Slightly Damned
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| Original review author: | Machaeus |
| Webcomic name: | Slightly Damned |
| Author: | "The 'Chu", a.k.a. Raizy |
| Start Date | March 14, 2004 |
| End Date | Ongoing |
| Genre | Anime, furry, humor |
| Defining Flaw | No one really progresses as people. |
Rating Summary
| Art: | 
The art gradually gets much better. The author did redraw a few old pages, so if there's some jarring disconnect in style, that's what it is. |
| Storyline: |
I've flushed better stories than what this becomes. Between identity politicking and villains that can't be stopped by anything short of Deus Ex Machina, expect even fanfics to be better. |
| Characters: |
As the original review stated, they're really not that bad. The problem is they don't evolve at all as the story progresses. |
| Dedication: |
The artist of this has worked harder than most webcomic artists at this comic, which is not to say that it's very good. Superior to Jack and Suicide for Hire, but it's not as if it's special. Just not quite as damnable as the worst comics out there. |
| Overall: |
There's worse out there. I know there is. I don't even want to get into what I know exists. I just wish I had more hope for this series and its setting. |
Background
Slightly Damned is...was...something of a passion for me. You could legitimately call it an obsession. I wrote an RPG using the setting, I wrote more fanfics than you can stick a shake at, and I read it with an almost religious attention. I even donated to the author's Patreon.
And I regret all of it.
Bad webcomics are nothing new. Bad stories are nothing new. But when a perfectly workable setting and story are maligned by real-world political nonsense, nonsensical motivations for villains, and many characters that are made into complete monsters without any redeeming qualities, for no real reason other than "they're a race of bigots"?
I'm not joking.
This review is an attempt to overcome my own Sunken Cost Fallacy, because I still check in on what this once-favorite-storyline has become. It has become my Naruto Shippuden, which should tell you about my terrible taste in anime. With that, I'm Machaeus, and here's my review of Slightly Damned.
Downfall
The basics of the plot are this: There was once a Great War between two factions: the Goddess Gaia, her Angels, and Heaven; and the God Syndel, his Demons, and Hell. Medius is the world stuck between them, because after 300 years, it's still going on.
For me, the fall of Slightly Damned began around the middle of an event known as The Gathering. During this event, the villains of the story, a bunch of Demon soldiers (a term I should use only loosely) capture a bunch of Angels, including a kid, for a giant ritual sacrifice to try and win the Great War through a form of attrition. (It actually makes more sense in context.)
The problem is, one of our heroes goes off alone, in spite of protests, because she has suicidal thoughts due to her mother being what I can only describe as a complete monster. Aapparently the PTSD is so bad that this is most people on both sides. (You'd think that'd be a hint, but no...)
You see, up until this point, one of the characters, Buwaro, had been through plenty of abuse. Now, though, he gets it from his girlfriend due to her psychotic breakdown, in order to try and split the party. At least when Order of the Stick did party-splitting, they made the characters halfway competent and established their growth. No one learns anything from this.
And that's the big problem: no one learns anything about how to be a better person after the first 200 or so pages. This thing's almost 1,000 pages.
Story and Plot Synopsis
Pages 1-92
Here's the thing: as I tried to allude, to, Slightly Damned starts off really strong. It's still finding its footing and the art isn't great, but it's 15-year-old pages, what do you expect?
So we meet our protagonist, Rhea Snaketail. She's a Jakkai, an original species based on Raichu, because the author really likes Pokemon. She's dead, much like Yusuke Urameshi. Unlike Yusuke, she's going to the outermost ring of Hell because she was just a jerk, rather than a True Bad Person.
It is there that she meets Buwaro, a Fire Demon and the best boy in any medium. I may abhor the comic now, but I will fight you on this to my dying breath. Buwaro is clumsy, weak, and stupid, but he's very, very kind and doesn't like hurting people. He only hurts Rhea at first because, "That's my job." He quickly fails at it, and this becomes a running theme.
