Forest Hill
This author responded to a review on the site and his/her reply can be found here in the "Reactions" section. |
Original review author: | Long Tom |
Webcomic name: | Forest Hill |
Author: | T. Rodriguez |
Start Date: | January 2012 |
End Date: | Ongoing |
Genre: | Furry/Anthro but dealing with unpleasant adult matters in a graphic way. |
Defining Flaw: | The webcomic began well enough, but it would jump the proverbial shark later on. The few bits of child nudity including genitals earlier in the webcomic were suitable enough when the story brought up the fact that the kids were genuinely sexually abused, clearing prior doubt on that topic. But later on there would be too many images of children being naked with their genitals on full display to suggest anything other than pornographic reasons. Worse than that however is how Colin and Flora would make such idiotic judgments involving their children which ruined the story's credibility as explained below. |
Rating Summary
Background
I don't remember how I found it, but there are plenty of ads for this webcomic around.
Downfall
The story was good until it later jumped the shark by Colin and Flora showing favoritism to the child villains and showing little care for how their own children suffered. An irony being that Flora suffered child sexual abuse herself and suffered for that while growing up.
Story and Plot
Colin is an anthropomorphic red fox (not to be confused with the one in ClosetCoon) who is promoted to become a district manager for a grocery store chain. The bad news is, the job requires Colin and his kits to abruptly relocate to another town. Arriving there, Colin manages to find an apartment and a new school for Tanya, who, once there, aggressively tries to make new friends. Tanya can also be aggressive in other ways, but in one case she proved to be aggressive with the wrong cub. Kaleb, a rabbit, intervenes and the fight turns ugly. Another student brings in an adult, but Kaleb has already been seriously injured. Kaleb's mother Flora is contacted, and she finds her son in a coma at the hospital. Her reaction is to pray to "the masters" for her son's recovery. Meanwhile, Tanya is upset over her day at school, and Maricio, who had brought the adult to rescue Tanya, is also upset-and afraid. Back to Flora, she now has trouble with an asshole boss. But then she is contacted by Colin, who has praise for Kaleb, and they all later meet at the hospital after Kaleb is wakened. Tanya tells off Kaleb when they are alone together, but after hearing Kaleb's side of the story, relents. Colin and Flora, also alone together, talk about childhood romance. It also turns out that Kaleb has complications from his head injury. Flora explains things to her asshole boss, who is forced to accommodate her needs.
Even then, Flora still has plenty of problems, such as therapy for Kaleb, and the fact that Kaleb is not enjoying Tanya's company. Flora also has financial problems to deal with. The kids are back at school, and there is Benni, the bully from earlier, to worry about when he gets back. But now Flora loses her job after all. And we learn Colin is a widower. Meanwhile Colin is at a special business conference, and despite this inconvenience, he is lucky to have employment, unlike Flora. And whither Benni? Not only is he not home, but like Kaleb, he also received an injury. Hunter has found him, to his displeasure, and now Tanya and Kaleb have found the two of them. Tanya confronts Benni, who confesses that he has run away from home. Flora, finding Hunter gone, has brought the police into the situation, and soon everyone is found. She brings everyone back to her house, including Benni. Surprise, surprise, Benni actually has a set of moral standards! Anyway, someone from Social Services visits Flora, and Benni is taken back to his father...but he doesn't want to go. Perhaps this is the reason why? Fortunately, the people at Social Services are not without suspicions about Benni's situation.
Colin comes back, and retrieves his kits. Afterward, Kaleb tells his mother about what Benni had done to him. But that was far less horrible than what happens to Benni.
At this point you might ask, "How is this an 'animal story' when everything that has happened so far could have been done with a human cast?" Well, now we come to the subject of...
Their religion, where they worship the now-vanished human race. (And in a previous strip, it showed the different monetary system they use.) And this society also has specific rules regarding species.
In any case, Benni again has run away from home. Flora brings Benni to her own home-and then discovers Benni's dark secret. Flora brings Benni back to Social Services, and eventually, Benni's father winds up in jail. Unfortunately, there would be others besides Benni who have faced such horrors. It turns out that Flora herself had been the victim of a pedophile. Unfortunately, this made her a pariah as she grew up.
As might be expected, Talitha's father would learn that he has been discovered and tries to flee with Talitha, but he is too late, and he goes to jail along with Benni's (step)father. Ironically, a new rape will occur, not by a parent but of Tanya by another toddler. Benni would go after him, redeeming himself to the others, and Benni would end up being fostered by Flora.
So far so good. But the story takes a turn for the worse later on.
