Era-Convergence
Combine a terrible plot with insipid dialogue and shit-tier art and you get this.
If the art wasn’t bad enough, the story is pretty much culled from whatever generic tripe the author had read in the C-tier children’s manga section. Naive, genki protagonist meets up with a bishounen antagonist who suddenly develops feelings for her! Oh my!
Oh yeah, and her brain’s totally fucked, but not in the Sakurasou way.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/era-convergence
Licensed Heroes
This is a 4-koma-formatted comic that reuses the same concept (that it’s hard to find a job without skills and that it’s hard to gain skills without a job)… for 46 fucking strips.
- That was strip 45. I wasn’t lying.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/licensed-heroes
Simon Sues
A spiritual lawyer detective helps people out with their problems involving spirits.
Yes, another person read xxxHolic and thought they could make a manga just like it. Please stop, people. This rarely ends well.
The art’s okayish, but the story is garbage. I mean, it’s fine to start out with something this sucky as you wait for your artistic skills to improve, but surely you can think of a better format for that than monster-of-the-week.
And the more you read, the worse it gets. Just look at that fucking dialogue. Ugh.
The plot is incredibly contrived (the protagonist can summon demons with the help of his mystical friend and every demon he summons must answer whatever questions he gives them because… that’s how it works!) and clearly inspired (read: stolen) from works like Un-Go and Death Note (arc one has a character whose special power is writing down the name of people, which causes them to die).
Yes, art is theft. But to be so fucking blatantly unoriginal is not fucking acceptable. Everything about this work screams “poorly done plagiarism” but the sad part is that even if everything here was original, it would still be complete shit.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/simon-sues
H. P. Lovecraft: Dreamlands
Shitty story with shitty art from Lovecraft lore. Great story here, author. I too read The Odyssey in high school.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/hp-lovecraft-dreamlands
Okamirai
This had to have evolved from Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction. I really see no other way it could have come into existence. Basically, the main character meets a wolf and then he encounters a demon and then the wolf tells him they can become more powerful together, so he fuses with said wolf to become a wolfman whenever trouble arises.
I fucking hate people.
The art is trash, yes, but the desperate attempt by the author to be seen as “honto Japanese” is what turns the work into something even the garbageman wouldn’t take.
Yes, that dialogue is real.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/okamirai-
Horizon Gakuen
Okay, so this is the first actual “manga” I’ve seen that used the Comipo software that Crunchyroll is shilling. Is it good?
Nope!
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/horizon-gakuen
Tides of Tirnanog
I’ve read this story twice now and I… I don’t think anything of it. It’s so completely unimpressive that I literally cannot give a description to it other than “bland”.
Boring review, boring comic. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/tides-of-tirnanog
Peter Pan
I hope you die of cancerous AIDS.
This story is literally just an “adaptation” of the Peter Pan novel with bleh art and pacing. At least I hope it’s an adaptation of the novel, because if it was adapted from the movie, Disney’s lawyers are gonna run a train over the author AND Crunchyroll. (I don’t care how many millions you got from Venrock, Crunchy, it’s not enough to go toe-to-toe with Disney on this.) I didn’t like the series, but I hope they covered their asses on this one.
Anyway, it doesn’t get lazier than copy/pasting a pre-written story onto your art and calling it a series. Not impressed.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/peter-pan
Midnight Oil
There are seven pages of this available on Crunchyroll right now. I’ll let you guess how good they were from the volume cover.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/midnight-oil
Figured It Out – Anything Goes
Jesus Christ are you stupid, Crunchyroll. You’re going to host a comic… with Pokemon? Really?
You can’t fucking do this anymore; your illegal streaming days are behind you. And since I bet your goal is to IPO, you need to fucking cut this shit out — no fucking licensed characters on your site. Nintendo will send fucking C&Ds.
Ignoring any legal issues they have with hosting this shit, the comic itself is just that. Any “humor” comes from the “lol random is pocky and kawaii” school of thought and as such, sucks.
