User:ARS2000

I am just a guy who showed up and spouted stuff. Nothing unusual.

DeviantART: https://www.deviantart.com/arafridi2000 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzflvQC67k6PlgsRmmfSnKA

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Rating Summary

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Background
Personally for me, I ended up getting involved in this webcomic back in early 2018, perhaps March or April. I recieved a comment (the nature of which I'm not even sure now if that was genuine or snarky due to how hard to read it was) from the author on one of my things, and I checked the guy out. At first, back then, I wasn't as good an artist and I was pretty new to around DeviantART and stuff. I was offered to be let into his Discord by him, and I was like "Why not."

Admittedly, I did have some good times in there. I learnt quite a lot of stuff and what really goes on around the internet (This may sound hard to believe for some of you but that was the time I discovered any expanded universes for franchises whose movies I had seen existed, or of the big meltdown of US media that was in progress since 2013). I learnt better at being an artist and more. But frankly, as time passed, then the cracks came to me as I got better at art, and grew more used to it all, that I started realizing things aren't as nice as they seem. They started spiralling, and I was there to see some of it, until I eventually left in about early 2021.

It took one of the fellows helping me write this review to leave and then observe from an outsider's standpoint just how fucked up everything actually was. And good lord, it was so bad when he put it out in that form I realized I had to put the information out here on BWW (which I found thanks to another pal.)

Note: I would put the Enraging tag on this comic, solely for those of us who understand military stuff and all that.

Downfall
Let me be honest. If there was a high point for this comic, I was probably not there. I don't think I saw that myself. The beginning of the current comic (Which itself is the third reboot right now) I thought is better and coherent than just about the rest of it. I thought the beginnings and earlier stuff in 2013-15 was some of his far better stuff than the stuff later and later stuff. The comic overall I would say probably didn't have much of a high point.

Story and Plot
It starts off like all great comics; with exposition of course! Apparently in the GrimDark future of the 39th Century, mankind has fucked over the Earth with several(or one?) nuclear wars, and through means unknown, Furries just… Become a thing because Evo Crystal go Brrr. As a result, humans develop the Novi; sharp penised/toothed-vagina synthetic…organic robot(??) beings to defend them from the Furry Menace. Apparently the Furries picked up a book on Marx somewhere along the way, and the ones in Asia formed a Communist furrystate (ORB)..... although no one knows what kind of Communism they practice. Just Communism. America is now run by mega corporations, and the military is now fully privatized (STAR)...for some reason? Africa (SPEAR) is somehow united into giant South Africa. And despite being touted as having the strongest economy, looks more like Zimbabwe. Their military is highly outdated, and they still use conscription because reasons. Our story follows the…. Shenanigans of Colonel (despite being called commander all the time) Alice Eichelberger, from CROSS, AKA the Human Ethnostate that are the incredibly unsubtle Nazis with every generic theme of Europe all slammed in with them but Nazi overarching theme.

Oh and pirates are a whole faction. Who....often speak like Orks (SKULL).

This amazing description by my pal, Jack Verstanden.

As Jack just showed you in a single paragraph not even that big, there is a ton of questions here. You may be asking how the hell did Europe go from the democratic collection of nations they were to a single autocratic monarchy, or why the hell did America fully privatize, or why did the furries resort to communism of all things (and how they do not suffer any societal drawbacks of various different animal species of differing biologies and stuff somehow living together perfectly fine), or what the hell happened to North Africa and Arabia. Why are the pirates talking like Orks? What is even going on? Whats the war about? How is it affecting the world?

To put it bluntly, its a war comic. Duh. Theres a war. Why is there a war? Because...race. Yeah, race is the driving factor (far as I know) of this conflict. Because fuck the other race! Also, a very very questionably reliable source mentioned some stuff about how humans and furries can apparently have sex and reproduce (HOW) but the kids will be sterile and apparently due to eugenics the war also has that? Then again, this source is well known by me and the ones writing this review, and we can confirm the fella is both moronic and a grade A jackass as bad as the author, so take it with a pile of salt.

Let me explain what the issue with the plot is. It doesn't feel like its going anywhere. One of my issues with war comics and stories like these is how pointless the conflicts feel. This is no exception. The most anyone can say is that racial reasons is why this conflict is going on. Because apparently diplomacy is something everyone forgot or something. Where is the war going? Is there any purpose to it all? Whats going on? Even the way the war started makes little sense. The ORB forces started their invasion....from West Africa. Despite Asia being to the East of Africa. Did they cross across an half a continent to get there? Without getting detected?

