traghetto

It’s that time of the year again!

Fresh meat…

This may be dumb for a person whose had little luck finding motivation to finish their own doujin to be criticizing others.  But it’s nice to know other people’s opinion of your work (and I do other stuff anyways).    I was a bit miffed at the delay. It seems kind of irresponsible to have a one week delay on a 6 month project that realistically could’ve been done and out the door in 4 months or so.   Made me think – “this better be good.”

Small breakdown – This release has 7 doujin submissions, 5 comic submissions and 2 art submissions.   comics by Lisu, Cookie, Eclair, Nameless Fairy and Gen-Atto.  Two art submissions by Nitro-Powered Kappa and VIVI.    I’ll review these individually this time.

Before I get started I’ll say this again,  a successful comic is one that has a good story that is complimented by suitable art.  Excellent art cannot save a manga from being boring, but poor art cannot save the manga from being ignored.  It’s a combined effort of the two.

<may contain spoilers>

Tea Time Trouble – Lisu

Silly story + little text = light read.  Nothing special really to say about it.  I like colour pages, it’s nice.  Other than that, the story suffers from lack of thought. The plot development is poorly thought out and the resolution to the conflict between Koakuma and Sakuya seemed too childish.  For instance, why didn’t Koakuma and Sakuya simply take turns using the leaves? Have you made tea before? Is there a point to this?  It felt inconsequential and therefore easy to forget.

Art level floats probably a bit above your DeviantArt average, it’s not good at all, but it’s not bad to the point where it would sear your eyes shut to block out the destructive imagery.

Between Heaven and Hell – Cookie

As I type this to you now, I cannot remember what this was about.  I hope that says something. *rereads* oh yeah, ok, It’s the beginning of a long story, retelling of Subterranean Animism.  Nothing remarkable or noteworthy happens since it’s the beginning.  The cliffhanger at the end didn’t feel like a cliffhanger.

It’s fairly well thought out (or at least when compared to Tea Time Trouble) and could turn into something interesting,  but  My feedback would be to stay away from long stories, it doesn’t make sense to do them in a publication released once every 6 months, I won’t remember shit even if they were masterfully written with professional art.

Speaking of art, the framing is kinda clunky, sometimes I don’t know if I’m supposed to be reading left to right, or left column first and then right column.  Also, art could use a lot of work as always.  It’s a bit above your regular DeviantArt-standard material.   So it receives the same comment from me as TTT – terrible.

Cirno’s Challenge – Eclair

Very short.  It doesn’t make me feel like I’ve wasted my time after I’ve read it.  That’s a good thing, I feel guilty when I read too much manga/watch too much anime.  Straightforward, to the point, something you can enjoy.  Artistically it’s notches above everyone else.  Only reason to not really like it is because of stylistic preferences, it’s very solid otherwise.  First page catches the eye, the other two uses simple frames which works for something this short.  If I  really had to complain about something, it would be that it uses an old tired joke.   The world does not need every conceivable variation of the “I’m CIRNO IM THE STRONGEST LOLOLOL” joke. let it go.

Shadow of Cirnobyl – Nameless Fairy

I have no idea what this is about.  It has a play on names in the title, and I’ve read it since chapter 1.  But I don’t know and I honestly don’t care enough to flick through the old train wrecks that is AD1-5 to find out.  No more long stories.  They’re not interesting because we can’t remember what happened.  Artistically…I actually really like it, its very simple, sorta like all the stuff I watched when I was a kid.  It’s just that it’s very obvious that the artist cannot really draw instead, they rely on stylization and  story.  It’s nothing a bit of hard work won’t solve.

Reimu and Marisa Make a Henta – Gen-Atto

It’s long, the longest submission.  But for it’s length offers surprisingly little content.  The art improved, no longer am I made to look at MSN doodles.   There are now coloured pages as well.   It won’t stop me from calling the drawings bad though.  The content is really “uh.” I understand the western-randomness brand of humor.   I do not get this.  You have to draw the line somewhere between random and “I don’t know what is happening”.  Perhaps it’s me, I didn’t like it.  The only thing I liked was comparing the bosses, Suwako fight, Giant doll….large fish (this segment is ironically also the most pointless.  It made too big a detour from what is actually going on, it has nothing to do with Marisa, Reimu or hentai).  The rest just lost me, a lot of it was just plain crude and not funny.  If it was supposed to be crude, at least make the drawings erotic.

The main problem in this submission for me therefore lies in storytelling+content, It wasn’t interesting and took too many detours.  Why the hell should I care that nobody likes Alice or that Sanae flashed ZUN and won her place in TH12 with giant knockers, it has nothing to do with the title and it wasn’t funny.  Maybe I’m getting old and don’t find this shit funny anymore.  Also my last gripe is that it’s too out of character, again, even if you want to twist their personalities up a bit, draw the line between “zany” and tasteless.

This is a real hit-or-miss submission.  Only people who really like this type of humor will enjoy this.

Memory 34/56 – Nitro-Powered Kappa

Breath of fresh air.  Instantly increased the value of this issue for me.  I like how there’s been an upgrade from pencil sketches to full colour CG.   Most pictures were given a background, that’s an added bonus.  Art would benefit from a dive at colour theory in addition to paying more attention to drapery.

A Flor Fantastica – VIVI

Also something else I really liked, I really liked the colours.  It was very well done.   Definitely a lot of work was put in.  I can appreciate that, but something I’ve always had a gripe with was that the people were too super-deformed in a way I can’t bring myself to love.  To be specific, the faces.   Too anatomically out of whack to ever say it’s  a “style”.  Otherwise it has colour usage and application I would expect from a children’s picture book, it’s very nicely done and easy on the eyes.

Overall

1 – It needs an increase in overall quality with storytelling/content and art, so some quality controls would need to be put in place for AD to ever be taken seriously and to attract any other contributors.

2 – Lay off long stories unless you plan to release AD with greater frequency.  Even then 1 chapter every 4 months is pushing it.

3- Give overused jokes a rest.