Pachishohma: Riza of the Bloody Gaze

Around May 2022, I started my own series of Pachimon-inspired parody illustrations, repurposing my fan art of pre-existing fictional characters, all popular pieces online but useless for professional reuse, and dubbed the endeavor as Pachishohma (Pachimon + Enshohma).

I've made nearly 40 entries in this series and plan to independently print some art books featuring these weirdos in early 2025.

In the meantime, I'll be sharing my Pachishohma monsters here as well, both as extra content and as an additional backup for the aforementioned art book.

We'll start with the very first, off-color entry into the series, starring Riza of the Bloody Gaze, alias Bloodsucking Eyeballs.

NAME: Riza of the Bloody Gaze

ALIASES / NICKNAMES: Bloodsucking Eyeballs; Eyeboobies; Vampire Giantess

SPECIES: Demonically-enhanced vampire / parasitic demons

GENDER: Female

HEIGHT: 10 meters (over 32 feet)

WEIGHT: 90 metric tons

EYES: Red / yellow on both pairs

HAIR: Picotee blue

HOMEWORLD: Earth (Universe 1052620221970-S)

AFFILIATION(s): Rainbow Rogue (ex-boyfriend)

Riza was a callous and spoiled vampire mistress of lesser nobility who was active in 16th century Spain until her unnatural undead life was forever changed by an encounter with The Bloody Gaze, a bizarre pair of floating demonic eyeballs who may have originated beyond our known universe.

True to their title, The Bloody Gaze invaded Riza's hunting grounds and started absorbing the same human peasants that the vampire routinely feasted upon.

This macabre conflict lasted for six gore-filled nights until Riza and her loyal human familiars cornered the monster eyes, attempting to destroy them, only to have The Bloody Gaze violently possess Riza, resulting in a horrific battle of wills and a physical transformation into a twisted combination of the three fiends: a half-demon blue-skinned freak with a new pair of jumbo eyeballs, protruding from where Riza's bountiful bust once resided.

For most villains, merging with a demonic force would be considered a dark blessing, abandoning one monstrous form for an even greater one. However, for a vain and self-conscious blood-sucker like Riza, a giant pair of ill-placed eyes was too embarrassing to handle, and soon she ran off into the nearby woods, but not before drinking her familiars dry in a violent tizzy.

As the centuries passed, Riza mutated further into a wild giantess who could now magically extract and absorb the blood of her victims through her mutant optics, earning her the moniker of Riza of the Bloody Gaze.

Sometime in 1976, Riza's global hunting leads her to meet and fall for a fellow weirdo with fatal powers, the interdimensional taker of literal colors known as The Rainbow Rouge. The two were a terrifying power couple of gigantic proportions until an epic breakup in 1999 when they became bitter enemies.

Why the falling out isn't known by mere mortals but, as one last slight against his ex-girlfriend, The Rainbow Rogue lured Riza to the mountainous outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where a local giant statue has effectively imprisoned her within the region to this day... Though Riza still finds wayward prey who tragically venture beyond the city limits.

Artist's Commentary: Riza is a reworking of Maximax, a bodacious Brazilian giantess, greedy hoarder of treasure, and occasional predator of lesser mortals, created by fellow artist of monsters and babes Animewave-Neo, as shown in the compilation piece above. Another major influence was the colorful if unsightly and crass demons-of-the-week from the 1972 animated series Devilman.

EXTRA ARTWORK:

Big Drawer

Big Drawer (Super Giant Heavy Industrial Machine) - Dekaranger, EP 18 "Samurai Go West" Japan 6/13/2004

Marato (The Robot God) - Power Rangers SPD, EP 18 "Samurai" US 6/11/2005

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The kaiju gimmick for 2004's Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger were the Heavy Industrial Machines: giant battle robots piloted by the show's various alien criminals in place of the usual method of growing Godzilla-size themselves, minus a handful of exceptions. The Heavy Industrial Machines were often distributed by Agent Abrella, a bat-like Rainian arms merchant and the closest thing to a main overarching villain within Dekaranger.

One of the more unique and clunkier robots was Big Drawer, a bigger-than-average Heavy Industrial Machine that could teleport away structures and people with a blue-green light ray, housing the captured inside energy spheres and further placed within its many drawers for safe imprisonment. Big Drawer was also armed with multiple flare-like missiles from the center drawer located in its center.

The pilot of Big Drawer was a blue-colored Batsuroid, one of the many middle-grade robot foot soldiers also sold by Agent Abrella throughout the series' run.

