Zap!: You Won't Believe it's Not a JRPG!

I've never actually played Final Fantasy VII, you see, I assumed that Nintendo would continue its dominance in the console wars, and it took me a few years to realize that the N64 wasn't going to make it. Which is a long way of explaining that I don't have the necessary background to think of Final Fantasy VII as anything other than the game that inserted a whole new set of painful cliches into the minds of impressionable youths that occasionally lead to disasters like Zap!

The eponymous Zap is amnesiac psychic with spiky blond hair. I believe these traits may make him one of the least original characters of all time. And his mysterious past? Yeah, he was working with the bad guys. The other characters include the initially distant love interest, the warrior alien (aka anime Worf), the robot with attitude (aka Bender-lite), the tech-girl, the androgynous evil guy who is clearly evil, and yet must be revealed as being evil, and the cat girl, for if the otaku of Japan have one dream for the future, it is that they will meld the features of the cat onto that of the schoolgirl, and that is why medical licenses must never be given to fans of anime.

But hey, a good story can make up for good characters, right? Okay, well, Zap! is the story of a ragtag band of rebels fighting an evil empire controlled by a cabal of evil psychics. So, you've got a bunch of derivative characters in a derivative plot. I'd talk more about the plot, but well, you've seen it before, trust me.

The art is competent. Actually, that may be underselling it, because, unlike most webcomics, there is clear improvement. Compare this to this and it's clear that the art is better now than it used to be (although the writing is still shit). It's not great, but there are many, many webcomics with worse art.

Zap! is actually kind of impressive, because I think that this webcomic is actually the ur-JRPG comic, a webcomic whose utter fidelity to the tropes of the genre is such that it somehow transcends its mediocre nature in order to become something grander. Shorn of any distracting outside influences or creative aspects, looking at Zap! is like looking into the base nature of this type of webcomic. Personally, I find such a view unpleasant and banal, but if you're looking for a sci-fi/fantasy comic with anime-influences, well, Zap! is certainly the exemplar, for good or ill.

Bardsworth: Bad Webcomic or Apocalyptically Bad Webcomic

Bardsworth is a pretty benign comic, I suppose. But, as it is a comic where the villain's evil plan is to corrupt the main character by convincing him to double-major in wizardry and bard studies, I can't help but attack.

The plot, ah, yes the plot, the main character is a kid named Mike, as you might expect in a story like this, is a complete and utter loser who just happens to be the chosen one. Luckily for him, he finds a portal to another universe or dimension or whatever and decides to enroll at the eponymous magical university. Anyway, it's quite a culture shock for young Mike, as well it might. Anyway, he gets a bunch of friends, and the main villain kind of sits around ominously announcing that he has evil intentions for young Mike. And...I don't know, that's really about it through around five hundred strips. No really, it's taken four and half years for Mike to enroll in magic college and get through a semester.

I think the problem that I have with this comic is that there's no real conflict and I don't think it's meant to be a straight comedy strip either. I mean, I guess there's a main villain, but he doesn't do anything. I guess there could be relationship drama, but the comic seems to go out of its way to pre-empt it. Oh, wait, there is an arc were Mike is forced to confront his hatred of theater people, now, you might think the author is trying to make a riff on fantasy characters having tragic pasts or something, but this strip makes me think it's being played straight.

Besides Mike, there other characters include, Old Man Wizard, who is old, wise, and all of those other things you'd expect of such a character. There's the villain, Rayner, who hasn't really done anything evil yet, but has evil facial hair. Oh, and there's Mike's love interest. Now, I know you're thinking, "Oh, let me guess, she's an Elven princess." Well, fuck you and your cynical nature, she's just the heiress to an Elven duchy, asshole. There's also a fairy who plays some part in the theoretical corruption of Mike, and some other ancillary characters that I can't bring myself to care enough about to discuss.

The art is....okay. It's not particularly good, but, for the most part, it's good enough, and I give it bonus points for not falling into the anime-inspired trap that afflicts so many webcomics. That said, the story really isn't good enough to carry this webcomic by itself, and so adequate art really isn't good enough for Bardsworth.

Bardsworth kind of sucks. It's not completely awful, but well, when you put together mediocre art and the least-exciting use of a fantasy world in human history, you're not apt to end up with anything good. That said, maybe something will actually fucking happen in the story and change my opinion of it, but, as a general rule of thumb, if nothing has happened in five hundred comics, nothing is ever going to happen.

