Webcomics of the Apocalypse: Misfile

Webcomics where men turn into teenage girls are really popular nowadays, and I'm not quite sure why....also, I'm not quite sure I want to know. It's probably Japan's fault or something.

Anyway, there are a ton of these webcomics out there, each an abomination against the human spirit in their own way. But since I decided I didn't want to commit suicide this week, I've decided to only take a look at one of them. And, as a sporting man, I choose to take on the mightiest among them, Misfile.

Begun in 2004, Misfile is the story of two high school students whose lives have been altered by... (come on, inner strength)...an angel getting high on pot and making a rather literal bureaucratic error. Anyway, one of them, Ash is now a girl and must learn to live as one until said pothead angel can fix the situation. Awesome.

Now, I haven't read many of these comics, but from what I understand, there are a number of tropes that these sort of comics are required by infernal law to invoke. There's the admission that a dude trapped in a chicks body would play with herself, there's a discussion on the proper use of bras, there's going into the girl's locker room, there's the use of boobs to control the minds of men...and so on....for over 1200 pages. Also, there are mind-shatteringly bad moments of supposed "humor." Fuck, let's be honest, just like every other one of these fucking transformation comics, it's just a flimsy chain of fanservice episodes that people mentally construct so that they don't have to come to terms with what they're spending their time reading. And in those rare instances where the strip tries to actually be funny, you'll wish they just did fanservice.

Actually, this comics does have exactly one other strand of story besides the adventures of the chick-who-was-a-dude, and that is the amazingly dull world of low-stakes auto racing. Sure, auto racing can be exciting...I guess, but this isn't. And it isn't an isolated occurrence.

I'm pretty sure there's an ongoing story, but it's been five years, and there's been essentially no forward movement. I guess occasionally some angels show up and say something ominous...or just dick around with the characters for fun.

As for the characters...well, you've Ash, the boy-girl, Emily the girl who is ambiguously attracted to Ash...and there are some angels and some other people, and I can't bring myself to care enough to finish this paragraph.

As for the art, well, one of my inspirations for this unfair and unbalanced attack was reading that Misfile was "notable for having above-average artwork." Yeah, I suppose given the utter dreck that populates most of the internet, it does have relatively nice artwork but, to paraphrase a Simpsons episode, while it has technical proficiency, it has no passion, showing no improvement over the five years it's been around, and having your typical derivative anime-wannabe style....well, except when his sense of perspective craps out.

Anyway, the larger point I'm trying to make is that this comic isn't very good. The art is competent, but that's the high point of the comic. It's well-written, but only by the standards of other gender-changing comics, and that's like saying that a serial killer who killed only four people is a pretty non-violent guy by the standards of serial killers. If you absolutely must read a a comic where a boy changes into a girl, perhaps because you lost a bet, or because of some sort of punishment from a higher power, then I suppose you could do worse than Misfile, and, my deepest condolences if those are, in fact, your circumstances.