There was a white and gold Big Drawer II who showed up in episode 44 but I couldn't find any good screen-captures of that model so we'll save him for a later date (maybe) though you can see it in the concept art alongside its predecessor.

Big Drawer was later adapted into Power Rangers SPD with an admittedly cooler sounding name of Marato, The Robot God though this title ended up being just salesman ballyhoo from Broodwing, the equally greedy American adaptation of Agent Abrella.

RELATED LINK: Power Rangers SPD - Samurai (official episode upload).

PREVIEW: Pachishohma, Volume One

Inspired by the real-world phenomenon of Pachimon (unofficial Japanese bromide cards featuring dubious reworkings of pre-existing giant monsters), I've been taking all my past fanart illustrations and portraits to rework them as parody characters, inserted into comical photo-collage backgrounds, coining my process as Pachishohma (Pachimon + Enshohma).

I'm gathering all these gag monsters into an art-book for this coming October. With additional creature contributions by my friend Mark / Hawanja, who is also serving as an editor and co-writer, alongside author Patrick Galvan and comedian Banjo Wilkins as extra proofreaders, I'm presenting a preview of the book thus far below - enjoy!

One of Mark / Hawanja's contributions.

Baron Sting Loves Us All

Baron String (Young Boy, Gorma, and giant form) - Gosei Sentai Dairanger EP 1 "Let's Tenshin!" Japan 2/19/1993

Baron String (紐男爵) is a golden string-themed Gorma Minion and the first of his villainous kind to be seen in the series with his human form looking like a young boy wearing comically thick (and equally questionable by today's sensibilities) glasses.

An ancient Chinese sorcerer recently awakened after six thousand years of sleep, Baron String, went around Tokyo and captured various children with his rather nasty snake-like tentacles, temporarily devouring his prisoners, while also attempting to assassinate Ryo, the soon-to-be red leader of the mystical Dairangers.

Despite his efforts, the newly revealed Dairangers get the upper hand over Baron String, forcing him to regurgitate his hostages, all of whom run to safety as their gold captor then uses an Growth Bomb (a common device of The Gorma Tribe) to grow gigantic. Soon afterwards, Baron String was defeated by the dragon-based robotic warrior RyuseiOh.

If you're all wondering what's up with this article's bizarre title, that's because Baron String has a gimmick where he sings a lullaby, something to the effect that he earnestly loves his soon-to-be-slain victims.

While I'm not aware of any cultural significance behind Baron String's song, it gives him an interesting character quirk similar to ones given to colorful assassins seen in certain anime shows.

Baron String was among a team of returning Gorma Minions in the theatrically released Gosei Sentai Dairanger: The Movie (4/17/1993), resurrected from the dead by a deck of card-themed villain named The Duke of Trump (トランプ公爵). 

Baron String was later adapted into the second season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as Pipebrain, a monster created from The Golden Pipe Trophy thru Lord Zedd's evil magic. Pipebrain's single appearance was in episode 74, "Missing Green" (10/3/1994).

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Lastly, here's some concept art and magazine scans I found throughout Twitter: apologizes to those who originally uploaded these for I failed to save the source links.

Raijin God = Mecha-Daimajin?!

Raijin God - Sazer X EP 25 "A Recreated History" Japan 3/25/2006

Super Fleet Sazer-X (2005-2006) was a Toho production aping the Super Sentai and Metal Hero genres, though with a bigger emphasis on giant robot action whenever possible, likely due to Koichi Kawakita as the show's special effects director.

Raijin God (雷神ゴード) was the guardian deity of the descendants of the ancient Lighting Clan and was summoned by Lightning Shogun Thundera, the last living modern member of said clan (the cute alien gal in the tight blue pants), from the bottom of a lake.

The robotic giant was a fierce combatant, holding its own in a four-way battle with three other mecha opponents, until Thundera saw reason and sends God Raijin back into the lake, never to be seen again in the series, unfortunately.

As you can tell by God Raijin's appearance, choice of weaponry (The Divine Sword Godius [ 神剣ゴーディウス ]), and overall iconography (the parting of the waves), he is a direct homage to Daimajin and his 1966 trilogy of fantasy films. If you're a fan of Daimajin, be happy to know God Raijin represents the demonic status of divine retribution quite well as, again, he was a real bruiser in the fight and could have won without a scratch had he not been returned to his aquatic sleep.

The character was played by television suit actor Shinya Iwasaki who mostly does work in the 2000s Ultraman franchise based on what I could find.

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