Rating: 1/5.
Link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/figured-it-out-anything-goes
After your previous, much ballyhooed post, I was expecting awesomeness. ┐(´ー｀)┌
But seriously, some of these “authors” are in serious need of a grammar lesson. I mean, I get these aren’t novels, but fuck… Also, I’ll admit that 1000 Words did give me a slight, tingly feeling of warmth~
I don’t care if they’re novels or fucking stick figure webcomics, if you are publishing something with words and expecting other people to take it seriously enough to bother reading it learn to spell. Some of this shit is unacceptable considering these people are presumably native English speaking adults. Am I a bad person for thinking that English teachers in this country should be loaded onto a rocket and fired into the sun? They have failed in a big way.
Maybe if they spent more time on the English part of English and less time on all that bullshit poetry and story analysis we’d be better off.
Read an interesting history on how things shook out this way once. Basically the short version is that as university professors moved increasingly towards being expected to do original research, grammar professors were fucked because how can they? So they tacked on studying literature to their field because anyone can read a Shakespeare play or whatever, write a bullshit analysis of the characters or something, and call it original research. Primary education caught wind of it and basically said “WELP if the university professors are doing it guess we better do it too!” So now we have a situation where instead of actually learning English students are reading Ender’s Game and calling it work.
Ignoring your terrible grammar here, I’ll go ahead and ask the questions that everyone is thinking: do you know what the fuck you’re talking about? Last I checked, it was a common belief that a great way to teach how to write is to have people read. One of the easiest and most effective ways to train people for literacy is to sit them down and have them read. Literacy, you know, reading and writing. Having questions on books does two things: teaches what is important in a text (usually focusing on the plot) and also how to show that you comprehend a text. Basically, without that “bullshit” you probably wouldn’t be high functioning enough to type out your comments, let alone fail to properly punctuate your goddamn sentences.
Granted, but I should hope that by the end of primary school kids would know how to read most modern texts with a normal vocabulary. Let’s be honest, you and I both learnt fuck all writing that 10th grade essay on the theme of love in Romeo and Juliet. I would agree that one would have to comprehend a text to write an essay on it (unless you have a summary related to you, now widely available on the internet, which can definitely serve you until VCE), but you’re not going to learn any more of the English language that way. English teaches you less about text comprehension and more about how to write flowery essays that prattle on for pages. I certainly don’t have any idea how one would rectify the subject, but it would serve well to at least teach some more complex grammar too. By the way, the most efficient way to teach someone a particular concept is to, well, teach them that particular concept, and not to read a novel that demonstrates it occasionally.
Ignoring your unnecessarily insulting tone here, I’ll go ahead and state straight out that I don’t give a shit what you think. Whether you agree with history or not is your own business. It’s a fact, whether you admit it or not, that grammar and literature used to be two separate fields of study. It’s a matter of historical fact that it wasn’t until 1892 when the National Education Association in the US officially recommended fusing English and Literature into one subject. If you can spare a moment from having kneejerk reactions to things you don’t know anything about, you can read the article I reference in my first post, complete with cited sources where he got his information, here: http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html
In conclusion: go fuck yourself.
In England, it’s still two subjects, to a degree. At GCSE level, we sit a language paper and a literature paper, but it’s all taught in the same class. Not sure if that’s relevant at all :)
Below the age of 14 though, it’s all one subject.
I don’t think you should be blaming the teachers for the student’s incompetence. My teachers were great English teachers but they never taught me about the grammar stuff. I learned those things from one of them activity books I did. Just read the rule once, and you get it and it stays with you forever. It’s nothing hard. Well, that’s true for here in Australia, anyway.
For the “English part of English”, there’s actually a subject here that’s all about the language itself (all the metalanguage and weirdo technical jargon).
