Warning: Contains Spoilers forDeadpool #5!Deapoolis nothing if he’s not making meta-references. Whether it’s about DC,X-Menmovies, or even Ryan Reynolds and Deapool’s treatment in the MCU, the Merc with a Mouth is always ready to crack a joke about another medium, just to get a laugh out of the fans. Recently, he’s been making a lot of references to anime and manga - and it seems the references don’t just start and stop with him.
Anime is a perfect breeding ground for jokes from someone like Deadpool, with its over-the-top emotional moments and fantastically intricate superpower systems. But inDeadpool#5 by Cody Ziglar and Andrea Di Vito, Deadpool isn’t even the one to make a meta-reference.
The joke comes from none other thanTaskmaster, as he referencesDomain Expansions from the popular anime/mange ofJujutsu Kaisen. This shows that Deadpool and anyone near him in his latest self-titled series have become the Marvel ambassadors of anime.
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Manga is the twin of comics, and Deadpool, knowing that his readers often read both styles, is trying to bridge the gap with his comedy.
This certainly isn’t the first time that anime has been referenced inDeadpool. In a quick joke straight to the readers reading the comic, Deadpool once told them thathe wanted to be Hokage, in a reference to the popular animeNaruto.EvenChainsaw Manwas referenced in an R-rated waythat completely brutalized a character. Deadpool will never miss a joke, and with the increasing popularity of anime and manga, these mediums are just his next targets.Manga is the twin of comics, and Deadpool, knowing that his readers often read both styles, is trying to bridge the gap with his comedy.
One of the most important pieces of Deadpool lore in this regard is in relation toDeadpool: Samuraiwhere Wade Wilson gets melded into a completely different genre andDeadpool becomes a manga character. This kind of experience for a meta-character like Deadpool wouldn’t just go by the wayside in later continuity. It seems that his experience in a different medium has stuck with him and is bleeding into his very storyline.The entireDeadpoolcomic is becoming meta, as even some of the side characters who aren’t gifted with meta-awareness, like Deadpool, are breaking the fourth wall.
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The fact that Taskmaster is the one to make thisJujutsu Kaisenjoke reveals that this new anime-form of meta-awareness really is growing beyond just Deadpool.As an anime ambassador, Deadpool has practically created an embassy of ambassadors in Marvel Comics.While Taskmaster may have gotten in a good reference this time,Deadpoolis still the central figure who keeps the fourth wall tumbling down - in classic anime style.
Deadpool
The merc with the mouth first appeared in an issue ofNew Mutantsin 1990, and since then has gone on to get his own series and a massive cult following. With his incredible powers of healing and regeneration, Deadpool was initially depicted as an X-Men villain but went on to become an anti-hero. After getting his own movie series starting in 2016, the third Deadpool movie finally brings the wisecracking, fourth-wall-breaking character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
