TwoKinds

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Rating Summary

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Background
Despite the fact that the original review was made back in 2012-2013 and that it focused too much on its creator, The Luigiian's statement still persists like an antiquity ruin: TwoKinds is a poorly written anime/manga done as furries, that has a shit-ton of softcore furry porn and it was thinly-veiled as an excuse for the artist to draw almost-porn and get paid.

And aside from the "outdated" review and the extreme focus on the artist, it seems that the webcomic had somehow "improved." So, let's just dive back into this hellhole.

(The Tweaking of the article might take a couple of days. You will see labels like these throughout the article until the tweaks are done.)

Downfall
At first it had a promising start, then it sucked and now it is recovering from its downfall. Albeit, with a very slow pace and a heavy dose of YMMV, seeing as the ratio of plot to softcore porn content has only gotten worse. Also, see the background headline.

Story and Plot


The story is placed in the continent of Mekkan, where three races reside and is full of magic. The first race is that of the humans, the all-white without a single smudge of melanin sort to be precise, who are settlers that discovered the continent and its inhabitants. The humans can draw magic out of the continent without having to extract it via mining or picking up crystal flowers(yes, these things exist in the comic.). They are being led by a king, although the ones who have a lot of power are a guild called the Templars(think of them as mages/crusaders). The second race are the Keidran, the indigenous furry inhabitants of Mekkan, some of whom are tribalistic, while others are more civilized and they range from wolves to tigers, leopards, foxes etc. Unlike the humans though, they have to mine or do flower picking in order to use magic because they can't draw it from the earth but from the crystals. Why can't they do magic as well as human? Never explained, it just is.

Apparently, it is explained...In a sketch...

The keidran also have a shorter lifespan due to the fact that they age like animals. The third are the Basitins, who live on an island, isolated from the outside world, although they are split into east and west. The eastern Basitins are more militarized and have the ancient Spartan principle with Medieval European equipment and the Japanese honorabu, while the western ones are more tribal-like - the eastern ones are basically furry Asians. Out of the three, the Basitins can't use magic without going insane. They can also go insane while in the vicinity of a large concentrationof magic, commonly known as a mana tower.

The plot begins when Trace Legacy, the main character, gets taken into the Templars. There he grows up, becomes an educated man and eventually marries a girl named Saria. They were about to celebrate something only for them to get attacked by a Keidran thief and then Trace, in his wisdom, decided to go after the thief instead of checking his wife for any serious wounds or poison. Take a guess on what happened to her...

Trace then attempted to revive her through black magic, only to destabilize his mental health and turn himself into a piece of shit. He then dethroned the Templar leader, killed his advisors and strategists, then replaced them with his own, waged war on the Keidran and took the human kingdom's royals by the balls. He then went somewhere to fight someone only to get his memories wiped out, followed by waking up in the middle of a forest. This is where the comic starts (you first learn all that other stuff much later).

However, the plot goes haywire after a few chapters. At first, the comic consisted of 85% plot and 15% of horny shit that shouldn't be there. then, the porn increased to 33%, and now at time of writing this review (early 2021) it is at 50%, mixing with the plot and giving us the end result of lots of inconsistency. BUT WAIT, it gets worse. The balance between the plot and the porn constantly shifts, with the porn mostly overwhelming the plot to the point where it just becomes annoying, confusing and stale - much like with Tina's Story.For example, there are a shitload of scenes with Flora doing things ranging from lying in bed with Trace to them doing other things, all filled with creepy and very horny dialogue, as if the artist constantly had to remind himself "No, I can't go full porn... I mustn't!" - but with all the actual furry softcore porn of the comic characters put up on the artist's DeviantArt, then we all know what's going on here.

Another thing is that Flora used to be a slave, which makes her character even more confusing, since its somewhat hard to tell if its slave conditioning or furry horniness that makes her want to fuck the main character so often. There is also another character called Kathrin, that is the end result of selective breeding, which made her very attractive(Which I cannot see) and was extremely valuable as a sex slave. She is also sterile due to her selective breeding. If you thought that "this is it about Kat", well guess what? Her owner, Eric, grew up with her to the point where they are basically step-siblings that love each other. Plus, Eric has developed a crush on her. A crush, on his step-sister and slave. I wish I was in a trench right now. Good thing that Eric sets her free of slavery later on, although it only makes it slightly better. Slightly. And it is confusing as hell.