If you read the story start to its current point, you may realize, when looking from a general viewpoint, the plot feels really...directionless. It just happens. Characters occur, and stuff happens and then something else happens. There's no weight to why these happen or what they do. Not to mention plot holes occur here and there, which occur due to literal jump cuts. I know sometimes plots can seem random, but they a good plot has a sense of growth and moving forward. Gungear just doesn't. I feel like the conflict has gone nowhere. Even dumber is the lack of exploration the effects the war has. If you are familiar with conflicts IRL, you are aware just how disastrous side results can be. Refugees, economic changes, political turmoil, these would be off the charts. But you not a single time see any human refugees or how they got affected by all this. On the other hand, we are shown furries suffering under the meany humans ruling in Africa. Ok? What about all the humans massacred in the start of the comic? Do events from the past have any consequences besides 'Oh now this new conflict escalation happens.' Does anyone wanna try a bit of talking?

The general plot of Gungear, after the exposition and a glimpse of our MC, Alice, in her childhood and later as an adult in the shower (her room has a Confederate flag....shes European why does she have that), starts with Africa under attack (as mentioned earlier, from ORB....attacking a city on its west side despite Asia being to the east of Africa but whatever). So SPEAR apparently has trouble handling it and CROSS (totally not the authors pets) roll in to deal with it. Cue about 2 battles and...wow they're being pushed back, and I have already lost all sense of time. This comic is not very good at establishing the pace with which things occur in the plot. So the one enemy rival for Alice gets shot in the back of the head and we don't see any other such character that rivals her like that again. Oh and she disables a nuke inside the building the remaining ORB forces were holed in by punching it.

Then we see the ORB forces who retreated came back to the first African city they took (its at the SOUTH of Africa. What the fuck?) only to find that one of the leading STAR politicians (Who is also a former pornst- wait a second how did he take that from them? When did he get there?). If all this plot recounting seems confused, it's because I am. Whatever, so now a pornstar and media conglomerate has amassed enough forces that apparently, combining it with ORB forces now makes it one of the largest combined forces on Terra (How does a pornstar media guy make this much money? I guess military services are cheaper than basic amenities in this universe).

So anyways, remember how I mentioned STAR is now basically run by mega corps? Well now another mega corp run by Dick Fury (XD what) is like "Oh no not my investments I gotta send in ALL my contractors to stop this!" (You may felt how the corporates here are, like, really not cash money with their decisions, sending armies into foreign territories to blow things up, since war is expensive and all....and you are onjectively correct in the feeling). So the pornstar politician (who is a fucking horse anthro) is also fighting for furry rights and that hes amassed all his PMCs to free them from the tyranny of SPEAR rule (Seriously? This guy is supposed to be a philanthropist for furries but he's also a pornstar? I don't think people would have respected Gandhi as much if he was a 20 Star Pimp).

Then one of Stallions big research ships with its escorts gets ambushed by SKULL pirate forces who proceed to attack and try to go after a plot device inside the ship (fun fact; you will never find out who gave them the info or why they were after it). Then some pirates find the scientist (named Hoshi) researching the plot device (think of a Tiberian crystal. Now make it pink) and being idiots despite him telling them not to touch it, they touch it and start mutating. Then after Alice meets another character (Steel, arguably one of the few likeable characters) on a carrier in the sea, the pirate and research ship fall out of the sky and into the ocean (for some reason).

Then we come into West ORB which is like mostly post medieval or mixed Renaissance (Yes I know it doesn't make sense) looking, more medieval. And heres another character, Xeno, who is a tinkerer, who apparently, knows how to make solar panels and a mini mech suit. In a village. Somehow. You'd think people would notice or hear you working on something like that or notice the solar panels being really strange in a medieval village but whatever. So Xeno proceeds to use his mech suit to kill tax collectors (who were going easy on the locals) and talk of going independent without the consultance of...anybody from his village. How heroic. He is unsurprisingly kicked out of town, and his friend tags along cuz apparently he doesn't have a family at home who cares about him.