You know, I’d call never being taught grammar of any kind a failure. It’s evidently not that difficult to teach it, and so many students fail horribly at it. By the way, blaming students is definitely the wrong way to look at education. You can blame the kids to a certain extent, but it’s ultimately the teacher’s duty to teach the curriculum effectively. Out of curiosity, what kind of schools did you go to? I certainly learnt some grammar in a public high school (and nothing but finger-painting in the royally fucked primary school system), but it obviously depends on the teacher. Sure, there’s that English Language subject, but 16/17 years is too little too late for shit like that.
Well, I don’t ‘blame’ the students for not knowing the grammar well. But I never once heard any student ask the teacher to teach them English grammar. I learned the most of my grammar skills in primary school with a bit of addon for years 7-9. It was in the curriculum and it was taught, but maybe the teachers assumed the students got the hang of it since no one asked for help on the matter. Maybe it’s because no one really liked English so no one really tried. I wouldn’t have done English if it wasn’t compulsory.
I went to Victorian schools like you (assuming you went to school in Victoria). Probably the most I learned in my primary school was some maths skills, handwriting and reading comprehension. As for high school, I went to one of them underprivileged schools with the cheap facilities but good teachers and above-average scores.
Honorifics In Amerimanga: Oh God Why
“I am Omsagro-sama”
Just as a thought experiment, would you be as exasperated if an English-speaking writer decided to set a story in France and used “monsieur” and “mademoiselle”?
Omsagro-sama = Okay.
Agent-san = Not okay.
There are layers to it. :P
http://puu.sh/1wfm8
That’s a shame.
sfkldgjhfdjklg. I always miss the good stuff.
Oh well, this was excellent for some good ol’ metaphorical facepalms! As if a decent manga reader didn’t already provide more manga than someone could reasonably consume….
On another note, why are official “manga readers” (what is it called?) so… painful to use?
> On another note, why are official “manga readers” (what is it called?) so… painful to use?
> Unlike other sites where people go to read comics online, CRUNCHYROLL COMICS was created to natively support comics.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
Why do some of them write shit from right to left? Oh right, weeaboos. That explains the honorifics, too.
Here:
http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/1000-W0RDS-126831037
http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/Knite-Chapter-1-151132545
They just got these too comics that was lying on deviant for 2-3 years already.
I swear I’ve seen that 1000 Words comic before.
I’ve seen it. It was a flash in Sankaku Complex Booru. Maybe it was plagarism, lol.
First off, I’m the creator of Shamrock and I wanted to take a moment to thank Dark_Sage for actually taking the time and trouble to bother reading all of the CrunchyRoll comics. I really do appreciate the feedback, negative or not.
I just wanted to point out in my own defense, my female MC is supposed to have butchered English as she’s Irish. I have a hard time writing a North-Belfast accent. I know it’s bad.
But really, if there’s anything else that you (or anyone else who’s read Shamrock for that matter) didn’t mention here that you think could be improved upon, drop me a line.
Anyway, thanks again. I hope we didn’t disappoint you too badly.
No, I loved her accent. You’re spelling words wrong though. It’s “believin'”, not “beleivin'”, for example.
Ack! Typos! Good catch! I’ll get those fixed!
Hey there!
This is Rogo, the artist for Gravston and I just wanted to echo Ashikai’s sentiment here – thanks for taking time to read and review our comics!
The points you made about my comic were valid and I hope in the future I can improve my art and lift my characters out from being generic.
Again, appreciate the honest reviews and hope that we all manage to improve in your eyes ^_^
Really? I mean yes I was being honest, but I didn’t offer any critique that would help you beyond “the art is fucking terrible”. I don’t know how much I can offer you in terms of artistic advice, but if you’re also the author I can certainly tell you why I didn’t enjoy it, in depth.
I don’t pull my punches, but I’m sincere with what I say, so if you want me to describe my problems with the plot/characters, I’d be happy to do so. Just keep in mind it’s just the opinion of one person and that doesn’t mean you need to pander to my every whim. If everyone lived their life solely for others they would have no life of their own.