Speaking of Eric, he is a well-rounded trader (that is what the character tab says about him) and a perverted painter that gets Keidran women to pose for him naked, so he can draw them and place his Masterpieces on the walls of his house's gallery, alongside with sculptures of them.

Oh, by the way, as stated earlier - there are no black or brown-skinned humans in the comic, at all. All humans are white, because... reasons that are never explained. Why hasn't this joker been canceled yet just for that?



Art review


The art is most likely The reason why the webcomic is widely known, as it is... well... quite good, and since the last review it had improved quite a lot over the years. It has decent to great backgrounds, vibrant colors and lighting that is just nice. The characters also look better. I got nothing else to say rather than that the art is quite great. However... despite the fact that the character designs have improved, they are still a problem. In fact, they are a big problem, especially the third category which I will explain soon. Some character designs are alright, with a tiny amount of wank material that is left mostly untouched, (thank God) some are confusing and the rest are clearly just for fapping or waifu material that can be used as fuel by the perverted.

BeforeI continue, I need to clarify that all characters have a trait in the design of their eyes, anime-like eyes, a remnant of the comic's old designs and days. There is one key exception, the character Keith who also has anime-like eyes but of the resting bitch face... kind of thing...

Another anime trait of the characters is that of their hair color and/or style, which few of them have. Particular examples being Trace and the sisters Maren and Karen.

First let's start with the that are alright. A good example here is Sythe who used to be a diplomat, trained by his uncle. He had an arranged a marriage with Flora (Who we are going to talk about later) to improve diplomatic relations between the Forest wolves and tigers,(anime fantasy shit) although the marriage ended up getting scrapped because she ran away. In the first chapters, he is seen wearing black robes. In chapter 12, he downgrades to a pair of pants, and stays with this up until chapter 15. (What happened to his robes?)

After this he downgrades again to a loincloth and stays with it all the way to chapter 20, because he had to sell them for gold and rations. What kind of material were these made out of?. The ONLY thing that is static in his design is the aristocrat-style pony tail that he has ever since his introduction.

Now, just a small rant about Nibbly: The damn thing looks extremely weird for a red squirrel, I mean just look at the damn thing, it looks like more of a mutated squirrel rather than a normal one. Especially the eyes.

It is not a squirrel...

Karen is the younger sister of Maren,(yes, her sister's name is Maren) the ditz of the group, (that trait itself is an anime stereotype) and probably the most confusing character design of all. The cat ears were given by Trace, during his tyrannical years, because she was a fucking nuisance (as in, magical transformation punishment) but that is the weird shit. The weird shit about her, is that she is the only human character who isn't entirely white in the comic. Was Tom high while designing her? Probably not, but he was definitely out of his mind.

A detail that is worth mentioning is that on the much newer pages, if when you click on the page itself, it shows you the sketch form of the page, giving a light on how it was layed out.

The Waifu material


In the third category we have almost every single female character in the webcomic, along with a few males, and Flora is the center of all of it. Flora is a walking, breathing mountain of Waifu, and porn material. Her character is developed in an extremely slow as fuck and painful way that makes me cringe. At first she seemed alright but she instantly turned to what we know today. She is the 2/3 of the cheese and beefcake and probably the worst thing is that she is the second protagonist. Plus, her design looks like it is purely designed for porn, what with her rarely ever actually wearing clothes.

Writing review
It is time to address the elephant in the room. For nearly two fucking decades The writing has been and will (probably) always be the main problem of this webcomic. Characters can range from "decently-written" to "Get your tools and three days worth of food, you got a SHITload of work to do" and there is one status called almost none-existent specifically reserved for the character Miss Nibbly which is a fucking squirrel NOT a squirrel and pretty much serves as the mascot of the webcomic.

First of, the dialogue.

For a good chunk of years of the comic's update history, the dialogue has been an evident problem of bad writing. In the early and middle days of the comic, the dialogues have heavy influences from anime (the entire webcomic is inspired by anime) and has a lot of horny shit cramped into them. Serious dialogue is overwhelmed by those two traits. Another instance is that an also decent chunk of the dialogue is generally... meh... (For the confused, I was still talking about the early to middle days.) After the Basitin arc and to the present day, the dialogue starting taking a "better shape" going from meh to not bad and in rare instances decent. Anime influences and horny dialogue started to slowly being phased out but are still present.

