new character Hommy. This isn’t super relevant to this manga, but I thought I’d give you the background because the identity of the main character is left ambiguous in the text.

Anyway, this manga was published in Namco’s official PR magazine NG: Namco Community Magazine, in the September 1988 issue, to promote the release of the game. The credits for that issue list Jun’ichi Ishikura as illustrator, which I think means he drew the comic, and I have assumed that he also wrote it. His other works include a Bomberman gamebook and a series of instructional manga.

The manga is brief at 4 pages, acting as a prologue and setting up the context for the game’s events. Dialogue is sparse, leaving space for some cool, dramatic action panels. It’s intended to be read in standard Japanese right-to-left format. I’ve left sound effects intact in the art, with captions for approximate equivalents.

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https://mega.nz/folder/AZ4wEZAI#trFkc8kbkgaVblsLMED3fA