Draconia Chronicles
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CODE YELLOW: CHEESECAKE
(MODERATE NSFW WARNING)
The following comic desperately wants to be porn without actually being porn. Contains more fanservice and fetish fuel than any actual sex, usually patterned off of bad harem comedy anime. It may not even have full nudity (at most may contain exposed boobs), but your teacher/parents/coworkers will surely give you some odd glances if they catch you seeing this. View with caution. |
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| Original review author: | Long Tom |
| Webcomic name: | Draconia Chronicles |
| Author: | Current version: Razorfox. Black-and-white version: Story: Donnie Sturges, Art: Danny Valentini, Shades: Jen Starling, Letters: Jason Cumberledge. |
| Start Date: | January 3, 2005 |
| End Date: | Ongoing |
| Genre: | Anthropomorphic Fantasy, Action, Drama (The author's own description BTW.) |
| Defining Flaw: | At first it was simply a substandard cheesecake fanservice comic, then the author made it worse by making it look like Equestria of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic series. |
Rating Summary
| Art: | 
Passable animu art to begin with, with bad faces on the figures spoiling things (and costing a star for that), but at least it suited the grimdark story about war and violence and intrigues and betrayals. But later the author introduced pastel coloring to his artwork and completely scuttled the atmosphere. |
| Storyline: |
Trite and banal fantasy story; it is really secondary to showing naked or near-naked anthropomorphic female characters. |
| Characters: |
As trite and banal as the story. |
| Miscellaneous Details: |
At least it was possible to take the webcomic somewhat seriously at the outset, but the author would later destroy even that. |
| Overall: |
From poor to outright ludicrous. |
Background
It was brought up on the BWW forums and I volunteered.
Downfall
The webcomic was mediocre to begin with, but when the author introduced Equestria-style pastel coloring to the artwork, it destroyed any meager merit the webcomic originally had had.
Story and Plot
Summary by the author:
The "About" page provides the story in more detail if you're interested, but it's obvious that the plot is of no real importance and this is just meant to be a cheesecake animu comic. The all-female cast and their almost total lack of clothing is a dead giveaway.
Art review
The art was originally passable black and white animu with greyscale shading; figures had good body proportions and showed proper motion. Unfortunately the faces were the weak point; they looked too human to suit dragons or tigers and their features were too small in proportion to the rest of the figures. The "bosoms" on the dragon figures also looked ridiculous, but presumably required to let the audience know they were girls. The characters are mostly naked except for a few token scraps of clothing to cover up any nipples or genitals. On the tigers, that is; genitals on dragon characters are simply omitted a la TwoKinds.
The webcomic became colorized starting with Chapter Three. While the tigers do look better in orange, for God knows what reason the author decided to make the dragons in a variety of pastel colors a la My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic! I mean, this is supposed to be a harsh story about war and violence and intrigues and betrayals, yet it now looks like Candyland!
But even this is not the worst part. I mentioned how the faces looked too humanlike for the animal-type characters in this scenario.
Now the faces truly look hideous! Preposterously large eyes which consume a third of the face, and preposterously short, fat snouts which consume the lower two-thirds. The teeny tiny noses and mouths only amplify the ridiculousness. This is on all the characters BTW.
Writing review
The story depicts a few pages of what the tigers are doing, then what the dragons are doing, then back to the tigers, and so on. Eventually they meet.
As mentioned above, the plot is best described as a "generic fantasy story", clearly made up as it goes along, and equally generic characters whose only real purpose is fanservice. The story is serviceable but not really important as far as the webcomic is concerned.
Author biography
The author describes himself:
As the old joke goes, don't quit your day job.
Conclusion
As Razorfox describes, the whole shebang started off as a series of dragon-themed calendar pictures, then added to the calendar series was a story of dragon ladies at war with tiger ladies, then the decision was made in 2005 to make everything into an actual webcomic.
The webcomic was mediocre fanservice at the outset, but at least it had the proper grimdark atmosphere to go with the story about a long war between the dragon race and the tiger race. But colorizing everything in bright pastels destroyed the atmosphere and any possibility of taking the webcomic seriously.
