Category Archives: Reviews

Aoi House Review and other opinions…

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I hate to miss out on good webcomic mangas, even if they are of an older series and I actually prefer completed series at occasions where I want a long read, because I do not have to wait on weekly one page updates. If you never heard of Aoi House, I suggest taking a look at it.

Aoi House Review

Aoi House is a completed webcomic manga that was adopted and serialized by Seven Seas for publication because of its success. It has some similarities to Love Hina by Ken Akatmasu, the manga novel that has a world-wide success. 2 guys, by the names of Sandy and Alex, stumbled into a club with lodging which are full of girls, and they were thinking that this club was an ordinary club that features otaku crazed hobbies such as anime and manga viewing.

However, thought it was just “Aoi house”; as it was intended by some members when the name is formally supposed to be “Yaoi house”. If you do not know, “yaoi” is a genre of manga which focuses on guy to guy relationships. Despite this, this manga isn’t about these, so relax; it just so happens that the author tries to create comedy by using that name.

So the girls tried to turn the guys into gays, or rather make them fancy their craze for yaoi otaku.

And of course it is hilarious.

Why do I say it resembles Love Hina? That’s because its about being surrounded by a group of beautiful girls again, forced to stay in close quarters with them, and they each have an animal mascot; a flying turtle for Love Hina, and a perverted hamster for Aoi House.So if you do like Love Hina as a manga, Aoi House is good for you as a webcomic manga.

The story is light hearted, harem, and a little ‘ecchi’. Again, due to its suggestive nature, I recommend this manga for older teens. It is still generally safe. The mascot hamster is ridiculously adorable. I really liked it!

Other opinions

I picked Aoi House up for review because it is a successful and completed series. As I was browsing around the Internet, I find that there are many incompleted webcomics lying around, which have potential, but stopped usually due to the lack of funding, popularity and support from fans.

I know how hard it is to do draw and publish weekly, as I tried a little with my own blog. So I actually can feel for the webcomic authors. However, if you are really good at what you are doing, you can really be picked up by a well known company, and be proven successful. And with this webcomic, I hope to encourage you to that.

Here’s MTV speaking a little about Aoi House:

I don’t exactly like the song itself, but I am happy for a manga webcomic that has its own MTV mention, which is rather rare.

Enjoy!

Some points to note:
1. Ecchi genre for manga means to be suggestive in the sexual department, but not usually explicit. It is generally suitable for older teens.

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Guest Review: Commander Kitty

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Writing up a good and fair review is always hard, considering how much time it takes to go through archives. Still yet we can’t always find ones that we feel compelled enough to sit down and study, giving the comic it’s fair review. So we’re introducing a new practice, and that’s the guest review. From now on we will be accepting reviews from you about your favorite webcomic, with the only stipulation being that you can’t be one of the artists behind it. Submit your comic to us and it will get reviewed for content and pleasantness and posted to the main site.

This is your chance! Now send those reviews in.

Back when I first discovered webcomics, one stood out as my favorite: A goofy, Saturday morning style adventure about a rag-tag team of animal spacers trying to be heroes. It combined good clean artwork with energetic scifi hilarity, and best of all didn’t try to be the next Spaceballs. Then one day the comic, website, and creator vanished from the face of the internet entirely. Until now.

Commander Kitty is back, and is off to a great start. Rather than continuing the old story, creator Scotty Arsenault decided to start fresh, and so far it’s been a great ride. Kitty is a slightly pathetic and overbearing spaz with delusions of grandeur. (Imagine the rich kid Hon Solo used to give wedgies in school) After somehow acquiring a spaceship, and hiring a crew of the only three creatures in the galaxy willing to work for him, he’s ready to make a name for himself as a great space captain, mostly without any success. First Officer Fluffy is an airbrained little pink kitten. Lieutenent Mittens is a paranoid and highly distractible grey tabby, and the usual brunt of Kitty’s wrath. Mr. Socks is a brilliant, yet inarticulate ferret. The ship is run by a swarm of misanthropic robots referred to collectively as MOUSE. They’ve just been joined by the shady Red Panda Nin Wah, who just might be their ticket out of numfdom.

You can really tell that Scotty’s done this before. The art is crisp and polished, drawn in smooth, expressive lines, with bright toylike colours. The characters are reminiscent of old Hannah Barberra cartoons, and all very distinct and consistent, in both appearance and personality. The comic is very action-based; the animals never stop moving, and the “punchline” is usually something funny that somebody did, rather than what they said. The whole page, however is filled with sight gags, one-liners, and pop-culture references; Rather than giving you just enough to keep you from starving, Scotty loads up your plate with enough humor to last you all week.