Anyway, we meet Sakido, his older sister, and Iratu, his older brother, here. Sakido is an angsty teen girl who isn't very good at writing, and Iratu is a drunkard. Buwaro and Rhea are our focus, though, and the two have a few adventures and learn about Demonkind a bit. Yes, even Buwaro does. He's that dumb. He has an excuse, trust me.
We learn along the way that Rhea was murdered, and that Buwaro has a very big problem. Rhea steals his Star Pendant, despite his warnings, and – for plot reasons – he goes Berserk. Berserk Demons slaughter everything they can find, until they die of wounds or exhaustion. His sister manages to save him, but it's clearly a close thing, and she's scared witless at first.
There are allusions to the Great War, and Buwaro and Rhea make up. Eventually, though, the pair escape Hell to Rhea's home world of Medius on a column of light, only to find Sakido has been slain by some kind of arrow. The problem? Demons die once, unlike Jakkai, Humans, and other Medians. It's a heartwrenching scene in the snow, and it's really well done, even in the old art style.
Pages 93-250
We end up near Rhea's old home, in her village's graveyard, and we journey through the woods to Rhea's house. They find a snow rabbit along the way, and end up naming it "Snowy" to distract a very depressed Buwaro from remembering Sakido too hard. We learn that Buwaro's even dumber than we thought and learn that the rabbit can become a very elven-looking girl. Turns out she's an Angel, and we learn a bit about the Great War between Angels and Demons.
Buwaro, being a naïve gentleman, tries to defend this Angel girl, whose name is actually Kieri Suizahn (yes the author is a weeb, I am too so shaddap), and after a tense battle, they escape the wrath of the two Demons hunting Kieri by dropping them into a frozen lake. They make their way to a Human town, where Buwaro hides out while Rhea gets him a very, very poor disguise – a pimp suit.
Meanwhile, Kieri looks for her twin brother Kazai and their friend Zahariah Sanjulo, who were in the town, but they're not there now, looking for her to the exact opposite direction she was taken. She gets help from the two friends, Buwaro and Rhea, the next morning. We also learn that her rabbit form is a curse by one of the Twelve Elemental Guardians, specifically Toski, the Rabbit of Water.
So the now-trio join forces, going east towards Riverside City. They find some bandits along the way, we learn Kieri's good with Elemental magic and her sword, and discover that Medius has two moons. My headcanon is that these are Heaven and Hell, but we don't know for sure yet. Regardless, they make it to the new city, and Rhea shares a diary she found in Hell with Kieri – it's the diary of an Angel, one Darius Elexion.
After searching for Kieri's brother Kazai, they come across a boy playing on ice, and we get some character development for Rhea. We also learn about the Trouble Help Center, apparently a group of do-good-for-money businesses where people post about troubles and get help. We learn that the two Angel boys went to St. Curtis, and eventually meet one Heathcliff Sinclair, who threatens the fire-proof purple boy with Fire magic, until Kieri steps in the way.
Pages 251-376
Eventually, the trio team up with Heathcliff, who is a merchant with a small family, and head south, since the road due east is blocked by a landslide. However, Kieri learns about Buwaro's father, Darius – yes, he adopted three Demons, despite being an Angel. And it only gets worse when she learns about his Star Pendant, which was apparently Darius's. It gets even worse, despite Rhea fixing that problem, because Heathcliff starts being a big enough jerk to go to Real Hell and making Buwaro feel bad for being what he is.
Rhea manages to make him feel better not long after they get to Weyville, their stop right before St. Curtis. By this time, Buwaro – having been a toddler when Darius found him – has learned about his father. He adopts the man's name, and goes to talk to Kieri now that he feels better. He and Kieri are curb-stomped by an Angel with all three Angelic Pendants, also known as a Seraph – yes, they're power sources and insignias of rank – and Heathcliff barely puts a stop to his rampage before they both die.
A couple days later, Buwaro awakens, talks to Kieri, and the two become an item.