Now onto the characters, oh God, the characters.

The characters are a mess, with them varying from not bad to "cardboard but fleshy" with the latter mostly serving as a device to move the plot or spice it without any felt impact.

And since the comic has its roots in anime influences,the entire main cast' and A LOT of side characters have been based upon anime stereotypes. The following examples being:

-Maren is the ice queen of the group which also shows signs of being slightly tsundere, while her sister Karen has the ditz and genky stereotypes.

-Trace being an amnesiac, slowly finding out about the evil shit he had done.

-Red (not his actual name) having a lancer sort of type character basis but with more brawn.

-Flora as a whole. Need I say more?

-Keith being the wronged outcast.

-Raine and her past. Not to be confused with the dog.

-Eric being a pervert.

-Alaric with his attitude and his Bishonen eyes.

I don't want to get into detail on how flawed all the characters are because 1: it will take me ages, 2: I have made my point clear and 3: you can find out more about the characters to see how flawed they are by reading the comic itself or reading information posted on what I would like to call "a desperate attempt at compiling information of fan wiki."

Or just use TV tropes...

Character development is present, although little and scattered all over the damn place, making it a bitch to keep consistent or even form consistency, resulting in either halting it, developing it in a quick pace or in apainfully slow one One example of character development being when the character Natani talks to her old self in a dreamscape while comatose on a ship that started burning, which can be found here and continues there.

I will explain it later.

However, a decent amount of character development is poorly executed and just ruins the flow. Another problem is how the author uses plot points and twists. Like, for example, at the start of the Basitin arc, Flora says that she got a little fat, however, during the aftermath of the battle at the isle, a basitin doctor confirms that Flora is in fact pregnant. This plot twist though falls flat on its face with a rebar. Why? Because they had sex a few chapters earlier.

BUT I AM NOT DONE YET.

There's subsections.

The Basitin fockin' islands
The Basitin Isles arc can be considered as the turning point of the comic where it started shifting away from the animu shit and paved the road to improvement in both art and writing. The arc itself has anime shit plastered all over it, since it is "located" in the middle days of the comic, which means only one thing: take a coffee break and put your gas mask back on. What confused me the most aside from the writing, were the arc's two plot points: The Templas plan on enslaving the Basitin and Basitin society, the latter confusing me more than the former.

The Templars had made some sort of military alliance with the Basitins so they could expand their influence all across the continent. In truth, the alliance was the first step of an insider plot to enslave the Basitin by constructing a mana tower, due to the fact that Basitins cannot use magic without taking brain damage and even standing within the range of such towers can cause brain damage. After the brain damage part was done, the Basitins would have been enslaved, with the entire plot being mustered Trace himself before he got his fleshy hard drive cleaned. His plan stops making any sense AFTER the Basitin arc, around chapters 17-18, Eric informs Trace that he would have to set all of his three slaves free before they reach Port because, apparently, before he got formatted, he heavily condemned slavery.

Why would you, condemn slavery, when you planned to enslave an entire race?

I get it, the guys are biologically hardwired to not question but... What the fuck...

Now for the Basitin society, I am going to directly quote The Luigiian, since he pretty much nailed it.

"Lastly, the Basitin. Oh Sweet Zombie Jesus, the Basitin. They live on an island largely isolated from everyone else in a highly regulated society that places huge emphasis on honor and dutifulness. Does that sound a tad familiar? Yeah, they're essentially the Furry fever dream of Japanese. The shit hits the fan, though, when it got revealed they are biologically hardwired to live in a militaristic, paternalistic society and obey orders, and if they do not they literally become insane."

Not only that! Remember the whole biological hardwiring? It only applies to the EASTERN Basitins! The highly regulated, militaristic society? EXCLUSIVE TO THE EASTERN ONES. The western Basitins are literally the ones with free will. And a possible reason that Keith was able to question his banishment was because he had Eastern father and Western mother !

Oh the humanity!

Natani and the arguments over her gender...
Subsection is under construction. Please wait.

The dick and the bastard
This is a tiny rant about a couple of characters: Database Error, also known as Red and Roman cohort, and the highly anticipated Clovis

Red is somewhat of a jackass that sometimes jumps from the brawn to the brains and vice versa. He is pretty much modelled after a certain anime archetype which I know of, but hardly remember. Another fact about Red is he is the most vocally racist character in the entire continent, only matched by post-Saria death Trace. Over the passage of time, his character developed and eventually got better. Along with his racism, which was reduced by 30%. By the way, the reason why he also known as database error is because it says it on the site's character section.