Commander Kitty is more than just a great webcomic, it’s also great comedic scifi. Rather than just annother Trek/Wars parody, Scotty has created a unique universe with its own social structures, that borrows from the tropes and technology of mainstream science fiction; Similar to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The story started out a bit slow, (it began with a three-page dream sequence) but it’s still been fun to read, and things look like they will be moving faster now that Kitty has met Nin Wah.

The website is well designed and fits the comic perfectly. There is a flash window in one corner that shows mug shots of the different characters, a Jukebox that has some pretty sweet music to listen to, and a news box with Scotty’s Twitter feed. It all looks very clean, and futuristic, like a web page from outer space.

This review was courtesy of Robin Gibson.

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Digital Strips 184 – Review Boxcar Astronaut

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One of these days I’m going to learn that this site is on Eastern time, so when I post after 10, I’m posting in the future or from the past depending on how you look at it.

Speaking of the future, that’s when we’ll all be flying around in space, like astronauts. Speaking of the past, that’s when none of had xBox 360s and had to use our imaginations to keep from going crazy and killing everyone around us. Just like astronauts.

The past and future combine in Boxcar Astronaut. A super kid friendly, gag-a-day strip by Jeff Carter and Marc Lapeirre.  We tqlk about the strip, what it means to review something that has finished it’s run, how important blog posts are to a comic and how cool robots are. It’s a good show, you should check it out.

Show Notes:

RiceBoy
Imagine This
Captain Excelsior
Wes Molebash
Penny Arcade
Charles Christopher

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Digital Strips 183 – Review Kukuburi

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Don’t tell my wife or son, but one of my favorite things has always been to imagine that my current life isn’t really a thing and lose myself in a fantasy world. While I enjoy retreating into the old classics, I can only pretend to be Captain Pichard so many times.

That’s why I love it when a comic (or movie/book/game, but this is Digital Strips) creates a world that I’ve never been to before. Something truly unique for this weary, whimsical-world wanderer. Kukuburi by Ramon Perez creates just such a world.

Listen in to see if this new playground can hold water and if this comic can live up to the standards set by so many great ones that have gone before (many of which we mention in the show at least once).

Once again I’m posting from work so I’ll fill in the links for the show notes up later along with updating the itunes/RSS feed. Here are the names of the comics mentioned just to tide you early birds over.

Oregon Trail
Odell Lake
Ryan Estrada
The Kind you Don’t take home to Mother
The donation place
Kickstarter
Uwe Boll
Transmission X
Butternut Squash
Abominable Charles Christopher
Sin Titulo
Panda Xpress
Rice Boy
Dresden Codak
Earthsong
Dreamland Chronicles
Phantom Sword
Realm of Atland
Looking for Group
Mirror’s Edge
Finder’s Keepers

I’ll try to figure out getting url’s into the itunes feed tomorrow, I’m sure it’s easy, but nothing’s easy when you’re running on seven hours of sleep over two days.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Digital Strips 182 – Horizons Watch Loldwell and My Milk Toof

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It’s the beginning of a brand new day, and brand new weekend and still – philosophically – a brand new year and what better way to celebrate than with two brand new – to you – strips?

This month on Horizons Watch we do another spectrum spanner. Jason’s pick was Loldwell by H Caldwell Tanner, a comic so Web comicy that I think I’ll used it as an example for now one. It’s full of gags, puns and Internet humor and makes no apologies for any of it.

On the other side, my pick My Milk Toof by Inhae is something I’ve never seen before. A photo comic fully of whimsy and spunk starring two tiny teeth. There’s no where else you can find something like this, which I guess makes it really Web comicy in its own way.

Please, check out the strips, let us know what you think. And let them know you found them through our show. That’ll really surprise them.

Show Notes:
Evan Dahm
Rice Boy
Gun Show
Hark a Vagrant
Chain Saw Suit
Johnny Wander
AppleGeeks
Machall
Delilah and the Basilisk
1/11 Penny Arcade
Ugly Hill
No Invented Here
Perry Bible Fellowship
Pilgrims are Noobs
Internet Bible
Sept 22 string theory
Dec 18 Crop Circles
Dec 10 The Buckley Clause
CAD
The Christmas Strip
Dawn of Time
Silent Kimbley
Kawaii Not
Twist Kaijuu Theater
Irregular Web Comics
The Lair of the Dreaded Atrox
Pavlov’s Dream
Scooter and Ferret

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Digital Strips 179 – Review: Finder’s Keepers

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There is a genre of web comics that I seem to forget about and rediscover every couple of months. Fantasy web comics are everywhere on the Internet. Seriously the only thing I think you can find more sites dedicated to are cameras pointed at lonely singles. And yet some how, I keep forgetting that they’re even there. But then one falls into my lap and I find myself with tons of new reading material.