Webcomics of the Apocalypse: Las Lindas

Going over the past few reviews I've done, it occurs to me that I've been relatively nice as far as the vitriol-fest that is the internet goes. But, people don't come to this blog to...well, people don't come to this blog at all.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah, today I'm going to fight a comic that is actually worthy of the millenarianist title that I give to these reviews. Today, though it may kill me, I will review Las Lindas.

Las Lindas is awful on a number of levels. As a practical matter, I could probably simply point out the quasi-pornographic rendering of an underage furry, and call it a day. But, as I am a man of courage, I will point out the other flaws in this webcomic...which is kind of like saying that the Hindenburg's air conditioning system sucked.

Anyway, Las Lindas is the story of a bunch of furries banding together to save a small farm from...I don't know, bankruptcy, I guess. The main character is a she-cow (I have no idea if that's the right terminology) named Mora who begins the comic by blackmailing a young cat-dude into slavery.

The other characters include some man-cow who ends with Mora, an oddly chaste bunny-girl, two cat-girls who exist in order to round out the cast, and some weird nano-technology spirit thing that makes the idea of a bunch of people working on a farm make even less sense than it already does.

Finally, there's the villain of the piece, Alejendra, apparently, who will stop at nothing to shut down Las Lindas. Her devilish schemes include offering to buy Las Lindas at a reasonable price, and then later retracting that offer. Oh, she also plans to legally purchase the farm after Mora's genius slave-and-vagabond labor plan doesn't pan out....and that's where an already bad comic gets downright weird.

Just as Mora is about to lose her farm...where the work was all done by hand, a spaceship lands. Some sort of galactic higher-up shows up and offers an awesome deus ex machina deal whereby Mora can keep her farm if she wins some sort of farming contest. (By the way, it's amazing how well the reaction of the villain matches anyone's reasonable response to this situation.) In a shocking twist, Mora manages to sort-of win the contest when said galactic higher-up changes the rules. And once, again, the villain manages to sum up exactly why that is such a shitty resolution. I can't decide if the authors have wildly misjudged their story, or are self-aware. Then the characters go shopping, and accidentally kill the spirit-thing....and that's about it.

There's also a clumsy attempt at world-building, explaining how furries came to live alongside humans after they blew up our planet, which is nice of them, I suppose. Actually, I don't understand the setting of this comic at all. They work on a farm, but there are spaceships and shopping malls and nanotechnology, and you'd think that if you had that technology, a small family farm wouldn't be particularly viable. It probably gets explained in the spinoff comics, but I really, really, really don't want to check, as one of the comics is called "Breasts are the Best" and my spirit just can't take it.

Okay, let's wrap this up by talking about the art, because that really gets to the heart of the matter. I guess the art isn't bad, in that I think it's well-done from a technical perspective, but seeing as the art is that of a bunch of overly-endowed furries...

You know what, fuck it. If you want to see furry porn but feel compelled to justify your curiosity by claiming that it's integral to the plot of a story, I guess Las Lindas might be your cup of tea. Although, in that case, I'd suggest you either come to terms with your furry-philia (Note: there is probably a proper term for what I'm describing, but, again, my spirit), or look at normal porn.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that if you really, really, really, need to whack off to a bunny-girl, there are probably faster ways to do it.

P.S. I originally thought that this review would be funnier, but it just turned out to be depressing and miserable. Sorry.

Webcomics of the Apocalypse: Flipside

Okay, I spent the last two weeks taking on some pretty bad webcomics, but I feel no satisfaction. Today I'm going to take down a webcomic that is better regarded. Why? Well, it is my nature. My target is Flipside...another comic with lesbians, although, unlike Misfile or Angels 2200, at least it comes by them honestly.

Let's start out by saying something positive: the art is actually pretty damn good. Oh, sure, it's that same sort of anime-inspired stuff that seems to be the dominant look in webcomics, but at least this guy does it well. So, there you go, I'm not just some asshole that spends all of his time making fun of others to make himself feel superior...I only do that most of the time.

Okay, the biggest problem with Flipside is that it's characters kind of make your head hurt. The main character is a jester named Maytag, a character who is magically able to solve every problem without violence. An evil sorceress about to kill her? Maytag can talk her down in one page or less. An angry band of thugs about to beat the shit out of her? She'll just decide the fight is over. A monstrous cannibal locking her up in a cave? Maytag will not only prove that the cannibal was just misunderstood, but also offer to be a food source. Incidentally, I believe that makes Maytag more Christ-like than Christ, because when Jesus offered his body and blood, he didn't mean it literally. (Also, that wasn't even the first time she dismembered herself in order to defuse a situation.)

