Re-Nightmare
| Original review author: | Blueberry |
| Webcomic name: | Re-Nightmare Now hosted on archive.org. |
| Author: | Skrill (Sleepykinq) |
| Start Date: | Around 2014 |
| End Date: | 2017, After the end of the animated series. |
| Genre: | Furry, Murder mystery, “Dark Humor” |
| Defining Flaw: | The fact that Skrill decides it’s a perfect idea to kill off a character, focus on the “love” between Alfred and Kao, or tell a rape joke every 8 pages instead of developing the characters he introduces every said 8 pages. |
Rating Summary
| Art | 
While it screams "2014", the art style is unique, a bit reminiscent of Happy Tree Friends, and shows a lot of expression and emotion, but you cannot tell the species of certain characters and the backgrounds are empty and dull. |
| Storyline: |
A decent premise that is ruined by plot holes, lack of development, and an overall juvenile take on a murder mystery. |
| Characters: | 
Gary-stu antagonist, anti-sue protagonist, blank states, underdeveloped characters and borderline mentally disturbed/ill people. I admit that SOME characters have an interesting premise, but they are not memorable. |
| Miscellaneous Details: |
Reboot: A more unique and clean style, shows the will that Skrill has to improve. |
| Overall: |
Wasted potential for an interesting premise instead put into killing meaningless characters and making rape jokes at the worst times possible. |
Background
I found this webcomic back in 2017 when I was browsing the author's gallery, for whatever reason. This webcomic caught my eye, and I was tempted to read it. After all, the cutesy yet dark designs of the characters intrigued me. Like Snow White being tricked into biting the poisoned apple, I dived right in. And oh my God, was it terrible.
Downfall
Right after the author called the main villain an “overpowered sexy piece of shit”.
Story and Plot
This’ll be a long one, because of the fact summing the story up in just two paragraphs is impossible.
The story revolves around a serial killer named Mystery that poses as a doctor or scientist who tortures and kills people in his care. Why? His intentions aren’t really explained in the beginning, because we instantly get into dialogue between Mystery and Alfred. Alfred appears to be his sidekick or assistant, but he highly dislikes him, due to the fact he kills people. We could assume he could just freely quit his job and get a real one, but this might be a low-income, terrible economy, where money is scarce. Either way, never explained.
Alfred asks him what should he use for… something, and Mystery replies with “A child”. Alfred Mystery instantly goes apeshit when Alfred objects to that idea, then grabs a knife and screams “SO, YOU ARE A REBEL!?” It then cuts to a drunk dude named Jack calling whoever kicked him out a “piece of shit”. Skrill tells us he’s a good guy, but he drinks a lot, so… “HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE, YEAH YOU KNOW.” Again, it cuts to his daughter, “Jessy”, announcing to herself that today’s her birthday. She goes and announces this to her dad, who doesn’t have a happy reaction.
We then cut back to where we missed out on some action, in where Alfred is seen with his ear chopped off, probably from the last few pages, but Skrill was a bit too lazy to draw Mystery doing this simple action. Then his son, Shia, randomly and conveniently finds him right AFTER he was going to be killed, and Skrill jumps in once again to save the day, explaining that he is “just stupid” and he attempts to guard his father, not knowing that Mystery has a knife so sharp it can cut through flesh and bone. He dies two pages after he is introduced, unsurprisingly, which means absolutely almost nothing would change if we took him out of the comic, as with most characters introduced into this comic. Then it cuts AGAIN to his older sister, Shai, also introducing us to their mother.
It cuts ONCE AGAIN after a page or two to Shia’s almost-dead body (Yes, he’s still somewhat alive despite Mystery’s knife literally cutting through his spine and everything) and Alfred seemingly attempting to fight Mystery for doing such a thing. But Mystery has The Matrix level reflexes, so he grabs his arm quickly and then stares him into the eyes, possessing him… Or mind control? Whatever it is, he suddenly gets Xs in his eyes, signalling that he is now “Not Alfred”, so we’ll call him Mystery for this segment.
For some reason, the first thing Mystery does is complement Kao’s hair.. Kao was never introduced in the beginning or before Shia got killed, but now he she makes an appearance, and she is his best friend. Despite obvious signs that something’s wrong, Kao just goes “he’s acting strange.” (Despite being a literal half-demon half-angel goat.) Then Alfred is suddenly 100% perfectly fine and healthy despite losing hearing in one ear, and assigns Kao the task of cleaning the room. Shia finally succumbs to his wounds, despite the fact he should have died the second he got stabbed.
Watch out, here comes Cutman, here to save the day by cutting to Jessy waking up in the evening… Or night? It just suddenly changed? She sneaks out of her house to escape her abusive father. She’s fine despite a few scabs and bruises, and walks off, naive of all the dangers lurking in night. Then Mystery comes and kidnaps her, as anyone can see coming a mile away. Even Shai agrees, because she runs off quickly in an attempt to save the day. Jack is tempted to grab another beer and his… beer comes to life? We aren’t given an explanation as to why that is, either he now has a sub-conscious or this might be the works of some black magic going on secretly.
Then the beer accuses him of being an irresponsible father, and we cut back to Jessy strapped to a torture device. Mystery could just un-possess Alfred now and finish her off now, but that’s a plot device we’ll get back onto later. Jessy attempts to break free, but Mystery chops off her free arm and then finishes her off quickly. I’d also like to mention that for some reason she’s naked, just like how the girls in U.S. Angel Corps were before they got killed, which comes off as a bit… weird.