Among the masses though there are comics of all levels. The cream rises to the top though on this episode as we take a look at Finder’s Keepers by Garth Cameron Graham. We had a ton of fun reading and talking about this comic and hope you will enjoy the show.

If you don’t, you suck.

Show Notes:
The David Mitchell Video
Pajama Forest
Least I Could Do
SnowFlakes
Byron Pinkleton
Grumps
Wonderella
Penny Arcade
PVP “incident”
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
11/27 Imagine this
Digital Strips Adventures

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Digital Strips 178 – Review Pajama Forest

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Alrighty faithful listeners, things are back to normal here at Digital Strips Central. I’m back in the saddle ready to review some comics. After almost a month off, i was pretty pissed off and ready to vent my frustrations at the nearest comic with bug-eyed characters I could find. The comic that fit the bill was Pajama Forest by Evan Diaz.

This was a fun show all around. We start with the Google News alerts (which we’re still taking feedback on, so if you feel one way or the other about it, please inform us) then get right into the meat of the matter: Pajama Forest. We talk about all the usual topics. What we like, what we don’t. What made us laugh, what made us cry. We grow closer to each other. It’s truly Oscar worthy entertainment.

What do you guys think? Is the comic too random? Too short? Too funny? Let us know in the comments, that’s what they are there for.

Show Notes:
Penny Arcade
PATV
PVP
Achewood
American Elf
AV Club top comics
The Ontarian Blurb
Bobwhite
Nerdriod
Lackisdaisy
Tiny Kitten Teeth
Cross Hare
Love Sick Comic
My Cardboard Life
Insert-Joke-Here

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Digital Strips 177 – Zuda Watch Nov 09

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OK boys and girls. A few of you may remember way back in our last show I said that I would disappear for a while because of my wife having a baby. I said this way back then because it was a week before the due date and people had told us stories about babies coming way before their parents were ready. In truth though, the due date is nothing more than an arbitrary point in time, some where in the middle of a month where you just walk around the house with a catcher’s mitt.

Not wanting to leave you guys completely showless Jason went ahead and planed a Zuda Watch for this month. Right before we were about to record though, I had to get ready to go to the hosipital because babies hate the Internet. Fortunately Mr. David Gallaher was willing to join in and save everyone from having to hear Jason talk to himself for an hour.

So tune in and take a frightening look at a world with out Steve “The Geek” Shinney.

Here’s a spoiler: It’s still a pretty goo world what with all the comics.

Sorry no show notes this time. They dropped a lot of names of creators that I didn’t recognize because I’m not that smart.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Review: Road Crew

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There are few names more evocative of rock and roll than Tommy. It is fitting that the penwrite of Road Crew, at least shares the sound of that magical name. The Road Crew follows the unheralded members of music with jokes that are leaden and panels that are pointedly, not child-friendly. It is difficult to gauge the authenticity of the strip from my position behind a type-writer but it certainly feels accurate. Brooding with sophomoric permanence. Dark, interspersed with naked vixens. Opinionated, staunchly against singing drummers (applause). Full of music knowledge and no care for spelling. Characters that look foreign and strung out on… well everything one could be strung out on. In short, authentic to my visage of the rock and roll industry.

Though sometimes the figures look like zombies in drag, the comic makes Oprah appear unctuous; short of covering the paper in butyrin or muck, this is in itself impressive. Nauseating but impressive. If ever a anthropomorphic, visual dictionary is made of any one of these characters it could deno-illustrate ‘tool’. Kudus for use of Oprah as… well you just have to see it for yourself.

In the first Road Crew compellation, “Electric Ladyland”, you get to relive or experience for the first time (if you have been under a rock, Yanni fan maybe) the quick wit of the Road Crew. Callous disregard for sound quality with a hint of questionable paternity fills the pages which pick up and fall with a fast and furious pace. If you abide the adage “sex, drugs and rock and roll” you’ll love Road Crew, a fun filled romp throughout the back allies behind the behind-the-music. After reading Electric Ladyland you might need a tenuous shot and a bath though.

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