Art review
It was rather crude, stiff, and poorly proportioned at first, to the point where some people told the author not to bother continuing. But he went ahead with it anyway, and his artwork certainly got better with practice:
The artwork becomes more refined and characters more integrated into the backgrounds as the webcomic continues, and the characters are less stiff and slightly more humanlike in proportion, but still definitely animal-like. The author has pet rabbits, and of all the animal characters, the rabbits look the best and even have (unlike most cartoon rabbits) proper rabbit heads and features. Everyone goes barefoot, but at least the characters' feet are animal-like (hooves for cattle and sheep, digitigrade for the foxes and cats, long feet for the rabbits, etc.) Surprisingly though, the characters' clothing is humanlike. Also of note is that though women have bosoms, neither gender has humanlike hair.
Though the characters are talking animals, they are relatively realistic rather than cartoonish. You won't see exaggerated gestures such as bulging eyes or jaws dropping to the floor. But when I say "relatively realistic", I don't mean that they look like real animals, but humans with fur or feathers, tails, and animal heads and feet, and not having animal proportions like you see in cartoons such as Hanna Barbera. On the plus side, rabbits, rodents, etc. have proper almond-shaped heads and side eyes like their four-legged counterparts, and avian characters also have side eyes and proper wings. On the minus side, the cats fail to look like cats, with their undersized ears and overlong snouts and tails.
Color appears in some strips but not others, presumably due to the time factor, for in strip #318, the author announced that due to time pressures in his daily life, he had to stop using color and resort to monochrome art in his webcomic to be able to continue it on a regular basis. Suitable enough for the nature of the story:
Writing review
Campion, the author of this webcomic, is also a member of the BWW, and has admitted that he originally intended that Forest Hill was going to be a conventional story about an anthro fox who is forced by his employer to abruptly relocate as part of his job, and who has to bring his reluctant children along as well, and the trouble everybody would have in this new environment. The part about the children being sexually abused was actually brought in later as an afterthought, though that element would prove popular with his audience, some of whom had to deal with victimized children, and others who have themselves suffered such abuse.
Of course, why have this sort of thing happening in a specific "animal world" with its own social rules, monetary system, and religion of worshipping long-lost humanity? And the answer is, why not? There is no reason to assume that a world of talking animals would be any more benign than one with humans. After all, the story Watership Down is about a society of non-anthropomorphic rabbits, and it is unpleasant and violent as well.
Unfortunately, The Webcomic Has Not Changed For The Better
Ironically, I mentioned this webcomic to LeafDog, author of ClosetCoon (for which we also gave a negative review), and he said that the webcomic made him uncomfortable, even though he knew the story was about how small children were supposed to be damaged by sexual abuse and how the adults would deal with it. Our negative review of his webcomic was partly based on all the unnecessary nudity and genital shots in his pictures.
Unfortunately, this has become a problem in Forest Hill as well.
Yes, the major theme of this story is about how small children have been sexually abused and how the characters have to deal with the fact, and the website gives us warning about that. And the story brings up the subject slowly, as Talitha is touching another child's genitals, or Flora discovering the full horror of what happened to Benni. All this has been done without graphic nudity.
Later on, however, some scenes of graphic nudity would take place. Benni would show his anus to Colin, expecting Colin to sexually abuse him, and Colin tells Benni to not do that, because he was not that type of person. Shocking, but at least done to show how seriously Benni had been psychologically damaged. Talitha takes off her clothes in front of others, and we see her vagina, but that also shows how she was similarly damaged. We see Kaleb explore Benni's different penis-but that is at least childish curiosity rather than sexual harassment. And we see Jestan prepare to rape Tanya (though the actual act is not shown). And Benni finds and punishes Jestan by grabbing his genitals and squeezing them hard-not unjustified after what Jestan had just done. Shocking as all these things are, they can be forgiven because they were intended for genuine dramatic effect. (Ironically, there are scenes of Colin being naked including genitals-but none of Flora, the major adult female character in the story.)
But things would become worse later on. Just as Sam Peckinpah's movies would become known for excessive violence, Campion would start incorporating too much child nudity including genitals into his later comics.
In the early part of the comic, there is a scene of Hunter being naughty and running through the house naked, which is cute because no genitals are shown, and the audience is unaware at this point of the story of all the child sexual abuse that has happened. But unlike Hunter, who was never abused, seeing Talitha go naked with genitals showing is not cute given what happened to her. Her acting this way shows not innocence but psychological damage, and yet we're supposed to think it is cute when she does this. My opinion maybe, but I see no argument against it.
Worse than that, however, is the story that starts with this cute Calvin and Hobbes reference. The adults left the kids alone, which turned out to be a foolish mistake. Then Benni and Tanya decide to explore sexuality, something they are too young to truly understand. These are psychologically abused kids, not regular ones, and they needed to be watched more closely.
One could claim that this is not the same thing, especially when the sex would not cause a pregnancy. But I thought the idea of the story was to say that pedophilia was a bad thing? Since when are two toddlers having sex okay if we agree a toddler having sex with an adult is monstrous? Especially since earlier in the story Talitha put her finger into Tanya's vagina, causing Tanya to become very upset, and Talitha got the idea she did wrong and apologized. Yet Tanya would coax Benni into having sex with her, which he didn't really want to do. A fisherman dog would happen by and see them having sex, and while he hated otters (known as a "speciesist" in the story), he genuinely thought Benni was raping Tanya-which was just common sense, yet the readers call him a villain for it. And it seems the adults in the story don't object to what Benni and Tanya had done either. Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but I think this is not the right way to view this sort of thing.