The CROSS-SPEAR alliance picks up the pieces of the crashed ship, and Steel's brother who works for Stallion is taken prisoner. Apparently the crystal on the ship is responsible for the creation of anthros and they were researching to make it more capable for medical reasons. So it is planned to go in there and get it, and they send in.....4 people. Alice, Hoshi, and 2 Steel soldiers. Because apparently they forgot the pirates are still out there. So they get surrounded by pirates, then they get surrounded by mutant zombies caused by soldiers and pirates coming into contact with the crystal (is this how powerful its radiation is, holy shit). Then Alice gets momentarily concerned that they may fail the mission, then remembers her father thinking shes a disappointment, then suddenly gets pissed and goes full melee against the mutants, and thus also killing your care for her as she goes head first at a giant mutants mouth.

Spoilers. She lives through it. Actually, spending time inside a monsters digestive system and all seems to have healed her instead when she comes out later?

Then more pirates come to help the first pirates, some fat pirate accidentally fires a missile while smoking (inside his fighter plane) and big shooty fight starts because radio communicators forget to mention that was an accident.

Ok I'm going to be real here, just go and read the comic yourself. Looking back at it, start to finish in one go, made me realize increasingly just how lifeless the plot feels at times, how I hardly care about most of the characters because they themselves are really cardboard, and it's such a sloggy chore going through it again. I hadn't felt it before at first, but back then it was during its first 100 pages. Now, in 2021, looking at it start to finish in one go, all the flaws are clear as day.

Art review
This is a mixed bag. It's not bad entirely, there are moments when it seems good and shines, but frankly on an overall scale, it's a bit average honestly. Its not incompetent, but can be done better. The author will not hesitate to call themself a professional, but frankly looking at some of their work, the title really feels kinda tacked on.

Notable inconsistencies, bad usage of color, bad foreshortening, color compositions and themes just not seeming right, the motion just feeling really stiff and sometimes not that impactful, it goes on. Look, I'm no art expert, I myself am taking art classes in university as of now, but frankly, I feel that this art style for the comic, from a digital comic view of judgement....looks rather generically bland, all things considered. There are occasional glimpses of genuine interesting things and designs, but a good chunk just ain't it.

For example, the composition here is....frankly it looks a bit off. Its not terrible, but the coloring feels off balance. The background's distance from the foreground feels confused. Also the lack of any real lighting and shading caused by the sky on the figures? Yeah expect that a LOT. No matter how much of a role that plays in the mood of the picture, thats part of why the impact of many of Gungears scenes...really fall flat. Like, observing as is, it doesn't seem bad, but when looking at it generally, it seems the colors and lighting is what really just kills the mood for so many things.

See? Much better. But its almost never like this in the comic.

This is underwater. Deep underwater. Does the lighting tell you ANYTHING of how deep they are?

Once again, the lighting and shading color choice here (or...lack of it) really does not help this scene. It's supposed to feel moody but I just don't feel the weight with this color of shading and lighting choice. Like, the lighting is in the back, but why is it not on the actual figures up front? They feel like they're not part of it.

Oh no! The city is under attack! These civilians have to be extracted! The giant pink background will get you! Sarcasm aside, you get it. The background colors are downright ugly here. And once again, the foreground figures have no other lighting and shade colors on em, which...really makes em pop out in a bad way.



Also, anime theme and style characters just DON'T work in this artstyle, as Gungear Chan's appearance just is frankly ugly (WHAT ARE THOSE PANTS). Don't take my word for it. Go look up CatzK3's deviantART gallery for yourself.

Theres a way to do RYGB values, and frankly, this is NOT the way.

Also, the faces of the characters are a mixed bag as well. Sometimes it works, other times it just....doesn't work.

Some faces look ok and what you'd expect from the artstyle. Not bad. I've seen better, but these are good enough.

Unfortunately, there are several bad ones as well.

This is a FEMALE character. Yeah! That's a woman! Be honest here. Looking only at her face, would you have been able to tell that's a woman? Those eye brows especially. Be prepared to see a lot of fat eyebrows on furry female characters.

The amount of muppet noses also makes things unintentionally funny. And sometimes, really uglier. Seriously. If there was a few muppet noses, I'd be fine, but the amount shown in the comic just makes it look sillier.

And here's what I'm talking about. This is ALSO a woman. Would you have known that just by looking at her?

Also this was supposed to be a massacre, but frankly, with those X_X eyes I can't take it seriously.



Also I think this was supposed to be PTSD but it looks funny instead.

