My web-comic,
The Fate of Keisuke, is officially one year old as of today. I doubt many, if any of you, have read or even heard of it, due to its current unfortunate state of being a Facebook exclusive comic, plus with the page for it on Facebook only having a meager 24 likes, but still. I'm happy. 366 days, 55 chapters, 457 pages, and 2 spin-off chapters. It's been a hell of a year with ups and downs.
And as a celebration of the one-year anniversary, I've created a collected edition of the first 15 chapters, titled
The Fate of Keisuke Vol. #1: Origins, which is now available as a free download as of today. All of the chapters have been remastered, with all errors being removed, dialogue has been (mostly) rewritten, extra story content was added, as well as a Character Booklet added to the end of the volume that gives background info on all of the cast members appearing in this book.
I'd love to share it with you all, so you can
download it here! Currently, it's only in image format, as I've yet to find a good (free) program that makes .pdfs out of images and keeps them at high quality, so the file is a whopping
170MB. I'd still love for everyone to check it out! Also, the Facebook Page is public access, so no account is required to read it there. If you like what you see here, feel free to head to the page to keep up to date with the comic (if you don't want to wait for the next volume release, which is coming next month). The link to the page is in my signature if you're interested!
So... yeah. I'm just really
really excited about this. I've usually lost interest in projects after a week or two, but I'm having a lot of fun doing this, despite the fact that my reader-base is
extremely low, like
one person actually regularly reads it kind of low. I'd really love to know what everyone here thinks about it!
Extra notes about the comic if people care to read it:
HISTORY AND BEHIND THE SCENES:
The Fate of Keisuke began as a test project once I purchased the Manga Maker program for $7 USD on BundleStars. It's a limited program that normally costs $50 USD on Steam, but for the price I paid for it, it was perfectly fine. Initially, the story was being made up as I went along, with no real thought behind it. It originally began as a parody series, which was meant to play on anime/manga tropes and ultimately make fun of the industry while still telling a story on its own. Eventually, I got bored with that and decided to move it into its own plot, so after Chapter #30 (the end of the first story arc), I actually began to plan the story out rather than make it up as I went along.
The series has a very inaccurate representation of Japan. Horribly horribly inaccurate. This happened simply because the series began as a parody. Rather than go back and rewrite everything to be more accurate, I instead took the easier route and retconned the series into taking place in a fictional city. While the setting was originally an inaccurate Tokyo, it now takes place in the fictional Konayama. I initially had plans to make it more accurate as I went on through the series, but I've since given up on that, now leaving any details about the setting and culture as vague as possible.
The series is broken up into "seasons", which are essentially just there to tell you when a new story arc begins. These are further broken down into multiple parts. Each season consists of 30 chapters. Season 1 is broken up into two 15-chapter parts, while Season 2 is broken up into three 10-chapter parts. Each of the parts ends with a chapter that is longer than the others. Season 1's chapters began as simple 5-page chapters (#15 being 20 pages and #30 being 27 pages), while Season 2 went for longer 10-page chapters (with #40 and #50 both being 20 pages), to make up for the fact that I was moving to a weekly release schedule rather than a daily release schedule.
I've since dropped any sort of release schedule, due to constant arising problems in my personal life making it difficult to keep a regular schedule. I still work hard on the comic, but now simply release them whenever they're finished (though one reader has notified me I need to do a better proof-reading job).
There's also dramatic shifts in tone throughout the series. The series begins as a slapstick humor-fest, but halfway through the first story arc switches to something darker, and the rest of the series to this point has maintained that. Drama first, comedy second. I want to make more action scenes, but due to the lack of options in the program, I'm very limited with what I can do (which is why the series is switching to hand-drawn art starting with Chapter #61).
I've also ultimately dropped the ideas I had for spin-offs that I posted about here previously. Not due to too much of a workload, but due to personal problems I had with the other team members. While one of them I plan to bring back after this story arc ends (as a sole focus, to help me get into the swing of hand-drawn art), the other spin-off has been dropped completely. A new spin-off was given birth to last month, but that's just simply so I still had an excuse to use the program after this story arc ended.
Also, the original release of the series contained quite a few references to the Harry Potter series, which I added in because I thought my mother would get a kick out of it (since she's a huge fan of said series). These exist in the forms of the characters Dureiko Marufoi, Hari Pota, Ranudo Wisuri, and Hamaini Gurenja, as well as their school Hogowatsu Academy (which was retconned from the original Aramaki High). Chapter #11 originally had a big focus on these characters, as I planned a 20-page short story about them, but I got bored of writing them and ultimately dropped it. This volume release completely writes these characters out (as well as retconning the school name back to Aramaki), aside from Dureiko, who I couldn't write out due to actually being a recurring character (as well as having a big role in the second story arc).
PLOT DETAILS:
It all began with a punch... Due to low test scores at Konayama's Central Academy, the schooling distract has added another month onto the term schedule. This leads to young Keisuke Toriumi being late, where he met with the grisly fate of being beaten into a coma. With his life on the line, his friends all fight to save him, but there are deadly forces at work behind the scenes...
WARNING - CONTAINS:
-Blood and Violence
-Strong Language*
-Mild Crude Humor*
* = Have been toned down in volume release, but still exist