Pages 376-577
After the two clear the air and become closer, they head on to St. Curtis, where we get more "Buwaro is useless" scenes. Heathcliff continues to be vicious to Buwaro. Buwaro starts learning to read, we learn that Kieri was abused by her mother, and we learn that Angels like good singers and music – and Buwaro just happens to be a naturally-gifted singer.
They get into the city, we get more worldbuilding, and we see Angels and Demons out in the open for the festival that Heathcliff is selling his wares at. After learning that Kazai is in jail, but then learning he was let out, the trio help Heathcliff sell stuff, with more "Buwaro is useless" scenes, and a not-quite-fight with a Wind Demon and an Earth Seraph who isn't being a bigot.
The next Angel we meet is one, though, and Kieri has a bit of a meltdown when he attacks her boyfriend – after the previous attacker, you can't blame her. But due to her own past trauma, she goes overboard, and she ends up breaking down afterwards and hiding. We meet a friendly Guardian in Meeros, the Mortori Bird of Wind (I'm about 99.5% sure the species is original). Buwaro asks about her curse and whether it can be undone, and he directs them to another Water Guardian who's a little nicer than Toski.
Pages 578-Current
Unfortunately, the weather takes a terrible turn, and then the Demons' attack begins with the death of another Guardian, Melli, the Bee of Fire, by a pretender Moku, the Serpent of Earth. (I'm giving them better titles, don't knock me.) Her death causes an explosion of fire and sets the city on edge for that alone – but the Demons' attack makes it worse. They slaughter Medians, but capture Angels alive.
And that Earth Seraph from before is helping them because of retarded reasons. This is, by the way, in spite of the fact that they're committing genocide against her people.
We find Kazai, lose him, and then Kieri gets captured in a desperate attempt by Buwaro to keep her alive. They find out Iratu's at the head of this Gathering, and Iratu decides to be a complete monster to his little brother. Every Demon there does, to be fair, and that's not even counting the fact that they're willing to commit a genocidal sacrifice-ritual to take over Medius because this war has been going on for 300 years.
Our heroes manage to escape, barely, thanks to a set of super-powered potions, and they hide out in the ruins of an old village in the Great Tree of St. Curtis while the city burns, recovering and trying not to get lynched. And then Rhea learns that all three Gods of their world – Gaia of Order, creator of the Angels; Syndel of Chaos, creator of the Demons; and Death of Judgment, creator of Medius on the whole; are all gone.
And it looks quite hopeless at this point. And that's about where we are as of the October 15, 2020.
Art review
(The following is from the previous first review.)
The weakest link in Slightly Damned is the art, which is anime derivative and desperately unpolished. Raizy “The Chu’s” art is obviously imitative in nature. She clearly learned to draw by drawing other people’s drawings, rather than by doing live sketches, and I would not be surprised if she had never taken a college quality art course of any kind (or an ANY quality PhotoShop course). The style itself (as mentioned) draws heavy influence from both Japanese anime and Western styles.
The perspective is atrocious, any scenes that aren’t flat side-views look like a Picasso painting. The expressions are so flat that they look like post-it notes tacked on to character’s faces. In flashbacks, she likes to leave in the tracing lines, removing the sense of polish from the drawing. It could work, but just looks lazy. Also, the author cannot draw people; most human characters have the proportions and detail of a SNES-era Megaman sprite. If you can imagine a kid that learned to draw by sketching official Nintendo drawings of Pikachu over and over (or more likely, Rai Chu) you’d have a good idea of what the art in Slightly Damned is like. This has a direct effect on non-critter drawings, like horses and humans, which Raizy has not yet learned how to draw. As the comic added more characters, this has become more and more noticeable.
There have been improvements, however, which lead to the worst (but most genuinely interesting) problem the comic has. The comic itself is the author’s learning experience. The author is not drawing their story, they’re drawing a ten year long homework project. Every page includes either an improvement, or a detriment, or a new technique of some kind that has probably never been practiced and looks like ass. It’s obvious that Raizy doesn't do any research on poses before drawing (and has no innate talent), so if a character is doing something that they haven’t before, it’ll look weirdly off until she draws it another four or five times.