But there is one other thing that gets me. It seems Colin has no introspective capabilities. He never stops and assesses how things are going with him and his kits. He moves to a new town and his toddler daughter gets raped and traumatized. He meets Flora and she might be good in the sack, but what else is good about her? She has financial difficulties, she has her own damaged son, and she chooses to foster Benni, who had done her and her son harm, and Beth-Anne, who had indirectly caused Tanya to be raped. Despite Flora having been a victim of child sexual abuse herself and having suffered throughout her childhood because of this, she seems to care more about these children who had done her and her son wrong than her own seriously injured son.
Even if we are generous and point out that Benni was trying to redeem himself by breaking with his former friends and trying to help Talitha and Kaleb, with all her current problems Flora would be hard pressed to take on new responsibilities when she has so much to deal with already. And other people on the forum besides me have raised this question. Certainly there must be other people available who were trustworthy and could have fostered Benni and Beth-Anne instead? Certainly if Flora wanted more children to raise, there could have been somebody more desirable she could have taken in? Did she expect Colin to be the white knight who was going to solve all their problems? What does she have to offer him anyway, besides a wet tunnel for his penis?
One would think Colin would have had the sense to see where everything was going, and after what happened to Tanya would have hightailed it (pun intended) out of town with his kits. Yes, Jestan, Ray, and Tibron have all been arrested and jailed, but as the story implies there are other pedophiles in the area. Hunter is another potential target; why not take him somewhere safer? Yet Colin seems to be too enamored of Flora (or her wet tunnel) to use his noodle.
UPDATE: I suppose it is foolish of me to blame it all on Campion. The people posting on the forums are not too bright themselves, thinking how wonderful it is for Beth-Anne and Kaleb to have an innocent romance. Never mind that Kaleb had seen how Beth-Anne helped bring Tanya into Jestan's clutches to be raped, and even though Beth-Anne objected to his doing so, she was still responsible for that happening. Yet Kaleb seems to turn a blind eye to the fact, even though Beth-Anne acknowledged she had done harm to Tanya, but the readers are oohing and aahing over how wonderful it is they are all becoming friends. But you can only be so forgiving; in Ozy and Millie, Jeremy was still acknowledged as a bad guy and the readership realized this. And when Millie's mother went to complain to the school officials about one incident and the school officials refused to do anything, and she and the readership were upset over that. Just as well Campion kicked me off the forums, the way the webcomic has been going. I would have never been so forgiving to the child villains in the story. It is not as though they were so young they did not know better, unlike Talitha who is.
Author biography
Nothing besides the links already provided, but the author is a member of the BWW forum.
Conclusion
One wag said that this webcomic was about "Richard Scarry animal-people who rape their own children". Actually only partly true, for only a couple of the characters were guilty of this, and Tanya was raped by another toddler.
Yes, at this point in the story, all the known rapists have been put into prison. But as mentioned earlier, when Colin moved to this town with his kits, his toddler daughter got raped. It also seems that the trauma she suffered was short-lived. Um, don't child sexual victims usually get extended therapy afterwards? (This was brought up in the Spider-Man comic series years ago, with Peter Parker himself having had to suffer it.) And it seems that after everything, Colin is trying to take care of Benni's past traumas himself, without really knowing what to do about it. And it seems neither Kaleb nor Flora care about the fact that it was Benni who caused Kaleb the serious head injury in the first place. Certainly it has never been mentioned by anybody in the story since it happened. And there is even less incentive for Colin or Flora to want Beth-Anne around, considering the harm she did to Tanya. Yet Kaleb seems to be blind to this fact as he talks to her.
Talitha was at least sent away to her uncle, but unfortunately said uncle, though evidently bound by a sense of duty, obviously doesn't how to raise a child, let alone a psychologically damaged one. One would think that social services would be aware of this and tell the uncle what to do and offer him needed support.
Okay, the idea is that the main characters are thrown into an awful situation they don't know what to do with. Still, while the excess child nudity is bad, the fact that so many of the characters make such stupid decisions, especially Colin and Flora, is what really made a once-decent story jump the shark. They seem to care more about the children who did them wrong than their own victimized children.
Links
Webcomic Police gives a neutral review of this webcomic.Domain expired.- WikiFur article on this webcomic.
- TV Tropes has an article as well.
- Wikipedia article on Inherit The Earth, which the author has based his webcomic scenario upon (though this story takes place centuries later than the game story).
- The author's FurAffinity page
- And his DeviantArt page
- And his InkBunny page
- The Cute And Cuddly Cast, an article which rightfully scorns Jack, though it was written before anyone knew about this webcomic (or likely before this webcomic ever existed).