Good morning everyone,
Welcome back to There She Grows! Today’s review of “Bronze Skin Inc” was requested in mid-March by a Twitter user who was such a fan that they personally identified as a Bronze Skin employee. The pilot, “Shake My Giant Butt,” was released on July 24th, 2019. Bronze Skin is the work of Pedro Barreto and is completely free to read! (SIDE NOTE: Click here for an interview with Pedro, and click here for the earlier review of Skinwalkers Chapter 1.) Thirty-eight chapters have since followed the pilot. Brazilian creators like bmtbguy and Pedro are quite generous when providing free content to the size community. To which I say “Obrigado!“
Since this comic is free, it is rather difficult to harshly critique. If someone was to say “Oh my God! How could Pedro have made this decision! It totally ruins this series which I paid … zero money … to read.” then their complaint would rightly go over like a lead balloon. It’s not as if readers have to spend their hard-earned Brazilian real or American dollars or Japanese yen to enjoy this long-running illustrated story. (SPOILER ALERT: I recommend Bronze Skin.)
The plot is centered on the employees of Bronze Skin Inc. A tanning company which first offered to provide tans to save themselves from a hungry giantess! (As one does… 😉 )
Later issues drift away from the tanning company. Initially, Bronze Skin employees spend their time spreading tanning lotion over voluptuous giantesses.
However, the series shifted to explore a large number of magic and science-fiction themes. Comic book-style superheroes and traditional ghosts also played a role in the narrative. A few Bronze Skin employees were shown to have fantastical abilities and were destined for greatness. By the way, the owner appears periodically, but the action is firmly centered on the workers, not the owner himself.
A warning stating “This content is intended for mature audiences” is a little misleading. There was no nudity, no nipple slips or full frontal nudity. People kiss and grope each other, including two women making out. Yet, this is not hardcore pornography and the most risque interactions never rise above PG-13 media content, for those accustomed to the Motion Picture Association (MPA) rating system. However, some of the themes were rather dark including an African man being abducted into slavery and enduring horrendous maltreatment. Thus, the mature rating was warranted, but that does not mean this comic includes the hardcore sex that some people, like fans of ZZZ Comics, may want.
Additionally, and surprisingly, a fair amount of the later half of the series takes place within a giant woman’s body! One of the characters, Vincent Izidro,Furtado, has a most unusual ability to change himself into different types of human cells such as fat cells, muscle cells, nerve cells, etc. The many scenes deep within a person’s body should be appreciated by fans of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage. Those who subscribe to endosomatophilia take note!
Another not altogether unwelcome but still surprising addition was a repeating trope of structures forming around giantesses. At first, a sandcastle was built around a sleeping giantess. Later on a pinball machine traps a giant woman in a deadly contest. Others serve as stages for non-copyright infringing “Super Marco World.”
Much of the art was quite nice to behold. One cover blended Bronze Skin characters into famous Japanese woodblock prints referencing The Great Wave off Kanagawa and portraits made by Sharaku. It also included the mythological Tengu (seen below as a long-nosed winged creature). A Kappa appeared within the pages as well.
Furthermore, who could not be utterly delighted to watch a curvaceous giantess perform a dance during Carnaval?
Another aspect that should not be overlooked was the inclusion of conflict. That was great! The heroes must struggle against villains and fight to protect people they love. Such cannot be said of all size-fetish media and it was most welcome to see it here.
As already noted, Bronze Skin is recommended. However, that does not mean that it is perfect. The most significant problem was the text. The chapters typically have a large number of misspellings. British rock band The Alan Parsons Project was misidentified as “The Allan Parson Project.” (The horror! 😉 ) For the most part, the meaning of the words was understandable. However, in a few instances, such as the one below taken from Chapter 2, the mistakes were too much to decipher.
References were made to quati, a raccoon-like mammal, and sagui, little monkeys. Those terms were easy enough to decipher because the animals in question were shown, not just referenced. On the one hand, the unfamiliar words gives this work a unique feel by incorporating Brazilian culture. I appreciate that. Particularly when an explanation was given for us foreigners. The Boto-Cor-De-Rosa was named and then defined for readers who never heard the legend. Excellent!
Alas, in other instances, no explanation was given. For example, Mr. Bronze, the owner of Bronze Skin, was questioned by a thug. In response to a violent threat, Mr. Bronze said his “… father was a Cangaceiro!” Yet, no definition for Cangaceiro was given. Thus, the reader was forced to guess. Or Google the meaning which truth to be told turned up an answer in less than a second.
I’m not completely against using uncommon terms. I’ve made reference to “the lower 48” in my stories about Alaska assuming that readers would understand its meaning with minimal effort. (The lower 48 is a term, similar to “Outside,” used for the 48 contiguous states which make up the bulk of the United States. That excludes Alaska and Hawaii, the two most recent states admitted to the Union and the two most distant from the rest.) Readers should have to work a little sometimes and not always be spoon-feed.
However, I can think of several possible meanings for Cangaceiro. Maybe Cangaceiro meant an “abusive person” implying that the father was physically abusive and thus his son was accustomed to being tortured. Alternatively, maybe it simply meant a large, intimidating man so he was used to dealing with scary people. There were several possibilities. So, a definition was required. (For the record, Wikipedia claims that a Cangaceiro or Cangaço was a type of bandit in northeastern Brazil.)
Lastly, “arf” was used like “huff.” Instead of a person being out of breath then huffing and puffing they say arf. I’m only familiar with arf being something that dogs say. In the United States a dog says “Bark!” or “Arf!” In Japan they say ワンワン “Wan! wan!” My own dog, who was born in Japan, doesn’t say wan, but the noise he makes doesn’t sound like bark either. He is more of an arf’ing ワンコ a.k.a. doggie. Setting aside this brief digression into the nature of my canine, you can call him Solo dog, the atypical usage for arf wasn’t a showstopper. Nonetheless it did catch my attention as a puzzling choice.
Overall, the flaws were easily overwhelmed by the strengths. Fans of giant women should appreciate Bronze Skin. It can be found at Tapas or Webtoon.
That’s it for today folks. Next week’s review should cover a comic made by American cartoonist Robert Crumb. Until then, keep growing!
This review was written by SolomonG and is protected under Fair Use copyright law.
All Rights Reserved.
There She Grows 