I'm going to go on a limb and say the worst part is the backgrounds, from start to finish. Sometimes they could be quite pretty and imaginative, but the 'Chu takes the lazy way out with every opportunity. At first she chose to avoid drawing backgrounds altogether. For most of the comic she stuck to colored backgrounds, dismissively referred to them as “rainbow barf.” But when she finally decided to start stop drawing her characters inside a void of "Fill Bucket" she couldn't do that right either. She was in such a hurry to draw proper backgrounds that she started doing so long before she actually knew how, or perhaps was just too lazy to bother with quality and decided to learn on the go. The end result was her paneling dozens of comics with ugly messes. The backgrounds gradually improved, but even now they remain little more than solid walls of color (or gradient to make it look like she's actually trying) when she thinks she can get away with it, or ugly, cartoonish and flawed on multiple levels whenever she feels like getting off her lazy ass and actually drawing some half - assed background.
The experimentation is obvious from the start. The atrocious beginning of the comic looks like a middle school art student had photographed their own pencil sketches and then inked them with a mouse. The first few pages use hand lettering. The overarching plot is planned years in advance, but individual pages seem to be churned out last minute with no preparation and minimal planning. At one point, Raizy decided to change her entire palette because she didn't like the old one (although it was rather garish) and then again change her shading because she wanted it to be more detailed, resulting in dozens of ugly comics before she actually figured out how to do it.
The comic is full of improvements that were added to the comic without testing to see how well they work elsewhere. In individual panels, you can see odd expressions, awkward posing, and extremely poor perspective. For palette and stylistic changes, this affects entire comics, sometimes as many as five before Raizy figures out what she’s doing. That doesn't include human characters, which are strangely proportioned with simplistic posing, nor does it include backgrounds, which have awkward perspectives and childish texturing.
Even at its best, the style is cartoony and childish, but if you like Pokémon or classic Disney you’ll probably like the art more for that (think Pokémon as drawn by Don Rosa) “At its best” is almost passable, and that will hopefully be fairly consistent when the author finally figures out how to draw scenes with natural character posturing and realistic perspective. Although this review is being re-done at the moment, two years after it was originally posted, and the comic is still not showing any signs of that happening.
Writing review
The first thing we need to talk about is that the artist is constantly adding new elements (not of the magical kind) to her world. While most of these are fine, it's hard to argue that Rhea's friend Jake was always trans/non-binary/whatever-the-tumblrites-make-next, when, background-character-who-got-upgraded or not, we saw no hints of that before.
While normally you have to separate the art from the artist, Chu makes that impossible. Between her constant drawing, on the side, the Demon Army – and especially Iratu and his murderous boyfriend Azurai – as cutesy-wootsey, lovey-dovey, did-nothing-wrong fluffy people, it just gets worse when you consider that the protagonists are the butts of jokes and the Angels as complete monsters worse than the Demons – despite the fact that we know both sides of this Great War slaughtered each other, including families and children, for centuries.
And then we get the fact that Heathcliff is "redeemed" as a character, and starts being nice to him – right before he leaves the party.
In short, Chu is actually pretty good at worldbuilding, and her art is actually quite good, but her story leaves massive amounts to be desired. In fact, that is my primary concern with the comic: the story takes a great concept and falls flat on its face so hard it gave everyone brain damage.
The only antagonist whose motivations make sense, thus far, is that of Denevol, the Seraph who curbstomps the two lovebirds in Weyville. He lost his entire clan save for himself, and he's now desperately trying to slaughter every Demon because of that grief. Consider that this is the most sensible reaction the villains have had thus far.
The antagonists are also well above the heroes in power. They're going to die. And with the weather tied to the Guardians, and possibly the health of the planet, they're not going to die alone. Basically, the only solution to the heroes' problem is a Deus Ex Machina...or a VERY bad end.
The worst part, though, is that no one seems to make any progress. The story is basically half-way over, and Chu doesn't expect it'll take 15 years to complete the other half. That's a very bad sign for this story, unless she's trying to write the next 1984 – and trust me, Chu is no George Orwell. In fact, by her politics, she's everything he opposed.
