An honest perspective of the 'I Hope So' comic and the creators.
Spoilers for those who have not read the comic yet!
I want to start this off with an honest review of the comic itself. I Hope So is a lion webcomic that is based around the concept of found family and was heavily inspired by the Indie show, 'My Pride', a show about a disabled lioness trying to survive in a brutal ablilest society. I Hope So follows a very similar story, having starting out initially as an AU to My Pride before the creators decided to scrap the idea and turn it into it's own story.
The story follows 'Hope', a young lioness who was born without a back leg and who is held in less than favorable regards by her abusive parents. Jasper, her father, is more on the emotional side, whereas Vicious, her mother, is physically and mentally abusive, having given Hope her scar and calling her 'Hopeless' her whole young life and treating her as a failure. After one of her aunts was killed by her father and another lion, Hope leaves the Pride with her surviving sister, Adamant, and her long time friend/love interest, Storm as they brave the dry lands and fight to survive all while being hunted down by a much larger foe.
While the comic is well paced, the way the creator went about it, introducing it in their My Pride review video, it comes off as very 'I can do the same story better. Watch me.' While nothing is wrong with competition, they take time to trash My Pride any chance they get despite insisting they don't.
The comic itself is well written. We get time to get to know Hope and her family and the dynamic of how the Golden Grove Pride works under Jasper's rule. Hope is the only survivor of her litter, the other two being stillborn. The early chapters show the overprotectiveness of Vicious, who refuses to let Hope do much on her own due to missing a leg, fearing if Hope gets hurt, she will not be able to walk. Hope meets a traveler family and this is where we first meet Storm before Vicious chases the two travelers off and barrates Hope for even interacting with them, highlighting why Vicious has her name.
Later we get to meet the two younger siblings of Hope, Adamant and Quiet. Through the naming of the two younger sisters, we learn that lions can get their name at any age based on their traits and we learn that Hope has yet to get her name. Hope goes her entire childhood nameless and kept from the hunt by her mother, Vicious, who claims caution but is very much saying without stating it directly she does not belive Hope can do it. Hope pushes for a chance to prove herself and for a name and reluctantly, Vicious agrees to have her join a hunt, which results in Hope being nearly trampled by a zebra but is lucky enough to walk away with a clipped ear. Enrage, Vicious tears into Hope to the point of tears and decide her name was going to be 'Hopeless'.
Shortly after, one of her aunts, Clever speaks to her and comes up with the idea to shorten the name to 'Hope', showing that Clever is not like the rest of the tribe and shows kindness to Hope, believing she is fully capable, having 'the soul of a survivor'. This makes her eventual murder far more tragic later on as Hope is left realing that, not only her aunt is dead, but her father is a murderer and working with an equally shady white lion. Before that, Quiet unfortunately passes away, setting up the mystery of something shady is going on behind the scenes as Jasper blames it on the hyenas but Clever knew better because Jasper chased them all out when he first took over the Pride.
Hope, equally suspicious of her father, trails him one early morning and witnessed Clever confronting him about everything. Jasper, as cocky as ever, reveals he had not only chased the hyenas off, he was the reason the previous ruler, Merry, is dead. Enraged, Clever attacks him only for Edge to come in and pin her down. Hope tries to intervene but Clever gets her to run to tell the pride. Hope frantically tries to explain to her abusive mother what she witnessed but Vicious basically calls her daughter a liar and becomes the embodiment of "He would never do that." Jasper comes crawling back and further manipulates the situation by portraying Clever and Hope had tried to attack him and that Clever turned Hope against her own parents.
Realizing the pride was no longer safe and that her mother was as horrible as Jasper, Hope leaves the pride and joins Storm and her sister Adamant catches up to them, wanting to leave the pride as well after Quiet has died and believed Hope's account of what Jasper did.
The trio proceeds into the landscape, unaware that Edge wants his dues from Jasper, as he wanted Adamant and Jasper pulled a fast one by giving him Quiet, who was confirmed to be the one who killed her to send a message to Jasper.