Hello again,
I should have been clearer – yes I am also the author.
If you wanna give me a critique of the characters, feel free to. So long as it’s done in a polite and constructive way, then I’ll be happy to read it.
Thanks again for reading.
All right, let me reread the entire series and I’ll get back to you when I’m done. I won’t necessarily be polite but my comment will be constructive.
Thank you very much, I look forward to reading it.
Okay, here’s chapter 1. I’m just gonna go chapter by chapter since I have a lot to say.
Spelling and grammar.
Grammar is not necessarily so important in webcomics, but spelling is because you can’t argue it reflects natural speech in any way at all.
Whose != Who’s
Agruing != Arguing
You’re != Your
Alot != A lot
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. You get the gist. Learn English before you write in English or get a proofreader.
The art.
Again, I’m not artist, but I am a consumer and I read a lot of manga.
If you take a look at: http://gravston.smackjeeves.com/comics/1007138/page-8/
the proportions are completely fucked, which isn’t good when you have a picture meant to be the center of attention.
Look at the guy’s feet. The fuck’s up with that? And I understand you like to emphasize heads in your work. Fine, that’s your style, but the head on this guy is much too big compared to the other characters we’ve seen up to this point (cover art person and wimpy kid)
And this kick looks impossible to manage — it’s distracting: http://gravston.smackjeeves.com/comics/1007154/page-12/
What the fuck is up with Samuel’s face? This is gonna give me nightmares: http://gravston.smackjeeves.com/comics/1007159/page-18/
Last art bit: Why the hell does the cat have an emo haircut? http://gravston.smackjeeves.com/comics/1007170/page-30/
Plot/characters
Your exposition is too bloody obvious. Most authors hide their failure behind flashbacks or – gods forbid – world building and character interaction, but this is just awkward.
I’m supposed to believe that this kid meets a stranger in a forest and starts reading his diary out to the guy? If your goal is to make him a sacrificial character, you’re making it very hard to sympathize with him. And if your goal is to make him the main character, you sure are setting up a pathetic MC (which to be fair, a lot of authors do, but that’s in the name of relatability, which this character has little of by this point).
The cat’s explanation is suitable, though.
Okay, thanks for the critiques, lemme try and address them all quickly.
Spelling & Grammar
I agree there is no excuse for poor spelling and grammar, and as such have actually done something you suggested – I have gotten myself a proofreader. Hopefully this will lead to a lot less of me butchering the English language in future chapters.
Artwork
I’m not going to address everything you brought up here, but simply say that I agree whole-heartedly that my artwork is in need of improvement.
Story/Characters
I actually 100% agree with you here, and in fact, I am already working on a revision of this chapter. I begun plotting it out a couple of days ago. I was reading through this and shaking my head at such elementary and frankly, stupid mistakes I was making.
Thanks again
Chapter 2.
Not gonna bother talking about spelling now. But yes, it’s still fucking terrible here. The art’s the same but I have to comment on something.
What the hell’s going on here: http://gravston.smackjeeves.com/comics/1007220/page-11/ ?
Is that a blush or did the guy try out for football team and screwed up with the face paint?
Characters/plot
Just how much Soul Eater did you read before starting this series? Yes, it’s obvious.
For Sunflower/Dave, you established early in the chapter that Sunflower knew he was into demons. And you’re clearly setting them up as characters that know way more than they’re letting on, so why the fuck does the chapter end with Dave saying “So Samuel is the death host, huh?” He should already know.
And Samuel continues your habit of revealing character thoughts not through thought bubbles (fair enough, thought bubbles are unrealistic anyway) but through… more endless blathering to people who don’t care. Is this how people really act in Britain? Maybe I could see girls talking about this, but guys? Eh… (That is assuming the other person is a guy and not a girl. I can’t tell with your art.)