The problem is that Chu refuses to see these criticisms. She somehow got it into my head that I'm a bigot, perhaps because I don't see forced representation as The Perfect Thing To Do (TM), but I haven't the slightest clue what her beef is other than my ability to get really angry and my inability to express myself perfectly under the best conditions.
Speaking of, if you ever read this, Chu, news flash: we're all human, and humans are flawed. My flaw is my anger, and I have only barely started to realize that being angry IS OKAY. I treat myself the way Kieri's mother treated her for getting angry, which leads to a Tantrum Spiral that would leave most Dwarf Fortress players wincing in sympathy. Think about that for a minute, if you dare. I sure won't hold my breath for an apology.
Author biography
(The following is from the previous first review.)
Raizy, who prefers to be called "The 'Chu" or "Chu", is a 29-year-old "jet programmer alt webcomic artist" (whatever the hell that means) with an English degree. She started the comic in 2004 out of the humiliation of realizing that she’d only ever written Pokémon fanfiction. Her DeviantArt account is full of Photoshop experiments featuring trite Nintendo fanart and the characters from her comics. Raizy’s influences are (obviously, but also explicitly stated to be) anime in general; the Fox Kids lineup from the early 90’s, which she apparently had in place of parents; and Nintendo (and only Nintendo) video games. Having been raised by Nintendo games and Saturday morning cartoons, the two strongest influences on her work seem to be Nintendo’s Pokémon and Disney’s Gargoyles. The third strongest influence, adorably, would be her friends.
Raizy is a member of a small internet collective that calls itself “The Hive,” consisting of several close friends, several of whom write webcomics (and none of which are notable enough to be included in this wiki, which should tell you something). Every single person in the group is better at some aspect of comics than Raizy, be that world building, dialogue writing, story writing, characterization, sketch work, or PhotoShop. Unfortunately, they're absolutely abysmal in whatever skills they're lacking,* and she seems to follow their suggestions based on whatever they’re worst at.**
Raizy herself is an English/Japanese/English Major (not art) who started writing the comic in High School and works hard to maintain that level of quality. She continued it all through college. Her status as a weeaboo eventually lead to her becoming a schoolteacher in Japan, until she realized that it was never going to be like she saw in anime and she quit. She currently spends most of her time drawing furries, insisting to people that she’s not a furry and does not write a furry comic, and bitching about how fans misspell the made-up names of her characters.
Also, she has a photo of herself over there. If you want to see what she looks like for whatever reason (not going to ask) why not go to her DA and see for yourself. I'm done here.
- Two good examples of this are a comic that contains panels of handwritten text, and a comic that features people standing around and talking, with occasional explanations of what the story is supposed to be. I refuse to link to these.
- A notable exception here is the shading/coloring. The author gleefully changes her coloring as often as possible to prevent anything from getting too consistent, but uses techniques recommended by people who know more than her about it (admittedly not a huge feat). The coloring/shading and backgrounds are the biggest stylistic changes since the start.
Conclusion
Slightly Damned is not a webcomic worth reading. Not anymore. To quote the Mysterious Mr. Enter, on his review of Family Guy's Seahorse Seashell Party: "It started out decently, and had a certain charm to it. But over the years, it got BAD."
I wish that weren't the case, subjectively or otherwise. I really wish I could still enjoy it. But I can't. I still read the new pages, just like I did for the Fourth Shinobi War Arc of Naruto Shippuden. It's for the same reasons, too: because I want to see how bad the train wreck becomes. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if we get a Kaguya Moment here.
I once said that if Chu really doesn't like this comic that much, then she should just dump it. She clearly likes writing stupid jokes and making people non-traditional sexualities, rather than writing serious topics like war and taking them seriously. It's like Twilight talking about Abortion, or Captain Planet talking about AIDS; she's just not talented enough.
And honestly, that really is a shame.
Links
- The comic for the masochistic.
The forum for those with peter pan syndrome.Removed- The links page that has links to some of those things I didn't link.
