Doubt and Trust

This may seem obvious but many writers can forget this; a narrative needs a hook at the start in order to keep the reader coming back. Sometimes that hook is an interesting premise. The hook maybe a mystery that keeps the audience asking questions. Maybe the hook is a group of characters that just work well off of each other. With this being a comic it could be that the art is so breath taking that it just sucks you into the world. Luckily Nyapapa's nuzlocke Doubt and Trust do all of those this well.

   Doubt and Trust is a special kind of nuzlocke called a gijanka nuzlocke. Gijanka is the humanization of none humans like animals or in today's case Pokemon. What that means for the nuzlocke is that their are no Pokemon trainers in this world, only the gijanka. This is a nuzlocke of Pokemon Heart Gold, but instead of a drirect lift for the story Nyapapa uses it as more of a frame work. The story is about a boy named Noah as he searches for the thought defeated group Team Rocket, but gets rounded up into a team to take on the league of this region. While it seems fairly simple at the start, it does set up quiet a lot of mystery hinting on how the world will only grow.

I was apprehensive about talking about the various Pokemon characters last time out of fear of giving away who lives and who dies, but with this nuzlocke being fairly early in its adventure no one has die yet. With that in mind I won't be talking about all of the characters just my two favorite, Noah and Senna. Noah is the Starter Totldile. While it hasn't been directly said yet, it is pretty clear he use to be a member of Team Rocket. He's come to Jotho in search of them and won't let anything get in his way. The myster of him really comes in from what happen to him that made him hate his former team so passionately. He wants to get the job done and as a result is overly serious. Senna is the first capture Hoothoot and is the opposite to Noah in nearly every way. She is always full of energy and will always speak her mind. She has two goals for going on a journey. First is to complete the league challenge which she ends up raping Noah into. Her second is to find her lost brother who went out for his one league challenge, but lost contact.  The two together have a bit of a comedy duo going on with their clashing personalities, but their is a real friendship between the two.

  The art and character design is amazing. First the art has a great flow when fights are involved. It's some of the best action I've seen from a nuzlocke, but the characters design is where this really shines. These characters are Pokemon drawn as people and  you can always tell what the Pokemon is. The details on the designs are also amazing. My favorite example of this is how Senna always has that second ring in her eyes. It just really nice detail.

Time for the problems, namely exposition. This comic loves just talking about the world and character background. The problem is that it's not done naturally. The exposition is very forced into a seen so the audience will know what's going on.  While I never had a problem with it on my first reading, it can come as very wordy with only a little action that could very easily become boring.

Despite the problems I mentioned Doubt and Trust is an amazing comic. It has created an amazing world with fun and interesting character. The art is amazing and I could just look at the character designs for a while. Click here to get started and I highly recommend you do. See you tomorrow.