(Note: the large cluster at the top of the page is the comic I’m talking about. The rest is other stuff by the same artist.)

All the other Vocaloids are characters in the strip as well. Even fan-made ones.

It is a 4koma comic, which basically means a comic with four panels. And it’s in Japanese, but there’s little dialogue. So even people who don’t know Japanese can (usually) understand what’s going on.

Somebody animated a few of the strips, which is pretty cool:

Chibi Miku-san

FTL: (It won’t let me link to the individual images, so go down to #75.) Poor Neru.

Also, that archive only gets updated every ten strips. So it doesn’t always have the latest strips. For them, you have to go to the main index page. There’s a new strip almost daily, so you might wanna go there often. (Or, simply check the archive page every couple weeks for the block of ten.)

True Remembrance is a visual novel. Everyone familiar with the term? Yes? …Oh, no? You in the back, you’re shaking your head… Alright. You all know what a novel is, right? It’s “an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events”. Now, what about the visual part?

A visual novel is what you could call an interactive novel. They are especially prevalent in Japan. It shows images of the various characters on the screen, and a text box that shows what they’re saying. You press a little button to advance to the next paragraph, and the character’s facial expressions will change. It can even be accompanied by a soundtrack!

Anyway, back to True Remembrance. The setting is rather interesting. Extreme depression is a pandemic spanning the entire globe. The condition is known as the Dolor. And people will go to one remote city, where they can have their bad memories removed by ‘Mnemonicides’.

In this city, live Blackiris, an Alpha Class Mnemonicide, and La, his patient. And this is their story.

And quite a nice story indeed. There is little in the way of action scenes, and much more about character development/interactions. So if you like a good story, you can’t go wrong with this. If you want things exploding every five minutes… You’ll have to look elsewhere.

As for the character art and accompanying soundtrack, they are both excellent. (It’s originally from Japan. Good artwork seems to flow from there.)

The entire story takes about three hours to read, and may be longer or shorter depending on how fast you are. But I recommend going a little slow in reading the first time.

In fact, when people are first introduced to the concept of visual novels, they are often directed to this piece. (Just as I just did. ;) )

Precocious is about little kids, who posess some degree of intelligence. Actually, I got a little bit of a Calvin and Hobbes vibe reading it. The smart kid part, anyway. There’s no stuffed tigers to be found, alas.

For the Lolz… Well, I think it’s a toss-up between this, (EVIL!) and this. (The last panel/title is just so random.)

So yeah, that’s it for this week. See you again when I find a webcomic that I like enough to write about.

Huh. Not only am I horribly late, I seem to have run out of suitable comics for my column here. Fancy that. Oh well, I imagine it was bound to happen sooner or later…

So… In lieu of more comics, I’ll post a single strip that may contain some wisdom…

Heh.

Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger is about a descendant of the other Quentyn Quinn, Questor of Freeman Downs.

The Racconans have ventured out into space, and Quentyn is a Space Ranger. Space Rangers are:

Brave warriors, explorers, frontier lawmen who push the boundaries of civilization and justice out across the stars every single day.

In the opening sequence, I am very much reminded of Spaceman Spiff. (Except his spaceship was red.) I would be not at all surprised if RH Junior was a Calvin and Hobbes fan. (It’s one of the greatest comic strips ever. Whad’ya expect?)

There are, as I write this, exactly ten strips in the archive. That’s because instead of just making the strip and putting it up, the author makes three new pages every time he collects $500 in donations. So if you’ve got the cash, why not help the guy out?

Foist.

Fellowship of Heroes is about a guy who suddenly gains superpowers. In a world where the superheroes of old have gone away, and their replacements… Kinda are morons. The old heroes were all about truth, justice, and virtue, and the newbies are liars, cowards, frauds, and hypocrites.

So feeling depressed after helping a friend research a thesis paper about supers, Chris is walking home in pouring rain, and helps out someone whose car went kaput. Little did anyone know what was about to happen…

It’s a real serialized story this time, so here’s the beginning.

FTL: You’re assuming they make TV that doesn’t.

Camp Calomine is about a camp counselor who works among a bunch of people who don’t know the first thing about real camping. They spend most of their time eating tofu dogs, and teaching about global warming. Eh… But Charles keeps his kids occupied with real camping stuff.

First.

FTL: Braille in the drivethrough

Today’s lineup includes Tallyho, yet another comic by the Tales of the Questor guy. There’s a fox, a basset hound, and an evil, insane kid. The fox loves fried chicken in a bucket, the hound is British, and the evil, insane kid is, well… Evil and insane.

I don’t think I can call it serialized, but there’s a few arcs in there. One particularly funny one should be Teh Lulz for people familiar with stuff on The Internetz.

FTL: Tank Commander

Goblin Hollow is a remake of an earlier comic by the same guy, Under the Lemon Tree. (It’s not online, it’s only available in book form.)

A new arcade opens in town, and three friends go over to check it out. But little known to them, the arcade is actually home to real live goblins! (Who love playing pranks on unsuspecting visitors, much to the dismay of the arcade owners.)

It’s not really truly serialized, but there are story arcs throughout it. So here’s the beginning.

For Teh Lolz: KHAAAAAAAAAAN!!!

Irregular Webcomic! is made using photos of Lego characters, and D&D miniatures. It doesn’t have just one story in it, it has many different themes all going at the same time, and they occasionally overlap. And they’re all funny. No, I can’t figure out how he does it either.

Despite what its name implies, IWC is very regular with its updates. The author updates it every day, and hasn’t missed a day since 2003. A very impressive record.

You can read through each different theme individually, but then you won’t understand everything when there’s a crossover. So as always, I say to start at the beginning. (There’s over 2000 strips in the archive, so you’ll need a while. ;) )

FTL:  Like I needed a reason?