Hey there again,
Art
Yes, that is meant to be a blush, but I agree it doesn’t look quite right.
Story
As with Chapter 1, I’m already planning to redo Chapter 2 to remove some of the problems you’ve mentioned, like Samuel just blathering about his problems to everyone and no one. It was a bad habit I got into that I’m trying to get out of.
The final line is… not great I’ll be honest. I couldn’t really figure out how to phrase the reveal, and the result is less than stellar.
I was wondering if you want to e-mail me the rest of your critique? It’ll help reduce the amount of spam in the comments.
Anyway, thanks again for taking time to read and critique.
Chapter 3 is my last critique, so don’t worry about taking up the comments field.
Ahhh fair enough, and thank you for your time.
Chapter 3.
More of your one-sided conversations that basically read as speeches. I’m not saying it’s bad to have them once in a while, but you’ve done this every chapter now. It gets annoying.
Belial: So what, he explains himself to the humans he just killed and then transforms into a demon? I don’t see why; there’s no logic behind it.
If War Monger’s main goal is to kill Samuel, why did he focus on killing the demon first and then just punching Samuel and warning him he’s after his life? Logic fail.
I’m also drawing lots of comparisons between these characters and other series, which I can only partially attribute to the nature of tropes.
Of course, these are all mostly just directed critiques. If you fixed them all (at least where you agree there are issues) and came back and said “5/5 now?” I’d still have to disagree.
Plots can start out generic and you can grow your characters out from there, fine. But what you really have to do is grow your art to reach a level that will make people interested in seeing where you can go with your series. This is especially important since you’re targeting manga fans who are what you would consider fans of a certain artform. Personally, the art of a series has to meet a certain bare minimum before I’ll be interested in reading it. There are a lot of comics out there and this is a sure-fire way to narrow the candidates.
But you acknowledge that your art needs work, and I believe that understanding will help you improve more than anything I say could. I wish you luck with continuing Gravston and your future series.
I am a great believer that the path to success is routed in understanding your flaws and over-coming them. This has been enlightening and I want to thank you for your time. I wish you luck with for the future with this blog and all your future endeavours.
On the subject of the art all I can say is never stop learning and you’ll eventually get there. I read a lot of webcomics and I see it time and time again where someone starts off with pretty lousy art but through practice gets a lot better. The important thing is not to get complacent, as soon as you start to think your art is good enough it will be hard to improve any more, you have to have the mindset that there are always places you can do better. Drawing well isn’t an inborn talent like a lot of people want to believe, it’s a skill that’s improved by practice. Keep practicing!
Wow.
Hi :) I’m the author/artist of Convergence, and like Ashi and Rogo I just wanna say thanks for reading and reviewing our manga ^^
I really just had a silly story that I wanted to draw XD I didn’t actually mean for this story to be like aimed to be published or achieve anything at all, but a lot of people have actually said they liked it so I decided to just share it ^^; (plus it has been a great learning experience!) My art still actually does have a lot of issues, although the first chapter was drawn 3 years ago so I hope I got better as the pages go on ><
If it isn't too much trouble can you tell me where the dialogue falls flat? And also, what does "Sakurasou" mean? @_@
Thanks again :)
The Pet Girl of Sakurasou is an anime that’s airing this season. In it, the girl I was talking about is quite literally autistic. But she’s also an idiot savant (as in she’s very gifted in a particular field — art in the case of this anime). I was basically calling your main character mentally retarded in the way she acts and behaves.
Also, yeah, I don’t mind going over the dialogue for you.
That “fluffy” shit has got to go. It makes me think the comment was written by a 13-year-old girl who grew up on Gaia and DeviantArt and thinks “random pocky kawaii” is the most hilarious phrase ever. Put simply, it limits your audience to the lowest tier of comic fan. If they’re the only people you’re targeting your series to, then you’re doing it right. But I have the feeling that you want more than that. So fucking grow up. You can still have a character that likes fluffy things in your work, but honestly it feels like you’re exploiting the mentally handicapped with this series.