Clovis, this piece of shit is the antagonist of comic and by far, the most anticipated character in TwoKinds to be officially introduced ever since he was referenced in the Basitin Isles arc, perhaps even surpassing The Elden ring in terms of anticipation. The character appears to be well-written and might even be a magnificent bastard. My problem with Clovis though is that it took Tom eight and a half fucking years to introduce him and he only made a single sneak peek in 2018. Well, Clovis did make an appearance before, although it was in one of Tom's side comics, which are non-canon.

The anticipation kind of reminds me of Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. when the main character and the readers, after so long, finally meet Kurtz, they end up finding two of them: One in flesh and one in thought. In TwoKinds, however, we only see one Clovis, the in the flesh one. He also had three body guards named after Roman figures. These guys were: Brutus, Romulus et Remus. Brutus was the only bodyguard Clovis trusted and the most loyal friend to him. Unfortunately for Brutus (and the fans), he was considered a liability, a weakness to him, and so Clovis killed him in order to have no weaknesses. That was foreshadowed when he killed one of his men that went to save Brutus, which gives out the amount of of shit he gives about his personnel, which is not even the tiniest scheisse. Romulus and Remus are the bodyguards Clovis took with him to raid the Legacy estate. Romulus was sent to find Zen (Natani's brother) while his brother Remus was tasked with keeping watch. Remus went off to finish Sythe and his squirrel, by throwing a fireball at it. It didn't go well The irony is that Remus died like the one in the Roman myth, by fall.

Incompetent masters
(Tweaking under construction, please wait.) Before Clovis, These guys were the original antagonists of the comic and they are pretty much shit. They were placed by Trace after the coup and ever since then, along with Trace, turned the Templars into the tyrants we know and despise. Why am I spoiling them, you might ask? Well, because they barely get any coverage whatsoever. First, we are going to start with Randal. He was the master architect that was sent to the Basitin Isles by Trace to build mana towers, so he could plunge the Basitins into madness. Aside from his shitty writing, he barely gets referenced or revealed until the arrival at the Isles. Plus, he gets killed at the climax of the Basitin arc, due to the fact that they hurt Flora, resulting in Trace turning to his dark self and killing both Randal and his subordinates. In other words, he was introduced to die.

Second is Ephemural, also known as neutral, is the lady with the iron mask and silver hair at the right corner. Quick exposition: she is one of the three demigods who were created by a higher god to "control" the races of the continent. Chaos controls the human race, while Order controls the Basitins. Neutral controls the Keidrans and she was shown to be the most "active" because she was shown more than the other two. Despite this, we only get to see her sporadically up until chapter 7, where Tom seemingly decided to stop showing her. The other two are only given the light once in the same chapter where Tom stopped showing the trio. Anyway, she is pretty much the great threat in Chapter 6 part 1 and 2 only to get her ass beaten and sent back to spectator mode, thanks to Trace having a two-in-one plot armour and armament necklace, given to him by a Not-So-Suspicious-Shopkeep.

Then, there is Euchre(what kind of fantasy name is this?) the master strategist, although his "strategical genius" has yet to be shown. He is introduced in chapter 4, where he stays until chapter 7. After that, he is pretty much nowhere to be found until he resurfaces at chapter 19, several years after he was gone. So, now everyone is curious about how the fuck was he able to enter the Templar. Well, he has the magical ability to transform himself to a human without a dead give-away.

Brahn, or what I would like to call "the corrupt politician" is the master seer(I don't know what the word "seer" means) and a shitter to say the least. After Trace's disappearance, he almost immediately started making a conspiracy, that will overthrow Trace and make him the new Grand master Templar, in other words, the new leader. He is given a sneak peek in chapter 9 shamelessly using his blind daughter's magical abilities for espionage. He is then introduced in chapter 18, and he is the most anime-esque character in the comic.

