Fallen star has a children’s book kind of aesthetic, and I really like it. There’s lots of really beautiful panels showing off the wilderness, and a great variety of locales, too. I want some of these as my wallpaper.

The story is kinda… eh. It opens with a big lore dump and all it amounts to is “the star goddess created good things but then an evil goddess came to destroy her creation because that’s what evil things do, so the goddess sealed her away with the help of a chosen hero.” It’s a simplistic, kinda generic story, but since the ‘kids picture book’ aesthetic is emphasized so much, it actually works here. Plus a lot of mystery is built up and it’s clear there’s more going on than meets the eye, so that makes it a lot more fun than it probably would have been otherwise.

The plot has a lot of similarites to Zelda, now that I think about it. But Zelda incorporates a lot of Buddhist themes and has the benefit of being able to fall back on game mechanics, so Fallen Star feels a lot weaker by comparison. Not that I hold that against this comic.

Mina is an excellent protagonist, well-mannered but still possessing the naivety and impatience of childhood, and it’s very easy to root for her. Her bunny cap reminds me a lot of Finn/Fiona’s hats - maybe an implicit reference?

Ryou is my favorite character, there’s a kindness and deep inner strength to him that, at least to me, felt very inspirational. Kinda like a wise mentor figure, which is surprisingly rare these days - modern day mentor figures in fiction tend to be almost malevolently insane. You can actually see the degradation over the last hundred years or so, from solemn and wise figures like Gandalf and Obi-Wan Kenobi to quirky but still inspirational figures like Doc Brown and Yoda, until finally you get to the modern day where Rick Sanchez and The Ellimist act as the protagonist’s teachers. Probably says a lot about the kind of people my generation has as mentor figures - take your pick of out of touch, half-demented boomers vs. e-celebs looking to scam their followers, or push some kind of insane ideology, or both. Anyway.

Probably my favorite part of this comic is all the locations the MC visits. There’s a mysterious town where everyone seems afraid to go outdoors, there’s a woodland of giant lilypads that can only be accessed by crossing a living river via stepping stones that only appear when the sun strikes a red lamppost at a certain angle - I love that sort of thing.

Surprisingly, what holds Fallen Star back most is the grammar. Normally I wouldn’t hold bad grammar against a comic much. Heck, one of my favorite comics is Tails Gets Trolled, known in part because of how atrocious the spelling was in earlier chapters. But… look at this.

English is clearly not Sam’s (the author’s) first language. This really needed some proofreading from a native speaker.

Still, if bad grammar is the worst thing I can say about a comic, that probably means it’s a comic worth reading. Check it out if you like light fantasy!