I think that Maytag is supposed to have character flaws, but I think they exist more in theory than in fact. She's supposed to be a nymphomaniac, and thus someone who's unable to maintain any sort of healthy relationship, but it's never actually shown to be a problem. In fact, that panel I linked to in the last sentence, this is the page that comes directly before it. I'm only harping on this because it seems like one of those flaws that authors give their characters so that they can say, "See, she isn't totally perfect." Except, if it's a flaw that never is shown to have any ill effects, is it really a flaw? The closest the comic comes to addressing it is in this sequence, but seeing as it's followed a few pages later by this, so that doesn't really count.

There's also the viewpoint character, Crest, whose role to remind the audience how awesome Maytag is. There's also Bernadette, who I guess is supposed to be torn about how her girlfriend is inevitably going to cheat on her, but well, since Maytag may be the most chaste nymphomaniac in history, that's really kind of a non-starter in terms of drama.

As for the plot...I don't know. Most of the time it seems to want to trend towards high fantasy, but then occasionally you end up with subplot about how Bernadette wants to join a group of knights, but she's a lesbian and they hate gays, and that's rather jarring. That said, the pace of the plot is probably best described as glacial, in that I believe the characters have been traveling towards the same town for about three years now.

In summary, Flipside is probably better than either Misfile or Angels 2200, but it's not really good. Actually, I'm probably being a bit hard on it, as far as webcomics go, it's actually rather well-crafted, but it ought to be better, especially since the creator is willing to ask for money from the audience.

Webcomics of the Apocalypse: Angels 2200

Sometimes, an author has an awesome idea for a story, but just can't quite execute it....and sometimes both premise and execution suck. Angels 2200 is one of the latter.

Angels 2200 is about of group of rookie space fighter pilots fighting against a nebulous threat in the mildly dystopian future. Oh, and since almost men on the Earth have been killed, they're all teenage girls. Now, at this point, you're probably saying to yourself, "Oh, it's a comedy," and you'd be half-right, I mean, it's clear that parts of it are supposed to be funny, but most strips seem to fall more on the dramatic side of things.

Part of me thinks that the entire premise is just a really elaborate background for "hot" girl-on-girl action, and while that does occasionally happen, it's clearly not the main focus of the book, which is a rather uninspired story about evil government conspiracies, and low-octane battles in space that are even less exciting than I've made them sound.

And the characters, God help me, the characters. Well, the main character is your typical young, fresh-faced innocent about to face the horrors of war, who also happens to have painful phonetically-transcribed French accent. Also, there's Whiskey, the firey red-head from Ireland who exists as part of a contest to create the least original character in all of fiction. There's also the bitch, the ditz, and I'm probably forgetting a few other characters.

Finally, there's the art, well, there are two types of art in this comic, and neither is good. First is your basic anime-inspired art which is used for most scenes, it's not really good, but I've seen worse, I suppose. Then, for some unknowable reason, the space combat scenes are rendered in 3-D, which, again, isn't particularly good, but isn't completely terrible, either.

Ultimately, Angels 2200 is kind of impressive, in a certain way. It seems as if every single aspect of the webcomic hovers between "not good" and "awful", creating a comic that is consisently bad, but not so terrible that it's particularly fun to mock.

(Note: While researching for this review, I learned that there is actually Angels 2200 fanfiction, and, only being mildly suicidal, could not bring myself to look at it. Still, I must give credit to the authors for making a comic that people like enough to write fanfic about. On the other hand, this news does make me question what kind of loving God would allow such a state of affairs to come to pass.)

....And Speaking of the Apocalypse

By the way, when I started working on my Misfile review, I was going to make a joke about the generally shitty nature of webcomics proving that corporate entities are ultimately the only thing saving us from ourselves. I only bring this up because I decided against it when I learned that FOX planned a entire night of Seth MacFarlane shows. Thus, I have concluded that whether executives meddle with creative types or not, mankind is completely and utterly doomed.

Incidentally, my generation can only blame themselves for this turn of events. You see, when we were all in our early-to-mid teens, Family Guy seemed like a good show...and since it went off the air, it kind of idealized our memories of it, even though Adult Swim brought it back. And so when Family Guy was put back on the air, it seemed awesome. Oh, how wrong we were.

I don't think my heart will be able to take it if it turns out that Futurama always sucked and I just hadn't realized it all of these years.

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.