Last but not least, there is Edmund Sirus, the master spy, most frequently shown master templar and the most competent of the five. The man is a like fucking ghost. He is like those kind of people who ghost entire levels without killing a single enemy. Well, at least once, and takes the word "infiltration" and "espionage" to a whole new level. He was given his first formal introduction in Chapter 8. However, he also made ''"informal appearances."' One example given is at Chapter 2 and he makes these sporadic appearances throughout the comic. Unfortunately, these appearances ceased after Chapter 11. Tom with his ceasing, lads. He has the magic ability to hide his race with an illusion. Unlike Euchre, Sirus has one dead give-away that will instantly compromise his disguise: His bandaged arms. Tom could have thought of any small detail, like a cut finger. instead, he chose the highly-suspicious bandages that almost no-one bothered to question. The last guy that asked was brutally killed. Other than that, there is no explanation given about why he is wearing them. Out of the five, he is the only one who is kind of decently-written. I also kind of like this character because he is shrouded in mystery, but that point is defeated due to his insta-compromise bandages and the fact that Tom stopped showing him.

See? This is what I meant by inconsistency.

Author biography
Jason Thomas Fischbach is a Korean-German, the creator of the webcomic and Mark Fischbach's (also known as Markiplier) older brother. I don't know if his attitudes have changed, since I never watched a single stream of his. Although, by the fact that there are two subreddits called Shitkinds and memekinds, which were most likely formed by separatists that broke away from the Twokinds subreddit, might indicate that some people aren't too fond of Tom.

The forums are a little dead due to its age, which is the reason why the aforementioned subreddit exists. Because of that, the forums are pretty much an Ancient Ruin which you can "marvel" its history, an by "history" I am talking about its controversies caused (separately) by a maniac, a shithead and a bitch.

The title of maniac belongs to a French twat called Leoian, who wreaked havoc on the forums with his insanity, bullshittery and his insane rip-off of Twokinds, called Project2nd. The story was covered by The Luigiian, which you can find the link to his article in the links section. The so called shithead, was the guy behind a webcomic called Hearts of wildfire, where after a review was made here about his absurd, laughable piece of shit, the cunt threatened to kill the author of the article. Thankfully his comic lasted for seven months before the creator pulled the plug. Last but not least, the title of bitch belongs to... a French girl...

Is there something wrong with the French?

Long story short, she made a fan webcomic called Twokinds:Alternity, her work garnered her some followers and then sooner or later, she had an army of simps. One day, she got called out for her blatant plagiarism by members of the forums. She got into a fight with them, then the mods got involved, then she summoned her small army of simps, a forum battle ensued, she lost and then both her and her army were banished, never to be seen or heard from again, with the fan webcomic being stopped from ever being updated again.

So far there hasn't been a cringy fan-fiction containment breach and there won't be since the forums are... well... ruins. Not exactly but still, and the subreddit is ruled with an iron fist so there won't be any dissidents...

Except when they failed, because the Shitkinds sub was formed. But the shitkinds sub died and the memekinds rarely use memes as an allegory to the holes of the story, so.... I don't know.

Now briefly back to Tom. Before creating TwoKinds, Tom experimented by creating a comic called Halfkind, it was discontinued after 12 pages and it seems that it had served as the prototype and basis of TwoKinds.

Also one more thing. I have the suspicion that Tom might have read both articles posted here, as there had been a noticeable shift. Slow, yet noticeable.

Conclusion
(Tweaking under construction, please wait.) The webcomic did improve since the previous review, both in art and writing and it turned into a passable one. However, as I had stated before, the writing needs a lot more work, alongside with more character development and a great reduction on the fucking fanservice. I mean, Jesus Christ Tom, reduce the Goddamn Cheese and beefcake, it is still too much.

Links

 * TwoKinds (old) - the original review written by The Luigiian
 * WikiFur article on TwoKinds.
 * Project2nd - The insane rip-off of the webcomic, by the Leoian cunt I mentioned earlier
 * Tom's words regarding the prototype.
 * Hearts of wildfire - The cunt's webcomic who-threatened-to-kill-us review
 * The artist's DevianArt page - guess how many highly suggestive pictures of the comic's female characters are here? Answer: Far too many. It's got everything from body pillow designs with the comic's ladies, to just straight up nudes
 * While writing this review, I found out that I spoke way too fucking soon by stumbling upon this while doing the research necessary for the review. It's a really shitty looking survival RPG based on the comic. The damn thing also has a Steam page. It has been in development for five-some years, so it looks like another shitty forever-early-access piece of shovel ware