The story is ongoing and is well written. It gives us a lot of characters and world building and takes its time to give us time to undersrand each character and their motivations. I can see where it draws a lot from My Pride and Watership Down but once the main character leaves the Golden Grove, it begins to break off into its own thing.
Some issues had popped up during the time the comic was on webtoon. On the early chapters, many noticed some panels were deviated in drawing style. A reddit user clipped together screenshot from The Lion King to show there was some tracing taking place.
The co-creator would reply to the post explaining that the other artist was still not comfortable drawing lions yet and that they had plans to redo the earlier chapters but acknowledges there should have been more transparency that panels were 'heavily referenced'. They made an honest mistake from the sounds of it.
While some chapters have been redone, many are still cynical about the artists for 'tracing' in the first place. This may or may not have been a factor in the webcomic eventually being removed from the Webtoon app and moving to Tumblr.
The comic will run into another issue however, the patreon. People who were paying to get early access were leaking the entire chapters, causing those who financially support the comic to pay the price of only getting one page ahead a week and the schedule to become a weekly release while still paying the same price. While the creators have said they were experimenting and released scripts as a way to compensate, many, including myself, could no longer justify paying 10 dollars a month for a page a week. The leaks also caused the entire comic release schedule to be reduced to a weekly page instead of a monthly half chapter release on tumbr and they website. While some would argue this was a smart way to keep readers, I've noticed comments here and there on people's accounts mentioning they cannot follow the story as well as they used to.
Interactions with the creators themselves have been met with some people calling out the creators for being rude or sarcastic when asking on their tumblr blog and the creators spinning it back on the fans. It has led to some fans, including myself, hesitant to even interact with comments or posts or asks as the creators always have a third degree to give to comments or ask they do not like.
Another recent issue that has come up was a few posts are popping up here and there about folks being randomly banned from the Tumblr to the Discord and to the Patreon itself.
I've speculated with some of my mutuals in a private discord server that the creators likely did some weird follower purge while others speculate this was some mass banning as the creators had been amping up the ban hammer lately over any perceive slights. It seems unfair some were banned for no reason off patreon since they were financially supporting the creators. I myself was recently banned from their tumbr as my reposts of their comic pages was taken down and I can no longer search up their account. I do agree with what some people in the screenshots were discussing that the creators gave no warnings. A shame because from my perspective, the creators tended to always have something to say and always needed the last word when interacting with fans and it often came off as sarcastic or negative with quotes like 'Thanks for the permission I guess' or 'So nice we have your approval oh so great follower'.
And I do remember an annon calling then out on this and they proceeded to drag them through the coal and deny everything and telling everyone they should be nice and to stop "Projecting tone" onto their words.
The issue is, I have seen many creators interacting with their followers and fans and they do not behave this way. They are honest but they aren't blunt or sarcastic. They take the time to explain things or address a misunderstanding of the plot. Whereas the creators here act condensending saying 'If we wanted someone to interpret a character or plot point this way, we would have said it in the story, now wouldn't we?' I personally think the creators should not really be interacting with their fanbase if they are gonna be this sarcastic or rude. They seem to be spiteful at times even when people gently bring up how they treat My Pride with the 'We hate the source of our inspiration' mentality.
I used to post on here how this comic is an inspiration to make my own concepts I hope to launch one day but I took them down after seeing how people can just be banned to be banned. And after reading some other threads, I decided to no longer really make anymore I Hope So art or related post and have taken them all down and unlisted it as an inspiration. The people behind this comic are really starting to come off as disrespectful and don't really treat their fanbase well. If I ever did release my comic, I rather not interact with fans at all then behave like that towards people who are just trying to support a project.
Now I am not trying to persuade anyone from the comic. It truly is well written with good art and I do think the artists made an honest mistake when it came to the drawing controversy. From my honest review and perspective, I hope that people just get more of the fanbase perspective on things.
This will be my very last time posting about I Hope So. I'll leave this post as my only I Hope So post.
Please do not go and bash the creators either. This post is purely opinionated and the screenshots are not 100 percent confirmed factual 🙏
