Triquetra Cats

--

Rating Summary

--

Background
Triquetra Cats was in the to-be-reviewed section of the BWW forum. Easy to see why.

Downfall
The comic always sucked.

Story and Plot
The story is divided in fifteen "periods". Why that description as opposed to say, "chapters"? Maybe the female authors were having them as they were doing this webcomic?

Period One: Michael Jorgensen is a student in high school taunted for wanting to be female. Because of this, he visits Mr. Yanatis, a guidance counselor who arranges for help for Michael...but more troubles await for him. Two attacks-(what's this?)-fail, but worse comes...but what now? (Not this horseshit again!) Well, now we get the back story...and a dream sequence. Wakey, wakey! Oh, look, Gemini has changed! And so has Michael! Oh, she gets a new identity and a new career at SERVICE.

Confused? Here's what Jessica Raven herself has to say:

""Triquetra Cats was originally planned as a soapbox comic, the good guys were going to be some underground LGBT freedom fighter movement and the bad guys were gonna be 'teh ebil homophobes' I quickly realized how preachy and stupid this would have been and changed it""

But what about the sudden (and random) appearance of the panels with Japanese writing on them?

""yyyyeah....I'd rather pretend these don't even exist

what you're looking at was my attempt to make TC look like an authentic japanese manga

do I speak a word of japanese? no

is Babelfish my friend? no

did I get called on for these? oh yeah""

This will be covered further in the "Writing Review" section. In the meantime, let's move on to...

Period Two: So how did Michael-er, Rain's new sisters end up doing service for SERVICE? Blaize also used to be a boy named Jason, a high school basketball champion. But during a game victory party, bullies crash it...but it turns out that they're not mere bullies, but are taking orders from someone important. Jason fights them off, but then he walks into trouble on his own accord...but the consequences were probably the last thing Jason would have expected. He even had the same recurring dream Michael had had.

Period Three: The third sister, Petra? Yep, same dream. But it turns out that Petra went to a high school with a very bad reputation! And furthermore, some people who tried to retrieve one of the rings attends that school. Fortunately they weren't too competent in their quest. Uh, oh, the school's principal is one of the villains! Fortunately again, help arrives, and Petra is rescued. Oh dear, the villains really are nasty! Fortunately they are also bumbling idiots.

Period Four: Come on, sisters, time to learn your backgrounds. Then you must be turned back into females, then you must go shopping. Now your late mother will tell you all who you are and who your enemy are. And Mommy goes bye-bye.

Period Five: Rain makes an unauthorized visit to her old home, upsetting her employer. As it turned out, Rain had gone on a wildcat revenge mission against her adoptive family's murderer, but she is soon found again by her sisters.

Period Six: A new battle starts. Our heroes have to flee back to headquarters and get issued...kittycat costumes (actually, special armor suits). And they meet the boss before going out on their first mission, which is partly successful. Of course, they also have to keep the general public safe in the process.

For those interested, the authors explain how the comics are created, starting here.

Period Seven: Now our heroes get a tour of the facilities. Then they are given an apartment to reside in, and they also still have to go to high school again.

(Okay, here's another serious problem with the story. Why would three girls who are part of an ultra-secret agency and who have their other needs taken care of by said agency have to go to under false pretenses to a presumably ordinary high school?  This throws a kibosh on the scenario's credibility; certainly an agency like SERVICE couldn't provide tutoring to children as well?)

Period Eight: The story so far. En route to the library, Petra discovers a strange being and captures it. The creature turns out to be a half-demon named Vyolette, the child of an evil demon king and a human mother. The child had been raised by our heroes' mother and was kept within the SERVICE facility during that time...but even now, the staff of SERVICE are uncertain of her. So Vyolette is put to the test...and she passes. Whoops, new mission. Time to attack another clan...and to again test Vyoletta's loyalty. This time she passes with distinction. But even a half-demon must also go to high school.

Period Nine: A mauling in an alley in which SERVICE gets involved, and our heroes are brought in. Vampires again? Nope, werewolves this time. Will our heroes face more horror cliches in the future? In the meantime, the current one must be dealt with, using this method. Also, our heroes get more toys! Well, not Vyoletta though. The other three are sent to Tokyo...but the werewolf actually isn't. In fact, he's a prison escapee. Our heroes subdue him and the period ends with an explanation of legalities.

Period Ten:

Art review
At the webcomic's beginning, it's positively atrocious, like someone who has hardly learned how to draw. How bad?

THIS bad.

Black and white drawings with some shading, with occasional crudely colorized pictures for title pages or special announcements. Linework is crude and scribbly, proportions and perspective are very inconsistent, figures are very stiff, and urk...SIDE MOUTHS! Bad enough on funny animals, even worse on humans. Backgrounds and most props are copy pasted pictures, and even those are poorly done.

As Triquera Cats proceeds, the art does improves somewhat, but it only gets to the level of passable rather than actually good.

The art after five years of practice.

Linework is much more refined, proportions and perspective are much improved, and there is now some flow to the action rather than the stick figures of before. Certainly an improvement over the webcomic's initial artwork, though still not great. Faces are still sometimes unbalanced and out of proportion, and most everything besides figures are still copy pasted pictures-but they are done better. At least Triquetra Cats's artwork gets better as it continues-which is more than can be said of other webcomics reviewed here, such as 21st Century Fox or Namir Deiter, both of which have had longer runs and less (if any) artistic improvement.

Writing review
OK, let's start with the webcomic's beginning. As previously noted, the authors had moved their creation from ComicGenesis to another website. Why is that relevant? Because if they went through the trouble of doing that, why not get the comic's beginning into better shape while they were at it? Jessica Raven herself admitted that she started with one story genre idea, then abruptly decided to change it to a very different one. Since she admitted that she also has replaced some older drawings with improved ones, why couldn't she do a few more and have a much smoother and more sensible beginning? At least she could have deleted all the pointless "Japanese writing" strips. Too logical, I guess.

On top of that, the comic was originally supposed to be about gender dysphoria. Then it pisses all over that topic by having had the protagonists born girls who were turned into boys until such time as they could be returned to their original gender. Of course, why would the sisters have been turned into boys to begin with? As a pretext to put gender-changing into the story...there would be no reason otherwise. After all, even the dumb-dumb onis weren't deceived by the changed genders and new identities of the Soricha sisters.

Author biography
Nothing besides the links already provided.

Conclusion
Weeaboo at its deadliest.

Links

 * The ComicGenesis Wiki page about Triquetra Cats.