Chapter 1, Page 36 almost made me vomit. It’s so sickeningly generic, I have trouble believing anyone could think it’s acceptable. “Oh wow, this girl called me fluffy. It melted my cold, icy heart and now I love her. But I have a duty to perform! Woe is me!!” Yes, you put background into this later, but that whole backstory is screwed up in and of itself. There’s more to the world than black and white, you know.
“slum trash, slum trash, slum trash”. Yes, we get it. How many times did you use that particular phrase in your work? Do you know of any synonyms you might use for it? It feels pretty fucking heavy handed.
The characters in general just feel… unreal. And no, I’m not saying that in the good sense. It’s like you came up with a sentence to describe each one’s entire being and thought that would suffice. Well, it doesn’t. And they all felt so generic that I found myself wanting to read something else with every page I turned. Yes, this does seem like something you just did for fun, but your initial intentions don’t quite matter since you set it up for critical judgment alongside every other author’s work on the Crunchyroll comics site. Luckily for you, most of the authors are operating on the same level, so yours doesn’t stand out as terrible as it might if you were compared to actual serialized works from Japan.
Ignoring my critique, if you only think your art is what you need to work on, I think the best solution is for you to read some manga on your own, or graphic novels. Read quite a bit and find out what made you like one series more than another. I think as you find out what exactly you like, you’ll be able to see where the flaws in your own work lie.
Also, quick question for you. How exactly did you find this site? Three authors in two days is way too coincidental. Does Crunchyroll tell you where referral links to your comics come from?
I see, thank you :D I might want to leave fluffy in because that’s actually what most of my readers comment about, how much they love how it’s out of left field. I appreciate your opinion though, I can see the other side of it. I can’t target everyone’s 100%. :)
Actually… for that page, I was actually trying to go for a double edged sword ><; Although it might seem like he was responding warmly, he ends up just thinking about another way to approach the situation, specifically realizing that he had a simple way of capturing her all along by just buying her something. But it's interesting that many people were able to read that differently.
To answer your quick question, I just googled crunchyroll manga ^^; I actually had no idea Ashi and Rogo came to this forum as well until I saw the other comments. We do actually know each other, though. XD But no, right now their manga system is pretty limited besides posting pages, but I'm sure they'll refine that soon.
But I actually have a quick question for you… Is it often that many characters have their full development after 100 pages into the manga? It's not in my defense, but it's a question I ask most people who read a lot of manga ^^
Ah, looks like I’m the second page of google for that. Okay, makes sense.
It’s not necessarily the development that endears me to characters in the beginning but rather their personalities and how well they’re handled in the context of pacing and character interaction. (Hell, if the plot/world-building are good enough, you don’t even need to care about the characters.)
In the very beginning of your series, you need to find some way to grab the reader’s attention and present your manga to them as “this is what I’m offering you”. Read the first ten pages of Death Note and tell me you’re not intrigued — the interest hooks, the character introduction, the world-building, the possibility of something unique. It’s got it all. What’s supposed to draw YOUR readers in? Faux-manga art presented with a battle sequence? Why wouldn’t I read another series instead? What’s YOUR value add that makes my time worth being spent reading your series? That’s something you have to figure out yourself, cuz I certainly can’t tell you.
I’m not gonna say you should read Bakuman like a bible, but maybe you should give it a shot. It’s a manga about making manga and it’s by the same guys behind Death Note so you know they know their shit.
I pray you never lay eyes on my comics, D_S.
Page 2 of your flagship series and the main character already has jizz all over his face. That escalated far more quickly than I would have thought.
;_;
Aww, I still love ya. <3
I like how you actually think you know what CR’s intentions with this project are. This entire post is simply laughable, you assume far too much and I hope you like deliberately wasting your time.
You’re the author of The Daily Snail, aren’t you?