Shai was a bit too slow, and thus could not save Jessy in time, but she came just in time to see her father kill someone, and Mystery suddenly goes away (Unless the only way for him to be free again was to kill someone), Alfred gets amnesia, and Shai, instead of… Calling the police Running away Taking a photo Or all of the above She calls him an idiot, then walks him home. You’d expect this type of reaction if he blew a bunch of money in the casino drunk, but he KILLED SOMEONE. He can at least be charged with manslaughter. But that doesn’t matter, doesn’t it? Anyways, he gets kicked out of his own home, and this is the only time we see Yuki do anything significant to the plot. After that, the trap Kao finds him in the streets almost right after that. She attempts to comfort him, but Alfred goes completely out of character and becomes some kind of tsundere.
Good way to break character development, Skrill. I swear, every time a character is going to develop, they instantly pause for a joke that has nothing to do with the story.
Kao offers to take him to his her house, and suddenly gets a nosebleed from thinking about Alfred and her having the “yiff yiff” with each other. Throughout the comic, Kao has random sexual thoughts about Alfred for some reason, and since Skrill says Kao is a half-demon half-angel goat, this means the type of demon they are is most likely a incubus succubus.
This is supported by the fact that Kao asks Alfred to “sleep with her.” As in, have sex. Then we are introduced to her brother, Howaito. He hits Alfred with a book, which turns out to be a porn magazine. These two are succubuses and incubuses, I called it.
Then they’re back at their job, with Mystery. Oh, and Alfred and Mystery fight again, when Alfred has sudden flashbacks about what Mystery has always told him. At this point in the comic I found out that Mystery was more than just “a villain.” He is more than overpowered. He is blessed with the powers from a SHINIGAMI.
Shinigami means “God of Death” which is the Japanese equivalent of a grim reaper. So you know what that means. Mystery is a demigod. Not only can he possess or mind-control people, he’s also partially immortal, because Kao tried to stab him with his her crystal javelins and he just tore it out of his body with no issue.
Then, just when we were FINALLY going to have character development, when the author finally managed to make a compelling scene…
“NOOOOOOO!!! My virginity is just for Al!!!”
Congratulations, Skrill. You broke a scene we were supposed to remember by not only MOVING THE PLOT, but attempting to develop the characters. Now they just go completely off topic and freak out about it, forgetting what they were even DOING in the first place.
Then Mystery randomly goes to sleep, probably by tranquilizer, except it’s never explained. These two characters are introduced. When Kao shouted “Nya! Neko!” I literally thought she was just being retarded, until it was revealed that those were their names (I kind of like Neko’s design though.) Then Skrill announces to the readers that he’s going to do a change: Improve the comic. The art style improves a bit, too.
The comic then cuts to when a special somebody was going to tell his backstory. I cannot find the comic version of this, so I’ll use the super short video version, which basically shows Mystery (as a kid I assume) suddenly waking up in the middle of nowhere and his father shows up, going “You should be dead, I will KILL YOU” multiple times… For some unexplained reason. It’s never explained as to why his father hates him or something.
Oh, and he was bullied, too. Then it shows him, as an emo teenager, in a trashcan, assuming he lives by himself now. He meets this demon trap girl named Rex, and decide to go get some food. Rex waits for so long that she eventually gives up on Mystery, while he becomes more “disgusting” for some unexplained reason. It turns out that he cut someone’s tail off as a child. Someone asks him for help to find someone, but when said someone calls him a “trash boy” he goes apeshit and kills him in cold blood. This is a common thing with Mystery, by the way.
Art review
The artstyle is actually kind of cute and unique for a comic that was made in 2014. However, Skrill is very lazy with backgrounds and can’t be bothered to draw anything else for the background, making it look like the reason why there’s no cops out on the lookout for Mystery is because they’re either:
- A: All dead
- B: All lazy assholes
- C: No such thing as the police, this is a dystopian era.
However, despite the cutesy art style, you cannot even tell the species of a character. Is Jessy a raccoon? If so, why does her father look like a ferret? And what even is Shai and Yuki? A gazelle?
Writing review
The dialogue mostly consists of incomplete sentences, some grammatical errors, silence, and illogical outbursts or responses to certain events. But that’s not the worst part. It isn’t the dialogue, it isn’t killing off new characters, it isn’t the lack of backgrounds, nor is it the narrator explaining shit for us instead of letting us figure it out ourselves...
The worst part about the writing is the RAPE JOKES.
That’s right. Rape jokes. You won’t see one until you’re introduced to Oliver, a super cute shark bartender. Mystery, for some reason, isn’t seen as suspicious by these people, and asks Oliver for some “fish”. Jack tells Mystery there is no fish. But since a shark technically counts as a fish, Mystery tells him that there is a fish right in front of him, and bites his arm (Or tail?)
Another infamous scene with a rape joke I already explained above, but you can see how pacing is the biggest issue with this webcomic.
Author biography
Skrill, or “Sleepykinq” is an Italian artist who has about 280k subscribers on YouTube, mainly for his AMVs and “Re-Nightmare” series. He’s pretty damn popular. He’s actually kind of chill, though, so not much to say about him, other than the fact he is too lazy to work on his webcomic as he promised.
Conclusion
Wasted potential for a very juvenile and immature take on a murder mystery. The comic would rather interrupt an important scene for a rape joke than develop any of the subplots it introduces.
But Neko is the best character, hands down.
On another note, I was going to do a review on that one Nuclear Throne porn comic about Fish having sex with Rebel while some depressing monologue takes place, but it was like six pages long, thus I don’t think it would matter.