The comic also has a very bad case of a self insert that is incredibly unsubtle. I can't even say it's bad, because this isn't even the right artstyle! Also, this character died a number of pages before. So not only is this character's design in conflict with the art style (and a shameless self insert), it is also a gigantic plot hole that has remain unanswered to the public in every form.

Despite the authors claims to be a professional artist, he has kept fucking up some character's anatomy. And the worst example to that is the comic's main character: Alice Eichelberger.

If you've studied art, or at least human anatomy in biology class, you know that there are many features that defines a woman other than boobs and vagina like the shape of the chin, the shape of the shoulders, the shape of the eyes, the shape of the hips etc. you know the drill. Its easy to look up figures and drawing references for these. Especially damning is how Alice's physique seems to have changed right in the middle of the story for really, not much reason. Heres how she used to look.

While the 2019 drawing has some flaws like the pose, the shape of the eyes (even when it's generally a recurring thing in his artstyle) and the chin, it looks way more feminine that the 2021 version where Alice still has her blocky looking chin and her hips now being as wide as her abdomen (consistency varies. Seriously.) But even dumber is how right in the middle of the comic itself you are seeing occasional inconsistencies in her build and appearance. Also, for some reason, in-universe, she's touted to be like, really hot or something when, uh.....

Look I'm not saying she always looks like that, but what I am saying is that when you tout yourself as a 'professional' but do stuff like this? Where your lead female character wouldn't look out of place in an SJW comic, looking more like a trans man than a tomboy? When the MC is claimed as being some super pretty model but looks like that? Yeah, we have a problem here. It makes you look like a pompous prick.

Its especially confusing because his older stuff looks LEAGUES ahead of his current stuff.



What the f- YES! This! THESE! MORE OF THESE PLEASE! They have style, soul! They actually feel like time and love was put into it! Why can't we have more of that? I thought these remain his best works to date, and sadly, these ain't coming back. If you've been here on BWW long enough, you are no stranger to out of place artstyles that just don't fit with the story or plot being told (like Original Life or Better Days) or declining artstyles (ClosetCoon).

Writing review
And this is the part where it all goes absolutely downhill from here.

The writing is arguably the worst part of Gungear, like hands down. It is beyond stupid, from a writing, storytelling, character development, and military stuff standard. The pacing of the comics gets worse. In the beginning of the comic, a scene can take between 30 and 60 pages while just changing to a different perspective of the same battlefield. Now a scene takes from 2 to 20 pages before changing to a whole other and barely related scene with little sense of time (Know that I counted the number of pages per scenes depending of where it happens in the comic's time and space,You can check it by yourself if you want). And as if it isn't enough, the scenes doesn't lead to anywhere and the battles rushes so fast that i wonder if this it could give seizures.

This is a military sci fi comic, and frankly, it fails so badly in both those regards. From a military standpoint, this comic is retarded. Violations of military standards, basic behavior, operation behavior, everything. Just looking at it makes it quite clear that the comic is heavily taking influences from Warhammer 40000 and Command and Conquer. While by itself, that's not bad, reading through it makes it rather clear that the authors (yes, authors, I'll talk about that in a bit) did not understand what made both those settings so captivating to people. These settings had gripping artstyles, themes, and atmosphere behind them. They held immense stories behind their aesthetics, the gritty weight of their settings being felt through just taking a look at one picture. Even if the 'military sci fi' of these is really just mostly WW1-WW2 in space, the atmosphere these settings have really gives in to add to that feel. Gungear just doesn't have that. The artstyle is often way too clean and digital looking, too polished, and the colors really do not do any favors. Even if one uses saturated colors, there is a way to do it, which Gungear just doesn't do.

I can't go over every military related problem in this comic, but we'd be here all day, so instead we'll go over a few.

| You see a giant armored hulking enemy, and assume you can take it on with a rifle. Incredibly short-sighted of this guy with predictable results.

| 40th Century, advanced weapons and all. Yet bayonet charge. Makes you wonder whats the point of all those tanks and explosives then.

| It is said that Crusaders | have 19 years of training. Too bad tactical and strategic decision making wasn't part of it.

| SAM anti air weapons are neither short range, | neither would you need 3 missiles to take out one plane. Also, [https://www.deviantart.com/catzk3/art/GG-Page-57-728194751| these CAS aircraft are flying way too low and slow. You're telling me in the far future, ground support aircraft are gonna be flying as high and fast as WW2 planes?] Is technology regressing or something?