General Info
Sakana No Sadness is an online humor/sci-fi graphic novel (i.e. Web comic). It updates at a rate of one page per week on Mondays. The latest comic page is always diplayed on the home page of the site, and updates can be followed by bookmarking sakanacomic.com or by subscribing to the RSS feed, which allows you to be notified of comic updates and news announcements as soon as they appear.
Note that the content of this comic is rated Web-14 for sexual themes, disturbing situations, and some violence.
The Story
Hideo, a brilliant yet socially inept and reclusive shut-in, has not left his parents' basement apartment in 13 years. To combat his loneliness while still avoiding all human contact, he has spent years constructing a female humanoid robot to be his de facto girlfriend. The completion of Hideo's steely sweetheart is an exciting event... that is, until she awakens and behaves completely differently from the way he programmed her.
Not keen on the idea of serving forever as the plaything of a perverse basement-dweller, Hideo's would-be mechanical mistress takes charge of the bizarre situation she's been wired into. When she forces Hideo to face his worst fear - the outside world - things start to get ugly, and fast. Soon enough, Hideo finds himself embroiled in the devious plans of an organization of sinister yet eerily familiar people, whose ultimate goal has implications not just for his own island nation, but the rest of the world of tomorrow as well. It's a darkly humorous adventure in which one man sees his wildest dreams come gloriously true and crumble spectacularly at the same time... the only upside is that they may have just been childish fantasies all along.
The Author
My name is Simon, and this is my Web comic. I'm a creative soul with a passion for art, design and cartooning. Sakana No Sadness is my third online comic series, and my first in the form of a graphic novel. I believe that humor is essential in everything I make, and this comic inherits its quirky and somewhat satirically comedic side from some of my previous stories. Whether you're a first time visitor, a long-time fan, or anything in between, I hope you'll stick around and enjoy Sakana.
For links to my other artwork and comics, plase see the links page. To email me for any reason, come over to the contact info page.
F.A.Q.
Q: You say this comic updates Mondays, but there's never a new page waiting for me when I stay up till midnight on Sunday, or on Monday morning. So when does it really update?
A: The precise time when each new page appears on the site is Monday at 5:00 in the morning, my local time (North American Eastern time zone). I chose this exact hour so that no matter where you are, the page will appear at some point on Monday. For example, if you're in the Americas, the it will be there for you when you wake up. If you're in Europe or Africa, you'll see it by late morning or towards noon. If you're reading from Australia, New Zealand or Eastern Asia, you can enjoy it with your dessert after supper.
Q: What is the meaning of the title Sakana No Sadness?
A: One of my own readers, E.L., once explained it very nicely for those curious:
Sakana is the Japanese word for a meal that goes well with alcohol, but as that meal is usually fish, it has also become the word used for fish.
The "no", I believe, is actually a particle which is used to link nouns together making the former own the latter.
Sadness is English, you should know what Sadness is.
In Japanese the title would look like this
"魚のサードネス。" and literally translates to "The Fish's Sadness" or "Sadness of the fish".
The title may or may not have a deeper significance aside from its literal meaning, but I think it's pretty deep and meaningful even at first glance, don't you?
Q: Why do some comment posters have "ranks" and how do they work?
A: To encourage discussion, this site's commenting system awards ranks (in the form of a 1-5 star rating, but with a twist) to readers based on their number of posts. Your post avatar will become fancier and more eye-catching the more you comment! Please keep in mind that the way this works is it simply counts the number of posts by the same name, so if you post under multiple names or decide to start using a different one, your rank won't carry over.
